(Sorry my photos are lame — I had way too much stuff going on and kept forgetting to grab my camera until it was too late.)
Happy new year! Hope you started it off right — with a delicious meal!
I ended up hosting a last-minute dinner party at my house, which is something I’ve never actually done before. I’ve hosted tons of parties in the Tribune lunch room, but all I really have to do for those is push a few tables together, hang up some streamers and wait for the pizza delivery guy to show up. And I’ve attended other people’s dinner parties, and even brought dishes to share. (Usually cupcakes.)
But this was different — I actually had to cook an entree. And I know this sounds weird, considering the subject matter of this blog, but I don’t ever cook entrees … or anything else, really. The vast majority of my meals are of the take-out variety. So, this whole cooking for other people thing? Totally new to me.
For the last few weeks, I’d had my eye on this Christmas ham recipe from Paula Deen, but I never got around to making it for the holidays. It seemed like a lot of food and a lot of work. And I still had tons of cookies to bake. But with a dinner party suddenly on the calendar, I figured I might as well go for it.
So I went to Vons to get a ham. Which sounds simple enough. But do you have any idea how many different kinds of ham there are? And do you have any idea how little I know about ham? As I stood in front of the ham section, my head started spinning. I briefly considered heading over to the processed lunchmeat section, picking up a package of Oscar Mayer and serving up ham-and-cheese croissants for dinner. But that would have made for an even lamer blog post than this one.
After I finally picked out a ham, I brought it home and proudly set it on the counter, thinking about how delicious it would be after I cooked it. And that’s when I realized I didn’t have anything to cook it in. So I had to go to Bed Bath and Beyond, where, due to the store’s post-holiday lack of selection and my own utter desperation, I ended up buying what has to be the most expensive roasting pan known to man.
All I could think on the way home was that this $200 ham better be freaking delicious, Paula Deen.
And it was! Well, it wasn’t $200 worth of delicious. I mean, it’s just a ham. But it was delicious enough to surprise my guests, who had been eyeing the dough-covered monstrosity with poorly disguised skepticism.
Another surprise was the glaze — I would never have guessed that orange marmalade and dijon mustard were such a tasty combo. The crescent-roll covering was also great, but that I expected. When are Pillsbury crescent rolls NOT delicious?
Here’s a tip: When Paula Deen implies that cooking your heat-and-eat ham will only take 40 minutes, don’t listen to her. My fully cooked ham took like two hours to heat up. Thank goodness we had appetizers.
Recipe: Christmas ham
From Paula Deen’s “Paula’s Party” show
- 1 butt end smoked ham, about 7 pounds
- ½ cup Dijon mustard
- 1/2 cup orange marmalade
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 3 cans crescent rolls (Pillsbury actually has sheets of crescent roll dough without perforations, which I didn’t realize when I bought my dough)
- Egg wash
- Preheat oven to 350˚F.
- Place the ham in a roasting pan and lightly score it with a sharp knife all around. Stir the mustard, marmalade and black pepper together in a small mixing bowl with a spoon. Slather the mustard mixture all over the outside of the ham, rubbing it into the scored meat. Bake the ham for 20 minutes then remove it from the oven.
- Using 2 cans of crescent rolls, unroll the crescent dough but don’t separate them into pieces. Press the perforated pieces together to keep the dough in its rectangular shape. Drape them over the ham pressing the dough edges together to cover the ham completely with the dough. Tuck any loose edges underneath the bottom of the ham in the roasting pan. Brush with egg wash.
- Lay the last piece can of dough out on a cutting board and cut our some holiday shapes with cookie cutters. Holly leaves are nice. Arrange the dough leaves in a pretty bunch on the dough draped ham. Brush these shapes with egg wash.
- Return the ham to the oven and bake for another 20 minutes until the ham is heated through and the crescent dough is cooked and browned.
The aftermath:
Ham and cheese quiche
Saucijzenbroodjes, or Dutch Sausage Rolls
Goat cheese and chorizo rolls
