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Shredded Ham with Currant Jelly Sauce
1/2 tablespoon butter 1/3 cup currant jelly Few grains cayenne 1/4 cup Sherry wine 1 cup cold cooked ham, cut in small strips Put butter and currant jelly into the chafing-dish. As soon as melted, add cayenne, wine, and ham; simmer five minutes.
A chafing-dish entree built on three ingredients and about six minutes of attention. It works equally well in a small skillet over low heat.
- The hamA cup of cold cooked ham cut in matchsticks is roughly 5 oz. Use a good baked or country ham rather than deli slices, which are too wet and will thin the sauce.
- Currant jellyRed currant jelly is still sold, usually near the preserves; it is tarter and less cloying than grape or apple. If you must substitute, a tart red plum or cranberry jelly comes closest. Do not use jam with fruit solids in it, which will not melt smooth.
- Chafing-dish equals low direct heatChafing-dish equals gentle heat -- The blazer pan of a chafing dish sits over a spirit flame, which gives modest, easily controlled heat rather than the output of a stove burner. A small heavy skillet or saucepan over low heat gives the same result.
- Melt before you add the restButter and jelly want to come together into a smooth glaze before the wine goes in. Adding liquid to unmelted jelly leaves lumps that never quite dissolve.
- Five minutes is the limitThe ham is already cooked; the simmer is only to warm it and let the sherry lose its raw edge. Longer and the strips turn dry and stringy while the jelly reduces to candy.
- The sherryUse a dry or medium sherry you would drink. Cooking sherry is salted, and against salty ham the dish becomes inedible.
- Cayenne"Few grains" means a small pinch, well under 1/8 teaspoon. Its job is to cut the sweetness, not to register as heat.
- YieldServes two as a light entree, or four if spread over toast points or hot buttered biscuit halves, though the recipe itself calls for no such base.
Chafing-dish cookery was a minor craze in American households around the turn of the twentieth century, when a spirit lamp and a blazer pan let a hostess cook at the table without a servant or a trip to the kitchen. The repertoire ran to things that reheat gracefully -- creamed oysters, lobster Newburg, welsh rarebit, and made dishes from cold roast meat like this one. Currant jelly with ham or game belongs to a much older tradition in English and French cooking, where a sharp red fruit preserve is the standard foil for salty or rich meat; here it is doing the same work as the jelly served alongside a joint, but stirred into the pan as a sauce. The recipe also reflects a plain domestic economy: it is a way of turning the tail end of a baked ham into something that could be set before guests.