Christmas lunch has always been the roasting hot affair when I was growing up. And I mean roasting hot in every form of the phrase – the obvious being a hot roast dinner, topped with hot pudding for desert and traditional hot custard. All cooked in a steaming hot kitchen with no air conditioning in you guessed it HOT Queensland! But I wouldn’t have it any other way, thanks Mum for bringing us up with this tradition. It has to be one of the best meals of the year, every year. But the one item my Mum never served hot was ham, in our family home this was always traditionally served cut cold – which is yummo – but after being introduced to baked ham 2 years ago by my brother ‘n law I can’t seem to go past it.
This year Christmas was at my home and I got to be host and cook which is exciting because as I am usually working up until Christmas eve I usually just bask in the goodness of watching and drinking however this year I finished work a week early and am pregnant – so no drinking icy cold Mango vodka slushies for me! Lucky I like to cook.
Baking a whole leg ham is an expensive task so I found out this year – $15 for my roast Chicken – $55 for the ham (makes doing it once a year even more special!) but sheesh I hope I don’t stuff it up I think as I start following the recipe I chose after filing through many blogs. The recipe of choice came courtesy of ‘A Table for Two‘
I took in his recommendations to use cloves in the ham, as this was not part of the original recipe he references. I also am not 100% sure what I did wrong other than perhaps I could have just put more glaze on the ham, but I had plenty of glaze left over which actually made for a perfect side dish on the table for everyone to add more to their plates. The remaining I put into a steralised jar and now have been having it on my sandwiches – YUMMO!
The result – a delicious baked ham that everyone raved about. (My photography with this one could have been better!)
Christmas Apricot Glazed Ham
[Originally adapted from Pete Evan's Baked Christmas Ham recipe, and further adapted from the recipe on 'A Table for Two'] Ingredients 1 large cold Leg of ham 500 g good quality apricot jam 1 tablespoon Ground Cinnamon 1/2 cup or more brown sugar 1 1/2 cups Dry Sherry 1 tbsp wholegrain mustard a handful of cloves Method 1. Thin the apricot jam with a little sherry and heat until it becomes a sticky spread. 2. Prepare ham by lifting off skin but leaving the fat. Diamond cut the fat and cut the skin off the bone. 3. Rub ham well with cinnamon and stud with cloves each diamond. 4. Spread half of the apricot glaze over the ham (retain the rest for basting when cooking and dressing before serve). 5. Once ham is spread with the apricot glaze, press brown sugar over whole top of ham, making sure some sugar gets into diamond cuts. 6. With the ham in the roasting dish, add 2 centimeter of water and cook for one and a half hours on 180C, keep basting with more glaze every 40 minutes or so – careful not to burn. Make sure to save some of the glaze for dressing later. 7. Once cooked, let it stand for 30 minutes before carving. We served it approx. 45mins after I took it out of the oven but my Hubby reckons the flavor was much stronger the next day. 8. Add wholegrain mustard to the remaining glaze and heat it up again. Pour over carved leg ham slices and is ready to serve - I forgot the wholegrain mustard and it tasted great without it but I am sure it would have been even better with! I also placed the baked ham under the grill for 5-10mins max just to get the glaze a final crispiness but be extra careful not to burn.
