Wow, it must be that time of year again. A little over a year ago, I wrote one of my first posts about my visit to Colonel Nancy Mahaffey’s country-ham curing operation in the small town of Princeton, Kentucky, just south of the Ohio River from Illinois. If you haven’t ordered yours already – what are you thinking! Click on the photo to the left or the “Meaty Link” to the right to order yours today.

Fresh (as a mere one-year old infant), the ham can be hard to slice thinly and still tastes quite salty from the cure. It’s best used as a flavoring ingredient in a meal. But after a few more years aging and drying, the saltiness mellows out (damned if I know why), and the ham can be sliced super thin and served like the finest European hams. In fact, Newsom’s ham was the first American ham invited to the World Congress of Dry Cured Hams (I kid you not), and one of Colonel Nancy’s hams now hangs in the collection of the Jamón museum in Aracena, Spain.

Pictured is a ham than Nancy, Loni, and Jessie cured almost 4 years ago. It’s been aging in my meat-curing fridge since, and I sliced this up for lunch recently. I thought I’d have some to bring home, but everyone ate it up. They ate it up plain. They wrapped Jerry’s oven-baked potato chips in it. Hats off to David for pointing out how great each bite of steak tasted wrapped in a slice of ham. As far as I can recall, the only things we didn’t wrap in ham were the fruit tarts and the pecan pie. (A mistake that – not trying the pecan pie with a slice of ham.)

As I said last year, if there’s an outer limit as to how long these hams can age before the flavor begins to fall off rather than improve, I haven’t reached it yet!

Every year in October, we head south to the Shawnee Forest to enjoy the colors, as the maple leaves turn flaming red and yellow and the oak leaves turn russetted reds. At the same time, across the Ohio River in the small town of Princeton, Kentucky, Nancy Newsom’s hams have turned a burnished reddish-brown in the haze of the smokehouse and are finally ready to take down from the rafters and slice into. (more…)

In the frugal farmhouse tradition of letting nothing go to waste, I made this with the trimmings from my Newsom’s ham. If you’re slicing into your ham slowly, just keep a Ziploc bag in the freezer, where you store up your trimmings until you have enough to cook with. This is mildly seasoned, with just salt, pepper, and a little ginger, to keep it in the comfort food category. The sorghum gives it a little sweetness, but with a lighter flavor than molasses.

Skin and fat trimmed from your Newsom’s ham plus ham chunks
2 lbs. of navy beans
3 medium onions, chopped into small dice
4-6 carrots, chopped into small dice
2 stalks of celery, sliced thin
1 28-oz. can of tomatoes, puréed
2-3 teaspoons of ginger
¼ cup of sorghum
salt and pepper to taste

The day before or early in the day, soak the beans in cold water or bring the water to a boil, and let the beans soak in this for a few hours. Drain any remaining water off. In the meantime, put the ham skin, fat, and any trimmings from the dried out end cuts into a pot with a gallon of water and simmer gently for hours.

When you’re ready to finish the beans, skim off some of the rendered fat and use this to cook the onions, carrots, and celery for a few minutes, until tender but not browned. In an ovenproof dish, combine the beans, any ham chunks, some salt and pepper, and enough liquid from your ham stock to cover. Cook in a very low oven (not more than 300) for the better part of a day, adding more ham broth as necessary to keep the beans from drying out. An hour or two before serving, when the beans are cooked and the liquid thick, add the tomatoes and ginger, and adjust the salt or pepper.

Serve with a grilled cheese sandwich, tomato soup, or a salad with some smoked walnuts sprinkled over it. Enjoy it sitting in front of the first fire in the fireplace this season or sitting around a bonfire outside.