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Country Ham
Appears in
By David Chang and Peter Meehan
Published 2009
When Ssäm Bar started serving late at night, we cooked some things—corn dogs and braised chicken miso clay-pots—and served a bunch of ready-to-eat foods, like purchased frozen mochi for dessert, whole wheels of Époisses cheese for whenever and, what has turned out to be the most enduring one, American country ham.
Dave Arnold—who is, in title, the “Director of Technology at The French Culinary Institute”—is the reason we serve ham. (Things to know about Dave: he is the smartest person I have ever met. He carries a spelunker’s headlight and a length of rope made out of some indestructible material with him at all times. There are some aspects of cooking and eating that he probably knows more about than anyone who’s ever lived. He’s also an impossibly good guy to get drunk with on a train.)