For "Torontosta",
Not doubting your Finnish skills at all, but because you might miss some of the finer details of the rampant saga of my pork molesting if I described this orgastic Yuletide joy in Finnish (and because my domestic language is her majesty's, anyway), I will continue in English...
Our ham (kinkku) eating this year went traditionally, as always:
1. Six and half kg. salted, fresh ham (never use frozen ones, if not desperate...) goes into a low oven (100-110 C) about 11 pm in the evening of the 23d. Out of the oven in the morning of the 24th (X-mas eve) at 9ish. A few slices of the hot ham get sliced and served with the baking juices and freshly baked white/oat rustic bread (dunked in the juices) for brekkie. Save all the baking juices and fat. The cooled ham is skinned and most of the fat under the skin removed (They make Fab pork cracklings, when deep fried btw.) and the upper side of the ham is smeared with a mixture of Dijon mustard, Cognac and egg yolks and then covered with bread crumbs and put in a very hot upper heat oven or grill to Glaze/cover for ten mins. You can make it pretty by making some criss-cross slashes on it and sticking in some cloves before glazing, but I have never found it to do any good. Even easthetically.
Then take it out and let to cool.
2. On X-mas eve at around 5 pm: you take the ham out of the fridge and slice parts of it. The slices will then be eaten hot with different kinds of casseroles (turnip, sweetened potato [not sweet potato but normal mashed one heated slowly so that the normal sugars are released and also with an added drop of treacle] and carrot) and re- heated cooking juices (and the above mentioned bread...)
3. When finished with the TV:s christmas progs and opening your gifts, you leave the ham on the kitchen table with a sharp coocks knife, more bread, butter and mustard. You can also leave the baking juices in a pan on a stove on VERY low temp. Everyone will help themselves during the whole night. Trust me. Here they will. At 3.30 am.
4. On Christmas day, you eat more ham just the same way as you did on the previous day.
5. On Boxing day, you still continue to eat the ham the same way you did the day before, but less, and instead you have snacks - open sandwiches (cut from the above mentioned loafs) with just butter, sliced ham and mustard on top.
6. Next day you freeze half of the rest of the remaining ham to be used for pea and ham soup or different casseroles/stews later (and yes, if there was a bone -usually not anymore nowadays- you freeze that too for the same purpose). Use the rest of the remaining piglet in your fridge either as cold cuts (see paragraph 5.) or pizza toppigs for the New Year.
So. Here are my wise words for you, my maple syrup-suckling fellow Finn in the far northwest (and most probably one of those many, many times removed cousins of mine; I have soooo many relatives living in Canada, you see...).
Btw: Even my Scottish husband loves this simple and very down-to-earth way it is done, so why not to try it next Christmas!
Keep in touch!
Pete
EDIT: We here in Finland have quite not yet understood the blessings of a turkey. It does happen in some families, but the wast majority still opts for the ham...
Not doubting your Finnish skills at all, but because you might miss some of the finer details of the rampant saga of my pork molesting if I described this orgastic Yuletide joy in Finnish (and because my domestic language is her majesty's, anyway), I will continue in English...
Our ham (kinkku) eating this year went traditionally, as always:
1. Six and half kg. salted, fresh ham (never use frozen ones, if not desperate...) goes into a low oven (100-110 C) about 11 pm in the evening of the 23d. Out of the oven in the morning of the 24th (X-mas eve) at 9ish. A few slices of the hot ham get sliced and served with the baking juices and freshly baked white/oat rustic bread (dunked in the juices) for brekkie. Save all the baking juices and fat. The cooled ham is skinned and most of the fat under the skin removed (They make Fab pork cracklings, when deep fried btw.) and the upper side of the ham is smeared with a mixture of Dijon mustard, Cognac and egg yolks and then covered with bread crumbs and put in a very hot upper heat oven or grill to Glaze/cover for ten mins. You can make it pretty by making some criss-cross slashes on it and sticking in some cloves before glazing, but I have never found it to do any good. Even easthetically.
Then take it out and let to cool.
2. On X-mas eve at around 5 pm: you take the ham out of the fridge and slice parts of it. The slices will then be eaten hot with different kinds of casseroles (turnip, sweetened potato [not sweet potato but normal mashed one heated slowly so that the normal sugars are released and also with an added drop of treacle] and carrot) and re- heated cooking juices (and the above mentioned bread...)
3. When finished with the TV:s christmas progs and opening your gifts, you leave the ham on the kitchen table with a sharp coocks knife, more bread, butter and mustard. You can also leave the baking juices in a pan on a stove on VERY low temp. Everyone will help themselves during the whole night. Trust me. Here they will. At 3.30 am.
4. On Christmas day, you eat more ham just the same way as you did on the previous day.
5. On Boxing day, you still continue to eat the ham the same way you did the day before, but less, and instead you have snacks - open sandwiches (cut from the above mentioned loafs) with just butter, sliced ham and mustard on top.
6. Next day you freeze half of the rest of the remaining ham to be used for pea and ham soup or different casseroles/stews later (and yes, if there was a bone -usually not anymore nowadays- you freeze that too for the same purpose). Use the rest of the remaining piglet in your fridge either as cold cuts (see paragraph 5.) or pizza toppigs for the New Year.
So. Here are my wise words for you, my maple syrup-suckling fellow Finn in the far northwest (and most probably one of those many, many times removed cousins of mine; I have soooo many relatives living in Canada, you see...).
Btw: Even my Scottish husband loves this simple and very down-to-earth way it is done, so why not to try it next Christmas!
Keep in touch!
Pete
EDIT: We here in Finland have quite not yet understood the blessings of a turkey. It does happen in some families, but the wast majority still opts for the ham...