Ham Steak 3 Ways

Ham and bread and mustard. One of the most basic food groups ever. I know everyone has heard the tale of the Earl of Sandwich, and maybe that is how society at the time relearned casual card table dining, but it is hard to believe that ham and bread did not naturally come together as soon baked bread and cured meat were both available. There are a lot of other ways to buy ham than the ham steak. I love it because it is the thickest cut you will get without committing to a whole picnic. There are reasons and seasons to buy a whole picnic ham, not the least of which is that you get to keep and freeze the ham bone.

One of the most important things my father ever taught me was to season my fried eggs with black pepper. He also showed me how to bust the yoke with the pointy end of my buttered toast before cutting the eggs up and to always save a triangle to mop up the last of the yolk left on the plate. And because my mother loved to buy whole picnic hams to make her famous white beans, we often had some pan seared ham to go with.

My father also highly valued fig preserves, and they would often be a part of breakfast as well. Maybe that is where I first paired fig and pig, but what really cemented that grouping for me was a day out on Pointe Coupee Road at my buddy Chris Morrison’s place. I had brought a classmate from grad school to meet Chris and enjoy a day out in the sticks. Joey was from Little Rock and everything in Pointe Coupee Parish was a revelation to him. The river, the borrow pits, the endless fields of cane being hacked and burned and harvested at the time. During an afternoon old-Ford-pickup tour of the levee, we stopped at Mr. JP Hotard’s place right down the road from Morrison’s for more beer and something to cook for dinner. JP sold us on pork roast since he had a fresh hind quarter in the cooler. He pulled it out and threw it on the table saw and cut us a four inch thick roast that reminded me of an oversized ham steak, though this meat was fresh, not cured. It immediately got me thinking of rubbing it down with honey, so when we got back to the house I dug through the pantry looking for fresh garlic and honey and instead ran across a jar of fig preserves. I had made the switch to Jack Daniels by then so I poked holes and stuffed the roast with garlic and green onions then mashed some fig preserves and Jack together and slathered it all over the pork before finishing with salt and pepper and wrapping it in foil and tossing it in the Chambers oven low and slow. When I went back outside, Chris had Joey up on the tractor riding the fallow fields right behind the house. We cranked a pecan fire as the sun headed down and dug some new potatoes from the garden to mash and Chris had some left over green beans and soon we were all set to head to the table when I pulled the roast out of the oven and set it on the stove top. It smelled so damn good we immediately started picking at it and we never made it to the table, just had our dinner straight from the stove top. Getting back to ham steak, another friend, the late, great Big Frank Finucane, used to toss a ham steak on the grill as an appetizer before the chicken or steaks or whatever was the main item of the day, much like leading with smoked or hot sausage or even bacon wrapped chicken livers. Another example of not making it to the table. Ham steak sliced up on a cutting board passed around among the lawn chairs and finally landing on a picnic table. Here’s something I wrote in Frank’ memory after we lost him.

For Frank

This is not tv or Afghanistan

we don’t see our friends die

we are told and the haunting

begins right away- No, there he is

standing right over there he’s

telling a joke, something about

five shaved squirrels he was

just here a minute ago–

damn

On the way to celebrate his life

I should stop at Dang’s for banh mi