Spiced Cherry Glazed Ham

Hello

안녕하세요

(Annyeonghaseyo)

こんにちは

(Konnichiwa)

你好

(Ni Hao)

A typical UK thing is that on a Sunday, we have some sort of roast with all the trimmings. We normally either have bangers & mash or a roast chicken. We sometimes get given some gammon, and while Skye loves gammon, I'm not a fan so always looks for ways for me to enjoy it. That's how I came across this Spiced Cherry Glazed Ham. While it's promoted as a Christmas dish. I think it's perfect for any time of the year.

Let's get cooking!

Ingredients:

1.2kg-1.5kg unsmoked gammon joint

1 small brown onion

1 litre full sugar cherry cola

2-3 tbsp cherry jam

1/2 tsp sweet smoked paprika

Splash red wine vinegar

Whole cloves

Start off by unwrapping and untrussing your ham if you need to.

Place it skin-side up in a large lidded saucepan.

Peel and halve your onion and place the halves in the pan with the ham.

Pour the cherry cola over the ham - add a little cold water if you need to, to make sure it's fully submerged.

Set over a high heat and bring to the boil. Then, turn the heat down to medium low and simmer, with the lid on for 1 hour per kg of ham.

Skim the sum off the top at 15 minute intervals until it stops appearing.

Remove the ham from the pan and discard the liquid.

Once cool enough to touch, with a sharp knife score a diamond pattern into the fat.

Preheat the oven to 230C.

Next combine the jam, paprika and a splash of red wine vinegar in a small saucepan over a medium high heat.

Bring it to the boil, and allow to bubble away for 1 minute.

While that bubbles away, stud cloves into the points of all the diamonds in the layer of fat.

Brush half of the glaze over clove studded fat and transfer the ham to a baking dish. Bake for 10 minutes, brush with the rest of the glaze and bake for a further 5-10 minutes until the fat and glaze are sticky and caramelised.

Now you're ready to slice or pull the ham and serve it however you want.

To say I don't like gammon, this was really nice. It was full of flavour and really juicy. Skye seemed to really enjoy it too.

This will definitely be a normal gammon dish I make throughout the year.

If you would like to follow the original recipe then head over to the Christmas Kitchen: Two person Spiced Cherry Glazed Ham recipe page over on Rachel Phipps' website.

See you soon!

안녕

(Annyeong)

さようなら

(Sayonara)

再见

(ZaiJian)

Bye

Ham & Potato Cakes

Hello

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こんにちは

(Konnichiwa)

你好

(Ni Hao)

 

It's been a while since I cooked and shared a Pinch of Nom recipe, around 2 years to be exact. So it's time to give another recipe a go.

This recipe can be found in the Everyday Light recipe book and found in the Quick Meals section.

Let's get cooking!

Ingredients:

700g potatoes, peeled and chopped

300g cooked ham

4 spring onions, trimmed and sliced

1 tsp mustard powder

2 tsp chopped fresh parsley

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 large egg yolk, beaten

cooking spray

Cook your potatoes in a large pan of boiling water for 20-30 minutes, until a knife slides easily into the potatoes.

Drain thoroughly and allow them to dry for a minutes. Place into a bowl and mash well.

Finely chop the ham and add to the potatoes.

Next add the spring onions, mustard powder and chopped parsley. Mix well. Then season with salt and pepper to taste.

Add the egg yolk, a little at a time to bind the mixture.

Form into 8 equal-sized cakes.

Spray cooking oil into a large frying pan and place over a medium heat.

Place 4 of the cakes in the pan and cook for about 5 minutes, flip and cook a further 5 minutes.

Once cooked slide onto a plate and cook the remaining 4 cakes.

Serve 2 cakes per person.

I served 3 each for both myself and Skye and served it with corn on the cob.

This recipe serves 4, but it was just me and Skye so I gave us both an extra cake than the serving suggestion.

I thought these cakes went really well the the corn on the cobs.

I enjoyed the flavours, but I think if I give these a go again, I'll turn the heat down slightly as they did burn, but overall they went down pretty well.

If you're interested in any of Pinch of Nom's recipe's then you can buy the recipe books in all major supermarkets as well as online retailers Waterstones and Amazon.

See you soon!

안녕

(Annyeong)

さようなら

(Sayonara)

再见

(ZaiJian)

Bye

Beef Wellington!

Hello

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(Annyeonghaseyo)

こんにちは 

(Konnichiwa)

你好

(Ni Hao)

I always like giving new recipe's a try and I've always wanted to attempt to make Beef Wellington but never gave it a go because I thought it would be really difficult but I found it quite easy especially with a recipe to follow.
Lets get cooking!

Ingredients:

8 ounces chestnut mushrooms

1 garlic clove

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper 

Thyme

3 beef medallion steaks

2 tbsp oil

English mustard

Sliced ham

2 ready rolled sheets of puff pastry

Egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp water)

Before I start I'll add that I didn't follow the measurements for the mushrooms or the beef, I just bought a box of chestnut mushrooms, and I bought 2 steaks and cut both in half to make 3, my local Tesco didn't have any thyme either so I wasn't able to add it to my dish and I used sliced sandwich ham.

Add the mushrooms, garlic, salt, pepper and thyme to a food processor and blend into a fine paste, I don't have a food processor so I used out Nutri Ninja so it made it more liquid based then a paste.

Next add the paste to a frying pan and spread it evenly across the bottom of the pan. Cook the mushrooms over a medium heat, after about 7-10 minutes the mushroom mixture should begin to form a paste, at this point remove from the heat and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.

Season both sides of the beef with salt and pepper.

Heat 2 tbsp of oil om a high heat and when it's smoking add the beef to the pan and sear on both sides for about 45-60 seconds on each side, once seared place on a cutting board or plate to rest.

Using a basting brush, generously paint the mustard over both sides of the resting beef.

Now spread the mushroom mixture on the sliced ham, and then place the ham on the puff pastry, add the beef onto the mushroom mixture, then add more mushroom mixture onto the beef and cover with another slice of ham (I didn't have enough ham to use for both sides, same with the mushroom mixture).

Fold the pastry over the center of the beef wellington, using your hands, carefully seal the edges of the pastry and then place on a parchment paper lined baking tray seam-side down (I used flour instead of baking parchment). Lightly brush each wellington with egg wash and with the back of a knife lightly score the tops of the pastry, try not to pierce the pastry.

Bake the wellingtons in the oven for about 20 minutes until the pastry is fully cooked and golden brown.

Allow the beef to stand for 10 minutes before plating it up, I served mine with vegetables but you could also serve with mash potato's and Yorkshire puddings if you wanted to.

If you want to follow the recipe I did then head to Beef Wellington for Two.
I definitely think I will be making this recipe again but without the mustard, I'm not a fan of English mustard, I'm not a big fan of the taste, but overall I was rather proud of myself as I thought it tasted really nice and the beef was really well cooked too.

See you soon!

안녕
(Annyeong)
さようなら
(Sayonara)
再见
(ZaiJian)

Bye