A big ham. 15 pounds, which is probably bigger than the one Dorothy Parker was talking about when she defined eternity as "two people and a ham". This one was made by the local ham people Hempler's, spiral sliced which I wouldn't normally choose, but I paid just $1.99 a pound for it. Strangely, I who love ham above almost all other meats, happened to have been walking past the meat cases for the dairy cabinets beyond when the store butcher who didn't know from Eve turned my way with the track-stopping question, "Like ham?"
I couldn't not have it. After a few days ruminating about my options, which were narrowed by being pre-sliced, I studded it with cloves and slathered it in blood orange marmalade and baked it off. We gnawed on it for a week and I eventually broke it down into several large clumps and froze the rest. I haven't purchased any fresh protein in about a month because I'm trying to use down my over-filled freezer.
So the turn came for a clump of ham. When thawed, it turned out to be the clump attached to the bone. I stared at it for half a day while working, separately, on details for our upcoming Burgundy trip and until the obvious occurred to me. The Burgundian classic ham and parsley terrine! So into a pot went the ham, bone and all, water and white wine which after an hour resulted in a brown broth due to the brown-black exterior of parts of the ham (I deliberately baked it until the sugars blackened in part). I didn't think it very attractive but the flavor was just lightly sweet and complex, so I poured in a raft of egg white to clarify it and now had a beautiful clear broth about the color of a good tawny port. The body of the terrine is the ham and parsley, with fresh fennel and orange peel to play up the flavors of the baked ham.
The result? Divine.