Southern Honey-Glazed Ham
(Serves 18-20)

10-12 lb. fully cooked, bone-in ham
½ C honey
½ C brown sugar
2 T prepared mustard
whole cloves

Preheat oven to 325. Place ham, fat side up, in large roasting pan and bake for 2 hours. In the meantime, heat next 3 ingredients for the glaze in a saucepan, cool slightly, and allow to thicken.

Remove the ham after 2 hours, peel off skin, if any, and score fat into a diamond shape. Insert a whole clove in the center of each diamond, and brush with the glaze.* Return the ham to the oven for 30 minutes, making sure glaze doesn’t burn. Let ham stand 20 minutes before carving.

* Some cooks suggest brushing on only half the glaze and reserving the other half to drizzle over the ham slices on the serving platter.

Tips & Glossary: Southern

Basic southern cuisine differs from its Cajun, Creole, and Southwestern cousins in its lack of hot spices. As a result, it's rich but mild—the ultimate in comfort food!

Most of the seasonings and spices you're probably familiar with and already have in your cupboard. You might want to check for freshness.

• Crabmeat:  meat from the body, legs or claws of numerous varieties of crab.  Most prized is jumbo lump from the hind leg.  But for crab cakes and casseroles, use regular lump, as well as finback from the body.  Claw meat is brown and stronger flavored, though also good for crab recipes.  Buy it fresh if you can. 

• Greens:  typically collard leaves (in the cabbage family), but also kale, turnip and mustard leaves.  A staple in Southern cooking, they're usually served with black-eyed peas, accompanied by cornbread.

• Grits:  another staple of Southern cooking: coarsely ground corn, cooked as porridge. Once cooked, grits are served plain, baked in a casserole, fried or deep-fried as a fritter. (Think polenta.)

• Yams:  a type of sweet potato with an elongated shape and deep orange flesh.  A true yam is grown in Africa and Asia is actually quite different from what Americans call yams.