Category Archives: gammon

salted caramel ham

food, gammon, ham

salted caramel ham

Yes, yes, salted caramel is uber-ubiquitous. But I love a sweet glaze on my ham, such as honey or maple syrup, so why not salted caramel?

It’s not a fully developed caramel, more a syrup. But the flavours are there, and you get a salty-sweet kick with every bite. Make sure you hold back some glaze and baste the freshly-carved slices. After five minutes cooling it settles into a sticky sauce. If you can’t bothered making a caramel, golden syrup will work just fine.

Salted caramel ham:

450g gammon ham joint

2 carrots, broken up

1 onion, quartered

2 bay leaves

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

1 star anise

For the glaze:

75g sugar

50ml water

40g butter

A large pinch of smoked sea salt

  1. Put the gammon and other ingredients in a large pan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer. Cook for two hours or until a knife inserted into the middle slides in easily. Turn off the heat and allow to relax in the warm juices.
  2. Preheat the oven to 200°C. In a small pan melt the sugar and water together until golden brown. Take off the heat and swirl in the butter. Simmer for a further three minutes and turn off the heat.
  3. Remove the meat from the stock and drain for a minute. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and place the meat on it. Baste with the caramel, adding a splash of stock if it’s too gooey.
  4. Bake for 15 minutes, then baste with more caramel.
  5. After a further 15 minutes remove from the oven and put the meat to one side to rest, sprinkling on the salt. Meanwhile add a trickle of stock to the baking tray to bring together the sauce and pour off into a bowl. Carve the meat, serving with the reserved caramel.
About these ads

heston blumenthal’s pea and ham soup

food, gammon, ham, peas, stock

heston blumenthal's pea and ham soup

“You don’t like small food, do you?”

That’s something someone said about my eating habits a few years back. It’s not completely accurate but did draw together a few of my food hates: sweetcorn, baked beans and peas. Baked beans remain the work of the devil, I’m still not really sold on sweetcorn (why does it always end up in tuna?) but over the years I have grown to accept peas. And if any recipe is going to fully convince me of the power of the pea, it’s a Heston one. I was sent this recipe by someone who knows of my Hesotn obsession, and comes from his new book Heston Blumenthal at Home.

peas defrostingIt’s refreshingly free of bonkers twists, as long as you discount defrosting frozen peas. Oh yes, frozen peas – I think most chefs now accept frozen is the way to have peas if they’re not straight from your garden. And the peas are barely cooked so they retain their vibrant colour and fresh taste.

The finishing touch, as is so common with Heston recipes (I’m looking at you, vanilla salt), the thing that just makes it. A few drops of mint oil is a crystal clear note among the comforting, meaty flavours.

It’s absolutely delicious. Creamy and fresh, with a round, savoury flavour that is amplified in all directions. Do try it, it’s brilliant.

Heston Blumenthal’s pea and ham soup (serves 4):

1kg gammon joint

1 onion, peeled and sliced

1 carrot, peeled and sliced

1 leek, white part only, rinsed and sliced

8 mint leaves

30ml extra virgin olive oil

900g frozen peas

65g butter, diced

75g shallots, finely diced

1 clove of garlic, minced

160g unsmoked bacon, cut into lardons

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 85°C. Pop the gammon, onion, leek and carrot into a casserole and barely cover with water. Bring to a simmer on the hob, pop a lid on it and transfer to the oven for 5 hours.
  2. While the gammon cooks, put the mint in the oil and leave in a warm place to infuse. Line a baking tray with kitchen roll and layer the frozen peas on this to defrost and absorb excess moisture.
  3. When the gammon is done, let the meat cool in the liquor. Sieve off the solids (Heston then says to discard the veg, but I squeezed out the excess juice and mixed with mash the following day for fab bubble ‘n’ squeak). Then shred 180g of the meat for the soup – the remainder you can keep for another day.
  4. Get a large frying pan over a low heat and add 25g of the butter. Ad the bacon, shallots and garlic and sizzle for five minutes so they soften but do not colour.
  5. Add 750ml of the gammon stock and bring to a simmer for 5 minutes. Add all but 75g of the peas and the rest of the butter and remove from the heat. Liquidize then strain through a sieve, squishing thoroughly to get as much good stuff in the pan as possible. Season to taste and reheat gently.
  6. Use a hand blender to aerate and thicken the soup, then add the reserved gammon and remaining peas. Allow these to warm up and then serve, drizzling with mint oil.

honey-glazed christmas ham

cloves, gammon, ham, honey

honey-glazed christmas ham

I absolutely adore a ham or gammon at Christmas. My Mum always had one hanging around the house from Christmas Eve onwards, and it’s something I still do every year. I favour twice-cooking, a long boiling followed by a fierce blast in the oven with a sticky sauce dribbled over the top. I spotted Gordon Ramsay’s recipe from this year’s and knew I had to give it a try.

One of the key things that makes or breaks a dish like this is the quality of the meat. Start from a poorly-reared, not-looked-after anonymous pig and you’ll end up with a bland pointless dinner. It’ll probably be watery, tasteless and feel like a massive waste of time. Do you and your family a favour when buying gammon (or any other meat for that matter) – go up a level in the quality of meat you buy. Put the Basics range to one side and get something a little better. More expensive yes, but with a fuller flavour and the peace of mind that your animal had a decent life. Freedom Food, outdoor reared, outdoor bred, free-range or organic – these are the labels to look for.

If you’d like to learn more about pig welfare, please visit the RSPCA’s Think Pig Facebook page.

This recipe, based on Gordon Ramsay’s, was great. The key is to repeat the glazing over and over, every ten minutes or so. This will help deepen the flavour and form a beautifully sweet and tasty crust that’s irresistible. Aside from as a roast dinner, I also ate this with some bubble and squeak, as a sandwich and with some chutney. Then I also got a wicked stock to make a soup from, so although the meat is expensive in the first place it’s a dish that keeps on giving.

Adapted from a recipe by Gordon Ramsay. The original honey glazed ham recipe is here.

Honey-glazed Christmas ham:

2.5kg unsmoked gammon joint

4 carrots, roughly chopped

2 celery sticks, roughly chopped

1 onion, quartered

4 cloves of garlic

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

1 tablespoon coriander seeds

1 cinnamon stick

3 bay leaves

A handful of cloves

For the glaze:

100g golden caster sugar

50ml Marsala

25ml sherry vinegar

125g honey

  1. Put the gammon in a large pot along with the veg, peppercorns, coriander, cinnamon and bay. Barely cover with water, bring to the boil and leave to simmer for about 3 hours, or until you can easily sink a knife into it. Every so often skim and scum that floats to the surface. Allow the meat to rest in the liquor for at least half an hour, but any more or less wouldn’t hurt.
  2. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Melt the glaze ingredients together gently in a saucepan.
  3. Remove the skin from the gammon and score the fat in a pretty diamond pattern. Stud each diamond with a clove. Very gently trickle some glaze over the meat. Take your time and make sure the whole surface is covered. Pop in the oven.
  4. After 10 minutes take the ham out and repeat the glaze, again gently. Do this every 10 minutes until the gammon has cooked for 40 minutes, when the joint is a gorgeous golden brown. Allow to rest for 10 minutes before carving. It’s amazing, and brilliant cold too.

maple baked gammon with roasted red onions

cider, food, gammon, maple syrup, mustard

maple roast gammon

I love a gammon joint, and while I let the glaze get a bit spotty it was still dead tasty. I won’t go into details as they are all in the link below, but the real tasty treat was the roasted onions: roasted in foil until soft, then split and fried on the cut side for a lovely crisp dimension. The gammon glaze is a standby of mine: maple syrup, cider and wholegrain mustard – an excellent combination with any pork dish.

Based on a recipe by Phil Vickery

sweet-glazed mustard gammon

food, gammon, mustard

While trying out Jamie Oliver’s method for roast potatoes, I had to have something to serve them with. At this time of year, gammon is both plentiful and reasonably priced so it seemed like an obvious choice. I favour the twice-cooking method; the boiling to do the actual cooking, then baking a glaze on the joint. This was a fairly obvious one of mustard and sugar, which ticks all the right boxes in ham for me.

Sweet-glazed mustard gammon:

1 gammon joint (450g)

1 stick celery

5 juniper berries

2 tablespoons wholegrain mustard

1 tablespoon light muscovado sugar

  • Cover the gammon with water and bring to the boil. Throw this water away and start again with fresh water (this removes scum from the joint and lightens the salty flavour).
  • Add the celery, juniper and a few peppercorns. Boil for 2 hours or until a skewer can pierce the meat with no resistance.
  • Allow the joint to drain well and pat dry. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
  • Spread the mustard over the joint, then press the sugar into the mustard. Roast for twenty minutes or until the mixture is coloured and bubbling. Carve into thick slices and chomp away.

gammon and leek risotto

food, gammon, leeks, rice

gammon and leek risotto

Thanks to this wonderful example of a roast chicken, I was of course left with a superb chicken stock to use up. Whenever I have spare stock floating about, my default dish is risotto. With some spare gammon and always keeping arborio in the cupboard, all this dinner requires is buying a leek. Quite a powerful flavour here – the gammon is of course quite strong, and the leeks quite sweet, so there’s a lot going on. The stock came through though, rich and meaty.

Gammon and leek risotto (serves 2):

2 gammon steaks, diced

1 large leek, cut into matchsticks

4 handfuls arborio rice

Glass of white wine

Chicken stock on the boil

Large knob of butter

Chopped parsley, to serve

  1. Fry the gammon in a little oil until coloured. Remove to one side.
  2. In the same pan, fry the leeks until softened. Add the rice and toast for a couple of minutes.
  3. Add the wine and bubble quickly until reduced to almost nothing.
  4. Add the stock a ladelful at a time, allowing the rice to absorb it all before adding the next. Stir frequently. This process will take at least 20 minutes. Taste often after this, to check how done the rice is.
  5. When the rice is ready, check for seasoning and add the butter, stirring and shaking it furiously.
  6. Add the gammon and parsley, warm both through and serve.

gammon with champ

food, gammon, potatoes

fennel gammon with champ and peas

Not terribly sophisticated but you can’t beat a piece of gammon. I rubbed the steaks first in a little fennel and black pepper before griddling both sides. This gave the outside of the meat a lovely charred finish, with the perfume of fennel and spike of pepper lingering amid the meaty saltiness.

When it comes to mash I prefer to bake – you don’t get any of that wateriness and I find you need to add less other stuff to take away from the potato flavour. A little charred spring onion added to it and hey presto – it’s champ.