St Mary's County MD Stuffed Ham...a Delicacy

HOLLYWOOD, Md. (November 15, 2007) -- As Thanksgiving fast approaches, and people whet their appetites for a traditional turkey feast, an old favorite is rapidly becoming more popular as holiday fare.

Southern Maryland stuffed ham, also known as St. Mary's County stuffed ham, has been a traditional local favorite dating back centuries in the region and independent grocers say that more and more people not originally from here are coming to love the dish.

"We have customers, some of them military, who said 'Someone told me about stuffed ham. What is it?'" said Mary White, store manager for McKay's Fine Food and Pharmacy in Great Mills. "They try it and they love it. They come back all the time."

The main ingredients of the dish include a corned ham, one that has been soaked or injected with brine, removed from its bone and stuffed with a mixture of cabbage, kale and spices that include a variety of peppers.

McKay's grocery stores prepared 400 individual hams for sale during the Thanksgiving holiday, showing just how popular the dish has become.

"Every day we're getting calls to see if we're still doing stuffed ham," White told The County Times, adding that many calls are from outside the county or even the region. "You give them a sample and you get them hooked; they've got to have it."




Donnie Tennyson, owner of Raley's Town and Country in Ridge, said the phenomenon of stuffed ham has reached far across the nation.

"It's amazing all the calls we get from all over the country asking about it," Tennyson said. "Either they know about us or find us on the Internet."

Residents in Hawaii have called up Raley's and asked for stuffed ham to be shipped to them, but so far international sales have eluded him.

"I'm not world famous, but that's my goal," Tennyson said with a laugh.

Stuffed ham is popular in just about any form it's cooked in, independent grocers say, and there are plenty of variations and methods for preparing it.

In places like Ridge, Tennyson said, cabbage is the predominant stuffing ingredient.

That's what he was raised on, but at Raley's they use just enough kale for a little flavor and color.

The farther north you go, Tennyson said, the more kale is used in the stuffing mixture.

"There's so many different variations," he said. "We've mused about putting a patent on our recipes."

The Raley's owner said he plans to bake 200 hams for the Thanksgiving holiday and will sell it by the pound.

He said that the stuffed ham business for independent grocers has grown because the knowledge has not been passed on in families where the older generations have traditionally done it for themselves.

"What we're seeing here is that the process is not being passed on to the next generation, Tennyson said. "They don't know how to stuff it or because of time they don't want to.

"It's becoming a lost art."

The stuffing part is where the most work usually happens, grocers say, and there are plenty of ways to do it.

At Raley's, they remove the large bone from the ham and simply stuff the cavity. At McKay's they sometimes cut open the ham, stuff the interior as it's laid out and them roll it back up and tie it off.

At Murphy's Town and Country in Avenue, which has been open since 1949, they take a more artistic bent with stuffing the ham, according to owner Gilbert Murphy.

"We cut slits through our ham from the inside, stuff it, tie it back up, wrap it in cheesecloth, steam it and when you slice it, it looks like a star on the inside."

At Murphy's, the steaming process is used to keep all the juices and the seasoning in the ham, Murphy said.

At Raley's, they measure all the ingredients to ensure a consistency in their products, especially with the stuffing and seasoning. At Murphy's, they uses a more instinctive approach.

"I go just by how it looks," Murphy said. "I've been doing it so long I know exactly what I'm looking for."

Virginia Tennyson, co-owner of Chaptico Market in Chaptico, said they blanch their vegetables before making their stuffing.

They also cut half-moon shaped slits in the meat to accommodate as much spicy stuffing as possible.

"You stuff it until it comes back out at you," Virginia Tennyson said. "That's how you know."

Murphy also lamented the apparent loss of knowledge about preparing stuffed ham.

"It was like a big party," Murphy said. "It was like a fellowship; people would stuff the hams together. Today it's just not out there."

Stuffed ham is also important as a signature product among independent grocers who are competing with larger chains for customer dollars.

"During the holidays it's a big part of your business," Murphy, who plans to steam about 200 hams for the season, said. "But people like it so much we do it year round."

Items like stuffed ham, and other delicatessen goodies that are homemade, ensure that customers will keep coming back to the smaller stores, he said.

Virginia Tennyson said that stuffed ham and other delicacies help them make it through the lean times.

"That's what gets our livelihood through the holidays," she said. "Because if you get the ham customer, then they'll come back and get the cakes and the pies."




But the precious porcine delicacy doesn't come cheap. Most of the independent grocers are selling ham for close to or over $10 a pound.

The labor needed to stuff a ham plus all the ingredients and cooking time that go into it necessitate the high price, Donnie Tennyson said.

One of his hams can cost up to $150; with shipping costs of $4.49 a pound it could cost about $225 just to have one delivered, he said.

"And people buy it," he said. "And they don't bat an eye. They say 'OK, I want it.'"

Lenny's Seafood Restaurant owner Daniel Rebarchick said he once shipped one-half of a ham to someone in Colorado that cost $70 alone; but it cost $78 just to ship it.

"They said it was worth every penny," Rebarchick said.

Here the Raley's recipe, from Raley's market in Ridge, MD. This is the closest to my Grandmother's recipe:

* You MUST have a corned ham for the original recipe. Regular ham, although I love it, is just not the same...

Ingredients
1 (20 to 22-pound) corned ham, boned
10 pounds cabbage
1 to 1 1/2 pounds kale
3 pounds onion
2 1/2 to 3 tablespoons crushed red pepper
1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons black pepper
1 package cheesecloth
Directions
Trim excess fat from ham.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Wash cabbage, kale and onions with cold water. Chop or shred cabbage, kale, and onions and place in a large bowl. Add red and black pepper. Mix all ingredients thoroughly.

Prepare ham for stuffing by making 1 or 2-inch slits all over the ham, about 1 to 2-inches deep. Using your gloved hand, press stuffing into slits until full. Fill large cavity where bone was located with stuffing also.

When finished stuffing, tie ham with string. Wrap ham with cheesecloth and tie securely. Cover ham with aluminum foil and bake for 5 hours.

When ham is finished, drain and let ham cool down overnight in the refrigerator before carving. Serve cold.

ST MARY'S LANDING
29935 Three Notch Rd. (Route 5), Charlotte Hall, Md. 301-884-3287.

You can't take a road trip through Southern Maryland without tripping over the local delicacy: stuffed ham. The traditional dish-corned ham stuffed with kale, cabbage, onions, and spices-is the specialty of the house at church suppers and roadside eateries and especially at St. Mary's Landing, where it's served for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. "We make it at least two or three times a week," says owner Billy Hill. "The key to stuffed ham is to buy it fresh and keep it fresh. The fresher it is, the better it tastes." And at St. Mary's Landing, the stuffed ham tastes pretty good. It's served as a sandwich or as a platter or with a breakfast of two eggs and a potato cake. The recipe is a holdover from Hill's Halfway House, a Mechanicsville landmark until the late 1990s, when Hill sold it and purchased St. Mary's Landing. The current building had housed a popular rib joint and before that, a steakhouse. (Consider St. Mary's Landing a "cumulative Hall of Famer.") These days, the restaurant fills with a post-church crowd on Sundays hungry for the all-you-can- eat breakfast buffet or the country breakfast of three eggs, hash browns, and real St. Mary's County sausage, cooked in boiling water. ("You don't put real country sausage in the broiler or fryer," notes Hill.) Fried chicken, oysters, and ribs round out the hearty lunch and dinner menus. Like the best roadhouses, the restaurant itself is not much to look at-it's poorly lit, half of it's a tavern, and suspended TVs broadcast an endless string of Keno games in its two dining rooms-but it's the food and wait staff that keep people coming back. "I've got a lot of kin in these parts," says Hill, and three of them, all first cousins-Sharon, Delores, and Beverly-have more than fifty years waitressing experience between them. How many stuffed hams they've served in that time we can hardly imagine.

Tent Count
Beverly Stephen reports.

St. Michaels, Maryland-What's an event without a chef in a tent? Or two? Or more? "We equate our growth to the number of tents," says St. Michaels Food & Wine Festival executive director Jon Mason. This year there were five. That's how successful this Chesapeake Bay festival has become in just six years.

On the last weekend in April some 2,000 attendees flocked to the tents to watch chefs demo their dishes; sample wines, cheeses, and specialty products; listen and learn at educational seminars; buy some wines to take home; and open their wallets at live and silent auctions to raise $35,000 for local charities. They also fanned out in the community to attend wine dinners at a number of local restaurants such as Scossa Restaurant & Lounge in Easton, where Italian fare ruled, and The Inn at Perry Cabin, where executive chef Mark Salter and pastry chef Douglas Matthews were joined by an international crew that included Guillermo J. Gomez (Maroma Resort and Spa, Riviera Maya, Mexico) and his pollen/cardamom crusted seared scallops with avocado relish and agave nectar essence; Michael Hobins, (The Lake of Menteith Hotel, Scotland) and his roasted breast of Maple Leaf duck with ginger nut crumble, chicory marmalade, and pepper berry jus; and Jeffrey Buben (Vidalia and (Bistro Bis, Washington, D.C.) and his stuffed saddle of Shenandoah lamb with sweet garlic/grits cake, espelette pepper, and arugula pesto. The addictive cheese bread was baked by Gustina Harmon, aka Miss Gussie, who has been turning out yeast rolls, biscuits, scones, cookies, etc. for the Inn for 18 years. Wines were from Chateau St. Jean in Sonoma County, California.





In the tents, New York City's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel executive chef John Doherty updated Waldorf salad with crème fraîche, walnut oil, and lemon juice; Buben served citrus cured salmon with tartare of spring vegetables; Gomez did ajillo sautéed shrimp with mango/ginger sangrita; and Salter produced Eastern Shore pub sauce-glazed pork tenderloin with corn salad and grilled onion relish. Lou DiPalo (DiPalo's Fine Foods, New York City) sampled speck, a type of prosciutto from the Alto Adige region that's smoked as well as cured. Restaurateur Tony May expounded on the evolution of Italian cuisine; Evan Cattanach led a tasting of Scotch and oysters; and Lynne Tolley, the great grandniece of Jack Daniel, offered a tasting and a history of the Tennessee whiskey, which she explained differs from Bourbon in that it goes through the additional step of charcoal filtration. Tolley also extolled the virtues of cooking with Jack Daniel's and gave the tip that one could always use it in lieu of vanilla. However, she got a good laugh when she recalled that one gentleman had told her, "Honey, I'm a lot more likely to run out of Jack Daniel's than I am to run out of vanilla."

When the festival first started, there was only one tent to accommodate both chefs and exhibitors on The Inn at Perry Cabin lawn (yes, that's where Wedding Crashers was filmed). "That was our first learning curve. We figured out that we couldn't put those two noise units together," says Mason. But growth came quickly. Like many promotions designed to boost shoulder season sales, the festival was soon filling up the hotels and selling out restaurants on an otherwise lackluster preseason weekend. As such, it has taken on a life of its own with new twists added annually.

Though the organizers want visitors to think beyond crab when they think of Maryland, they "have incorporated a number of events-wine dinners, receptions, tours-on boats to bring the water experience into the festival," according to John Volponi, Inn at Perry Cabin gm. And now the expanded festival has moved to the grounds of the (Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, giving visitors the opportunity to catch a history lesson.

"We constantly add to the festival to encourage visitors to utilize activities and visit other areas of the town," says Volponi. "This year we added a Sip and Shop component in which local stores featured wine tastings."

Festival board member Bonnie Booth, who with her husband, John, owns the historic (Five Gables Inn & Spa, says, "We originally joined to build business during a down time of year, and it has turned out to be a wonderful event for Five Gables." An unexpected bonus, she notes, "is the number of repeat guests we have. Lots of people come to the festival every year, and they book for the next year as they're checking out."

CAPT. BERT'S STUFFED HAM

Submitted by: Bert Shaffner

12 to 18lb corned ham and have it deboned
3lb kale
3lb cabbage
1lb watercress
1 bunch celery
small onion (optional)
Chop all ingredients in less than 1" pieces. Blanch together, remove, place in bag to drain. Add the following spices:

2 teaspoon hot sauce
2 tablespoon crushed red pepper
4 tablespoons salt
3 tablespoons black pepper
2 tablespoons mustard seed
2 tablespoons celery seed
1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper
Mix spices in stuffing. If your hands burn its just about right. Stuff bone cavity, fold and tie ham with butchers twine or crab line. Cut X's in ham and push stuffing in to these. Get a sack, pillow case, or cheese cloth and place the ham inside. Bring water to a boil, put in ham, simmer 15 min to pound. When finished, allow to cool in broth, remove, drain and serve cold the next day.

Corned Ham

(from Saveur magazine)

SERVES 8 - 10

This deliciously moist ham is cured in salt (a process known as corning). The recipe is an adaptation of one that appears in Bill Smith's Seasoned in the South (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2006).

8-10-lb. fresh shank-end ham, rinsed and dried
1 1%u20444 cups kosher salt

1. Insert a knife into either end of the ham, next to the bone, making 3"-deep incisions in each end. Fill the incisions and rub the outside of the ham with salt. Collect and reserve any salt that doesn't cling to the ham; store in a container in refrigerator. Place ham in a nonreactive pan and cover with plastic wrap, then aluminum foil; let chill.

2. Turn ham every 1-2 days, rerubbing with remaining salt, for 7 days. (Pour off any juice that collects in the pan.) Wash the ham under cold running water; be sure to flush out the salted incisions. Transfer ham to a large, clean container and cover with cold water; let chill overnight. Drain.

3. Preheat oven to 325°. Bake ham on a rack in a roasting pan, covered, for 1 hour. Uncover, increase oven temperature to 375°, and continue to bake, basting from time to time, until the meat pulls away from the bone, about 3 hours more. (Cover ham loosely with a piece of aluminum foil if skin is browning too fast.) Set ham aside to let rest a little, then carve and serve.