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Head Butler’s Ridiculously Simple Holiday Ham PLUS French Roast Lamb

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Dec 20, 2022
Category: Food and Wine

This recipe has been a holiday favorite of two wives and one long-playing companion, which is more than I can always say about myself. It comes from a long-departed friend, Gene Hovis, a dazzling cook and exceptional human who made it all the way from a small town in North Carolina to the Best Dressed List.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a dozen people coming to dinner — you’ll want these leftovers.

One caution: If you buy a pre-sliced ham, no one will be happy.

Prep time: 5 minutes. 6 basic ingredients. Insanely good.

Cooking tip: set the ham in a tin foil pan. Or, better, two. It’s so much easier to dispose of a sticky foil pan than spend fifteen minutes scouring one you value.

HOLIDAY HAM

serves 10-12

16-18 pound ready-to-eat ham, pre-cooked, with bone in (A smoked ham is okay; an unsmoked ham is better. But do NOT get a spiral-cut ham — the edges will overcook.)
l box dark brown sugar
l/2 cup Gulden’s mustard
l/2 cup bourbon
l/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
l cup honey
2 tablespoons ground cloves

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix ingredients. Pour over ham.

Cook in oven for 2-3 hours.

Baste constantly after first half hour.

To buy “Gene Hovis’s Uptown Downtown Cookbook” from Amazon, click here.


HOLIDAY LAMB

from Bistro Cooking, by Patricia Wells

GIGOT ROTI AU GRATIN DE MONSIEUR HENRY
(Roast Lamb with Monsieur Henry’s Potato, Onion and Tomato Gratin)

serves 8-10

6 garlic cloves (1 clove peeled and split, the rest peeled and chopped)
1 pounds baking potatoes, peeled and sliced very thin
2 large onions, peeled and sliced very thin
5 medium tomatoes, cored and sliced very thin
1 leg of lamb, bone-in (6-7 pounds)

2/3 cup white wine
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
l tablespoon fresh thyme salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Rub the bottom of a large (16 x 10 x 2) oval porcelain gratin dish (or casserole dish) with the split clove of garlic.

Arrange the potatoes in a single layer, season with salt, pepper, some of the thyme and some of the chopped garlic.

Layer the sliced onions on top, season as you did the potatoes.

Layer the tomatoes on top of the onions. Season with salt, pepper, the rest of the thyme and chopped garlic.

Pour on the white wine, then the olive oil.

Trim the thicker portions of fat from the lamb, season with salt and pepper. Set a cake or oven rack on (or in) the gratin dish and set the lamb on the rack so its juices will drip into the gratin.

Roast, uncovered, for 1 hour and 15 minutes for rare lamb (for medium lamb, roast for 15-30 more minutes). Turn the lamb every 15 minutes, basting with liquid from the gratin dish.

Remove the pan from oven and let the lamb sit for 15 minutes before carving.

Serve the thinly sliced lamb on warmed dinner plates, with the gratin alongside. Vegetable suggestion: Green or French beans.