Merry Christmas 🎄

So Christmas is done and dusted and it was our third year hosting the family in our not-so-new house. This year, I approached it with an attitude that Christmas dinner did not need to be an endurance event, just a joyful meal with family. And most importantly – no turkey 🦃

As much as I enjoy a delicious turkey at Christmas, it is more something of Christmas past now rather than Christmas present and future. Turkey can be wonderful, with yuletide aromas that fill the house, but it can also be quite stressful to prepare. Especially, when you are aiming for that perfect golden-brown finish and juicy texture – we don’t do dry turkey! This year, I thought it would be nice to remove that stress from the equation and lean into a more relaxed approach to our family meal. Additionally, our beloved turkey-roaster-in-chief, aka my sister, has decided to take a break from her usual role, giving us an opportunity to explore new culinary horizons. With her absence in the kitchen, an alternative solution needed to be found…

What is your favourite dish to cook for Christmas dinner, and why do you enjoy making it?

It was my husband’s idea to ask the other family members to bring dishes, which turned out to be a very good decision. This arrangement meant that all I needed to focus on was one main dish, relieving the pressure of us preparing an entire feast. After a short think and a flick through a Christmas recipe magazine (!), I decided on roast ham. Ham feels just as traditional as turkey, at least in my Christmas imagination.

The last time I cooked a roast ham was probably over a decade ago, when I lived in my little flat in North East London, with a very small kitchen. I made it just for my sister and I. I can’t remember exactly how I cooked it, though Instagram or Facebook (I can’t remember which one) kindly reminded me of its existence a few days ago – and from the photos, it looked pretty good.

Although I had planned on ham since mid-December, I did not buy anything until two days before Christmas. I figured there would be no shortage of gammons to buy, and it would save space if I did not have a huge piece of meat sitting in the fridge or freezer for days. Or maybe I was just disorganised…I simply don’t know.

To help me with this version of ham, I watched a few YouTube videos to remind me of the general principles. So there are probably many/finite ways to cook gammon; however, the general themes seemed to be – boil (and create a beautiful stock as a bonus), remove skin, score the fat and add a sweet and savoury glaze, plus or minus stud with cloves.

In the end, I was inspired by this Jamie Oliver method for the marmalade glaze.

Gordon Ramsay came through for the boiling and the stock.

I also have a best friend who cooks ham quite frequently, and I could have, should have, and eventually did ask her how she makes hers. In fact, I was at her house on Christmas Eve when her ham came out of the oven, looking absolutely spectacular.

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Christmas Eve, back at my own kitchen…

The only tricky thing for me was that I was at the beginning of a mild but irritating cold, the kind of cold that means you only get through the day with multiple cups of Lemsip. So I think I probably wasn’t quite thinking straight when I decided to start boiling gammon at 10 o’clock at night on Christmas Eve.

It occurred to me that after midnight and in the early hours of Christmas morning, I would be standing up in the kitchen trying to roast a ham. That felt quite ridiculous. After consultation with my sister and the internet, I decided that the boiled ham could be stored in the fridge overnight with some of the stock, and I could continue in the morning. Which I did.

Christmas Day came, and I finished preparing and cooking the ham with the help of my husband. Do you know what? It was, quite simply, one of the most delicious things I’ve cooked in a long time. Sweet, salty, crisp on the outside, juicy within. Comforting, special, and everyone loved it.

What struck me most was how unstressful the whole thing felt. No panicking – just good food. I’ll definitely be cooking ham again.

Method

Day One: The Boil

I gently simmered the ham (2.3kg) in a large pot of water with aromatics: crushed peppercorns, coriander seeds, bay leaves (plenty of them), three cinnamon sticks, two chopped onions, three chopped celery stalks, and three chopped carrots. Salt and pepper added too.

The smell of the kitchen while this was cooking was heavenly.

After two hours, I took the ham out, poured the stock into containers (liquid gold ✨), and put it into multiple plastic containers. I put the ham in its own case with a little stock and stored it in the fridge overnight.

Day Two: Skin, Glaze, and Roast

The next morning, I took the ham out of the fridge, removed the string, cut off the skin, scored the fat into diamond shapes, and studded it with cloves and sprinkled over some ground black pepper.

For the glaze, I followed Jamie Oliver’s marmalade idea, but with a small adjustment. Straight marmalade was too thick and just sat on the ham in a heavy blob, so I squeezed fresh orange juice and mixed it in until it became glossy, loose, and spreadable.

Into the oven it went for about an hour. Every 20 minutes, (well, actually Ignacio did, while I ran around doing other things) opened the door, spooned over the juices and glaze, and watched it slowly transform.

By the end, the outside was deeply caramelised, sticky, crispy, and dark in places. The inside was a rich, warm pink — moist, tender, and anything but dry.