Month: December 2010

Categories
cloves gammon ham honey

honey-glazed christmas ham

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.
Categories
orange

heston blumenthal’s hidden orange christmas pudding

In my rush to eat this legendary item, I took the worst picture possible. Sorry about that.

The run-up to Christmas 2010 will be remembered for one thing: the craze to eat Heston’s hidden orange pud. The ads appeared on TV, and suddenly stocks were low. Then Waitrose ran out completely, and demand reached fever-pitch. Reports came in that they were selling for over £1,000 and they were the must-have Christmas dinner dessert. How strange.

I knew I had no chance of getting one but entertained thoughts of making my own. Every newspaper seemed to jump at the chance, and Mat Follas had a really good go. But while I was formulating my recipe, I was sent by Waitrose direct.

So what did my family think of it come Christmas day, post Queen’s speech? The consensus was: light, marmaladey, with a moist texture. The candied orange itself is beautiful, sending jammy juice through the pudding. I tasted a lot of hazelnuts myself, and fairly bready. Personally I can take or leave Christmas pudding, so this made a delicious alternative.

Though this does present Waitrose with a dilemma. Do they put this back on the shelf in December 2011? If they do they won’t get the same fervour, and customers getting comfortable with it being available every year. Or do they consign it to the archives as an exclusive and do something completely different? Time will tell…

Categories
beef pork

heston blumenthal’s perfect spaghetti bolognese

I happened to read FrontLineChef’s Ultimate Spag Bol recipe one morning on Twitter and almost fell over: it sounds utterly superb. I remembered I hadn’t yet tried Heston Blumenthal’s perfect spaghetti bolognese.

Bolognese has a strange and maligned history in this country. It’s one of those quirky dishes that are echoes of the home country, like chicken tikka masala, or pizza. I’ve had many a spag bol in my time and plenty of them have made this blog. I particularly recommend Antonio Carluccio’s version which is a cracker.

As his recipes go it’s not one of his most complex; braised meat + soffritto + tomato compote slow-cooked together. I still cut a little of it out when it comes to the tomatoes – I can’t believe the ‘fresh’ tomatoes in December can be much cop so I went for a tinned variety and took it from there. That said it’s very close to the original. To save time I recommend having two decent casserole pans on the go, this will cut down time right at the beginning.

Is it perfect? Not for me. It’s far too sweet for my taste, I would prefer it far more savoury. Although it’s still very tasty and quite complex, different layers of flavours coming through as you enjoy each mouthful. In a nod to old-school spag bol the spaghetti is served under the ragu, yet the buttering it receives is fab and definitely worth a try.

Big love to the superb Bunting’s of Maldon for their excellent meat.

Spaghetti bolognese (serves 6):

For caramelised onion:

1 onion, sliced

1 star anise

For the soffritto:

3 sticks celery, diced

3 carrots, diced

2 onions, diced

8 garlic cloves, minced

For the ragu:

300g pork loin steak, diced

200g beef braising steak, diced

½ bottle white wine

300ml whole milk

For the tomato compote:

2 tins tomatoes

30ml sherry vinegar

5 drops tabasco

5 drops fish suace

For the pasta:

100g spaghetti per person

50g butter

  1. Heat some oil in a large casserole pan and fry the onion and star anise together for 20 mins until caramelised.
  2. Whilst the onion is caramelising, in another large casserole pan fry the soffritto veg in some olive oil for about 10 minutes until softened.
  3. Return to your onions. When they’re done put them to one side (discarding the star anise), add a little olive oil and use this pan to brown off the meats. Take your time with this and make sure there’s enough room for all the pieces of meat to brown, so do these in batches as necessary.
  4. Deglaze this pan with the white wine and turn the heat up. Scrape the bottom of the pan and keep this going until it’s reduced by half.
  5. When your soffritto is tender, add the caramelised onion, diced meat and reduced wine to it. Add the milk and top up with water until all the ingredients are submerged. Leave uncovered on the lowest heat for 6 hours, stirring occasionally. Add water if necessary to keep the liquids topped up. (The milk can make it appear a little granular, this won’t affect the final product.)
  6. For the compote, add all the ingredients to a little olive oil over a high heat. Cook rapidly until thick, then stir this into the rest of the bolognese. Cook for a further hour. Turn the heat off and let it rest for 5 minutes while you cook the pasta. You should check the seasoning at the point – a little extra sherry vinegar can help cut the richness.
  7. For the spaghetti, cook according to packet instructions and drain. Rinse briefly to ensure it doesn’t stick then return to the pan to warm. Toss in the butter to coat well.
  8. Serve the spaghetti by twirling around a carving fork. Add a generous serving of bolognese and top with plenty of freshly grated parmesan.
Categories
potatoes

perfect roast potatoes

roast potatoes | bigspud.co.uk

Here it is: the reason for the blog and why it’s here. My take on perfect roast potatoes.

Click here to skip to the recipe

Perfect roast potatoes for me means golden nuggets: crunchy, shiny outside and ivory fluff inside.

Watch the video version of this recipe here:

One of the key components to a roast dinner being truly memorable is perfect roast potatoes. I’ve spent a long time eating and cooking roast potatoes, and have tried all the methods from all the chefs – Heston Blumenthal, Delia Smith, Jamie Oliver, the lot. In 2009 The Guardian published an interesting article comparing different celebrity chef techniques. Many spuds later I feel somewhat qualified to give the perfect potato.

the potatoes

First, the potatoes. You need lovely dry-matter-packed potatoes, such as Maris Pipers or Yukon Golds. Peel them but keep the skins, in a muslin cloth or brand new J-cloth tied at the top. This may sound bonkers but these peelings will lend a real earthy note to the final product. Cut the potatoes into golf-ball size chunks. Get some water on a really rapid boil and salt much more than you usually would. When you reach your salting limit, add a touch more (this is more chemical- than taste-based). Pop your pots in the water and dunk the skins in too.

the boiling

Leave to boil until tremendously tender – up to but not as far as potato soup. This is a test of nerves. Drain and return to the pan to steam-dry, discarding the skins. If you dare, shake the cooked potatoes a little to break the edges.

(The potatoes can be frozen or fridged at this point, leaving you free to do the actual roasting when you’re ready. The best method is to leave them separate on a tray to freeze hard, then pop them in a freezer bag. When you need them, just roast straight from frozen in hot fat as per the next step.)

the roasting

When you’re ready to cook, get the oven dead hot, around 220C. Pre-heating is the order of the day – don’t put the potatoes in then turn the oven on. Give it at least 10 minutes to reach the optimum temperature. A couple of minutes before the potatoes go in, add your fat of choice to a large baking tray. I favour a 50/50 mix of pork and duck fat. I add enough to barely cover the base of the tray. Put this back in the oven to get smoky, wibbly hot. At this point add the potatoes to the fat.

the seasoning

After 20 minutes, take the tray out, add a sprig of rosemary, a couple of bashed (no need to peel) garlic cloves and a few splashes of red wine vinegar. Add a slice of orange zest if you have it. Take a fork and gently press on the back of each spud. You want them crispy, right? That’s formed by the crags on the potato opening up, so this squishing makes as much surface area as possible. Try not to break them up, but if you do you get the by-product of little crispy bits in the tray. Season with salt and pepper here, toss it all together and pop back in the oven.

After another 20 minutes they will be approaching done. Keep tossing the potatoes in the oils and flavourings when you check on them, and pop them back in if you think they could do with a few more minutes. When they come out of the oven sprinkle over some crumbled flakes of delicious Maldon sea salt.

It sounds like a lot of work when you read it all back like that, but it makes the most fluffy-centred, crunchy and gravy-absorbent roast potatoes you can imagine. Give them a try on your next roast!

praise for perfect potatoes the Big Spud way

Have you tried my perfect roast potatoes? Let me know what you think.

“One of the gang cooked roast potatoes for their future in-laws …they were the best Roasties they’d ever eaten” – Love Potatoes

“Made them for family and my sister apparently hasn’t stopped going on about them since.” – @lukewhitt_

“Big Spud’s guide to perfect roast potatoes is absolutely excellent” – She Cooks She Eats

“Tasted brilliant” – Munchmun.ch

“Farking amazing… it really is all about taking them to the edge” – FoodUrchin

“No joke, I could eat these roasted potatoes every day and never get tired of them” – Jacob from Gumbo

Want more? Check out my potato recipe ebook

Want a simpler take? Try HelloFresh’s roast potatoes
Print

perfect roast potatoes

Ultimate roast potatoes just the way I like them.
Course Side Dish
Cuisine English
Keyword fat,, garlic, rosemary
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 45 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 5 minutes
Servings 6 people
Calories 200kcal
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 1.5 kg Maris Piper potatoes
  • 75 g lard
  • 75 g duck fat
  • 1 sprig of rosemary
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 1 piece of orange zest
  • sea salt

Instructions

  • Peel the potatoes but keep the skins, in a muslin cloth or brand new dishcloth tied at the top. Cut the potatoes into golf ball size chunks. Get some water on a really rapid boil and salt it much more than you usually would. Pop your pots in the water and dunk the skins in too.
  • Leave to boil until tender – about 15 minutes. Drain and return to the pan to steam-dry, discarding the skins. If you dare, shake the cooked potatoes a little to break the edges.
  • Preheat the oven 220°C / 430°F. A couple of minutes before the potatoes go in, add your fat of choice to a large baking tray. Put this back in the oven to get smoky, wibbly hot for another 2 minutes. At this point add the potatoes to the fat.
  • After 20 minutes, take the tray out, add a sprig of rosemary, a couple of bashed (no need to peel) garlic cloves and a few splashes of red wine vinegar. Add a slice of orange zest if you have it. Take a fork and gently press on the back of each spud. Season with salt and pepper here, toss it all together and pop back in the oven.
  • After another 20 minutes toss the potatoes in the oils and flavourings, and pop them back in if you think they could do with a few more minutes.
  • When they come out of the oven sprinkle over sea salt and serve.

Video

Notes

You can freeze this recipe at just about any point. After boiling is a good time, then add straight to the hot fat. Or you can roast them for 20 minutes and again add them straight to hot fat direct from the freezer.
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