Farmersgirl Kitchen

Sunday, 11 January 2015

Slow Cooked Spiced Ham

It might seem like a bit of an extravagance to buy a ham in January, but you can get an awful lot of eating out of a large ham like this eating it sliced, warm and cold, then stretching the rest into several meals using rice, pasta, quiche, bakes, pies and pasties.

Adding some spices and citrus fruit to the cooking liquid just adds a little extra flavour to the ham. It's not overpowering and is more obvious in the cold ham than when it is served warm.

Slow Cooked Spiced Ham
1 ham or gammon joint (2.5 kilos)
1 cinnamon stick
2 star anise
3 all spice berries
1/2 lemon
1/2 orange
1 litre of liquid (you can use apple juice, cider, white wine or water or a combination)

Place all the ingredients in your Slow Cooker or Crockpot, put on the lid and cook on low for 4-5 hours.

Farmersgirl Tips

If you are using a smaller gammon joint, simply reduce the liquid, spices and cooking time, it's a really that simple.
If you want to glaze your ham, remove the rind, then using a sharp knife, make a criss cross pattern in the fat. Make a mixture of 50g dark brown sugar and 1 tsp dried mustard powder and rub into the fat. Heat the oven to 180C and bake until the rind is bubbling about 10-12 minutes. I would recommend lining your tin with foil as the sugar mixture is really sticky and difficult to remove.

This is my entry for my #SlowCookedChallenge, the theme for January is CITRUS, why not join me?

Labels: all spice, bacon, Cinnamon, crockpot, Gammon, ham, lemon, orange, Slow Cooked Challenge, slow cooker, spice, star anise

Saturday, 30 August 2014

Wisdom for Home Preservers and Spiced Blackberry Jam

When autumn (fall) starts to creep in, it's definitely time to start preserving the harvest from your garden or the hedgerows. People have been preserving food since ancient times—evidence shows that Middle Eastern cultures were using the heat of the sun to dry their foods as early as 12,000 BC—for reasons of survival or culture or both. Fast forward to the present day, and preserving our food—perhaps home-grown, seasonal, local, organic, or free-range—is an essential and enjoyable part of a healthy, sustainable lifestyle.

Wisdom for Home Preservers by Robin Ripley is a comprehensive guide to preserving in all sorts of different ways including bottling, freezing, drying, fermenting, salt curing and smoking and cold storage/root cellaring. This isn't a cook book, there are no recipes, but it is full of really helpful tips which will help you get the most from your produce and answer any questions you might have. Here are a few of the useful tips:

Tip 158: Pick the right bowls and pots for pickling
Avoid containers and utensils made of unlined copper, iron, zinc or brass when pickling. These materials may react with acid and salt and can cloud or discolour your pickles. For pots, pick such materials as stainless steel, heatproof glass or hard-anodised aluminium.

Tip 254: Set your freezer temperature to -18
Freezer temperatures settings should be set to -18 C (0 F) or lower. Not all freezer settings are accurate, though, so get a freezer thermometer, available at supermarkets and kitchenware retailers, and regularly monitor the temperate and adjust the setting if needed.

Tip 279: Create your own herb meat rubs
With herbs rolling in from the garden by the basketful, don't forget you can mix the match them to make unique and delicious rubs for meat and poultry. For poultry, try combining dried lemon thyme, sage, rosemary, salt and pepper. For beef, try a combination of dried thyme, sage, marjoram, garlic and onion powders, pepper and salt.

Garden and food writer ROBIN RIPLEY has been growing, cooking and preserving fresh food from her garden since moving to a small farm in rural Maryland 15 years ago. She is an enthusiastic experimenter of all things related to food, including bread and pastry baking, wine and cheese making, canning and preserving. She is co-author of Grocery Gardening and blogs about her gardening, preserving and made-from-scratch cooking projects at http://bumblebeeblog.com. She also raises pet chickens, which she blogs about at http://eggsandchickens.com. Robin writes and talks regularly with groups about gardening, potager design and the importance and joy of supporting locally-grown and fresh foods.

Wisdom for Home Preservers
Author: Robin Ripley
Publisher: Apple Press
Published: 4th September
RRP: £12.99

I have one copy of Wisdom for Home Preservers to give away (scroll down to the Rafflecopter widget to enter)

As a bonus I thought I'd share this recipe for Spiced Blackberry Jam with you. The blackberries in our lane have been particularly good this year and it's been so easy to collect enough to make a few pots of jam. If you would like to make this jam, I found the recipe at 'Putting up with the Turnbulls' you can find it here: Spiced Blackberry Jam it's absolutely delicious, the spices are very subtle but enhance the flavour of the fruit.

I'm adding this recipe to the The Great British Blackberry Recipe Round Up, a Linky party which Karen at Lavender and Lovage and I are running throughout Blackberry season 2015. Click through to the GBBR post for full details. You will see that I used the photo from this post for the Linky badge!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Labels: blackberries, brambles book review., Cinnamon, cloves, giveaway, Spiced Blackberry Jam, star anise, Wisdom for Home Preservers

Friday, 28 October 2011

Hotel Chocolat and Christmas - made for each other!

I was so excited to be chosen by Beth at Jam and Cream to review some lovely Hotel Chocolat goodies. I think Hotel Chocolat do Christmas so well and this Classic Sleekster Christmas Selection Luxe box of Chocolates epitomises just how good their chocs are and how beautifully they are presented.

Forget your dodgy selection box, this is what you want to select to go in your Christmas Stocking. All this week Mr Farmer and I have been tasting these chocolates on your behalf...it's a hard job but somebody has got to do it! I've been making tasting notes and choosing my faves. Of course you may have different ideas, but there are so many delicious chocolates in here that you are bound to find quite a few that become your favourites too.

Lift the lid and let Christmas out! That's what it says on the 'menu', there are a total of 16 different types of chocolate in this selection.

Top choice for us was the Ginger Cheesecake with a thick layer of ginger conserve topped with creammy cheesecake topping all covered in thick milk chocolate.

A close second was the Chilli Truffle, a rich dark chocolate truffle with just the right amount of heat from the chilli hitting the back of your throat, I could have eaten a whole box of these.

There are a whole host of spicy Christmas flavours, gingerbread, florentine, mulled wine, cinnamon, star anise, marzipan and champagne, as well as some simpler chocolate truffles and pralines.

See the Hotel Chocolat Christmas Selection HERE

See the Stocking Fillers from Hotel Chocolat HERE

See the Christmas Hampers, Chocolate Hampers HERE

Labels: champagne, chilli, chocolate, Christmas, Cinnamon, florentines, Gingerbread, Hotel Chocolat, marzipan, mulled wine, pralines., selection box, star anise, truffles

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Farmersgirl Kitchen

Sunday, 11 January 2015

Slow Cooked Spiced Ham

Saturday, 30 August 2014

Wisdom for Home Preservers and Spiced Blackberry Jam

Friday, 28 October 2011

Hotel Chocolat and Christmas - made for each other!

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