Here goes Plantpot ...
Nigella's Fully Festive Ham
Serves 8-10
3.5kg Gammon
2 litres Cranberry Juice
2 litres Apple Juice
2 Cinnamon Sticks, halved
2 onions, halved but not peeled
1 tablesp Allspice Berries
For the Cranberry Glaze:
approx. 30 cloves to stud ham
4 tablesps cranberry jelly or 6 tablespns Cranberry Sauce
1 tablesp runny honey
1 tablesp English mustard powder
1/2 teasp ground cinnamon
Put the gammon into a large saucepan and cover wtih cold water. Bring to a boil and then immediately drain and rinse the gammon in a colander, which will get ride of any excess saltiness; alternatively, soak it in water overnight.
Rinse the pan and put the gammon back in along with cranberry and apple juicees, cinnamon sticks, onions and allspice berries. If the fruit juices do not cover the meat, add some water so as it's covered. Bring to the boil and cook at a fast simmer for 3.5 to 4 hours. Partially cover the ham with a lid if the liquid is boiling away and the top of the ham is getting dry.
Once the ham is cooked, remove it from the hot and now salty juice, and sit on a board. If you want, you can cook it well ahead of schedule and let it get cold before glazing and roasting it. If that's the case, what I (ie. Nigella) tend to do is cook it for about half an hour less and let it cool in the cooking liquid. I try to let it cool as fast as possible by sitting it near an open window, letting the wintry winds chill it in the old-fashioned way.
But if you're going ahead now, wait until the ham's bearable to the touch - easy to scald yourself on hot sugary fat - and then cut and peel the rind off the cooked ham and make sure you take a thin layer of white fat off with it, or just use a knife to shave some fat off so as you're left with a thin coating. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to gas mark7/220 deg c. Score the trimmed fat into a diamond pattern with a sharp knife, and stud the points of each diamond with a clove.
Heat the glaze ingredients together in a saucepan until the jelly or sauce melts into the honey, mustard and cinnomon to make a smooth glaze/syrupy sauce - it needs to be thick enough not to run off the ham completely as it blisters in the oven.
Sit the ham on a piece of foil in a roasting tin - which will make the washing up easier later. Pur the glaze over the clove-studded ham so that all of the scored fat is covered. Cook in the oven for 15 mins until the fat is coloured and burnished by the sugary glaze. If you've let the ham get completely cold before you glaze it, it'll need a good 40 mins at gas mark 4/180 deg c and you moight have to give a final blast of real heat at the end too. And this is based on it being at room temp, not fridge cold, when it goes in.
Plantpot, I usually use a much much smaller piece of ham (1-2kg, depending how many nights dinner I want out of it) and use just one litre each of apple and cranberry juices, with 1 onion and half berries (or skip them altogether). To make it much less fussy, I also skip the glaze bit and just let it cool in the cooking liquid like she suggests - keeps it really moist too.
Enjoy.