An old Irish dish to Appalachian tastes: Kalecannon with smoked ham

[theHandpuppet]

2. My grandmother often served a dish very much like the recipe in the OP

Last edited Sat Nov 1, 2014, 12:35 AM - Edit history (1)

It was basically whole potatoes cooked in pork broth, kale, onions and fatback (or ham trimmings). This would be served with a coarse, unsweetened cornbread baked in an iron skillet coated with bacon grease and the meat would always be slow-cooked pork roast.

Just a couple of things about the Appalachian menu...I had wondered why curly kale (also known as scotch kale) is such a staple in Appalachia but once I did a little research it made perfect sense.

http://www.scotlandinaweek.com/scottish-cooking.html
Kale’s historical popularity as a mainstay of Scottish cooking owes much to the fact that it can survive a harsh Scottish winter. Many Scottish phrases mention it, indicating its former importance in the Scots’ diet. The kailyard or kaleyard was an old name for the kitchen garden or vegetable plot. Take a look at the kaleyard at Robert Burns Cottage here. The kaleyard school of Scottish literature is a description of a 19th century vogue for Scottish writing about parochial, cosy (or couthy) subjects. Cauld kale het up (cold kale warmed) means any old tale or fashion revived. Kale can even mean, broadly, food itself (like the old generic sense of ‘meat’ as in ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’), which suggests its prevalence in the Scots’ diet of olden days. It also used to mean more specifically a thick and warming vegetable soup that would have kale in it. (It certainly did in my mum’s house.) Sometimes, modern recipes substitute parsley, but that’s positively decadent.

Logic would follow, then, that the early Scots-Irish settlers in Appalachia would have brought some of their culinary tastes along with them. The clime and rugged terrain of Appalachia were perfectly suited for this hardy and nutritious vegetable.

Many was the day when my father and I would head over to his uncle's house to pick kale after the first frost, as kale is supposed to be sweeter after it's been "kissed". But the kale itself was never sweetened with sugar. Sweetened greens was something that shocked my palate when I lived for a few years in southern Virginia; never could get used to it. Where I come from that would be considered sacrilege. (The copious amounts of sugar in southern food & drink is something to which I just couldn't adjust.)

Here's another article on the history of kale in the highlander diet:
http://huntgatherlove.com/content/highlander-diet