Mike van de Elzen: Cider, star anise and pineapple roasted Christmas ham

Cider, star anise and pineapple roasted ham 

Cook time: 60 minutes 

Prep time: 10 minutes 

Serves: 8-10

3kg free range cured and smoked Christmas ham  

2 x 330ml dry cider or apple juice  

6 star anise  

10 cloves  

2 cups fresh pineapple, peeled, sliced and cubed  

2 tbsp Dijion mustard  

300 gm brown sugar

Preheat a oven on fan-bake to160c.  

Slice the skin of the ham and score the fat in a diamond pattern.  

Combine the cider, star anise and sugar in a pot and bring to the boil, reduce until syrupy (bubbles will increase in size and slow) Dice the pineapple into thin dice and then stir into the cider mixture. Allow to cool. 

Place the ham into a roasting tray. Smear the Dijion over the ham, followed by 3 tbsp of the cider glaze. Use the cloves to prick through the pineapple to keep it in place. Place the ham in the middle of the oven oven for 1 hour depending on size, checking and baste until caramelized. Serve hot or at room temperature if transporting.  

Keep the remaining cider syrup to re-glaze once on the table.  

Sumptuous! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Joining me now, Mike vander Ellison, our resident chief, Good.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Morning, top of the morning.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
We have been you have been very kindly giving us
some inspiration for our Christmas menus over the last few weeks.
And last week you touched on sides and you'd be
amazing number of people who said to me during the week,
Mike is so right, sides is the most important thing
on the table at Christmas.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
It really is.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
It's kind of like you know. And then Carrie, my producer,
took great she disputed it. She says, well, if you
eat my turkey, my turki is absolutely amazing, You'll eat
nothing like my turkey. So look, she backs herself on
the turkey. But today we are going to talk about
the protein. What's on your list? What's on your menu?
This year?

Speaker 4 (00:55):
We are we're doing a ham and then we're also
doing I spoke about last week a tradicial Dutch dish
called calcotta, which is mayonnaise salad.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
So, and apparently I've been I've been rung into doing
a hot smoked salmon as well. So I'm just going
to do one side because it's horrendously expensive and they
can just fight for it. There it is, that's all
that's there. Go for it. If you get some, you
get some.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
The sami prepared for hearing themselves. Now it's not fair enough.
I think. Look, there's nothing like ham Atchristmas time, and
it just it's just you know, the ham samis go
on and on and on, don't they.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, and it's great and a good glazed ham is
a is a thing of beauty. So okay. A couple
of other tips if you're not doing a ham, if
you're doing chickens or turkeys, I would always bride them
so ten percents of solution, leave your chickens in there
for twelve hours, and maybe leave your tekis in for
a bit longer. With the price of lamb and beef
at the moment, even though it is freaking delicious, you

(02:02):
could possibly look at an alternative like a butterfly lamb
shoulder as a slightly cheaper alternative. The only reason bean
is there's no watage. You know, you're cooking the whole
lot and you're cutting the whole lot up. There's no
wastage in there fresh fish light s having like a
saying is really expensive, so you could look at something like, yeah,

(02:22):
you go to supermarket, they do something like a smoke
gym fish. It's about twelve bucks for maybe three hundred grams.
That will make a lot of smoke fish patta instead
of salmon. If you want to go down that road.
And for Christmas hams themselves, shop around. There is a
huge array of or variance and pricings and Christmas hams.
I noticed this year. You know you're going from like

(02:44):
thirty five up to one hundred and fifty. It's extraordinary.
And yes, probably the quality does change to being on
whether how commercially it's made. However, you know if you
glaze it, sometimes it's quite a hard thing to tell
the difference between.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
There we go. Do you want to talk us through
what you're going to do with your ham?

Speaker 3 (03:03):
So there's insider star, a nisse and pineapple roasted hair.
So I've got a three kilo ham here that I'm
gonna use. So preheat your other one hundred and sixty
degrees on bambake, not ridiculously hot, and then you take
the outside skin off the ham and then you crisscross
the fat and a diamond pattern. Set that aside, and
now we make the all important clay. So into a pot,

(03:25):
I'm gonna put two bottles of dry cider. I've got
six star anise and I've got three hundred It seems
like a lot round of grand is a brown sugar.
Chuck that into a pot, reduce it down to it
becomes syrupy. And you'll tell this because the bubbles will
start to increase in size and slow down once this happens.
I take a fresh pineapple. I've got about two cups

(03:46):
of maybe sliced and diced pineapple, add that into your
sider syrup, and then just turn it off and just
let that cool down on the side. Take a roasting tray,
take your ham that's been cut in the diamond fashion,
and then I smear two tablespoons of dish or mustard
over the top of the ham, and then I spoon
over retablespoons of the sider glaze. And then you pick

(04:09):
out all those pieces of pineapple and you stick them
into your hand with clothes to hold them in place,
and then maybe just drizzle a little bit more of
that glaze over the top. Fire that into the middle
of the oven on one sixty younger. Leave that in
there for one hour. Every twenty minutes, just open it
up and just check a bit more of that glaze
over the top, whether you're putting fresh glaze on or

(04:30):
whether you're taking the glaze from the bottom of the
roacing train and re applying it over the top. Either
either after an hour, pull that out and then you
can serve that either hot, you can serve it at
room temperture I you're going to transport it, but keep it.
If you've got a little bit of that side of glaze,
serve it with that side of glaze, and then people
can slice the ham and then pour a little bit
of that sided glaze over the top.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
And then you need to make sure that you've got
an old pillow case that you can sacrifice, you know,
as your handbag.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
As your hand And also trick for handbags is make
sure you soak them in cold salted water, cold salt
in the right salters and that and the salt is
just a bit more of a preservative.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Wring it out, put the hand ring there, put it
in the fridge, and then you're good to go. For
three weeks worth of ham sandwiches, and.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Then I'll come back on that in the middle of January.
What to do with the lift.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Over ham I don't know, because it's sort of the
only time of the year that I really eat it.
You don't kind of, I don't really sort of tire
over just putting a bit of mustard and a bit
of letters and kickcumber on top of a bit of
bread and eating it.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
You know what I mean. And if you want to
get rid of if you've got a bit more ham steaks,
is a very good way of using up ham steaks. Yeah,
just barbecue them barbecued ham hot ham steaks on.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
The okay, so just heat them up on the barbie. Okay,
all right, we give that what the world to see.
Look at your full of amazing ideas. So next week
we're on to my favorite part of the meal.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
I presume desserts, Yes, and I'm not doing a pad.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
You don't have to. You know, you can buy some
pretty good ones these days.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Is that a.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Terrible thing to say? But if you think about the
price of fresh fruit and or fresh berries, but you
just can't put it all together.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
One of bees desserts. Okay, I won't tell you one
of those. It will be surprised for next week.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio