Sunday, 3 February 2013

JULIA CHILD and the HAM


1978:  Who's a ham! 

I don’t like grocery shopping, so I’m lucky that Bryan does quite a lot of it on his own, but every now and then I get a bit of surprise like when I wrote on the list “a small package of ham” and got four pounds.

It took me a while to find a recipe, but, finally, I checked Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Tranches de Jambon Morvandelle . . . Placed on a bed of spinach braised in stock . . . this is a delectable ham dish,” she promised.

Naturally Julia took no short cuts.  It took me most of a day to prepare the spinach . . . only to discover that I could have substituted two packets of frozen chopped spinach for the three pounds I had to rinse over and over before getting into the boiling and squeezing.


No matter.  The bed of braised spinach was delicious.  


So was the Cream and Madeira Sauce on the ham. 


The thing is though,  the ham was . . .  well, it was just a ham that took too much time getting dressed up for company.  



  

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