I cannot get through the Christmas season without having a gammon nearby. And most years I come up with a new glaze to finish it off. I’ve blogged about lots of them. This year I wanted mulled wine with my gammon.
it’s very salty and strong, a slightly sweet flavour as well it’s one of my absolute favourites. We call it gammon in the UK: it’s the hind leg of a pork but just the top part so you get that big round of meat. just one of those weird quirks of Butchery that we have a joint called the Gammon which is a basically like bacon but a big joint of bacon or ham. like bacon it’s cured and usually smoked not always but not ready to eat. It needs cooking.
You can roast it in the oven, you’ll get a more intense flavour and it is relatively difficult to keep it tender with this method as all the fat in the joint is on the top – hardly any runs through the meat itself. You can cook it sous vide which I’ve done on this channel before where you have a lot of control over the cooking. Today I am going to cook it in the more traditional method of simmering on the hob with a load of aromatics. This is usually root veg and hardy herbs. The finished gammon is usually juicy and fairly mellow. Some people like to do a quick first simmer before replacing the water to remove impurities, I find this doesn’t seem to be a thing any more.
Mulled wine is a warm, spiced concoction that’s perfect for chilly evenings. It’s a blend of red wine, typically a robust one, infused with spices. Common additions include cinnamon sticks, cloves, star anise, and citrus zest, to make it rich, warming and aromatic. But to some extent it’s up to you what’s in the mix.
To prepare this comforting drink, you gently heat the wine with the spices, allowing the flavors to come together. Sweeteners like sugar or honey are often added to balance the robustness of the wine and enhance its overall warmth.
It’s perfect for the colder months and as such favoured at Christmas. I confess to also enjoying mulled cider too!
This recipe is very straight forward. Simmer the gammon for a couple of hours, then baste in a reduced mulled wine. It’s dead easy to do – the main thing to watch out for is overreducing the wine and burning your pan.
assorted root veg for the stockonions, carrots, etc
350mlmulled wine
1clementineor other small orange citrus
1heaped tablespoonicing sugar
Instructions
Put the gammon in a large pot with any old veg and if you have it, a spoon of black peppercorns and hardy herbs like bay. But no worries if you don't. Cover with water, bring to a simmer and bubble away for about 2 hours. The gammon is cooked when a skewer is inserted and removed easily. Allow it to cool in the broth for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile reduce the mulled wine. Add the halved orange and icing sugar and boil really hard. Keep boiling and bubbling until it is sticky.
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Transfer the gammon to a rimmed baking dish. Baste the meat in all the wine generously and place in the oven. Every 5 minutes pull the gammon out and spoon on the glaze that has collected in the pan. Keep going for 20-30 minutes until the glaze has hardened and crystallized. Remove from the oven and carve.
Video
Notes
If you don't have any mulled wine, take a full-flavoured or robust red wine and simmer it with cinnamon, star anise, nutmeg and other sweet spices.
As part of a collaboration with BakeAcrossEurope we decided to have a go at Christmas puddings. She’s gone down the traditional route, making an Eliza Acton recipe, and I… didn’t.
In 2010 Heston Blumenthal released the ‘hidden orange Christmas pudding’ in conjunction with Waitrose. I wrote about it at the time and it’s bizarre to look back on it now. They sold out, they were on eBay for hundreds of pounds, and now if you look around all the supermarkets they all have versions of this pudding.
Where did the idea come from? Well most of us know the gimmick of having a sixpence coin buried in the batter, with the recipient being lucky, so that’s the idea of a hidden treat. We often have oranges around the house at this time of year, as well as the idea of having an orange in your stocking (which seems mean now, but was very typical in the post-war years right up to the 1980s). I also think Heston might have had the Sussex Pond Pudding in mind, an historical recipe he loves to reference, where a lemon custard flows from the dessert when cut into. So there’s many ideas coming together.
Because it was a commercial product an official recipe was never released. So I’ve looked at other attempts people made, looked at the ingredient listing from an archive product, watched the factory videos… and I think I’ve made a good stab at it.
If I had a niggle, I’d candy the orange for longer. The commercial version candies it for 7 weeks! Mine was just an hour. I think a few hours so it starts to shrivel and break down would make it more delicious.
But otherwise I’m really pleased with it. It’s lighter than a traditional pudding like Heston’s was, but still rich and fruity.
Have you made Heston’s hidden orange Christmas pudding? Let me know in the comments!
pan big enough to comfortably hold the pudding basin, plus lid
Ingredients
For the candied orange:
1large orange
250gsugar
10gliquid glucose
200gmarmalade
For the pudding:
125gsuetbeef or vegetable
125gbreadcrumbs
250gbrown sugar
75gself-raising flour
¼teaspooncinnamon
¼teaspoonmixed spiceany combination of sweet baking spices will do
500gmixed dried fruitsuch as currants, cherries, raisins, cranberries
25gmixed nuts
50gmixed citrus peel
50gglace cherries
150mlciderpreferably orange flavoured, but any will do
4tablespoonsCointreauany booze will do but the orange liqueur seems appropriate
2eggs
Instructions
For the candied orange:
Prick the orange all over with a toothpick. Combine the ingredients in a pan with the orange and cover with water. Stir really well to combine. Cover and simmer gently for an hour. Turn off the heat and leave to sit, covered, for a further hour. Then reheat and simmer for yet another hour to really break the orange down. Remove the orange and set aside to cool.
For the pudding:
In a large bowl combine all the dry ingredients, stirring well. Then add all the wet ingredients, fruits and nuts and stir very well. You want something that will drop off the spoon slowly. Add a touch more flour or cider if needed.
Grease a 1 litre pudding basin well. Add about a third of the pudding mix, then nestle your orange in. Pack the rest of your pudding mix around the orange and press down with the spatula. Gently tap your basin to remove air pockets.
Add a layer of baking paper, then cover with foil. Tie around the neck with string. Put a plate at the bottom of a pan large enough to fit your basin, pop your pudding in and bring boiling water up along the sides and cover. Simmer for 7 hours, topping up with more water as required. Allow to cool. You can eat straight away, or microwave for a couple of minutes before serving.
Video
Notes
Serve with custard, ice cream, brandy sauce, or brandy butter. Scales up really well and difficult to get wrong.
A round-up of little bits and pieces I’ve been mucking about with at Spud HQ.
Trying (and failing) to make Heston Blumenthal’s meat fruit
I had a lot of fun recreating this iconic recipe from Dinner by Heston. Meat fruit is a trompe l’oeil whereby a mandarin sphere encases chicken liver parfait. I made some terrible mistakes. Watch how I got on.
Kathy’s continental potatoes
Do you listen to the Off Menu Podcast? Ed Gamble and James Acaster ask guests to name their favourite starter, main dish, side, dessert and drink. It’s an excuse for some fun chat. One of their dream guests was the incredible Kathy Burke, who had a homely and delicious sounding menu. Her side dish of “Kathy’s Continental Potatoes” spoke to me for some reason so I had to make it. And whaddya know, they’re great!
Boxtails
The lovely people at Boxtails sent me some of their cocktail sachets to try. Letterbox-friendly, their boxes come in a variety of flavours. I’ve tried a bunch, to the point where I can’t remember what I’ve drunk now! Though I do recall the Bramble being tasty. Word of warning, they are pretty strong! I recommend plenty of ice. And then have another one.
Garlic and black pepper seasoning
I’m a little obsessed with this seasoning from Santa Maria lately. Readily available in supermarkets. I’ve been grinding it over roast potatoes, into meatballs, over broccoli… whatever I can get my hands on. Love it!
Gumbo Recipes
I’ve been playing around with Gumbo recipes lately. Chuck in some ingredients and you get some recipe inspo back atcha. Gumbo crawls recipe sites (including this one!) and pulls in ideas. Other sites have done this but I like the wide variety of sources it uses. Give it a try!
Floyd on France
I’ve been reminding myself what an absolute treat the show Floyd on France (iPlayer link) was. 7 episodes of self-deprecating, leisurely escapades in food and cooking. It feels like the whole thing is made up on the spot and it’s all the better for it. There’s never been another presenter like Keith Floyd. Go revisit if you’re in the UK. And if not, Floyd on Fish is easily found on YouTube.
Meat fruit is considered a signature dish of chef Heston Blumenthal. I’ve wanted to make it for ages so here’s my attempt at it. I’ll have a look at where it came from, the process I went through and what I’d do differently if I did it again.
Heston has been fascinated with food history for decades. As he began his career he researched the traditional French recipes like Petit Salé aux Lentilles and cassoulet, but once he had his own restaurants he looked even further back in history.
The meat fruit recipe has it’s roots in 1399 at a banquet celebrating the coronation of Henry IV which featured “pome dorreng” among other grand items befitting a new king. Bringing the language forward to ‘pome dorres’ we can start to identify that it was pork mince fashioned into a ball, then glazed in a paste of flour, green herbs and hazel-leaf juice. Prepared in this fashion it had the appearance of an apple, and yet was savoury inside. This trompe l’oeil was very much on trend for banquets of the day; messing about with food was a way to show off how rich you were.
Heston was sent this recipe by the historians at Hampton Court. Blumenthal loves playing with diners’ expectations (e.g. egg and bacon ice cream, hot and iced tea) so set about finding a way to bring this concept to modern audiences. After much experimentation with savoury fillings and sweet coatings, in 2011 the meat fruit of chicken liver parfait with a mandarin appearance was one of the debut dishes for his new restaurant Dinner by Heston. It was a smash hit and immediately the talk of the town; coinciding with the uptake in Instagram made it the perfect menu item to show off what you’d eaten. In fact the dish has almost become the signature of the restaurant, popping up as a logo and motif all over its social media.
My attempt at meat fruit
In attempting this I knew straight away I would be making some changes. I prefer a pork liver pate so I swapped out the chicken livers for pork livers. The restaurant version also uses foie gras which I’m just not down for. I also wasn’t about to buy two types of port, something I very rarely drink, just for this recipe. I also struggled with the exact jelly ingredients: mandarin puree was proving elusive, mandarin oil just no, and paprika extract was lost on me. As you might have seen from the images around this post, this affected the finish dramatically. More on that in a bit.
As recipes go it’s not terrifically difficult. As with a lot of Heston recipes they take a long time but most of that is putting things in the fridge or freezer overnight. There’s no special chef techniques involved, and the only mildly unusual equipment you might not have are spherical moulds but these are widely available (here’s similar ones to mine on Amazon). Sous vide is used in the recipe but it is only for bringing everything to the same temperature. A couple of weird ingredients for the jelly but nothing too Blumenbonkers.
The stages are essentially this:
Marinate onion and garlic in booze. Overnight. Reduce to a glaze.
Blitz together liver, butter and boozy onions. Bake in a bain marie.
Shape parfait into mould, freeze. Seal together and refreeze.
Make a mandarin jelly. Refrigerate and then bring back to liquid, dip spheres into jelly. Refrigerate before eating.
Photos of making meat fruit
How did it turn out?
I had some issues. It’s worth saying straight away I halved the recipe because it was going to make way too much for our house. That is always fraught with danger in a Heston recipe, with it’s extremely precise gram measurements. In terms of technique, watching Barry Lewis’s attempt I splodged the mixture into the moulds with a spoon and spatula, but if I’d looked closer I would’ve seen that his hemispheres had cracks, and mine had loads. The actual recipe recommends piping which should cut down on air pockets and therefore a smoother finish. I also struggled like mad using cocktail sticks, I should’ve used bamboo skewers which could’ve taken more weight. I had such grief struggling with the flimsy sticks, domes falling over, snapping in two, ugh. Horrid.
And as I mentioned before I didn’t manage to get all the ingredients for the orange jelly. I’m not super-experienced with gelatine but just enough knowledge to know the ratios are sensitive, as are the liquids you use with it affecting the set. I came up with a recipe using tinned mandarins and leaf gelatine and while it worked as a jelly it didn’t have the shine or appearance that the product demands. AND I just forgot the step where you let the jelly mix cool to 27° – when it gets here it sets just right. Really if you get the finish of this jelly wrong the whole thing is a waste of time. My final ‘fruit’ wasn’t going to fool anyone!
More importantly than any of this, I wasn’t crazy about the taste. It was just a bit too gamey for my palate. Maybe that was my folly for using pork livers, maybe I should’ve soaked the livers in milk to calm the flavour. Either way, it’s not quite enjoyable enough for me. And if you don’t like the taste of it what is the point?
As with other Heston recipes, I did enjoy the process and there’s things I’d try again. Recording the outro to my video recipe I suddenly recalled the mushroom parfait recipe I made 11 years ago and really I should have made that again as I remember it being very tasty. The cream would also help soften the flavour. There’s also nothing stopping you using a store-bought pate you like and pressing into a mould. So next would be to make a mash-up of these to get my perfect parfait spheres. Maybe in time for the coronation of King Charles!
This inventive starter looks like an orange but contains pork parfait!
Course Starter
Prep Time 4 daysdays
Cook Time 1 hourhour
Servings 2fruits
Author Gary @ BigSpud
Ingredients
For the parfait spheres:
50gpeeled and finely sliced shallots
5ggarlicpeeled and finely diced
10grosemary
150gMarsala wine
150gport
25gbrandy
400gpork livers
10gsalt
120gwhole egg
150gunsalted buttercubed and at room temperature
For the mandarin jelly:
40gglucose
800gtinned mandarins
90gleaf gelatine
1teaspoonorange colouring
Instructions
For the parfait spheres:
Begin by placing the shallots, garlic and thyme in a container, along with the Marsala, port and brandy. Cover and marinate in the fridge overnight.
Remove the marinated mixture from the fridge and place in a saucepan. Gently and slowly heat the mixture until nearly all the liquid has evaporated to form a glaze, stirring regularly to prevent the shallots and garlic from catching. Remove the pan from the heat, discard the thyme and allow the mixture to cool.
Preheat the oven to 100°c / 212°f. In the meantime, fill a deep roasting tray two-thirds full with water. Ensure that it is large and deep enough to hold a terrine dish or loaf pan. Place the tray in the oven. Place the terrine dish in the oven to warm through while the parfait is prepared.
Preheat a water bath to 50°c / 122°f.
To prepare the parfait, combine the livers with salt in a sous vide bag.
Put the alcohol reduction, along with the egg, in a second sous-vide bag, and the butter in a third bag.
Seal all 3 bags under full pressure and place them in the preheated water bath for 20 minutes.
Carefully remove the bags from the water bath, and place the livers and the egg-alcohol reduction in a deep dish.
Using a hand blender, blitz the mixture well, then slowly incorporate the melted butter. Blend until smooth. It is important to remember that all three elements should be at the same temperature when combined, to avoid splitting the mixture. Pass the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve.
Carefully remove the terrine from the oven, pour in the smooth parfait mixture and place the terrine in the bain-marie. Check that the water level is the same height as the top of the parfait. Cover the bain-marie with aluminium foil.
After 35 minutes, check the temperature of the centre of the parfait using a probe thermometer. The parfait will be perfectly cooked when the centre reaches 64°c / 147°f. This can take up to an hour.
Remove the terrine from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature. Cover with clingfilm and place in the fridge for 24 hours.
Remove the terrine from the fridge and take off the clingfilm.
The top layer of the parfait may have oxidized to grey, so scrape the discoloured part off the surface and you're left with pink. Spoon the parfait into a spherical silicone mould.
Using a palette knife, scrape the surface of the moulds flat, then cover with clingfilm. Gently press the clingfilm on to the surface of the parfait and place the moulds in the freezer until frozen solid.
Taking one tray at a time from the freezer, remove the clingfilm and lightly blowtorch the flat side of the parfait, being careful to only melt the surface. Join the two halves together by folding one half of the silicone mould on to the other half and press gently, ensuring the hemispheres are lined up properly.
Remove the folded half of the mould to reveal a joined-up parfait sphere, and push a cocktail skewer down into it.
Place the moulds back in the freezer for 2 hours (the spheres are easier to handle once frozen solid). Remove them from the mould completely, and smooth any obvious lines with a paring knife.
Wrap the perfectly smooth spheres individually in clingfilm and store in the freezer.
They should be placed in the freezer for at least 2 hours before dipping in the mandarin jelly.
For the mandarin jelly:
Strain the tinned mandarins into a bowl, reserving the liquid. Place the glucose and mandarin pieces in a saucepan and gently heat , stirring to dissolve the glucose.
Bloom the gelatine by placing it in the reserved mandarin liquid. Allow to stand for 5 minutes.
Place the softened gelatine in a fine-mesh sieve and squeeze out all excess juice, then add it to the warm mandarin purée. Stir well until fully dissolved.
Take a couple of tablespoons of the warm purée mixture and add the orange colouring.
Stir gently to combine and add it back to the mandarin mixture. Add the remaining mandarin purée and stir again to fully combine, before passing the mixture through a fine mesh sieve. Allow the mandarin jelly to stand in the fridge for a minimum of 24 hours before using.
Place the mandarin jelly in a saucepan over a low-to-medium heat and gently melt. Place the melted jelly in a tall container and allow the jelly to cool to 27°c / 81°f.
In the meantime, line a tray with kitchen paper covered with a layer of pierced clingfilm. This will make an ideal base for the parfait balls when they defrost. A block of polystyrene is useful for standing up the parfait spheres once dipped.
Once the jelly has reached the optimal dipping temperature, remove the parfait balls from the freezer. Remove the clingfilm and carefully plunge each ball into the jelly twice, before allowing excess jelly to run off.
Stand them vertically in the polystyrene and place immediately in the fridge for 1 minute.
Repeat the process a second time. Depending on the colour and thickness of the jelly on the parfait ball, the process may need to be repeated a third time.
Soon after the final dip, the jelly will have set sufficiently to permit handling. Gently remove the skewers and place the balls on the lined tray, with the hole hidden underneath.
Cover the tray with a lid and allow to defrost in the fridge for approximately 6 hours.
To serve, gently push the top of the spheres with your thumb to create the shape of a mandarin. Place a bay leaf in the top of the indent to complete the “fruit”.
Serve each meat fruit with toast.
Notes
I used 7cm dome moulds and 1 of these assembled fruits could serve 2 people with toast etc. A 5cm mould would like serve 1 person generously.The only thing the water bath is needed for is to bring the egg, onion and liver to the same temperature to avoid splitting the mixture. You could do this in a saucepan heating the ingredients gently.