Easter Dinner

One of the reasons I like spring is that it gives us two occasions to celebrate cuisines that have contributed to our collective taste memories – St. Patrick’s Day and Easter.  For the last several years, I’ve been exploring the differences between Irish and Irish-American food for St. Patrick’s Day, but the same thing is true in our household for Easter dinner.

There are many traditions around Easter dinner around the country and somebody has probably studied this extensively.  If anyone out there knows about a good survey of how people have celebrated Easter in the U.S. over the years, I’d be very interested in hearing about it.  My knowledge, though, is limited to my own upbringing (you could label this 1950’s east coast generic) and my true love’s Polish-American heritage.  Since my heritage is more Irish than anything else (5/8 Irish, 1/4 German, 1/8 English), this allows us to nicely balance St. Patrick’s Day with a Polish focused Easter.

Except we had a problem.  My true love vividly remembered a type of ham she called “shinka,” which we were completely unable to find.  That “shinka” was the centerpiece of Easter dinner for her but there was nothing in either the plain or fancy grocery stores that remotely matched what she was imagining.  For a few years running I traipsed through Philadelphia’s famous Italian Market and Reading Terminal Market looking in vain for something called “shinka.”  Neither the name nor our feeble attempts at description worked, and as a result, we settled on a delicious leg of lamb as a second choice.  Last year I wrote about our leg of lamb, but we still had a “shinka” as the ideal.

Let me go on a diversion for a moment.  I recently wrote about (here) how lucky we were to live in a neighborhood with such great access to ingredients, but my access is not exactly universal.  These days, ingredients for Italian,  French, Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern, Mexican, North African, Thai, and Indian cuisine are available almost anywhere but just try to get special ingredients for a northern/central/eastern European recipe or sub-Saharan African.  I’ve already talked about the difficulty in finding Irish bacon but I’ve had the same problem with Polish meats and mushrooms.  And don’t give me supermarket kielbasa as being representative of Polish food. 

This year, though, was different.  First, we discovered by accident that “shinka” was the Polish word for ham.  Using google translate, we found that word in Polish is “szynka” and that meant that we had to find out what kind of ham it was.  With that guidance and the help of the internet, we found out that what we thought we were looking for was a smoked picnic shoulder.  It’s the same cut of meat that barbecue cooks use for pulled pork, except that is has been smoked/cured like a ham.  So it came as no surprise that when I asked for it with its’ proper name at Cannuli’s in the Italian Market they were able to give me what I wanted right away.

Having located the right cut of ham, the rest was easy.  Someday I’m going to make my own sauerkraut but for now I’ll buy a jar.  The third piece was mashed potatoes, made with salt pork and buttermilk.  Assembling everything together into an Easter celebration was easy, once the ingredients were located.  The ham needed to be reheated by putting it in a Dutch oven with a cup of water and heating it slowly (250°F) until warmed through.  When serving sauerkraut on a plate, I prefer mine warm so that needed to be warmed up.

The only thing I cooked was the potatoes but honestly, mashed potatoes are not a particularly difficult dish.  I boiled two diced potatoes until done and then dumped them in a bowl.  While that was happening, I diced about 3 oz of salt pork and then rendered it in a cast iron skillet until I had a bunch of crispy pieces of salt pork and about a quarter-cup of fat.  Most of the fat I saved for later but I added a tablespoon of the fat and all the pieces of salt pork to the bowl with the potatoes.  Then added a third of a cup of buttermilk and began mashing until I got the right consistency.  Sprinkled some chives and dill on top before serving.

All in all, a very simple but very satisfying Easter dinner.  Easy, once you locate the parts.

Recipe – Mashed potatoes

Ingredients

2 potatoes, peeled and diced

3 oz salt pork, diced

1/3 cup buttermilk

1 tsp dried chives

1 tsp dried dill

Directions

Put the potatoes in a  medium saucepan and cover with cold water.  Turn the heat up until the water boils and let it boil until the potatoes are soft, about 10-12 minutes. Drain and set the potatoes aside in a bowl.

While the potatoes are boiling, add the salt pork to a skillet on medium-low.  Stir frequently until the fat begins to render.  Keep stirring occasionally.  At about the same time the potatoes are done, the pieces of salt pork should be crispy and the skillet covered with about 1/8″ of rendered fat.  If you do this sort of thing, drain most of the fat for future use.

Add the pieces of salt pork and 1 tbl of fat to the potatoes.  Add the buttermilk and mash until the consistency is smooth.

Plate and then sprinkle the chives and dill over the top and serve.