Cola Gammon - a Simple Christmas Dish

COLA GAMMON

While the family originates in Birmingham, the bulk now lives in Cape Town, South Africa and we’ve taken some of our traditions with us.   Although Gammon in coke is quite new on the foodie scene, we’ve been doing this for over 10 years.

-          One gammon – about 5/6 pounds

-          2 litres of coke (brand doesn’t matter but not diet or low sugar)

-          Jar of cloves

-          Large onion – cut into chunks

-          1 cinnamon stick

-          1 teaspoon five spice

-          2 tablespoons of nice runny honey

-          2 tablespoons of brown sugar (muscavado)

-          Zest of one orange

-          Red wine vinegar

Take the gammon and pop it in a large pan filled with cola.   Add a handful of cloves, an onion quartered, a cinnamon stick and a teaspoon of five spice.   Bring the gammon to the boil and then simmer for about 30 minutes per pound and then 30 minutes over.

Remove the gammon and then cool so you can peel off the rind.  It depends how much fat you like so you can – if you want – also remove part of the fat.  Transfer the gammon to a roasting tin and score the remaining fat before studding with cloves

You need to make a glaze so in another dish combine honey, orange zest, brown sugar and a little vinegar to loosen it all up.   Then pour over the gammon and roast for about 30 mins.  Remove and rest for an hour or so (and try to keep people from picking at it)

This is home cooking so the measures are not hugely precise and if you want to add a little more /little less do so.  It is very hard to mess this dish up and unless the oven is actually on fire, a little smoke just means the sugar is catching.   And ‘utter bliss’ it can be done the night or day before so one less thing to worry about.

Offally Nice

One of my hero's - and indeed, many peoples hero's - is Fergus Henderson of St John fame as he fully advocates not only the use of good ingredients but also (and I love this quote) said the fact that if you kill something 'it would just be rude not to eat everything'.

So when I decide to make this weeks 'lunch time meal', I decided to go outside my comfort zone and use oxtail.  We've all (I think) had oxtail soup but I personally haven't cooked with it before and I chose a recipe from Ash Mair.  Now for those of you who don't see MasterChef, he is the Tasmanian Chef who is wicked and has just launched his book so see if you can get it.

Right so the recipe, I made Oxtail with Sherry and Mash Potatoes & panchetta.  Lets just say it is simple but it does take a little while!   Ash used pureed parsnip but as this is the food of the devil and nuclear carrots, I chose not to do this.

First, take 1.2kg of oxtail and toss it in flour with a hint of pepper and salt.  Then brown this off in oil.  It needs to be brown and the chances are unless you have a huge pan, you will need to do this in batches.  Set this aside.

Then take onion (1 sliced into chunks), celery (2 stalks sliced into chunks) and then carrots (2 sliced into chunks).  Brown these in a little oil until properly coloured.

Add 400 ml red wine and 600 ml Pedro Ximenez Sherry (not the sweet stuff you get at Christmas, the lovely honey gold Spanish stuff) to the pot and bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes.  Then, add 1 bay leaf, 10 pepper corns, 3 cloves of garlic (crushed) and 4 sprigs of thyme.  Pourover 400 mls of stock after it has cooked for about 2 or 3 minutes.

Now bring to the boil, skim off any froth and pop in an over (120 C) for three hours - yes, three hours.  When it is cooked, drain off the oxtail and veggies through a sieve before reducing this over a high heat.  It should reduce to about half and then return the oxtail to ensure it is warm.

As you do this, prepare your mash.  Not powdered, fresh and creamy.  Also, fry a few tiny pieces of panchetta as garnish.  Pop your mash onto the plate then spoon over the oxtail and sauce before garnishing with the panchetta.

Long, simple but really quite good!  YUM.

L xx

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