51 Songs About Ham

A to Z Lyrics lists 51 songs that mention ham. A surprising number of these songs are naughty, naughty, naughty. I'd never really thought of ham as an erotic food, but I don't think I'll ever be able to look at ham on the bone in the same way again. I'm glad I didn't discover this little gem of trivia before I decided to cook a ham for Easter dinner. I might not have discovered the best ham I have ever ever ever, in a million squillion years, tasted.

As I am writing this I am fantasizing over the cold left over ham in the fridge....

mwffthf, thrmsw fmwfff mthfwww. Ffmwffffth, mm thwwwy?

Sorry. I really oughtn't to speak with my mouth full. How rude.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. The. Ham.

I have, in fact, made this ham (and other versions of it) before. I just hadn't done this particular recipe all the way through. Now I know what a bad bad bad girl I've been and I swear as long as I live I will never ever make ham any other way.

The recipe I used is the Coca-Cola Ham from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat. As I said, I've done ham in coke a fair few times. My mum used to do it from her very late seventies recipe book "No More Than 4 Ingredient Recipes". That same recipe book also had a very tasty (if somewhat surprising) recipe for barbeque sauce: ketchup and coke. And nothing else. It is actually quite good. I wonder whether the authors got a kickback from Coke?

Anyhow, it wasn't the boiling in Coke thing that was new to me, it was Nigella's mustard crust. Traditionally, I have boiled my ham in Coke and then glazed with a brown sugar/mustard mix, which is stellar. But the mustard crust is heavenly...it is what the mustard glaze wants to grow up to be..especially adjusted the way I did - which was quite a lot more mustardy than what was called for in How to Eat.

This is what I did...

Ingredients

• 1 Smoked (but not precooked) picnic shoulder ham on the bone. Mine was 3.75 kilos which was enough for three of us for supper plus too many leftovers to count. But that is never a bad thing with ham. You could probably comfortably feed 6 to eight from that size ham bearing in mind that the bone takes up some space, as does the offensive amount of fat you will have to scoop off the ham after boiling
• 2 x 2 litre bottles of full-sugar Cola beverage
• a dozen peppercorns
• 2 onions, quartered

Boil the ham in the coke with peppercorns and quartered onions 30 minutes per 500 gram plus 30 minutes.  Remove the ham from the liquid and allow to cool sufficiently that you can handle it long enough to remove its sock (if it has one) and remove the gelatinous surface fat with a big ole spoon. Prepare to be ooked out at the sheer volume of fatty fatty fatty fat. I reckon my grandma would have rendered this down into something useful for deep-frying, and I felt a bit unworthy for a moment chucking all that good piggy fat out, until I realized my Grandma would probably be ooked out about cooking the ham in Coke and I figured I could, in good conscience, call us even.

Make a paste out of:

• 1.5 cups fine bread crumbs
• 2 Tbsp dry mustard
• 1.5 Tbsp prepared American mustard
• 1.5 Tbsps prepared hot English mustard
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• and enough of the cooking liquid to form a thick paste that you can mould, like a not quite firm marzipan.

With damp fingers, pat the paste evenly on to the top side of the ham, and extend down the sides to make a nice covering.

Pop the covered ham into a 210 (Celsius) degree oven for 30 minutes to allow the crust to get cooked and crunchy. Remove ham and slice, with a bit of crust on each slice. Oh my god this is so good!

Fmwfff mthfwww. Ffmwffffth, mm ffffthlth!!

Sorry. Again.

If you try to slice the ham right out of the oven, the crispy crust will kind of pop off the meat.

After the leftovers have been covered with foil and put in the fridge overnight, the crust seems to stick better and will remain attached to each slice. I thought the crust would be gross the next day as I am not at all a fan of formerly-crispy-but-now-depressingly-soggified anything from the fridge. But wow. It was still stellar the next day. The crust has a fantastic, solid but slightly sticky texture (kind of reminiscent of sticky buns at Dim Sum) and the tangy mustard/musky brown sugar flavour that totally complements the salty/sweet meat.

I am off to the kitchen for another slice...

Comments

[Zarah Maria]

I loved the "mwffthf, thrmsw fmwfff mthfwww. Ffmwffffth, mm thwwwy?"! Funny Lyn! Oh, and the ham sounds good too!

[anthony]

With the Scottish Restaurant offering rappers money to name check Big Macs, the coke hypothesis doesn't surprise. Neither did Sylvester Stallone doing ads for ham in Japan.

Food is double entendre paydirt, surprised they haven't had an IMBB on it.