We hold our own garden party on a plate with this classic British cider-poached gammon. We’re starting our indian summer here in the dream garden. After a few weeks of truly miserable weather, the sun has come out and we were blessed with a lovely warm, sunny weekend for the last two days of August. The tomatoes and peppers are finally ripening, and the plants all seem to be wriggling and fluffing their petals with joy at better weather, finally. To celebrate, I made a big fat garden lunch. Waitrose got in touch to challenge me to cook up F&F’s take on a classic British dish for our own garden party as part of their Great British Garden Party campaign. And here it is: This is cider-poached gammon on a bed of braised red cabbage with baby new potatoes, a mustard, mint and nasturtium sauce and edible flowers. How do I make it? Well, for a lunch, it requires I get up at a reasonable hour as this joint needs to be poached for a good long time so that the meat is melt-in-the-mouth tender by lunchtime. I gave this one five hours. And while everything that I bought for this lunch is from Waitrose, it’s extra-fun to be able to celebrate the garden with a few edible flowers - borage and nasturtium in this case - and throw some nasturtium leaves into the sauce. You can use watercress or rocket instead of nasturtium if you wish, but the nasturtium leaves do have a really superbly peppery taste that goes beautifully with the mustard. And I used apple mint because pork and apple go especially well together, but pick or buy whatever mint you have available. The braised red cabbage recipe is here. Print Cider-poached gammon Author: Fennel & Fern Recipe type: Lunch Cuisine: British Prep time: 25 mins Cook time: 5 hours Total time: 5 hours 25 mins Serves: 6 Cider-poached gammon and a mint, nasturtium and mustard sauce. Serves 6. Ingredients 1 large smoked gammon joint 2 large bottles of cider 10 small carrots 3 large onions 4 large fennel leaves 5 bay leaves 12 peppercorns 750g new potatoes 4 stalks mint leaves (apple mint is great) 5 tbsp nasturtium leaves 2 tbsp wholegrain mustard 2 tbsp lemon juice 1 tsp olive oil For the braised red cabbage recipe, click http://www.fennelandfern.co.uk/blog/2014/02/23/the-joy-of-braised-cabbage/ Directions Place the gammon in a very large heavy-bottomed saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil. Empty the water, and add the carrots, the onions (peeled and quartered), the fennel, the peppercorns and the bay leaves. Then refill the pot with cider until the gammon joint is covered. Bring to the boil and then cover and set on a low to medium heat on a bubbly simmer for five hours, checking occasionally to ensure the cider still covers the meat. Top up if necessary. Throw the mint, nasturtium, mustard, lemon juice and olive oil into a food processor and blend until smooth. If you want a very, very smooth sauce, you can use dijon mustard. Chill until you serve. minutes before serving, boil the new potatoes until soft in the centre. Serve the gammon on a bed of braised red cabbage, with the sauce smeared artfully around the dish and the edible flowers scattered on top, the carrots to one side and an onion or two on top. Drop a tablespoon or two of the cider mixture on top of the gammon and you can freeze any remaining to use as a stock. 3.2.1311 Share this:Share Leave a Reply Cancel Reply Your email address will not be published. Name* Email* Website Comment Rate this recipe: Object in the image Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email.
