Roasting the Christmas Ham

Time for Part Two of our super-exciting Christmas Ham serial. Today, I felt that the recipe said it all.

Roasting the Christmas Ham

Ingredients:

1 ham
Water
Cider
Vinegar

Lots of cloves

Honey
Soft brown sugar
Mustard (your choice)
Marmalade (it's better without too many bits in, as they tend to burn)

Recipe...

So. You and I have soaked our Ham overnight to remove the salt. Now, we need to drain the water off it and weigh it, in order to work out the cooking time. My enormous gammon was too big for our kitchen scales (there's a phrase I never thought I'd write), so I had a hilarious time with the full-sized bathroom version. Let's just say that I weigh around twelve Hams.

You need to allow 10-15 minutes of cooking time per 450 grams of Ham. Mine took two hours. The perceptive among you will now be able to work out how much I weigh, what fun. The means of cooking is a slow simmer, covered with a lid, in the biggest pan you can find. I simmered my Ham in a can of Woodpecker cider, a good big slosh of white wine vinegar, and water to top it up. Ideally you want to cover your Ham with the cooking liquid, but if, like mine, your pan isn't quite big enough you can just settle for turning it over halfway through cooking. By a slow simmer, by the way, I mean that while the water is steaming it is certainly not boiling fast - just barely moving, with the occasional bubble glooping onto the surface.

Once the Ham has simmered for its allotted time, remove from the heat and let it cool in the cooking liquid until the water doesn't scald you if you dip a finger in (the first few tests might be a bit tricky...). This is because you're going to need to handle the Ham for the next bit, and while it needs to be warm, you don't want to burn yourself on it. By the way, you'll need to save your cooking liquid for the minute, so don't pour it down the sink just yet!

Now for my favourite bit. You need to peel the skin (but not all of the fat) off your Ham, then score the fat in a diagonal chequered pattern (that's 'checkered' for the 3 readers I apparently have in the US), so that the Ham is covered in little diamonds. Then you need a lot of cloves. Push one into each junction in the pattern (ie, in the corner of each diamond) so that the Ham is studded with cloves in a diamond pattern. Put the Ham in a deep roasting tray. You're ready for the honey glaze.

I use a honey and marnalade version, which goes roughly as follows: tablespoon of mustard (I prefer the grainy kind with ham, but it's up to you); however much honey you think will cover your ham (I used 8 tablespoons for mine); half as much brown sugar and marmalade as you used of honey. Mix it all up and pour over the Ham in the roasting tin. You'll also want to add a few ladlefuls of the cooking liquid from earlier, as this stops the Ham from drying out, and is also yummy. It just needs to cover the bottom of the roasting tin.

Now into the oven, for around 40 minutes, on a high heat (call it 200 - I used the top right oven in the aga). Don't think you can wander off for some mid-cooking TV though, because you need to baste your Ham every ten minutes, to keep it moist as it cooks and to make sure as much of the glaze as possible stays on the Ham and not burned onto the bottom of your roasting tin. By basting, I mean you pull it out of the oven, grab a spoon and use it to pour whatever juices are in the bottom of the pan over the top of the Ham. These juices will get less runny and more syrupy as the cooking goes along.

It will probably sizzle and spit at you, and bits of the glaze are 99% certain to burn. Don't worry about any of this. It will be delicious, I promise. The burned edges of glaze will taste like caramelised oranges rather than gross. Trust me.

Ham looking golden with some burn-y edges? Good. Out of the oven and onto a serving dish or any convenient flat surface which you don't mind wiping sticky honey off later on.

And now for this year's experiment. I poured the leftover juices into a small saucepan and set it on a medium heat to reduce. Once it had reached what looked a bit like the setting point of a jam, I let it cool and thicken slightly then poured the resulting deep golden-brown mess over my Ham. Most of it, I have to admit, ran off into the dish, but there was just a bit more sticky glaze than usual, and frankly, anything which adds more honey glaze to a ham is worth it in my book.

So there we have it. Christmas Ham, perching smugly on my serving dish and looking sticky, meaty, shiny, ever so slightly Victorian, and utterly fantastic (if I do say so myself). Tomorrow, Cumberland sauce, the only thing to eat with your Ham. But for now, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.