Roast

This hard-to-resist ham makes a great centerpiece at a brunch. Moist and succulent within, it has a delicious crusted exterior that is both sweet and spicy. Leftovers are delicious in sandwiches as well as in many egg dishes.

Smithfield ham is the American answer to prosciutto. To be called a Smithfield ham, the ham must be cured and processed in Smithfield, Virginia. It is aged for twenty-four months and offers a unique taste. (You can buy Smithfield ham online at www.smithfieldhams.com. Order the uncooked bone-in version.) It requires some serious effort to prepare a proper Smithfield ham, but it is very worth it. The instructions are odd, even counterintuitive, but this is the way it is done! Smithfield ham is easiest to prepare when it’s cold enough to leave the ham outside. That means it has to be below 40°F all day and night. Otherwise, you have to refrigerate the ham while soaking it, and unless you have a walk-in refrigerator, it is nearly impossible. When you are ready to prepare the ham, remove it from the bag. Place it in a sink or a very large pot of water and scrub it with steel wool to remove the outside mold and grime. Don’t let the mold (a result of aging) worry you. Once it is scrubbed, place the ham in a pot large enough that it can be covered with plenty of water. The ham needs to soak for three days and the water changed every twelve hours, at least. Now you’re ready to cook the ham. The best way to serve Smithfield ham is with eggs and fresh biscuits.

Beef and tomatoes have enjoyed a long history together. Whether it’s tomato ketchup on your burger or tomato paste in your beef casserole, the two have an established friendship. Winter tomatoes—why do we buy them?—can add a surprising depth to gravy if they are roasted alongside the Sunday beef. I chuck them in with the onions and bay leaves that provide the background music for the gravy. The tomatoes sharpen up in the searing heat, their skin catches and burns, and they add a certain piquancy to the sweet onion and caked-on roasting juices. The winter tomato has at last found a point. You may well want some roast potatoes to go with this. I usually boil them first for ten minutes, then drain and add to the roasting tin.

A tomato’s flavor intensifies in the heat of the oven. All its sweet-sharpness comes to the fore. I eat these warm, sprinkled with a little herb vinegar, sometimes sandwiched inside a crisp and chewy baguette.

The idea of a potato salad usually involves slippery potatoes of the purest ivory, but an interesting take entails a much rougher texture brought about by roasting them before dressing.

Young potatoes of any sort roast sweetly, especially if scrubbed hard so their skin almost disappears and they are allowed to develop a sticky, golden coating in the oven. They need a few minutes in boiling water before they hit the oven if they are not to toughen as they roast. I match them with robust ingredients—slices of fat-flecked salami or perhaps a spoonful of softly fibrous pork rillettes—as a Saturday lunch.

Baking a big piece of meat or a large fish on top of a layer of potatoes is a reliable way of ensuring they stay moist. The juices from the roast are soaked up by the potatoes, making sure that not a drop of flavor is wasted. Large fish such as sea bass and sea bream can be cooked in this way, as can Cornish mullet. Line-caught, ocean-friendly sea bass is not too difficult to find. I reckon on a 2-pound (1kg) fish being enough for two.

The smell you get from slicing freshly picked runner beans and the warm, herbal notes attached to the stalk of a tomato are, to my mind, the very essence of summer. Put those scents together and you have a recipe that is pure pleasure to make. A dish that could only mean midsummer—something to eat with cold salmon, a slice of crab tart, or a plate of grilled sardines.

Whatever magic it may contain (and I certainly believe it does), honey is still sugar, and it seems extraordinary to add it to an already sweet root. But for some reason it works, bringing out the vegetable’s flavor and lending it a distinct depth. I can’t think of any better accompaniment to roast pork.

The thyme is essential here, adding an important herbal note to the general sugar-fest. You need something savory alongside, and nothing works quite so well as gloriously rare roast beef. Sausages come a close second.

I cook them in dripping or butter for preference. Peanut oil if there is nothing else. They take forty minutes to color interestingly but an hour will turn them into vegetable toffee. The initial steaming is worth the ten minutes’ wait and the pan to rinse and dry, helping as it does to keep them moist during the roasting and preventing them from toughening up in the heat.

Onions are used in most stuffings, both lightening the rice, couscous, or breadcrumbs and introducing sweetness. As they melt down, they keep the filling moist. Ask the butcher to prepare your shoulder of lamb for stuffing. When the bone is removed, it provides a neat pocket that will hold just the right amount.

Pheasant and celery get on rather well. I sometimes put thick ribs in with the aromatics for a pot-roast bird, and have included shredded celery in a salad of cold pheasant with Little Gem lettuce and walnuts. Celery root seems to be one of the most successful mashes to serve with the mildly gamey flesh of this bird (parsnip is good, too).