Fennel Glazed Ham

My family and I often go to Suffolk on holiday, and the last time we went, we visited a delicatessen noted for its smoked hams, bacons, and other yummilicious pork products. While there we tried a fennel glazed ham that was rather nice, so I decided to create my own version, and the result turned out so well that I wanted to share it. This dish can be enjoyed hot, but I prefer to let it cool, and slice it to enjoy in a cold meats and salad meal, or even as part of a ploughman's lunch.

Fennel is a gorgeous spice with a flavour  that is reminiscent of aniseed. However, if you aren't keen on aniseed and liquorice, don't let that put you off. I can't stand liquorice or strong aniseed flavours, but I love fennel so it's well worth a try.

This recipe is for a fairly small gammon joint, if you want to cook a larger ham, then you only need to increase the amounts for the glaze as the amount of spices in the cooking liquid should be fine for the flavour. However, if cooking a particularly large joint - say a 4-5lb gammon, it would be worth doubling the spices due to the drastically increased amount of water.

Ingredients: A Small Unsmoked Gammon (About 1lb in weight) 1 Tbsp Whole Fennel Seeds 1 Tsp Whole Black Peppercorns Pinch Sea Salt For the Glaze: 2 Tsp Whole Fennel Seeds 15g Butter 2 Tbsp Runny Honey 1 Tbsp Soft Brown Sugar

Method:

1. To start with you will need to soak the gammon joint in water overnight. This will help reduce the saltiness of the joint, making it more tender when cooked.
2. Take the fennel seeds for the cooking and place in a pestle and mortar with the peppercorns and salt, and lightly crush. don't pulverise the spices, you just need to bruise and lightly break them up to release the flavour of the fennel.
3. Tip the spice mix into the bottom of a large saucepan. Drain the gammon from its soaking liquid and place it on top of the spices. Fill the pan with clean water until the joint is covered and put on the lid. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about half an hour. A good guide for cooking gammon joints is to cook the meat for 25 minutes per 1lb (450g) weight. So if you had a 2lb joint you'd need to cook it for 50-60 minutes. If you go over the cooking time, it won't matter too much, but too long may cause the meat to break apart. When cooked, leave the gammon to cool then remove from the water and pat dry.
4. In the meantime, you need to make the glaze. Lightly crush the fennel seeds in a pestle and mortar and put to one side.
5. Gently melt the butter over a low heat, and add in the crushed fennel seeds, honey, and sugar. Heat through and stir well until the glaze begins to bubble and froth. Remove from the heat.
6. Place the gammon on a baking tray lined with parchment and brush with plenty of the glaze. Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes at 180C, glazing the meat again two to three times during the cooking.

Parmentier Potatoes

I've been brought up on home cooked meals, so I've not always been huge on shop-bought ready meals. However, I always enjoyed buying pre-made parmentier potatoes from the supermarket and I alwys thought them to be more hassle to make than enough, One day, however, one day I decided to bite the bullet and have a go at making my own version. The result was seven kinds of awesome and I've never looked back. Shop bought are nice, but these, for me, are on another level. Subsequently, this has become one of my favourite potato recipes, and I thought I'd share it with you.

Ingredients: 8 Medium Sized Potatoes 4-6 Slices Bacon Butter Olive Oil 20cm Sprig of Fresh Rosemary (Chopped) 1 1/2 Tbsp Chopped Fresh Thyme Salt Pepper Grated Parmesan Cheese

Method:

1. Peel the potatoes, and cut them into 1cm cubes and place in a bowl of water to remove a little of the starch. Chop the Bacon into small chunks.
2. Melt a little butter and oil in a large, deep-sided saucepan and fry the bacon until cooked but not crispy. Remove from the pan and set to one side.
3. Melt some more butter (around about a 5-10 gram chunk) in the same saucepan with a little more oil for about five minutes.
4. Mix in the chopped herbs and season with a little salt (not too much as the butter and bacon will add a certain amount of salt content) and plenty of ground black pepper. Continue to fry the potatoes until they're softened and have begun to brown.
5. Next add in about 2 tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese and return the bacon to the man. Mix thoroughly and remove from the heat.
6. Line a baking tray with some baking parchment and spread the potatoes across the pan in a single layer. Sprinkle with some more parmesan cheese to give an extra crisp.
7. Bake in the oven at about 180C for 20-30 minutes or until nicely browned and crispy. Make sure to shuffle the potatoes on the tray every now and again to ensure that they cook evenly and don't stick to the paper or burn.

Wedding Favour Chocolates: A Beginning

One of my closest friends and favourite people in the world is getting married this year and as well as being a bridesmaid (and wedding cake conspirator), I have been asked to make chocolates for the wedding favours. I love experimenting and generally playing around with chocolate, so with a fairly large task ahead of me, I thought I'd blog my progress through the process.

At the moment, We're at the end of stage one and the sweets in question have been decided upon. The next step will be to do a trial run, which I will be doing at the end of June so that I can experiment with new techniques to me and check that everything works well.

So for now all I can do is list what I have planned, and as and when I get to trying things out, I will post more details.

The wedding favours will be in a small box and will consist of four different sweets, which are as follows

• Fruit-Flavoured Fudge - For this I will be using an existing fudge recipe I have for strawberry fudge, and will experiment with replacing the colouring and flavouring with freeze-dried fruit powders in the hope that will naturally flavour and colour. I will be trying this in three flavours: Strawberry, Raspberry, and Cherry. If the powders don't work, then I'll be using food flavourings as per the original recipe.
• Champagne Truffle Squares - This is a recipe that I found in a supermarket magazine, and have never tried before. My main experimentation with this will be the decoration, which will be using gold food spray and a stencil to create a heart motif on the top.
• Violet Creams - With this chocolate I will be using a dark chocolate shell, decorated with a pink chocolate heart design on top, filled with a violet flavoured fondant cream. This is probably my most tried and tested recipe, that should be easy enough for me to do.
• Rainbow Ganache Truffles - By far my most ambitious chocolate.for this I will be using a dark chocolate ganache coated in a white chocolate shell which will be decorated with a circular rainbow design. For this, I will be experimenting with colouring the white chocolate with powdered food colouring, which I've never used before. If the colour works, then the actual execution should be relatively simple enough, but time consuming.

Also for the last two chocolates on the above list, I will be attempting to use a piping bag pen to make it easier to create the designs needed. Hopefully, this should be faster than using paint brushes as I have done before. No matter the turnout though, I can't wait to get playing - though I fear that if the colouring works well, could lead to more creative chocolate decoration ideas in future.