Boiled Ham - Ver Jus, Cloves, Whisky Mustard, and Lime Marmalade

I suppose I should have blogged a day by day record of the cooking from the larder.  The problem is that with this '2 days at home and 5 days living on the boat in London' lark I do a huge amount of cooking on Saturday and Sunday, and then live off buckets of soup and stew during the week.

We've no shortage of food really, and have freezers to thank for the abundance and variety that we are able to enjoy even without going to the supermarket for a month.  For instance this weekend I boiled a gammon joint that I had purchased very cheaply after Christmas (supermarket had a super cut price deal on them and I bought about 4 of 3-4kg each - made two into gammon steaks and froze the other two whole).

The gammon was simmered gently in ver jus (green grape juice - several gallons of which I was able to make when we had to cut the neighbour's grape vine back off the garage roof last September.  It had been a mast year and I had to think of something to do with about 40kg of unripe grapes.  Result?  Lots of frozen very sour grape juice.)

Anyway the gammon simmered in sour grape juice, a couple of tablespoons of grainy whisky mustard we'd made before Christmas  2012, half a dozen cloves, and half a cup or so of runny lime marmalade - a disaster from about 14 months ago which I am slowly working my way through (see earlier posts on lime marmalade....)

The result was just divine.  After it was cooked, I strained the liquid and thickened it up to make a zingy mustard sauce for the hot ham.

Of course we will be eating cold ham with everything for a week. 

No 45 - Upside Down Citrus Cake

'Birds on Bikes', a group of local women, had their annual tour of the Hayling Art Trail last weekend.  It was followed by a meal and social gathering at the large and very welcoming home of one of the organizers of Birds on Bikes.  The invitation to join them was accepted with delight, and as the main course was to be curry, I had no problem deciding what to make to contribute to deserts; there are still jars of my unset marmalade lurking on my top shelf.... 

So in addition to the Lime Marmalade Cheesecake (see No 36), I made this marmalade cake with oranges and lime marmalade.  (Lime so goes with curry.)  This looks like the sort of thing that could easily weld itself to a baking tin, so I hauled out the silicon bakeware.  

(I hate this stuff, it's rubbish for cooking a Christmas cake in, but for cakes that weld to the tin, this turned out to be just the ticket.)   This is a 23cm cake pan.   If you want a deeper cake use a smaller pan.

Upside Down Citrus & Marmalade Cake

Grease the bottom and sides of the cake pan with a heavy layer of unsalted butter.  Sprinkle in 2 tablespoons of demerrara sugar and arrange thinly sliced oranges in there.

Pre-heat the oven at 180 degrees C.

Cream 200 grams of unsalted butter & 200 grams of golden caster sugar until it is the colour of french vanila ice-cream.

Beat in 4 large eggs, 1 at a time with lots of beating in between.

Add the zest and juice of an orange and zest off a lemon, and 3 generous tablespoons of lime marmalade.

More beating.

Fold in 200 grams of self-raising flour and 50 grams of ground almonds.

Dollop the mix on top of the arranged orange slices, swipe your spatula round the top a bit to even it out, and bake it for about half an hour (in your pre-heated oven).

When it has cooled a bit, tip it onto the serving plate and dress the top with 3-4 tablespoons of marmlade.  Your marmalade won't be an unset disaster like mine so you might need to warm it up first to make it runny.

Et voila...

....marmalade cake

Sorry about the pink cake-carrying understorey.  That colour combination was just so 'in-your-face' I had to photograph it like that.

And the astute among you will have noticed that the photgraphs are two different cakes - of course they are; one of them had to come to work to count for the blog.

No 37 - Lime Marmalade and Pear Cake

As promised I have been working on using up lime and ginger marmalade.  And there were some pears looking neglected in the fruit bowl that went into this cake  (pears and ginger always seem to go well together don't you find?)- so it was very moist, slightly gritty as pear cakes are (as pears tend to be) and was very popular at work - even without icing, which tends to just get stuck all over the place on the trip up to London.

Lime and Ginger Marmalade & Pear Cake

6 oz butter

2 oz butter

1/4 cup golden syrup

2 eggs

5 ox marmalade

10 oz flour (wholemeal if you like texture and believe in making cakes a bit more healthful)

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ginger (if your marmalade doesn't have it already - or you like extra)

2 grated pears

1 tsp soda disolved in 1/4 milk

Cream the butter sugar and golden syrup, beat in the eggs, then the marmalade.  Sift in the dry ingredients, addn the grated pears and lastly stir in the soda and milk.

I useda 9" ring tin for this cake - so that it cooks slightly faster.  Grease it well.

Bake at 160 degrees C for 1 hour to 75 minutes.  Cool it in the tin for about 15 minutes.

You could ice it with icing made from icing sugar and  lemon or lime juice - and sprinkle on chopped toasted walnuts if you like some class to your cake.  We just like cake - and this one is quite good as a pudding - still warm with lashings of custard......