Gammon

[powerdesal]

We normally have sliced roast gammon with poached eggs and champagne for Christmas Day breakfast.

Unfortunately, this year we have no gammon to roast and don't seem to be able to find any in the supermarket butchery sections.

Is a gammon for roasting not available in France or are we asking / looking for the wrong thing ?

[woolybanana]

Is there not either a Brit shop near where you live who can get you one or a handy Brit driving over who could drop it off?

Not sure what gammon is in French - Gammoon springs to mind but that might not be much use.

I too am very fond of the stuff though usually on Boxing Day.

[idun]

I love bacon/gammon joints, not the thick slices that are cooked alone.

As we could get the stuff for a potée Savoyarde easily, I used, I think the petit jambonneau salé. It always needed soaking to get rid of some of the salt, but then boiled up in fresh water and it was fine. Maybe not quite what I can now get, but certainly a good enough replacement for the whole family and parents in law when they came over, to be happy.

Ask your butcher if they have this. It is a dinky joint of salted porc with a bone in it usually.

Cannot imagine eating such a breakfast on xmas day, when do you have your main meal?? and I take it you are not planning on having a proper french feast on christmas eve,  as that fills me up until my big meal on xmas day.

[powerdesal]

Brit shops are not something that we look out for or take notice of, so I have no idea if any exist locally.

Similarly we don't know of any Brits driving back and forth.

It's a quandary !

[powerdesal]

Idun, we will keep an eye open for the little joints of salt porc.

No Christmas Eve feast here, just our traditional Christmas Day breakfast then main meal in the evening.

[alittlebitfrench]

I think it is called 'Le Jarret de porc'.

As Idun said you can get them cooked (jambonneau) at most supermarket or other traiters.

[idun]

Yes, might be jarrett, while since I bought one in France[Www]

I do buy gammon joints every few weeks in the UK though. I love cooking and can food as fancy as you want, but I adore, gammon joint, home made coleslaw and boiled potatoes, really is one of my favourite meals.

[woolybanana]

PD, a former BBC discjockey friend of mine who now lives in France after retiring early and who speaks fluent French suggests you might go into a butcher's shop and ask for 'gamin' or 'gamine', depending on your choice of boar or sow meat. He says the butcher can usually get what you want given time!!

Jarret can be quite dry though, don't you think.

[nomoss]

We have bought petit salé joints twice, the second time to check if the first had accidentally been stored too long.

On both occasions the product was in date, but smelt extremely bad when the sealed package was opened, so we threw it away.

[JohnFB]

Perhaps Jambon sur l'os. You quite often see it for sale in the traiteur section of supermarkets. Cooked of course. I buy a slice as a gammon substitute when feeling lazy. Pan fry plus a fried egg or two.

JFB

[Chancer]

http://www.leporc.com/tout-est-bon-dans-le-cochon/morceaux.html

 

Any help?

 

My favorite is the palette à la diable from Lidl.

[andyh4]

Wooly,

Jarret is not dry cooked the Nigella way - in red wine with onion, fennel seeds etc.

http://www.lifestylefood.com.au/recipes/3261/aromatic-christmas-ham

Recipe obviously adjusted for Jarret - and I tend to use a lot more red wine in the cooking.

Edit - meant to add, this version of the recipe is from an Aussie site and so they eat it cold given Xmas is the height of summer. It is also very good hot, which is much more suited to a French Winter climate.

[idun]

Red wine with gammon, why, I cannot think of one good reason to do that? Is there?

[powerdesal]

Thank you all for your comments.

We will explore your suggestions.

[andyh4]

Idun

Red wine and Gammon? Yes it sounds so wrong, and IIRC Nigella even said so herself when presenting the recipe. However despite our prejudices, it works. Try it, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

As for why it works, I can think of a few possibilities:

Red wine has more sugars than white for an equivalent feel of sweetness in the mouth.

Red wine has (generally) less acid than white wine - which would rend to break down the meat fibres to a mush in a long slow cook.

The tannins add a subtle depth to the flavour of the meat.

And finally and for sure, the red wine colours the meat and stops it turning into an insipid off-white colour.

In support of the sweetness and colour argument, a number of professional cold recipes for curing pork use molasses and or black treacle in the cure - which will do the same thing as the red wine.

And as a final thought, isn't coq-au-vin cooked with red wine? Again a combination that should not work, but does.

[idun]

I cook pork in red wine, but salted cured pork and it just feels wrong to cook a whole joint in it.

And coq au vin, well I have done a true recipe once, but usually I use chicken and that isn't 'cured' meat.

I agree that lardons have their place in many dishes, and they after all are cured pork.

If ever a friend is giving this a go, I'll ask to try it, but it would grieve me to try it and it not be to my taste, as I really enjoy eating plain cooked gammon.

Just found a potée de lorraine, with red wine[:D] I'd still like to taste first though.

In our village, they would make a vin chaud with a petit blanc de savoie!!!!! And at Aix les Bains they cook Lavaret in a sauce mondeuse and that is a red savoy wine.

 So there you go, things which seem wrong are apparently OK.