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.

seriously good pasta bake

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you might notice I do a lot of things “from scratch” (I really hate that phrase, like a badge of snobbish one-upmanship), because I enjoy it and I like knowing what goes into my dinner. In my time of course I’ve used pasta sauces and the like, and they range from OK to pretty good to truly vomit-inducing (usually ones that involve mascarpone).

I wouldn’t usually blog about such a jar but I happened to use a Seriously Good pasta sauce. These are Gordon Ramsay-devised with a 10p donation to Comic Relief for each jar sold. And no, Gordon doesn’t get a penny. There’s a bunch of flavours, and the one I used happened to be cherry tomato & balsamic. Peering over the ingredients list on the label is very surprising: you can pronounce everything. And I can buy all of them in any supermarket. That’s very reassuring.

I chucked it in a pasta bake with some chorizo and courgette, and it was lovely. Well worth a try – certainly if you find it on promotion, as it was in my local Sainsbury’s. At least bask in the glow of making a small donation to a good cause :-)

Seriously good pasta bake (serves 4):

400g fusilli

100g chorizo, roughly diced

2 large courgettes

1 jar Seriously Good cherry tomato and balsamic sauce

Cheddar cheese

Some basil leaves, shredded

Splash of balsamic vinegar

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Get a pan of salted water on to boil and cook the pasta according to the packet instructions. Get on with the rest of the recipe and when ready, drain until needed.

In a large oven-proof pan, heat a little oil and add the chorizo. Cook briefly until it starts to colour on all sides, then add the courgette.

Continue to fry for 3-4 minutes, tossing frequently so the courgette gets coated in the rich chorizo juices and is starting to turn tender.

Add the sauce, then refill the jar half-full with water. Sloosh it around to gather up the dregs of the sauce and pour into the pan. Bring up to the boil and then add the drained pasta. Make sure everything is well-mixed and pop into an oven for ten minutes, or until the tops of the pasta sticking out are starting to turn dark-brown.

Scatter the basil over the top, grate some cheddar over and sprinkle with balsamic. Grind a little black pepper on top and a swirl of your best extra virgin olive oil, then return to the oven for a further minute or two, until the cheese has melted. Serve piping hot.

sweet and sour peppers

Peppers (bell peppers to our American cousins, and capsicums to many areas of the world) are one of my absolute favourite things in food. Left beside the salad cart with a tray of sliced peppers and a creamy mayonnaise or ranch dressing I will soon be left holding an empty bowl. It’s the freshness, the sweetness and crunchy texture I love. Yet they are still delcious when cooked, juicy and vibrant, often adding the fleck of colour that the plate of brown mince needs.

Sometimes I want the flavours of the peppers to be really enhanced, I’ve adapted this recipe of Gordon Ramsay’s to pack a real flavour punch. Tangy vinegar gives you that beautiful sour edge, and the stock provides a luscious glaze that makes them irresistible. In this recipe I don’t bother picking the thyme leaves, but rather leave a healthy bundle strapped together and tossed with the frying peppers. This way some little bits fall off and the quick frying imparts their woody aroma and you can discard the garni afterwards. If you’re ambivalent about peppers, give this one a whirl alongside some grilled meat – they really sing.

Sweet and sour peppers:

2 peppers, sliced

Bunch of thyme, bound together with string

A few tablespoons of white wine vinegar

A few tablespoons of chicken stock

Get a pan really hot and add a splash of olive oil. Chuck the peppers and thyme in and get stir-frying. I prefer the peppers to be unscorched for this one, but you can let them blacken if you like.

Continue frying for a couple of minutes until they start to become tender. Drizzle over some white wine vinegar and toss thoroughly.

Once the vinegar has started to disappear, chuck over some chicken stock (barely enough to cover them all) and toss to coat the peppers well. Keep everything moving until everything is covered in a sticky glaze.

Taste a small chunk of pepper, checking for acidity (lots of this is good) and season as necessary.

masala beef with curried pumpkin

masala beef with curried pumpkin

The most recent series of The F Word (which changed inexplicably mid-series to Gordon Ramsay’s The F Word) played host to local restaurants, pitting them against one another to find the best UK local restaurant. I’m not sure how you compare carbonara to chow mein to see which is “best” but the competition was entertaining enough. The show would have been improved tenfold if it had’ve been only clips of Jean-Baptiste stumbling though a pad thai, but there you go. The winning restaurant was Lasan, an Indian restaurant – what’s this, Gordon has a new book and series based on Indian food out? Well that is a coincidence.

Serendipity aside, I loved the sound of the dish that swung it for the Birmingham curry-house; masala beef with curried pumpkin. It seemed like a skillful blend  of techniques and ingredients, and given I have a bit of a home-cooked curry fetish lately I thought I’d give it a whirl. I made some changes to the original: my budget didn’t stretch to fillet this week so used some casserole-type steak and braised it for a long time, and my house is not so spicy so I toned down the chilli element. I also chose to forego mustard oil, substituting oil steeped in yellow mustard seeds for a similar burn. I didn’t have time to grab veal bones so a little beef stock concentrate had to do instead, and finally tinned tomatoes seemed like a decent enough substitute, and I didn’t fancy a real tomato in January being worth cooking with. Other than that I was fortunate enough to grab some khudu, or Indian pumpkin, from a superb little Asian grocer’s near me.

The results? The curry was absolutely delicious. Rich and meaty, while still spiced and sweet was a very complex and deep flavour. The sweetness of such things as cassia bark came through, while the last-minute addition of cashew nut paste brought a richness to the sauce. A triumph. The pumpkin, while tasty enough, was a little watery. If I’d known this in advance I would’ve perhaps salted the squash first to draw the excess moisture out. That said, it was a refreshing taste alongside the rich curried gravy. With recipes like this, I can see why head chef Aktar Islam took the trophy. I’d certainly love to see a book of curries like this.

PS. leftover cashew nut paste, blended with a little cream and sugar and a hint of cardamom, makes an excellent lassi to follow this.

Masala beef with curried pumpkin:

750g casserole beef, diced

For the marinade:

1 tablespoon garlic and ginger paste

2 tablespoons papaya paste

2 tablespoons mustard oil

1 teaspoon tandoori masala

½ teaspoon chilli powder

½ teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon turmeric

For the sauce:

4 green cardamom pods

3” cassia bark

3 bay leaves

1 large onion, sliced

½ tablespoon garlic and ginger paste

½ tablespoon ground coriander

½ tablespoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon chilli powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 tin tomatoes

1 litre beef stock

5 tablespoons smooth cashew nut paste (toasted cashews blitzed with a little water)

For the curried pumpkin:

500g pumpkin, peeled and diced (approx 2cm squares)

½ teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds, cracked

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 teaspoon tomato paste

1 onion, finely chopped

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon turmeric

½ teaspoon ground chilli powder

100ml water

Handful fresh coriander, chopped

Combine the beef with the marinade ingredients and leave for about 6 hours for the spices to penetrate the meat.

For the sauce, seal the beef in a large casserole pan then remove to one side. In a little oil crackle the cassia bark, cardamom and bay leaves for about a minute. Brown the onion, then add the garlic and ginger paste.

Add the dry spices and cook out for a few minutes, add the stock then bring to the boil. Scrape the excess marinade off the beef then add to the pan. Leave to simmer uncovered for 2 hours. Check the beef is tender before serving.

To finish the sauce add the cashew nut paste and ground cardamom just before serving. Adjust seasoning if needed.

For the pumpkin, crackle the seeds in a little oil for a minute then add the onion and garlic.

When the onions have softened add the pumpkin and toss in the mixture. Add the water and cover, cooking quite vigorously until the pumpkin is tender. Top with coriander and serve immediately.

Aktar’s original recipe is here.

tiramisu granita

After a recent trip to his Royal Hospital Road restaurant, Cathyella also purchased Gordon Ramsay’s book, Three Star Chef
. I’ve borrowed it and I can’t resist the urge to try some of the recipes out. This one had the bonus of being able to be prepared a while in advance.

There’s three components: coffee cream, mascarpone sorbet, and espresso granita. The granita is simply coffee, sugar and water combined and then left in the freezer. Every couple of hours I went back and mashed it up with a fork until it gained a Slush Puppie like appearance. For the sorbet it’s sugar and water again, this time with lemon juice, mascarpone and liquid glucose. I worried that the last ingredient would be difficult to find, but no, there it was in the baking aisle with things like bicarb and silver dragees. Similar process here: freeze and mash every hour or so. For the coffee cream I followed the same process as last week.

At serving time it’s simple enough to pile on top of each other, and dust with cocoa. It’s not easy to make out in the photo but there are three layers. The cream was a little sloppier than Gordon’s due to some adjustments I had to make to the recipe. But the taste was there, that’s the main thing. The biggest revelation to me was the sorbet. I’d never made one before but the flavour was great and the texture was dreamy. Come back for a proper sorbet post in the near future!