Leftover Easter Ham in Aspic
Jambon Persillé à la Bourguinonne, pg 78
I know I have a problem, I know. You don’t have to tell spell it out. I’ve learned to own my flaws and cooking for a Goddam army is one of them. It’s gotten better lately, but I used to only understand portion control as WHAT WILL FIT IN THE POT. Although I’ve gotten better at food math, on holidays I still lose my mind and cook for 100 people. So there are leftovers. A lot of leftovers. And after Easter, there will be leftover easter ham which I will turn into the following gorgeous and remarkable dish: Jambon Persillé à la Bourguinonne.
The recipe sits quietly on page 78 after the menu for Chevillot Beune in the Hôtel de la Poste and let’s just stop right here. I’m having some journalism issues with Hôtels des las Postes because there seem to be a lot of them in France. Price gives excellent clues (never addresses) for these but even then, they remain jumbled up in my research and I don’t know which is which. Is the one in Beune on page 78 the same as the one on page 48? It’s infuriating, as are so many of the details of The Treasury.
Leftover Easter ham in aspic is going to be wonderful
Jellied meats are not as popular as they were in the middle of the last century. People ate things in aspic all the time. And I know the title is in French and therefore intimidating as hell and you think maybe this one’s too hard, I assure you, it’s a no-brainer—and it teaches you the technique of making clarified aspic. Who knows, maybe we can bring it back.
Aspic is the jelly that comes from boiling bones and meat. It’s meat jello. And yeah, you can mold it. Which is what the 1970s were all about. Google it. Be warned, they did . . . terrible things. But you don’t have to follow in their flip floppery. Don’t make weird aspic molds. I mean, an aspic mold is already kind of weird. I’m just saying don’t . . . don’t go 1970s on me, man. You’re better than that. We’re gonna mold some leftover Easter ham in a simple casserole. So relax.
This is not your blogger friend’s bone broth
Aspic is the natural jelly that happens when you cook down bones, which you do all the time, right? If you’ve made really good beef stock, when you finish and pour it into a Tupperware and then the next day it’s all jiggly? That’s basically aspic. Except ours is going to be less beefy (although, I mean, it doesn’t have to be).
You need bones. Most grocery stores carry stock bones or beef knuckles so you shouldn’t have a problem. Price’s recipe calls for a calf’s foot, which is no big deal in Chicago but might be in your neck of the woods. Thank God online ordering exists. However, you can also make a few calls. Some on-store butchers might have one.
And I know what you’re thinking, you want to dip into the bone broth you’ve got bubbling in your crock pot under the kitchen cabinets but I say please don’t fucking do that. That shit is terrible.
If the ham you had for Easter (or bought for this recipe) is bone-in (and it had better damn be bone-in, we’re not savages) just dig that out for the stock. If for some reason you bought a boneless ham (shame) then that same butcher with the calf’s foot probably has a couple of smoked ham hocks buried in his freezer. It’ll make this a little smokey, but that’s just flavor.
There are two schools on the wine
The first school thinks that you cook with the same quality of wine you’re going to have with the meal. So grab a bottle of Domaine Laflaive Pouligny-Montrachet and pour it over those beef knuckles.
The more reasonable school cooks with cheap ass wine (like, not Barefoot Bynum, but not far from it). I swiped a nondescript bottle of white off the Whole Foods shelf and didn’t look back. But don’t be an idiot: this is not a recipe where Riesling will work. Nor is it a particularly good spot for Pinot Grigio. You want a boring white. A table white. A working wine.
Because this leftover Easter ham recipe is actually a great technique
Used to be every home cook had a pot of stock bubbling away on the back of the stove and if you have pig knuckles, you just threw them in there. So if you had a few extra meat bits, you folded them into an aspic and voila, lunch.
By making this aspic, you are learning a time honored technique you can use for just about anything. You can put oysters into an aspic, chicken, turkey . . . oh god, we’re back in the 1970s already. Just, keep this tool in your apron pocket. You never know when it’ll come in handy.
Chef Chevillot’s take on this is simple, but like all great dishes that seem really really fancy, it’s beautiful. Or striking. Or maybe weird or gross if you do it wrong. But in a great French restaurant, it’s one of those simple dishes that’s perfectly plated and served alone, maybe with a piece of bread, and a nice chilled white.