Jambon Persillé

I woke up today with a surprising and serious craving for jambon persillé, that Burgundian delicacy that resembles the head cheese I sometimes glimpse in horror at my local Polish grocery, and I'm sure they are pretty close kin. I've never made it myself, but I've watched my husband--whose superb cooking I have often likened to that of a French farm wife--make it, and it's no small undertaking. There's the making of (exceptionally gelatinous) stock, the chopping of meats and parsley and garlic, the slow cooking, the patience that a day's chilling in the refrigerator demands. It is not quite cucina povera, but a resourceful dish nonetheless, representing the combination and coaxing of ordinary ingredients (scraps, perhaps, back in the day) into something elevated, sublime. "Serve with crusty bread and a green salad" is one of those exhausted dining dicta we hear so often (with a hearty soup, with a lamb stew, etc.), but here I'll go with it: in this case too, it's all you want. And a few glasses of wine, obviously, though a very good dry cider might be nice, too.

Austerity and work will keep me from making a parsleyed ham terrine today, or next week, or the next, but I intend to do it soon--even if its season might more properly be spring than late summer. A craving is a craving, and should be satisfied when possible. When my friend Bernie learned of this particular craving, he mentioned that he'll be here in New York in October, and perhaps we could make a jambon persillé together. Yes, by all means.

But there was a time when cooking with others did not appeal to me in the least. I was less secure in my culinary competence back then, and dreaded the possibility of having anyone looking over my shoulder lest I was doing it--whatever it might be--wrong. As I've become a better cook, I've loosened up. For a time, a few years ago, I enjoyed regular Sunday night dinners with friends at their loft in lower Manhattan. These were improvised, uncomplicated affairs, normally following a few hours logged at the bar around the corner: a big pasta, a big salad, more bottles of wine than three people should rightly consume in one go. But for all their simplicity--no, surely because of their simplicity--they were invariably wonderful. One of us would saute vegetables while another made salad dressing and maybe the third cooked up some salmon to boost the dinner's protein level. And while we cooked, we drank and talked and felt perfectly relaxed, perfectly at ease. Those Sundays showed me what a joy cooking in the company of good and trusted friends can be.

And here's what I've observed: if you want to get to know someone better, spend time with her, or him, in the kitchen, cooking. Some old hearth-impulse comes out, and, warmed by it, you get closer, just like that. It never fails.

I can't wait to make jambon persillé when Bernie comes to visit, even if I mince the parsley too finely, or otherwise screw up in some small way. I've stopped worrying about stuff like that, because I know that there will be pleasure enough in time spent cooking together, making a mess, cleaning it up, talking, laughing, united in the honorable act of making something with so much history and soul. And I'm sure it will still be delicious, mistakes be damned.