Tower Of Babel

Well, it is Friday again….even though I go on call from 8 AM today until 8 AM on Monday, let me say TGIF! I still nuh get back mi wheels, kinda frustrating when a man doh have him own trans-p. Anyway, I am hoping for early next week. Yesterday was payday, so me likkle more flexible financially. Yow Scratchie ….now is a good time to beg a smalls towards you fees!

Anyhow, you can see that I basically jus a lime and not getting into the meat of the post….perhaps because I feel like I could go back to bed, sleep late and just skull work….but that is not really my style still.

From my reading, it seems all of the de man dem inna de CARICOM blogging community are all ham demons…myself included. Nutten wrong wid dat….for me pork is the sweetest meat! In other words….dis Doc nuh have nuh rastafarian in him at all….I kill de trenton! Now, I not showing off, but for a number of years I been the one baking the hams for this home. Started quite a while before Mummy passed away. She used to do them, but always needed some manpower to help her take it out and put back into the oven while baking it…..Daddy was famous for purchasing some 16-18 pound mofos them times. So, over the years watching Mummy, I learned how to bake ham and eventually, it sorta became my job so to speak, with her playing more of a supervisory role. She would dictate when the skin should be removed and when it was ‘done’. Zeen? So, for all mi bredrins who may have to bake their owna ham this Christmas…or who may wish to impress wifey or your favourite lady by doing it yourself….what follows is a fairly simple ‘recipe’.

Ham baking for rude boyz, made simple.
You will need….
1 ham (duuh) Now what size you purchase will be determined by how many mouths you plan to feed, how long you want it to last and of course, how much dinero man haffi spend. Personally, I prefer a leg ham that is about in the 10-14 pound range. If the weight is quoted in Kilogrammes, remember one Kg. is about 2.2 pounds. I find the very large legs, like 18 pounds too big, they take too long to bake and sometimes because they take a long time to finish may dry out in the fridge. Also bear in mind that in baking as much as 2 pounds of the weight is lost in juices, trimmings and melt down of fat and removal of skin.
A large enough baking tray or pyex dish.
Aluminium foil.
Stuff for basting…orange juice, pineapple juice, honey, brown sugar…I have even seen June Plum juice mentioned but have never tried it (maybe this year?). You can select which baste you wish to use, or a combination is fine.
Cloves
Canned Pineapple slices
Maraschino cherries

Allow the ham to thaw properly…either from overnight or early in the morning. Nowadays, most of the commercially made ones do not require any damn boiling… (who the hell has time for that anyway?)

Remove the ham from its packaging, (that includes the mesh covering on the inside). Preheat the oven to 375 F. Line the baking tray/pyex dish with aluminium foil…be generous…cleaning up a tray with baked on greasy stuff might mek you cuss plenty claat and your lady may not offer to do it for you. (Failing that, the disposable aluminum baking trays are a joy! )

Place the ham into the baking tray skin side up. Cover the ham securely with foil. Place in the oven. Baking time is approximately 15 minutes per pound. So, for a twelve pounder, about three hours.

About halfway through the baking time, remove the ham from the oven and take off the foil. By this time, the skin should be starting to shrink and come away from the fatty part of the ham. Remove the skin…..you should be able to do this fairly easily without using brute force, if not, it needs to bake a bit longer before removing the skin. DO NOT DISPOSE OF THE SKIN!!! That stuff is wonderful to chew on…yes, I know its full of fat, cholesterol and all that shyte, but it tastes irie especially if it is crisp (crackling). In addition, it can be frozen and then cut into smaller pieces to add flavour to your gungo rice and peas. Lawd me getting hungry now.

After removing the skin, you will now see the fatty side of the ham facing upwards. Take a fairly sharp knife and make long slits into the fat until you have a sort of checkerboard appearance on the surfce of the ham. Insert cloves into the slits, rub some brown sugar and drizzle a couple tablespoons of the baste of your choice into the meat. Replace into the oven but do not cover with foil anymore…you are trying to get the fat to take on a lovely golden brown colour (similar to what you may be attracted to while pripsing a kriss gyal profiling in a bikini/thong on a white sand Caribbean beach as you sip on a well cold Red Stripe! ) About every 15 minutes, check the ham for doneness by sticking a fork into the meat. Drizzle with more baste. The ham is done when very little or no more juice stops coming from it when you stick it with the fork. Usually, once the skin is removed, depending on the size of the ham, there may only be about an hour to hour and a half of baking time left. I personally prefer to take it out just a bit early…if it is overdone and dry, its horrible….meat mus have likkle juice inna it for me…..I mean…who likes to eat dry meat? (I being me usual rude bwoy self here. Apology to the ladies who may be reading.)

When the baking is over, remove it from the oven and allow it to cool well (a few hours) before placing in the fridge. Do not slice it hot, the meat will break up. Of course, you are allowed to sample it still. Dress it up with your pineapple slices and cherries. Some people put the pineapple slices on the ham in the last 20-30 minutes of cooking…I don’t. I like to have nuff juice from the pineapple while eating and baking it dries them out.

When slicing the meat, always remember that you slice the meat perpendicular to the direction that the muscle fibres run in…not parallel to the fibres. Enjoy! Best served chilled, and to help pass the baking time, a bredrin is nice to have over to share some VX. If it fail doh blame me a rass….after all, I am a Dermatologist..not a chef!

When coming down to the bone, don’t discard that either…that wikid when you boil it down in gungo peas soup! Awoah. Let me know how it turn out my crew.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 26th, 2004 at 8:08 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.