First of all, MERRY CHRISTMAS!! It’s been a great day filled with lots of cooking, food, carbonated drinks, relaxation and laughter. This year was the first time that I have ever cooked a meal for Christmas and I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep last night! On the Christmas menu was:
- Fresh carrots and celery with hummus dip
- Sausages
- Mince pies
- Vietnamese vegetarian rice spring rolls with fish sauce and lemon dip
- Glazed baked pork rump
- Ginger chilli chicken wings
- Dill and lemon baked salmon
- Roast veges
By the way, there’s only 4 of us and yes, there are heaps of left-overs but there is no doubt that all of it will be eaten before I leave for Perth this Saturday.
Of all the things up to be cooked, I was the most worried about the ham, specifically the glaze. Being the first time that I’ve attempted to make glaze for ham, I was apprehensive about it tasting right when paired with the meat. None of the recipes I found online really appealed to me that much so I amalgamated a recipe I found with the one in my cookbook. It went something like this:
Ingredients
1/2 cup honey
1/2 firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup water
About 1-2 teaspoons or so of mustard powder – I don’t know if this was enough because I didn’t get any mustard taste or heat but I didn’t want to overdo it
A pinch of cinnamon
A bit of flour (Sorry for the vagueness but it literally was a pinch of this and a bit of that in terms of these latter 3 ingredients)
Method
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C/160˚C fan-forced.
2. Mix together the honey, sugar, cinnamon, water and mustard powder in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Stir until all the sugar has dissolved. Take off the heat.
3. Remove the rind with your fingers, being careful not to take off the layer of fat underneath (I need more practice with this one!). Score the fat diagonally, making sure that you don’t cut past the fat and into the meat.
4. Place about 2 cups of water in a baking tray, set an oiled rack in the tray and sit the rump onto the rack
5. Brush the glaze over the rump (leaving some more additional glazing later) and place in the oven. I also pushed some whole cloves into the fat before placing in the oven.
6. Keep glazing throughout the whole time it cooks. Cooking time for me was about 90 minutes but I may have had the temperature a bit low. The meat turned out great though; very moist and the sweetness of the glaze went very well with the saltiness of the pork.
Lunch was served around midday today and I think my stomach has only just shrunk back to something that resembles its normal size. It’s terrible, this gluttony, and even more terrible is the fact that I let this day be an excuse to pig out. But when you don’t celebrate Christmas for the religious reasons, what better things are there to celebrate on this day aside from the precious time spent with your loved ones and the fantastic food that you all get to share?
Of All Tastes 