For 4 people: 300 g cooked ham (sliced), 800 g potatoes, 100 g butter, 3 bunches of chives, salt. (Glaze: 3 eggs, 3 cups milk, freshly grated nutmeg).
Boil potatoes in their skins, peel and slice while still hot. Line a well-buttered baking dish with a layer of potato slices and salt carefully. Spread ham pieces and chopped chives on top. Cover with potatoes and butter flakes and continue in this manner; the last layer being butter flakes. Place in hot oven for fifteen minutes and serve.
If very hungry, make a glaze of eggs and milk, season with salt and nutmeg, and pour over potatoes. Let set in a 150° oven, which takes about half an hour.
Serve with asparagus - or, along with a fresh salad, as a main dish.
First-rate ham is not rumbled!
Long gone are the days when the most important function of smoking was to preserve the meat, and hams were smoke preserves, so to speak. It should not be forgotten that smoked ham is practically unknown south of the Alps; in the dry climates prevailing there it is usually sufficient to salt and dry the legs of pork. In our humid weather, smoke is additionally required for preservation.
Additionally, mind you, because rather more important for warding off putrefactive bacteria was drying: one day in the smoke, three days in the air, that was the home-made rule of thumb, according to which the (dry) cured legs and shoulders were refined into hind and shoulder hams. This took a lot of time, required a lot of work and required a great deal of experience as well as a sure instinct, because the hams were not allowed to be oversalted. What price such ` smoked would have to have today, is idle to calculate; it should not be very many customers who would be willing to pay it.
In order not to slide into nostalgia, it must be made clear that the idylls of earlier home slaughtering cannot be transferred to the conditions in butcher shops; the artisanal ham production at the butcher's represents a compromise, not least from the point of view of price.
Master butcher Andreas Diess, owner of the eponymous butcher's shop in Seligenstadt, founded in 1928, is well aware of this. In a family business ham could be produced according to traditional house recipes - without the customers flinching in view of the prices. Three kinds of raw ham are available: Ham bacon (€1.69), nut ham (€1.79) and salmon ham (€1.95, each for 100g). The meat from Upper Hessian pigs is dry-cured for this, smoked over beechwood chips and then matured for four weeks.
But the showpiece is the boiled ham, 100 g cost € 1.64. The meat for this is salted in brine and smoked over beechwood chips. The meat is cured in brine, then pressed into moulds and gently cooked for 6 hours. It then needs 36 hours to cool down in peace. Andreas Diess makes a point of saying that he does not "poltert" his cooked hams. This is the name given to the process commonly used in many places, by which they are subjected to rotational movements in drums in order to break down the protein better. This also makes the meat firmer, but the flavours are lost. In the Diess butcher's shop, on the other hand, it is accepted in favour of a better taste that the slices sometimes lose their shape when cut. Also from the smoking of the cooked hams one is not pleased in the Seligenstädter butcher's shop, since it leads easily to a uniform taste, means Andreas Diess. If at all, then he smokes with juniper smoke, such ham he loves to asparagus.
To make things clearer on the plate, ham potatoes according to Henriette Davidis are recommended as a side dish.
Butchery Andreas and Sindy Diess
Bahnhofsstr. 46
63500 Seligenstadt
Phone: 06182-3304
Fax: 1589
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 7am-6.30pm, Sat 7am-1pm
from Waldemar Thomas