Fixin' Leaks and Leeks

I’m not one to roll around in the ham aisle, trying to get its scent all over me, but if a ham dropped from the sky, I’d probably put it in a sandwich or something—and eat it. So, yeah. I like ham. I’m just not going to run off with the first one I see.

So, over Easter weekend, I’m not sure what possessed me (I think it was my grandmother, actually), but I NEEDED to get a ham.

I’ve been thinking about my grandmother, who passed away a while ago, and I’ve been craving the way she prepared ham at Easter. It was quite the process. Lots of salting and boiling and dumping the water, and boiling again, and things to do the night before, etc. And then we’d get to the table, and it was as if we’d never tasted ham in our lives. It was amazing, and even though she freely shared her method and recipe with my mother, no one—absolutely no one—could get the same results.

But I was going through my cookbooks, and I discovered one my mother bought me years ago from The Columbia restaurant in Ybor City, Florida. In it, was a recipe for “Pernil de Puerco/Fresh Pork Ham” (we’re talking page 110 of The Columbia Restaurant Spanish Cookbook by Adela Hernandez Gonzmart and Ferdie Pacheco, 1999).

This recipe was not one my grandmother ever used, but I decided it looked especially savory and tasty, and I thought about using the leftovers in a toasted sandwich with swiss cheese, a dill pickle, and yellow mustard. I thought about it a lot.

In any case, the ham turned out great. I’m not sure I got the right kind of ham, but it was so good. Basically, I looked for a “fresh ham,” but I could only find a spiral one (four pounds, that I suspect had been smoked), but the package said to cook it, so I figured it was fresh? (The ham aisle, apparently, is quite confusing.)

When I brought it home, I followed the directions in the cookbook: washing the ham and then attempting to pierce it with a knife, but realizing it was already spiraled, so…I skipped those directions, and continued on by pouring a combination of orange juice and lemon juice onto the ham. I was supposed to then rub it with salt, and then pound eight cloves of garlic and two teaspoons of oregano, along with some freshly ground black pepper, into a paste. The directions said to pack the paste into the ham and then place four bay leaves in the juice—I assumed at the bottom of the pan—then let it all marinate overnight.

The next day, I heated the oven to 350° F and let it cook for 2 hours. The directions didn’t say to baste it, so I didn’t.

Meanwhile, birds chirped outside the window. The Easter bunny left treats for Alex, who is twenty-one and no longer believes in the Easter bunny (that I know of), but we still hid eggs and ate chocolate and drank mimosas and listened to the birds…which got louder and louder and louder…and it was like they were trying to tell us something. Perhaps something wonderful…something about Grandma, maybe.

And we devoured the ham, and it was delicious—perfectly cooked and seasoned. And we toasted up the leftovers in buttery sandwiches—and the birds were going on and on and on…until we couldn’t stand it anymore, and opened the door to find out what they were really telling us:

A cat had found our lawn furniture—and rolled around in it—as if it wanted to get its scent all over—and it did. And we had no choice but to make more sandwiches and clean the heck out of the lawn furniture, while the creature hopped away, like some kind of feral Easter Kitty in a ham store.

Your Turn: What’s a special family meal/memory you cherish?