Ham Steaks in Madeira Sauce

In 2018, Food & Wine named this recipe one of our 40 best:Julia Child was a longtime Food & Wine contributor—and a champion of ham. She feared most cooks outside of the South didn’t care much about the beautiful hunk of meat if it wasn’t breakfast, and she was determined to change that. For this recipe, she was inspired by a dish called jambon à la morvandelle, the signature dish of Alexandre Dumaine, one of France’s most famous chefs in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. “Although supermarket ham will do, real country ham will give you a dish more like Dumaine’s fabled creation,” wrote Child. Child called the dish, featuring ham steaks basted in a mushroom and Madeira sauce, one of her “fast entrées for fancy people.” She recommended serving them with steamed spinach and mashed potatoes.