Pair up Festive Baked Ham and Tater salad for Memorial Day

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From Paths of Sunshine Cookbook, Festive Baked Ham will grace our Memorial Day table. I love to cook my ham the day before, in time to get it cold and slice it for a day in the back yard on this special day. Along with… you guessed it! Tater salad!

Potato salad from reader Nancy Thomas will be wonderful with the cold, sliced ham above. You can make this the day before, and the flavors will be wonderfully incorporated throughout. But don’t fall for the “Hey, honey, is it ok if I get a little taste of the tater salad now?” Because there won’t be enough left for tomorrow!

In Field to Feast, John Alger and his wife Carla share their recipe for fried corn “from corn picked right out here in the field.” The farm is located south of Miami in Homestead where they produce sweet corn on 1100 acres, making Alger Farms a major provider of sweet corn in America’s “winter bread basket.” They operate their farm as a business and are great supporters of agricultural research and industry-wide interests. They caution, “Once you toss the corn in the skillet, it begins to caramelize – be careful not to overcook or the corn will toughen.”

From Treasures and Pleasures, we have Mary Jo Goodwin’s skillet okra. It calls for FRESH okra, tomatoes, and corn. And a little gumbo seasoning.

Do you know how to cook crabs? Charleston Receipts gives us directions and they appear below. I like to sprinkle some Old Bay seasoning over mine while they cook. And… do you know how to cook shrimp? Again, Charleston Receipts is going to tell us the secrets, below. And, they refer to “receipts,” which is the older form of “recipe.” They say, “The very small shrimp caught in the creeks and inlets abounding the Carolina Low-Country are most delicious. They cannot be purchased from the markets but from the hucksters who cry their wares through the old city’s streets: “Swimpee, raw, raw swimp!” These shrimp give the following receipts that extra flavor and distinction so much enjoyed.”

In honor of Memorial Day, we have the First World War Army Cake from Paths of Sunshine Cookbook. They say do not find a substitute for lard. I would say, however, if that keeps you from making the cake, overlook the admonition! Maybe Crisco, butter or margarine.

FESTIVE BAKED HAM

Recipe from Florida Federation of Garden Clubs, Paths of Sunshine Cookbook

1 cup apple cider

1/2 cup water

1 5-pound uncooked ham half

12 whole cloves

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 21-ounce can cherry pie filling

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup orange juice

Combine apple cider and water in saucepan; bring to a boil. Set aside. Remove skin from ham. Place ham in shallow baking pan, fat side up. Coat top with brown sugar. Insert meat thermometer making sure it does not touch fat or bone. Bake, uncovered, at 325 degrees for approximately 2 hours (22 to 25 minutes per pound), or until meat thermometer registers 160 degrees, basting every 30 minutes with cider mixture. Combine remaining ingredients in a saucepan, bring to a boil. Serve sauce with sliced ham.

NANCY THOMAS’ POTATO SALAD

Recipe from Reader of The Apopka Chief and The Planter newspapers

Five pounds potatoes boiled in skins till tender

Five or six eggs boiled hard

Celery, about two ribs

Multicolored sweet peppers, six small

Sweet onion, 1/4 large (not too much)

Dill pickle, large

Salt and pepper

Mayonnaise, 1/2 cup

Dill weed

Dry mustard

Celery seed

Paprika

Cook, drain and cool potatoes. Cook, drain and cool eggs by putting ice on them. When potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel the skins. Set aside. Chop the potatoes into pieces no larger than 1/2 inch or so. Salt and pepper the potatoes in big bowl and mix with spatula. Setting aside at least two whole eggs to slice for garnish at the end, peel the cooled eggs, chop them, adding salt and pepper to taste. Dice celery. Setting aside a couple of the peppers to slice for garnish, slice and dice five or six small multi-colored peppers. Slice and dice 1/4 large onion. Slice and dice the pickle. Fold together in big bowl the potatoes, eggs, celery, peppers, onion, and pickle.

Mix dressing in separate bowl: 1/2 cup, maybe a little more, of the mayonnaise and two tablespoons or so of dill pickle juice. Add to this soupy mixture 1/4 teaspoon each of following: dill weed, dry mustard, celery seed. Add salt and pepper to taste if more is needed.

Pour the dressing into the potato salad. Fold together. Don’t make mashed potatoes out of the mixture!

Place the garnishes on top of the salad: Pepper rings and chopped eggs. Sprinkle beautiful red paprika on top. Cover with plastic wrap and store in refrigerator for enough time to allow the flavors to meld together. Serve cold.

JOHN AND CARLA ALGER’S SOUTHERN FRIED CORN

Recipe from Field to Feast

6 ears fresh corn

4 slices bacon, halved

1/2 cup whole or 2% milk

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Pinch of sugar

1. Cut corn kernels from cob with a sharp knife. Scrape the back of the knife blade down each cob to get all the milky pulp. Set aside.

2. Fry bacon in a heavy skillet over medium heat until crisp. Remove bacon from skillet, reserving drippings, and drain on paper towel. Crumble bacon and set aside.

3. Add 4 tablespoons reserved bacon grease to same skillet. Add corn, cooking over medium heat without stirring until crisp on one side. Stir in milk, salt, pepper, sugar, and reserved bacon. Cover and cook on low for 10 more minutes. Serve hot.

MARY JO GOODWIN’S SUMMERTIME OKRA

Recipe from First Presbyterian Church of Apopka, Treasures and Pleasures

3 cups sliced fresh okra

2 cups fresh corn cut from cob

4 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped

3 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

2 bay leaves

1/2 teaspoon gumbo file (a powdered seasoning, Zatarain’s makes it)

1/8 teaspoon hot sauce, to taste

Thoroughly rinse okra under running water. Drain well. Combine okra and next six ingredients in a large skillet. Cover and simmer 10 minutes. Uncover and simmer 20 minutes longer. Stir in gumbo file and hot sauce. Cook, stirring constantly for one minute. Remove bay leaves before serving. Yield: 10 servings.

HOW TO COOK CRABS

Recipe from Charleston Receipts, America’s Oldest Junior League Cookbook in Print,

a Cookbook by The Junior League of Charleston, Inc.

Have one inch of water in the pot in which crabs are to be cooked. Add 2 or 3 tablespoons of vinegar and salt to this. Put in crabs when water boils. Steam crabs for 25 to 30 minutes. The vinegar and steam make the crabs easy to pick. Keep clean crab shells in the refrigerator before using.

HOW TO COOK SHRIMP

Recipe from Charleston Receipts, America’s Oldest Junior League Cookbook in Print,

a Cookbook by The Junior League of Charleston, Inc.

Most receipts call for cooked or boiled shrimp. To cook shrimp, wash the shrimp thoroughly and boil 4 or 5 minutes in a covered pot, using just enough salted water to cover them. As soon as they cool, they are “picked” or peeled. Large shrimp are cooked longer; the black line down the back removed and the shrimp cut into pieces. Black pepper, celery, onion, or paprika can be boiled with shrimp for added flavor. Beer is sometimes substituted for water in cooking shrimp. To pick a shrimp, any local person will tell you to “pull, peel, pinch.” You pull off the heads, peel shell off the body, and pinch shrimp out of the tail.

FIRST WORLD WAR

ARMY CAKE – 1918

Recipe from

Florida Federation of Garden Clubs

Paths of Sunshine Cookbook

1 3-ounce box raisins

3 cups water

1/2 cup lard (no substitute for this, recipe says)

2 cups white sugar

5 cups sifted flour

1 tablespoon baking soda

1 heaping teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1 cup chopped walnuts

Boil the box of raisins in 3 cups of water for 15 minutes and let cool. Drain and reserve water. Cream the lard and sugar. Add alternately the dry ingredients and two cups of reserved water from raisins. Add chopped walnuts. (Fruit may be added instead of nuts.) Add cooked raisins. Pour into greased and floured loaf pans and bake at 325 degrees for about 1 to 1-1/2 hours. Test for doneness.

NOTE: This is an Heirloom Recipe.