Glazed ham - trying to please the family but not quite succeeding

"Why glaze? Done right, glazing takes ham from a humble stand-by to a show-stopping centrepiece, adding layers of flavour along the way" Gourmet Traveller

Tonight we have a slightly smaller family meal. Smaller than yesterday's Easter Egg Hunt Day lunch that is, when virtually all the family came. Tonight it's a subset but still nine people, including the five children, four of whom are now pretty good eaters. So what to cook? Well I know that they all really want me to do meatballs again, but it's such a performance and I'm feeling lazy. Though I almost caved in.

Then I pondered on sausages - in the oven perhaps, or braised with other things. But also a bit boring and I knew my husband would not be impressed and would want to have a barbecue instead. So then I thought I could do a glazed ham, to use up some of my leftover tomato sauce, with a potato gratin - which just about everyone seems to like - well maybe not my husband. But just to show you can't please everyone all the time, one member has already dropped out when told what was on the menu - well he is tired and he really wanted meatballs. And then my husband more or less decreed that it would be cooked on the Weber - well our Weber lookalike, which means no roast onions and carrots to go with it. And also no easy gravy. But I caved in because, yes it does taste good - if you don't burn it that is - it's more fun for everyone - and we might even get to go outside a bit. As for everyone else - not sure how they feel about glazed ham either, but it's a good dish to feed a lot of people, so glazed ham it is. I just need to steel myself against rejection.

Roast carrots abandoned, so it will just be glazed carrots and beans. But the gratin still stands.

I looked at the history of glazed ham and it seems it's a pagan thing. The best account I found was on a blog called Bee Raw by a guy called Zeke Freeman. In fact he was one of the few who talked about ham as an Easter tradition rather than a Christmas one.

"Having slaughtered and preserved the meat of their agricultural animals during the Blood Moon celebrations the previous autumn so they would have food throughout the winter months, they would celebrate the occasion by using up the last of the remaining cured meats" Zeke Freeman - Bee Raw

The glaze came from honey which is a spring thing. For Easter is a spring festival. Christianity is a northern hemisphere religion, with traditions that are superimposed on to the previous pagan festivals. Of course when you are living in Europe you don't fully realise this - the match is so perfect - but when you come to Australia where the seasons are in reverse, as it were. you suddenly see the true origins. I mean - Father Christmas capering around in fur in 40 degree heat! And all that rebirth stuff when the trees are dropping leaves all over the place and the temperature is dropping on a daily basis. It just doesn't quite fit.

He also mentioned a theory that the ham was a way of the Christians getting at the Muslims and Jews who were banned from eating pork!

(And another brief, completely irrelevant aside. Bee Raw - catchy title for a blog. I keep coming across similar catchy titles and wish I could think of something similar for me. I should do some research on it one day.)

Today is Easter Monday - so very, very appropriate to have glazed ham. Though, yet again, here in Australia lamb is the Easter thing, because of all the Greeks (and spring again), but their Easter is at a different time anyway. And a leg of lamb will not feed nine people.

That's the ham - what about the glaze? Well there are literally hundreds, possibly thousands of recipes out there, but there are a couple of overall requirements it seems.

"the thing is to have a basic mixture of mustard and sweetness" Jane Grigson

I don't think mine will have mustard, being as how the base of it will be the leftover tomato sauce.

"The guiding principle seems to be to ensure there's something dry in the topping, whether that's flour or mustard powder, so it forms a thick paste and doesn't simply slide off the joint" Felicity Cloake

I actually haven't heard this one before, but it's a thought. Should I add some flour - or breadcrumbs perhaps. Though she thinks breadcrumbs go soggy after a while, (she's thinking of leftovers there). Actually I don't think I will have anything dry in it. After all most of the recipes seem to maintain that you should brush the glaze on every quarter of an hour or so, little by little, which means small amounts, so one would hope that if brushed on like this it would stay on. I've just got to make sure my husband doesn't pour the whole lot over it at once. Then it definitely would slide off.

"Sugar is what makes a glaze. Whether it's in the form of brown sugar, muscovado or honey, it caramelises to create that thick, syrupy sheen, which you then have the freedom to balance with spices, juices, vinegars or even booze" Gourmet Traveller

I think my 'sugar' apart from the natural sweetness of the tomatoes, will be maple syrup, which I love. Tempered with some balsamic vinegar perhaps. Balsamic vinegar, of which I am not a huge fan, is nevertheless perfect for this - being both sweet and sour in one ingredient. It already has a tiny bit of Worcestershire sauce for a bit of tang.

I hope mine looks like these two rather than the rather more burnt looking one at the top of the page. But burnt, or should I say, 'charred' is also more or less OK. Just not burnt so much the glaze ends up like charcoal.

And if I have leftovers because half the family refuse to eat it, that's Ok too because you can do a lot with leftover ham.

"ham is the gift that will keep on giving" Felicity Cloake