Recipe: Baked Virginia Ham

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From: Nancy,.SanFran

Baked Virginia Ham - the Barefoot Contessa Cookbook
From: The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook - Ina Garten Clarkson Potter/ Publishers New York, 1999 Foreword by Martha Stewart ISBN 0-609-60219-5

Barefoot Contessa is a specialty foods store in the Hamptons that caters to the rich and famous who live and visit there, and this cookbook chronicles some of its favorite dishes. This is a beautiful book with lots of color photographs of carefully arranged food - you know exactly what the final product should look like. There is nothing very inventive here, but rather old favorites that everyone enjoys - Baked Virginia Ham, Coconut Cupcakes, Granola, Roasted Carrots, Split Pea Soup, and Meat Loaf. This is upscale home-cooking with some very good ideas for entertaining thrown in. The Baked Virginia Ham look so delicious in the photograph, I'm going to make it for Christmas dinner this year.

Serves 35 for dinner, 50 for cocktails.

1 spiral-cut smoked ham, fully cooked -- 14 to 16 pounds
6 cloves garlic
8 1/2 ounces mango chutney -- Major Gray's
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
1 cup light brown sugar -- packed
zest of 1 orange
1/4 cup fresh orange juice

Preheat oven to 350 F. Place the ham in a heavy roasting pan.

Mince the garlic in a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Add the chutney, mustard, brown sugar, orange zest, and orange juice and process until smooth. Pour the glaze over the ham and bake for 1 hour, until the ham is fully heated and the glaze is well browned.

Serve hot or cold.

NOTE: This is the ultimate party dish. The glaze takes only a minute to make and the ham tastes like you worked for hours. I like to serve it with mini corn muffins for cocktails, or for dinner with extra mustard and chutney.