Bonne Annee in Charroux, Vienne

The Ham!

 

Bonne Annee to one and all!

 

We celebrated Christmas with 7 other English ex-pats—all making different courses for a traditional British Christmas. This seems to have become the norm in Charroux, over the last 4 or 5 years and seems to be one of the rare times when being French is forgotten, and on with the turkey, sprouts and plum pud!

 

Of course, all English have variations on the theme, but as far as I can see everybody is totally over-indulgent, doing their best to keep everybody happy.

 

There are very few things one is unable to get in France. The French eat lardons, and super thin sliced streaky bacon—but not ‘throughcut’ or ‘back’. Their hams are of the continental type. Delicious, but not a moist roast ham that we get (albeit, usually from Denmark!) in the UK. French cheeses are numerous, and often superior—but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of stilton whilst back in England last month—and I still think a good cheddar is the best cheese to cook with!

 

So, with these thoughts in mind, I was thrilled at the beginning of last November to find the local supermarche had huge pieces of pork on ‘promo’—for as little as 2.30euros per kilo. I bought a 13kilo leg of pork.

 

The plan was to cut off a small piece to roast for my daughter & her family who were staying with us. The remains was to be salted.

As I’ve probably said before, I was a farmer’s wife in a previous existence. I fed family, friends, farmworkers and also paying guests who were staying at the B&B that I ran for nearly 10 years. In the early days of our marriage (before the arrival of BSE) we fattened and slaughtered numerous animals for private consumption. We had cattle and sheep on the farm, so Trefor, and later on Slim, both qualified butchers,came and slaughtered, hung, and then, with me helping them, jointed all sorts of meat for the freezer. Every autumn we’d buy a runt or two from a local pig farmer and rear them on windfalls from the orchard and surplus milk from the dairy. They were always the fastest growing—and tastiest, pigs in the district!

 

Once all the jointing and bagging up of meat was finished, there were always bits that needed some sort of processing. Over the years I’ve boiled up pig’s heads—for ‘chaps’, trotters for jelly (for pork pies). I’ve never tried making sausages or ‘boudin’ like the farmer’s wives do here, but I have salted sides for bacon—and hams!

 

So, seeing these vast pieces of pork, I decided to do it again! And lo!—as I was making this decision, I spotted, alongside the fridge, a heap of 10kilo sacks of salt! VOILA—I can’t be alone, I thought!

I got back home—studied my trusty and very tattered cookbook—my grandmother’s 1946 edition of ‘Farmhouse Fare’ with it’s wonderful section entitled ‘Pig-curing and by-products’ and then went into panic mode! It’s 20 years since I last salted pork. The difficulty then—and now, being that it was no longer possible to buy saltpetre—or any other individual chemical substances in small amounts from the local high street chemist. I really can’t remember what I did then, but after studying the bag of salt that I’d already bought—although no mention of saltpetre, decided it would have to do. It is generally only required in tiny amounts, to be rubbed around the bones,which are more prone to deterioration, whilst the flesh is rubbed with demerara sugar and then put in a stone ( or, in my case) plastic tub and covered in salt. It is turned and rubbed daily for 3 or 4 weeks, and then taken out, wiped down, and hung in an old white pillow slip, in an outside shed to dry!

I got it down again on New Years Day. It smelt good! Now then, how to cook it?

 

I remember previous occasions of over-soaking—which left me with a joint of pork to cook, and under- soaking, leaving the joint too salty. It was with much trepidation and consultation of cookery websites and ‘Farmhouse Fare’—that I decided how to deal with it.

Sunday January 3rd 2010, we were having a luncheon party where the ham was to take pride of place!

 

The afternoon of Saturday January 2th 2010, I put the ham in my largest jam pan, and covered it with cold water. I slowly brought it to the boil. I turned the oven on to gas mark 4. I then lifted the enormous- slippery and heavy joint, out of the boiling water and onto aluminium foil, with baking parchment on top, on my roasting tin.

That was the hardest job of all!

 

My recipe wanted me to pour apple juice, or apple cider onto the joint, before sealing the foil & putting it all in the oven for 3 hours.

I used local apple juice from Chantegrolle farmshop in Charroux. You can drive past, and see the apples growing in their orchards—and, on these auspicious occasions, it feels good to use local produce!

After 3 hours I took the foil off the ham, removed the rind and then plastered it all with a mixture of grainy Dijon mustard and honey. I turned the oven up to 5 and popped the ham in for another 15 minutes.

 

Geoff and I sat down to warm ham, mashed potatoes, peas and parsley sauce that evening.

Perfick! ( as Pa Larkin used to say!!)

 

And it went down very well cold the next day!

 

About me

I am Heather Squires we bought our house in 2002, moved over to France to live here full time in 2006 and now run Maureville Chambre D'hotes in Asnois - 5 miles south of Charroux in the Vienne department.

 

 
Posted by: heather squires on 12 January 2010