Gammon in Coke

Last week, while talking about delivered meat boxes, a friend asked if I had any idea what to do with a gammon joint.  They had received one in their last meat box and didn't have a clue where to start with it.  I jokingly suggested that they should acquire a bread-fruit and cook Oil Down.  Another, more sensible person suggested cooking the gammon in coke.  I had heard of cooking ham this way before, but it was something that I put down as a weird idea.  The conversation moved on and I forgot all about gammon, after all I didn't have any.

On Friday, while discussing my plans for the weekend, I was offered the gammon joint that had starred in the previous conversation.  It turns out that neither Elizabeth nor Rachel are actually that keen on cured pork.  My mum is exactly the same.  She loves pork chops, roasts a mean pork shoulder but can't stand bacon.  A little bit of bartering later*, I was the proud owner of a modest but perfect gammon joint.

There was only one thing I could do with it really and that was to cook it in coke.  A bit of judicious internet surfing lead me to Nigella Lawson's Ham in Coca Cola recipe.  I'm all in favour of odd cookery but submerging a joint of meat in coke did feel strange.  I cooked the joint as per Nigella's instructions before going out for the afternoon.

The final part of the recipe was the glaze.  I'm sure that you could have quite happily eaten the gammon without glazing it but I felt like going the whole hog.  In any case the meat needed reheating so not glazing it would have been a wasted opportunity.  While the gammon was getting its final cook, under a coating of treacle, brown sugar and English mustard, we roasted a sweet potato and boiled some new potatoes to make a two potato mash.  The final sweet accompaniment was some corn on the cob to round off the sweet savoury theme of the meal.

It wasn't the handsomest plate of food I have ever photographed, but what it lacked in looks it certainly made up for in flavour.  Yes I was sceptical about the whole cooking meat in fizzy pop thing but I shouldn't have been.  The coke didn't just add sweetness to the meat but also added an extra meatiness to the joint.  I'm much more likely to have a joint of gammon in the house in future than a bottle of coke but if the two turn up at the same time, I have a feeling that I'll be cooking this again.

*I owe you some lamb!

Olympic Food Challenge: Grenada - Oil Down

There are some dishes in world cuisine that sound so good that you want to eat the page they are written on; steak and chips, bacon sandwich and lemon meringue pie all do it for me.  Tonight's Olympic Food Challenge meal does not make the mouth water from its name alone.  Oil Down is the national dish of Grenada and, that one fact, should have made me want to cook it as part of the challenge.

The clincher that allowed me to see through the greasy title of the dish, was the addition of breadfruit.  Now I don't have a bucket list mentality, I have no driving ambition to eat everything under the sun before I put down my pots and pans, but I do have a stubborn streak a mile wide.  If a new food opportunity is presented to me, I have to take it.  This way I can make my own mind up about how good or bad something is.

When I announced on twitter that I was going to eat breadfruit the responses were extreme.  Breadfruit, it seems, divides opinion like Marmite on steroids.  I received horrified messages warning me off eating the disgusting fruit, alongside messages telling me how lucky I was to be having the nicest food on the planet.

With all of the above knowledge on board, I was more determined than ever to cook Oil Down.  I had spies (@eatlittlespoon) on Leeds Kirkgate Market looking out for its arrival.  In the end Z was passing during her lunch break and happend to find some.  We had originally planned to eat Grenadan next week, but that was bread fruit dependant.  Now that we had it in our grasp we had to reshuffle the menu plan.

Oil Down is a wonderful one pot coconut milk based dish of salted meat and vegetables.  With the breadfruit secured I chose a bacon joint as the meat and got to cooking.  It turns out that we possibly should have cooked this a day or two ago.  Breadfruit doesn't stand well once cut* and we had bought half a fruit for the two of us.  What we cooked with was closer to a ripe brie than any vegetable I can think of, but after three quarters of an hour simmering in coconut milk with onion, peppers, bacon and a scotch bonnet chilli, it had firmed up and taken on the texture of soft, sweet gnocchi.

So far, Oil Down has been the stand out dish of the Olympic Food Challenge for me, it's the one that I want to cook again and that is as high a recommendation for breadfruit and Grenada as I can give.

*nobody told me that.

Gammon, Egg and Chips

Just had a quick flick through the archives and found that we last had this meal on the 15th December 2011.  There are many similarities between that meal and Tonight's.  The gammon is the same product of Swillington Farm and the eggs are fried to perfection*.

For a change I decided to make my own oven chips.  It's simple enough, but takes a little longer than cooking those from the freezer.  Making your own means that you can mess about a bit.  I messed about by adding a parsnip to the potatoes.  This led to an exciting Russian roulette situation where you didn't know if the next bite would be savoury or sweet**.

*even if I do say so myself.  You need to get the frying pan and oil very hot then turn down the heat as you add the eggs.  You also need a lot more oil than you think.  If you skimp on the oil the eggs will stick.
**Don't try this if you don't like parsnip.

Gammon, Egg and Chips

Back in November, when I started this blog, I penned a post about Roast Pork Shoulder, in which I mentioned the tastiest gammon I have ever eaten.  The gammon came from Swillington Farm and it is the reason we have started buying their monthly meat boxes.

Unlike your average shop bought gammon, this was a substantial piece of cured pork that didn't shrivel to half the size during cooking, leaving behind a milky scum.  The rind crisped up like good crackling should and you could taste the pig, not just salt.  Gammon hasn't always been like this for me.

I remember family trips out for Sunday lunch to The Bowling Green Inn, Euxton, where I'd invariably choose gammon.  It's the first place where I remember getting to choose from the real menu, not the kids menu.  It was like a whole new world had been opened up to me.  To give you some idea of the era in which this epic, life changing event happened, the Bowling Green had a Pacman video game and Findus had launched the French Bread Pizza.

The most exciting topping of these superheated, jaw-breakingly crisp pizzas, was the ham and pineapple.  I know now that this is a combination that should be locked into Room 101, but back then the salty sweet combo was a winner. 

The gammon at the Bowling Green came with pineapple.  Tonight, the gammon came with a fried egg, chips and peas.