What exactly is a Christmas ham and what's the best way to cook it?

Wet sloppy nightmare or artisan luxury bliss. If you plan to buy a Christmas ham this year here's a few pointers

Firstly what exactly is a ham?

A ham is hind leg of a pig from the femur to the hock. The word gammon derives from the Old Northern French word jambe for hind-leg, and gammon may also be used to refer to a ham or bacon. The depth of meat to the bone is greatest at the top of the hind limb; cutting this piece away from the bone and curing it separately does the job thoroughly and easily. This cut is the original and to this extent authentic form of gammon, though the name is often applied to any round ham steak. Gammon is usually smoked.

What is a free range ham?

Organic ham implies that the pigs are reared in a free range way but there are also many free range producers who don’t feed organic feed and therefore just sell “Free range” pork. New guidelines have been drawn up between the Irish free range producers pig group and Bord Bia and a mark will soon be available to consumers. The prices for free range will generally be higher but believe me, it does taste more flavoursome.

So you’re out rushing around for your Christmas food shop. Why is it important to look at where the ham is from?

Finely sliced ham

Imported European hams have more water and nitrite content allowed. Dutch processors can put up to 17% brine into their meat but only about 10% is allowable here. So an imported ham or packet of rashers that cook down to half their size mightn’t be worth the cheaper price on the supermarket shelf. In the USA a new study in the US found 69 percent of raw pork samples tested positive for yersina a lesser known but serious foodborne pathogen. Countries with less strict food regimes than ours are not worth buying cheap meat from.  

What goes into a ham?

Wet-cured bacon is prepared by immersing sides of bacon in brine or by injecting brine into the meat. It’s popular with manufacturers as it’s a faster and cheaper way to cure, but it has downsides for flavour. The final product is allowed to have up to 10% brine by weight, leading to shrinking on the pan. When you see a white liquid come from your rashers, that’s the brine and is a sign they have been wet cured.

You should be able see the grain of the muscle 

By contrast, dry-cured bacon is rubbed with a mixture of salt and sugar in various proportions and they are given time to cure the meat, taking about 7 days. Some producers will say there really is no such thing as nitrate free ham has pork can only be cured with nitrate. (Some use dried celery extract which has high concentrations of nitrate).  It’s a slower and more labour intensive process but it results in a drier finish and fuller, more pronounced flavour. This is the way meat was cured prior to it becoming an industrial process. You’ll benefit not just from a much better taste, but because there will be less shrinkage during cooking and it is easier to get a nice crisp result.

What’s the best way to cook it?

Choose the right sized ham e.g. a 4kg fillet of ham will feed 10 people and allows a little extra if your family like to help themselves to more on Christmas night. Never!!

Cook the ham on Christmas eve – it takes the pressure off the next day

Weigh the ham and put in a pot with half water and pure apple juice if you have it or a bay leaf, bouquet garni, orange peel or cider

Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes per pound. Some people change this water or soak the ham then fully roast it. If its dry cured it doesn’t need soaking.

Honey and spice glazed ham

Next day, remove skin and score the meat crossways with a sharp knife. Apply your preferred glaze. Honey, mixed spices with cinnamon and cardamon is one of my favourites. A lot of people will put cloves in the ham, a jerk or Caribbean glaze is gorgeous but seriously hot.

You can warm the ham before putting on the glaze. Apply the glaze and put it back in the oven for another 20/30 minutes. (This can all be done while your turkey is resting.)

Do not throw the cooking water out. It can be used to keep the ham moist when roasting in the oven. 

All important - what price should you pay?

Supermarkets –

Lidl have hams from 4.99 a kilo to 7.99 a kilo a gammon and a loin, Irish produced

Dunnes stores cooked ham 4 kilos Bord Bia 50 euro (12.50 a kilo)

Dunnes Stores Dry cured Irish gammon joint 1.9 kilos 19.99 euro

Free range/small producers

www.crowesfarm.ie - outdoor reared dry cure hams and organic dry cure hams, both boneless.

Their Outdoor Reared hams are €9 per kg and the organic are €12.99 per Kg.

Can courier direct to your door, final courier delivery day for Christmas is Dec 22nd and courier is free for orders over €100, below that it's €10..

www.Termonfeckindelicious.ie (I so love that name) – dry cured 13lb (nearly 6 kilos) boneless ham 45 euro. Whole ham on the bone 40 euroBottom of Form

www.Jack McCarthy.ie award winning Kanturk butcher 4 kilos free range boned –

34 euro

www.oldfarm.ie  €14.50 per kg, free-range, gmo free, natural brine cure.  Delivered to your door!

Here's a link to a radio piece I did with Pat Kenny this week on ham (its an hour and 6 mins into the show) and whatever you do, eat plenty of ham this Christmas. 

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny/2012-12-06.html 

Would you bet on the price of food if eventually it made you poorer?

Great to read today that Barclays have made £500 million this year from betting on food prices, a practice that has been labelled by observers as "immoral" and "lacking a moral compass". Betting on commodity prices is a major part of the financial trading markets and unfortunately results in making food more expensive for the rest of us.

In the developing world, it can result in even more people starving than at present, and creates uncertainty and pressure on food supplies globally. In Ireland, the hangover from drought in the US, rising grain prices combined with speculative profiteering by commodity traders has had it's own effects. According to the Irish Farmer's Association one third of Irish pig farmers are now close to hitting the wall.

Betting on food prices is a huge driver in the cost of the food, and banks, hedge funds and the like don't give a whit about its knock on effects. In 2008, the exorbitant rise of food prices caused public disorder throughout the developing world and particularly in North Africa. This movement about hunger essentially, and lack of fairness in the food distribution system extended into human rights and became the Arab spring. It felled Colonel Gadaffi in Libya and began the struggle for equality that has lead to the terrible bloodshed now happening in Syria.

I travelled to Lebanon and Syria a few years ago with my husband, not as journalists but as a curious people seeking an inside track on what was going on in these fascinating countries. When I think now of the gorgeous people we stayed with it gives me shivers to think where they might be now. The retired academic who ran a small B and B in Aleppo with a library full of French and English literature and Roman walls propping up the basement. On a rooftop terrace we looked across the dusky skyline of one of the world's most beautiful cities, talked about the Assad regime and how on earth they were going to get rid of him. This fantastic man is surely fled from Syria by now, or else he is dead.

The price of food has always been a driver in political and social change. Land and the resources to grow food on are the primary reason countries go to war. Now more than ever the pressure on fragile world resources in the food chain needs serious attention. We also need to be cogent of a food ownership and distribution system that is deeply inequitable and flawed. Irish farmers are suffering at present as they rely on imported grain and soya to feed livestock and the price of this food has risen to almost twice it's value since the start of this year.

Pigs and poultry who are indoor animals (in the coventional systems) are wholly dependent on cereal food. They are also suffering in the face of cheap imports from the EU and further afield. All of us like a bargain and we're also grocery shopping in more lean times, but asking food producers to grow livestock below the cost of production is something that shouldn't be occurring. On RTE Countrywide on Saturday I joined presenter Damien O'Reilly in examining how critical this problem is. We asked why no mechanism so far seems to able to get the food chain under control and limit its volatility and that knock on effect on farmers and consumers.

Check it out at the link below and ask yourself, is cheap food really the way to go? For all our sakes.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/countrywide/

Meet the GM hacker who modifies food in his kitchen

Is GM food the devil? Last week I spoke at Kilkenny Arts festival on plans to grow genetically modified potatoes for the first time in Ireland. On the panel with me was Cathal Garvey, a bio-hacker who makes GM food in his kitchen, literally. Cathal brought a lot of new light and discussion to the subject.

He gave us a basic run down of how genetic science works and explained how he can hack qualities from one plant (such as luminesence) and insert it into another. Hey presto - glow in the dark bananas. What Cathal advocates is more discussion around GM food which informs consumers rather than scaring them, and liberalising the ability to alter food so that anyone can do it,  taking control from the agri-chem giants such as Monsanto and DuPont.

It's clearly one of the problems in the debate on GM - Monsanto have such a bad name in this area they make the Republican party look like a bunch of Carmelite nuns. And for most people, Monsanto is GM. They have wreaked the American food chain, polluted it's environment with unwanted crops, sued farmers and wield an unethical, ridiculous amount of power in how food is produced.

But genetically modifying food is not simply Monsanto. What Cathal (pictured below) advocates is that GM should be available to everyone. For young scientists like Cathal, there is the potential to create food that is patent free, and could have a role in impacting positively on hunger in the developing world.

Now this kind of talk upsets most people. Most foodies and consumers consider GM devils spawn and any genetic modification of anything, is unnatural, and unwanted. They say GM won't solve world hunger, the GM agri-chems have already meddled with Africa in a threatening way which has benefitted no one but themselves. But again, GM is not Monsanto. It is much more than that. What has raised people's hackles about the proposed trials in Carlow is that the potatoes may eventually become a commercial project that will again benefit private business and no one else. But Teagasc's answer is that it's not a commercial project and that without that without testing GM they can't go forward in understanding how it affects the environment.

If you want an overview of the Teagasc trials, check out this recent piece I did on Today with Pat Kenny explaining the potato sector in Ireland, the prevalence of blight and an explanation of Teagasc's plans at Oakpark.
http://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A3228018%3A133%3A14%2D03%2D2012%3A

What's clear is that GM makes people impassioned and angry most of the time. What was refreshing about our talk at Kilkenny is that no one threw rotten fruit at us, all views on the topic were aired and there was lots of new stuff learned by all. Opening up the debate on GM, separating the scientists like Cathal from the Monsantos of this world allow discussion that's not adversarial but interesting, funny and really valuable. And if you want to make your own luminescent yoghurt, have a look at Cathal's website below. And send me some when you're finished.

http://www.indiebiotech.com

Latest leak from MacDonalds at London Olympics; their contract prevents other foods suppliers selling chips

The Super Dooper MacDonalds in Olympic Park

It's not surprising that MacDonald's sponsorship of the London Olympics has generated a bit of heat, after all, sport and Big Macs are hardly a new pairing - the MacDonald's brand has been linked to the Olympics for several decades. For London 2012 MacDonald's will have four restaurants in Olympic park, including the biggest MacDonald's in the world which will serve up 1200 customers an hour and sell £3 million worth of fast food during the games. 

As expected, the chain has been criticised for promoting the consumption of fast food at a time when the UK, like ourselves, is facing huge problems with obesity and should be linking sports participation with healthy living.  Last week, members of the London Assembly said firms which sold junk food should not be linked to the Olympic Games. Cadbury and Coca-Cola are also sponsors. 

Sponsorship by these type of brands is at odds with UK policy on obesity and as with Ireland, calls into question the role between food companies and sports advertising. It's also now apparent that the deal with MacDonald's is going to negatively affect other food retailers at the Olympics who are not allowed sell chips unless they are with fish, as this was stipulated in the MacDonald's deal. 

A recently published memo to food suppliers from the London 2012 organisers Locog says "Due to sponsorship obligations with MacDonalds, Locog have instructed the catering team they are no longer allowed to serve chips on their own anywhere within the Olympic park." Not surprisingly, this latest piece of news has gone down like a lead balloon with other food suppliers contracted to the games.

As with a recent social media campaign that went wrong for MacDonald's, their Olympics sponsorship has so far generated much more bad news stories than good. But controversy or not, the more burgers MacDonald's sells the better it is for Irish exports; they are the biggest single buyer of Irish beef and use it in their restaurants all over Europe. 

So here's a conundrum. Can we complain on one hand about food companies contributing to obesity when they are also such big contributors to our GDP and create valuable Irish jobs? On Today with Pat Kenny this week I examined this paradox and the huge buying power MacDonalds has in the Irish beef sector. Check out our discussion on the programme at the link below

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny/2012-07-26.html

Would you pay more for non Genetically Modified food?

In the UK, Morrisons, the large supermarket chain has dropped its requirement for poultry suppliers to feed non GM food to their chickens. They say it's a cost issue for producers, and here in Ireland it's certainly the same.

So we as consumers want to pay less for our chicken fillets, we have to accept that poultry here is fed with genetically modified food. In fact feeding chickens, pigs or cattle non-genetically modified feed is significantly more expensive than the more commonly and cheaply available GM feeds. So do we care as consumers?

Apparently not. Most of the animal beef, chicken and pigmeat we eat in Ireland is fed with GM rations. The only way to absolutely assure that you're not eating animal products fed on GM food is to buy organic. And that obviously has an expense premium attached.

The Morrisons announcement comes just as the debate on Teagasc's plans to grow GM potatoes at its Carlow research centre is hotting up. If you want to know more about the issue check out my interview on Today with Pat Kenny at the link below. GM is a complicated, emotive topic. This radio piece focusses primarily on Teagasc's plans and gives an overview of the issue. You could do hundreds of hours of broadcasting on GM and still not come to agreement between those who support the technology (Teagasc) and those who hate it (GM-Free Ireland) and other groups.

It's very much the case that GM has a sorry history in the US and needs to be hugely regulated and watched as a developing technology. Does it have a place in food? You have to make up your own mind.

http://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A3228018%3A133%3A14%2D03%2D2012%3A

Calories on menus, hate it or love it, let your views be known today

This debate has pulled in lots of new voices, divergent views and strong opinion. Is putting calories on menus a health policy that will cripple an already pressurised restaurant sector? Or a badly needed intervention that has proved to have had some success reducing calorie intake, notably in the US.

Today is the final day to let your views be known on the proposed new legislation. The consultation process is being run by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and has been accepting views from the public and food businesses for a month now. Whatever your feelings, let them be known at www.FSAI.ie.

If you want to learn more about the proposals, and how they could affect you, your health or your business, check out my radio piece with Pat Kenny from last week at the following link. Scroll the player 1hr 36 mins up the timeline; I've tried to include all views and give an overview into what the proposals could mean for all of us

http://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A3199527%3A133%3A15%2D02%2D2012%3A

Fat tax adds 6% to price of cream; supermarket charges 17% more, just for the hell of it. The Denmark fat tax experience

Yes sometimes I moan about supermarkets, but I never thought they could have an active role in mucking up public health policy.

I recently did a report on RTE radio about Denmark's Fat Tax. Instead of the expected trend in consumers purchasing high calorie foods, what I found was that retailers there are using the tax to fatten their bottom line. A price survey of eight supermarkets carried out by weekly Danish newspaper Søndagsavisen with co-operation from the Tax Ministry, revealed that prices on many fatty foods were significantly higher than warranted by the tax’s introduction.

For example, while Skat – the Danish Tax and Customs Administration had calculated that the price of sour cream would increase by 6.6 percent due to the fat tax, the spot check revealed that at supermarket Aldi the price of sour cream was raised by a whopping 17.3 percent.
Aldi was the worst offender in the study, with the supermarket raising prices on 9 of the 10 inspected products by more than what could be accounted for by the new tax. Lidl was also an offender - they had increased the price of sour cream by 15.1 percent more than warranted by the tax. Both of these firms operate in Ireland and in fact are growing their share of the grocery market here.

The Danish Consumer Council’s reaction was “Supermarkets can determine their own prices, so it is not prohibited, but it doesn’t look good.” Yes, it sure doesn't look good. Politicians there have now said that there needs to be a debate on “whether there are ways to protect the consumer.”

In all my analysis of fat taxes and obesity measures around the world I was probably naive to overlook the huge issue of how these taxes are delivered - via the supermarkets. As there is yet no regulation on supermarkets in Ireland, going down a sugar tax or fat tax route could put us in exactly the same postition as the Danes - being fleeced. There are also supermarkets in Denmark who are not charging the new tax and trying to gain competitive advantage. So basically, the public health measures expected from the tax are at the whim of the companies who deliver them.

Later this winter we should have legislation here on a proposed new supermarket ombudsman and the possibility of at last protecting both consumers and food producers. After giving a witness statement at an Oireachtas Committee on this back in 2009 it's getting critical that something finally be done. Successive governments here have shirked their responsibilities on the issue. The Danish example just goes to prove that if you have no legal framework to work with the supermarkets on pricing then you may as well be throwing public health measures down the pan.

If you want to hear my discussion with Pat Kenny on the Danish fat tax dilemma it's on the following link; scroll down to November 1st and you'll see my name and the Fat Tax item.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_patkenny.xml

Would you like fries with that? We're being codded, again.

A year on from when I first wrote about the fish labelling scandal going on in Ireland it seems nothing has changed. In the second survey into what exactly we are buying when we purchase "cod", the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has revealed that nearly one in five fish are not what it says on the label. So what are the implications for consumers and does this point to murky goings on in the fish trade?

This most recent survey was carried out in retail outlets, fish shops, hotels, pubs, restaurants and takeaways all over Ireland. The FSAI found that 19% of products it sampled were labelled incorrectly. The largest sector selling us fake cod was takeaways, with 32% of takeaways found to have mislabelled fish produce on sale.

Do takeaways rely on people being either (a) drunk and on their way home from the pub when they buy their "cod" and chips, or (b) their product being so doused in salt and vinegar that your box of fish and chips could be in fact battered Nike trainer with deep fried turnip peelings?

The point is that this isn't so much a food safety issue but common or garden food swindling, based on making money from innocent consumers. Cod is generally an expensive fish and in this case it’s being replaced with other varieties, and food businesses are increasing their own profit margins by selling fake produce.

This survey was undertaken last autumn when cod stocks are traditionally low and found that fish such as pollack, coley or smelt were being sold as cod. At that time cod was about 11 euros a kilo; pollack about 6 or 7 euro a kilo so you stand to make a lot of money if you can replace one with the other.

Okay, so a bit of coley posing as cod won't kill us. However, in terms of food safety, food substitution in the past has had fatal consequences. In North America two people died from eating puffer fish that had been labelled and sold as monkfish; a pretty terrifying outcome. As consumers, we need to have confidence in what it says on the label. Particularly in the EU, we are under the impression that strict policies on labelling and traceability are in place. Instead, what this study reveals is a level of disfunction in the labelling of seafood in Europe.

What’s shocking about this is not the first time that mislabelling of fish has found to be an issue in Ireland. About 12 months ago when I first wrote on the subject UCD did a study on fish and found much the same problem. A quarter of the fish they examined was mislabelled. In one major supermarket chain, seven out of their 16 "cod" products weren't cod. The research calculated that by selling cheaper alternatives, this retailer could be getting inflated profits of between €400,000 to €550,000 per year on Irish cod sales.

So who is doing the duping – is it the supermarkets, the fish and chip shops or is it the fish dealers who are selling them the fish? The FSAI can’t name and shame the outlets or merchants involved in this sting so to speak. They found that some of the mislabelling may be due to a certain amount of ignorance, but a few names popped up in the retail and wholesale side where several instances occurred, especially in the battered and smoked fish. They’re being investigated as this would suggest that it was more than accidental.

Unfortunately the penalities are low even if charges are brought and while you can name and shame an outlet for food safety breaches, mislabelling food comes under “misleading the consumer” which hasn’t huge penalities – most will get a verbal warning, then if they persist be taken to court.

Not very heartening for the consumer is it? Will it take a serious health incident arising from food mislabelling to change the law? Why can't we find out who the worst operators are and therefore make our own choice as consumers to stop being codded at the fish counter? If you want to hear more on this topic I'll soon upload my interview on RTE radio with Pat Kenny teasing through the issue. And no, there won't be any bad jokes, I promise.

In part two of this post, I'll be examining the sometimes hideous, sometimes hysterically funny history of food substitution and I'll have some tips for how to buy Irish fish, that's the genuine article. We've so much great fish in Ireland it's ridiculous that we're buying not only fake product but fake product that's mostly coming from outside the EU. But that's a whole other story... part two coming soon.