Finnish Christmas Ham - Joulukinkku

I'm hoping you'll order a full back leg of pork from your butcher ( http://www.taylorsofsale.co.uk/ are great). Make up a brine, I use 5 litres of water, 500g salt and 250g sugar, warm these together until fully dissolved. You can throw some other spices etc in there (Bay leaves, cloves, mustard seeds etc) but I'm yet to be convinced they make a noticeable difference). Let the brine cool completely - this is important! Wash the leg and them completely immerse in the cold brine (if needs be make up some more brine), preferable in a plastic/non-reactive container (a plastic bucket is ideal), leave in a fridge or unheated garage for 10-14 days. It's at this point of the recipe that you realise you don't have anywhere to put it or a container big enough - that'll teach you to start a recipe without reading it all the way through!

A day before serving take it out of the brine and rinse, put it back in the container and cover with cold water. Repeat this as often as you can be bothered to, preferably at least 8 times with an hour in between each rinse. Ideally the final water shouldn't taste salty.

Preheat the oven to 100-130 C. If you've got a roasting bag then this is the time to use it.


Roast the ham for a good long while, I'd reckon on at least an hour per kilo, excluding bone. What you're looking for is an internal temperature of 65 C, you will be far better off using a probe as opposed to testing the heat with a metal skewer and guesswork.

Take the ham out of the oven and turn the oven up to 220 C. Carefully strip the outer skin off the ham and then score the fat (not the meat) in a criss-cross pattern (see piccy above).

Brush the ham with mustard, using Finnish stuff for authenticity:


Push a clove into each cross on the ham. Mix (about 50-50) fine white breadcrumbs (in fact I can't think of any situation where you'd want brown breadcrumbs) and light brown sugar. Sprinkle this mixture over the ham, where the mustard will act like glue, shake off the excess. Return the ham to the (now) blisteringly hot oven and allow the sugar/crumb to brown and get nice and crunchy, keep a weather eye on it as it can catch & burn fairly quickly.

Allow to cool slightly and carve, serve with vegetable side dishes (recipes to follow)

Macaroni Cheese, with chicken & paprika

Proper comfort food this one, not for the lactose intolerant though. Serves 6 easily.

Take 4 boneless and skinless chicken thighs, chop into roughly equal chunks and gently fry until cooked through and brown on the outside. As you're doing this cook 500g of macaroni as per the instructions on the packet, then drain. Preheat the oven to 180C.

Remove the chicken from the pan but leave the oil. Add 100g of butter and once melted a tablespoon of hot/smoked paprika along with salt & pepper. Add 100g of plain flour and stir until you have a nice smooth paste. Keep adding milk to this in small amounts, stirring or whisking as you go to ensure it stays smooth. You'll probably need about 750ml of milk, but every time is slightly different. Once you've got a nice smooth sauce throw in a big handful of finely diced (better) or grated cheese. No need to splash out on the expensive stuff here, but don't use crap either.

Once that's melted into the sauce stir in the pasta and chicken making sure everything is coated and the chicken is evenly mixed through. Spoon this mixture into a greased oven dish.

Grate a whole load of cheese and mix with a handful of breadcrumbs, sprinkle this evenly over the top and bake until crispy and crunchy. Cold white wine would be a very good idea about now.

Toad in the hole

Fairly simple this one, in honour of National Sausage week I get our sausages from http://www.taylorsofsale.co.uk/ or make them myself but feel free to substitute with any high quality ones. Take 3 eggs and break into a glass, look how far up the glass the eggs go. Pour the eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk to break them up completely. Fill the same glass with plain flour and whick this in to the eggs until smooth, repeat the process with full fat milk. Season as desired, if you fancy some chopped thyme in the batter could be nice, or sage (not too much though). This is a basic batter recipe for Yorkshire pudding and can be easily scaled up or down the basic idea is equal quantities by VOLUME of egg, milk and flour. Put the batter in the fridge or at least out of the way. Put the oven on to 190C, as it's warming up put the dish/tray you'll be cooking it in into the oven along with a generous splash of oil (or even better dripping/lard) to heat up with the oven. This is vital, if you forget you need to put the dish & oil in and leave for at least 20 minutes when the oven's hot. When the oven if up to speed and the dish & oil are really hot you can continue. Fry a pound of thin sausages in a pan to brown them off. This is now where you need to work quickly - take the tray out of the oven, tip in the sausages, pour the batter around (it should sizzle) and get it back into the oven as soon as possible. Bake for 25-30 minutes and serve up straight away.

Onion gravy goes great with this and it's a nice touch to use the pan you brown the sausages in to make it.

Finnish style meatloaf

Medium chop, fry & brown one onion.

While that's happening take 200-300ml of breadcrumbs, pour over 100ml of cream and 100ml of water (or milk) and one egg yolk (optional) - mix these all together.

Add the onion to this along with 500g minced beef, 250g minced porkand one beaten egg.

Mix all of these together along with salt, pepper and a generous amount of jauhelihamauste. If you can't get it then you'll not go too far wrong with oregano & paprika, if you like a spot of chilli wouldn't go amiss but that's up to you.

Form the mix into a classic meatloaf shape, remembering that the more even the shape, the more even the cooking and put into a pre-heated oven (180C) for about an hour depending on how thick it is. Let it rest for about 5 minutes after cooking.

Meanwhile make the brown sauce (and mash if you're having that, but if you're thinking about adding boiling water to flakes you need to go away and re-evaluate your lifestyle choices).

Medium chop one large onion and fry in a little oil until it's brown, add about 50g of butter and fry melted. Add 50g of plain flour and keep stirring over a medium-high heat until the flour incorporated and then browned. At this point add stock or water. Obviously stock tastes better (real stock that is, tap water is better than a cube). Add when the stock/water is hot and stir until you have a smooth sauce, you can serve as is or strain the onions out. A welcome addition here would be a spoonful of mustard stirred into the sauce at the last minute.

Serve it all up with mash and or salad.

Spicy Carrot Salad

You will need

3 large carrots
Half a ripe melon
Bunch of spring onions
One red onion
Bunch of coridaner
A piece of ginger about the size of your thumb
Tamarind paste & Chillis (as much/little as you like) OR the chilli-tamarind past from Zumar
Handful of peanuts
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of wine vinegar
Sugar to taste

Chop the melon into medium chunks
Finely chop the spring onions
Finely slice the red onion
Shred the carrot - don't grate it, a Kom Kom miracle knife is perfect for this

Put all the other ingredients in a blender and give it a whizz
You should have a reddish sauce with little chunks of peanut and flecked with green from the coriander - taste it to see if you want more chilli or if it needs sugar/vinegar. It won't need salt due to the soy.

Mix everything together in a large bowl about half an hour before serving.

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

Pulled pork sandwiches - an all-time fave. Pork, cheese, spice and bread - everything you need after a few beers. Perfect for snacks late on in the night during a house party. You can make this before and store the pork in the fridge, gently reheat it in a pan with a little extra sauce before putting in the bun.

Or, if you're BBQ-ing or have a bonfire, make them up, double wrap in foil and bake for 10-20 minutes.

You will need:

In a dry pan toast cumin & coriander seeds until they smell good, don't go and do anything else or you'll end up with a black pan and a godawful smell:

Mix salt, pepper & spicy paprika with the toasted seeds and crush them all together:

Rub this mixture into the pork shoulder and leave for at least 2 hours, at most 24:

3 onions, 3 carrots & 4 sticks of celery roughly chopped, ginger & garlic peeled & roughly chopped, 2 star anise, 6 crushed cardamon pods, 2 bay leaves & a cinnamon stick. Bit of oil in a pan then sweat down gently until soft & beginning to brown/caramelise

Like this - then stir in a small can of tomato puree and cook out:

Roughly chop some dried chillis. I'm using chipolte, ancho and some un-named ones from an Asian supermarket in Levenshulme.
These places are good for chilli varieties:
http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Food-and-Drink/Mexican/Panchos-Burritos-Arndale-Reviewed
or
http://www.thespiceshop.co.uk/

Sear off the shoulders(s), not too hot oil or the spice rub will burn:

Mix a bottle of tommy K (I use Sainsbury's basic) with the cooked veg, chopped chillis, about 1/4 of a bottle of Soy (careful not to make it too salty) about the same amount of wine vinegar, a big spoonful of mustard, a couple of cans of chopped toms and 2 roughly chopped apples.
Heat all of this together until boiling and start to taste, add sugar or honey to balance out the vinegar so you get that nice sweet/sour thing going on. If you've got any stock (made from bones & trotters NOT a cube) this would be a more than welcome addition. When it's all nice and hot pour it over the pork (skin side up) and put it, uncovered, into a preheated oven (150 C) for 2 hours basting once. After this time cover with a lid or foil, if you're using foil make sure it doesn't press down on the skin. Bake for another 2-3 hours, the meat should be falling apart:


CAREFULLY, life the pork out of the liquid:

Strain the sauce, chuck out the remaining veg/bits, and put into a saucepan to reduce until you get a nice thick sauce. You'd be well advised to skim this a couple of times as there will be a fair bit of fat floating on the surface:

Make a joke about customs officers:

Remove the skin from the pork, put on a rack then stick into the fridge - once cold it can be chopped up then deep fried or baked to make spicy pork scratchings:

Scrape off the layer of fat between the skin and the meat and discard:

Once the fat has done use a couple of spoons and shred the meat:


Chuck some of the sauce on and mix, add sauce as necessary, you're aiming to coat the meat but not so it's "wet"


Like this:
Slice some buns in half and bake in the oven (NOT under the grill) until they're nice and toasty.
Put a generous spoonful of pork on the bottom half, grated cheese and a spoonful of sauce on the top, then put back into the oven - keep an eye on them, you want the cheese to get melty not brown & crunchy:

Once the cheese is melted remove and put the sandwiches together:

Serve with beer, triple-cooked chips & good company: