How to cure a ham

A recent trip to the store presented me with a beautiful selection of hams, recently brought in by a local pig farmer. As I picked out the one I wanted, the butcher said, “You realize that these hams have not been cured.” No, I did not. I asked for him to explain.

He told me that most of the hams that you buy have already been both cured and cooked—so they’re ready to eat. But he was selling leg joints—the part of the pig from where we get our hams—which had not been cured, let alone cooked. And in order for them to get that classic salty, sweet taste of ham, they would have to be cured first before baking.

My grandparents have told me stories about the hams their parents used to slow cure in the smokehouse. This ham, which after being coated in salt, sugar and black pepper, was hung and left to develop for almost a year. And the result was a delicate, supple meat similar to prosciutto. This is what’s known as country ham.



But the hams that we more often see at the grocery store have been cured in a wet brine for only a few days and then cooked, which leaves it with a more juicy yet chewy texture. This is what’s known as city ham. I don’t have a smokehouse nor do I have a cold basement to cure a country ham, so I decided to make a city ham instead. And you know what? It’s pretty darn easy!
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Green chile chowder

“We know people will buy the book for this recipe alone,” was noted on an entry for a green-chile chowder in Seasoned with Sun, the El Paso Junior League’s cookbook. Despite such high praise, this green chowder recipe—Maxon’s green chile chowder, to be exact—was not the reason why I had bought the book. Nope, I had purchased this cookbook to satisfy a burgeoning obsession with Junior League cookbooks, which began when I was home at Christmas.

My mom had put me on kitchen duty, but in between chopping onions and rolling out biscuits, I sat at her table and thumbed through her out-of-print copy of The Star of Texas Cookbook, put out by the Houston Junior League in the early 1980’s. After I finished that book, I moved on to her copy of a Colorado Junior League cookbook and one from Savannah as well. “I’ve never seen you read so much,” said Mom. And while that was probably her polite way of insisting I finish making dinner, I wasn’t deterred in my community-cookbook enthusiasm.



When I returned to New York, a trip to a Bonnie Slotnick’s magical used bookstore in the Village rewarded me with a copy of Fiesta, produced by the Junior League of Corpus Christi. Flavors, the Junior League cookbook of San Antonio came next. I was running out of money, so I had to temporarily pass on cookbooks from Dallas, Wichita Falls and Abilene, but a friend told me about Seasoned with Sun, the Junior League cookbook from El Paso, and so I ignored my impending poverty and groaning bookshelves and made the purchase.
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Capirotada, Mexican bread pudding traditional for lent

I did not grow up eating capirotada. Truth be told, I had never even heard of it until a few years ago when I was at a Mexican restaurant on a Lenten Friday. “Hay capirotada,” was written on a chalkboard and curious what it was, I ordered some. The waitress brought me a small plate with a dessert made of toasted bread slices drenched in a sweet and spicy syrup. It was soft and sticky, but there were crunchy almonds, chewy raisins and a creamy tang to keep it from becoming cloying. Capirotada? I was in love!

Newly smitten, I decided to do some research. I learned that capirotada is Mexican bread pudding, with the addition of savory cheese being one of its signatures. It’s traditionally eaten during Lent as some say because the cheese provides extra protein to Lenten observers abstaining from meat on Fridays. My friend Penny, however, informed that it’s a welcome dessert at any festive occasion on the calendar, not just during those periods of abstinence.

Despite its popularity with those in the know, I’ve found that it’s still somewhat of an esoteric dessert, despite it being in existence in some form since the 1400’s. And sure, you’ll see it on menus and it’s even been written about in the Texas press since the 1930’s, but for some reason it never caught on with eaters as much as other Mexican delicacies such as tres leches cake or flan.



I think I know why.
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Ranch style beans recipe

Fifteen years ago, I was on my way to the Austin airport to catch a flight to New York City when the friend I’d be staying with called and said that we’d be attending a dance performance that evening in the East Village. Admission was free, she said, but the organizers requested a donation of two canned goods for a food pantry. So before walking out the door, I grabbed a couple of Ranch Style Beans as my offering.

Ranch Style Beans are a Texan staple and they’ve been satisfying people since 1872 with their take on classic chuck-wagon fare. It’s a distinctive flavor—the beans aren’t fiery but they do have a depth and brightness that can be very addictive. When I lived in Texas, we ate them often—either topped with cheese and rice, as a base to bean salad, alongside enchiladas or even in my mom’s King Ranch casserole.



But beyond the deliciousness and versatility of Ranch Style Beans, there’s the appeal of that iconic black can with its distinctive Western-style font and illustration of a man with his tongue sticking out stating the beans are Appetite Pleasin’. (Of course, the latter is a recent development for if you’re as old as I am, you remember when the beans were Husband Pleasin’.) I love that can and I’ve read that if Andy Warhol had been a Texan he would have painted Ranch Style Beans cans instead of Campbell’s Soup cans. I believe it.
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Tacos al carbon

If you were in Houston in the 1980’s, it was hard to escape the ubiquitous tacos al carbon. Ninfa Laurenzo—of the eponymous Ninfa’s—made them her signature dish and as with her green sauce, many Houston Mexican restaurants soon added these tacos to their menus as well. Tacos al carbon became a defining characteristic of Houston Tex-Mex

But what exactly are tacos al carbon?

The term al carbon is the Spanish phrase for cooking over coal, so you should expect grilled meats inside a tortilla. If you have tacos al carbon in Mexico, you will indeed find a variety of meats wrapped in either corn or flour tortillas depending on where you are geographically. But in Texas tacos al carbon came to mean one thing: cuts of grilled beef, nestled in a fluffy flour tortilla.



But wait, isn’t that a fajita? Now this is where it gets confusing.
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