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03/27/2000 Archived Entry: "Ann Nurse's Famous Baked Ham"

Walking into Ann Amendolara Nurse’s house in Brooklyn is entering a world you didn’t know existed anymore, certainly not in a city. The unheated entry room, a former porch, is a larder filled with bushels of produce, whatever the season bears, and I don’t know what else except that I always expect a hanging sausage or ham to knock me in the head. It is just food storage, a tangible, aromatic overflow, a sort of metaphor for her overflowing personality, but it is also art the way Ann arranges it.

Inside, most of the first floor is a huge dining room with a fireplace at one end, and two dining tables in the center. The one nearest the door, as well as all the other furniture surfaces, is usually laden with incredible and unusual large serving pieces – a cut crystal punch bowl, ceramic and porcelain platters and terrines … you name it. Closer to the fireplace , another table is usually set up as what I call “Ann Central” with her phone and phone book, one of the most valuable resources in metro New York. All around the brick-faced hearth is Ann’s copper collection, more copper than most store’s display or even carry, and in sizes so large that you wonder if she isn’t the real Old Mother Hubbard with so many children -- well, she would know what to do. She’d cook them all zuppa di vongole or pasta e fagiole, or a cauldron full of pork ribs and meat balls in ragu. Copper cookware is her weakness, as Ann readily admits. Cooking is her passion and therapy, as anyone can tell.

All this cooking takes place in the kitchen behind the huge dining room, a spacious area itself, an eat-in kitchen as we say in New York, with windows facing the neighboring house and the garden in back. Ann has nothing-special appliances but her kitchen is obviously the domain of a serious cook, cluttered with cookware and stashes of preserved foods. I’ve yet to walk in when there wasn’t something simmering on the stove. A Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, it was a big pot of garlicky tomato sauce, next to which was a colander full of scrubbed mussels waiting to be steamed open in the sauce. “You want to stay and eat something,” asked Ann. “I have plenty.” To prove it, she opened the refrigerator and revealed an equally large colander full of Littleneck clams. Of course, she had on hand several loaves of both of our favorite bread – from Royal Crown bakery in Bensonhurst (it’s sold at many markets in the metro area, although rarely identified by the bakery’s name). I couldn’t stay that day, but it surely was tempting.

Behind the kitchen is Ann’s big garden, which in summer supplies her with herbs and produce. I worry that without her gardener and love of her life, Eugene Nurse, to whom she was married nearly 42 years and who died less than a year ago, she will be, if possible, even more bereft about her loss. On the other hand, somehow, I know that Ann is definitely going to get someone to help her plant that garden.

Ann Amendolara Nurse is, as you can tell, a force of nature. As she herself said the other day, “I may be old but never fear, I can still climb a hill in shifty gear.”

How to describe this smart, funny, wise, incomparably generous and indefatigable woman? You might say she is a mother figure to many of us in the New York/New Jersey food world. Indeed, she often refers to herself as Mother, as in “I’m just telling you what your old mother thinks.” Or, when she wants something, “Do your old Mother a favor.” No one ever denies Ann, as she would never deny one of her “children.” I, for one, however, never think of her as parental. She’s just my dear friend Annarose, which is her given name and the name her family still calls her.

How did Ann become mother to so many in the New York food world? Many years ago, she was a cooking teacher and before that, as she likes to remind us often, a professional singer, as if we would ever think of her as one dimensional. Her cooking career started inauspiciously enough. :Like many of us, she’s been cooking since she could reach the kitchen counter – since she was 6 or 7, as she remembers – and after she married Gene, she loved giving dinner parties. She was such a good cook that people always asked her for recipes. Somehow, her renown as a hostess evolved into a catering business, and her renown as a caterer led her parish priest at the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, to ask her to conduct cooking classes. After a time, she also conducted classes in the Kingsboro Community College and Bishop Ford High School adult education programs. Eventually, she helped launch the original culinary program at the New School in Greenwich Village, which eventually broke off from the New School and became the New York Restaurant School.

Today, besides teaching her chef and cooking teacher friends a thing or two every day, she is the director of workshops at New York City Technical College (City Tech), a division of the City University of New York, and at the James Beard Foundation. At City Tech, which has one of the best culinary schools in the country, she brings in working chefs and outside teachers to lecture and demonstrate to the students. At the Beard Foundation, she runs a series of Saturday morning workshops that are open to the public. She is also a very active member of the New York Association of Cooking Teachers (NYACT), which honored her in 1995 as teacher of the year, and where she serves as an honorary lifetime board member. This is all besides being the mother of two adult daughters, Rosemary and Dorian, Dorian’s husband Frank (a good cook and great baker, Ann always like to mention), and the devoted grandmother of Dana Nicole, Alexandra Eugene and Francesca Josephine.

Perhaps her most famous endeavor, however, is the annual Easter-season brunch that she produces at the James Beard House to benefit the scholarship fund in her name at City Tech. It is always a sold-out event. In fact, Ann’s fans reserve their places a year ahead. As you might well think, Ann serves more dishes at this party than fill some cookbooks. She gets some help from a few of her other sons -- baking master teacher/cookbook author Nick Malgieri, Brooklyn’s most famous chef, Michael Ayoub (Cucina, and Mike and Tony’s), and chef Mario Batali (Po, Babba, Lupa), but the piece de resistance is Ann’s own glorious baked ham. Here’s the recipe. It’s easy, but you must buy a high-quality, low-moisture smoked ham for it to be really good.


Ann Amendolara Nurse’s
Famous Ambrosial Baked Ham

Makes 1 whole ham to feed at least 20, probably more

1 12- to 18-pound smoked ham, bone in
Whole cloves
3 cups pineapple juice
1 pound dark brown sugar
1 bottle dark corn syrup



1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2. Place the ham in a large open roasting pan. Score the fat into a 1-inch diamond pattern, and stud completely with cloves. The cloves should be about an inch apart. Pour the pineapple juice over the ham. Put the pan in the oven and bake for 12 minutes a pound.

3. After the first 1 1/2 hours, remove the pan from the oven and carefully pat brown sugar on to completely cover the top of the ham. Then gently pour the corn syrup over the ham, taking care not to disturb the sugar covering. Return the pan to the oven and continue baking, basting every 15 minutes with the pan juices.

4. Once the ham has baked for the allotted time, remove it from the oven and continue basting until the ham is cool, about an hour. This gives it a beautiful glaze. The remaining syrup may be used to make candied yams, sweet potatoes or butternut squash.