Honey Glaze for Epiphany Ham

A view of the Christmas tree and my 30 week baby bump.

I’m not sure if you know, but we are still in the middle of what was traditionally the Christmas season! I believe today specifically is the 10th day of Christmas, and while I’m not expecting to receive ten lords-a-leaping today I’m still enjoying my Christmas tree, and soaking up a little more holiday season. It seems right to me to continue a little longer since it only just started snowing around here and the tree and other wintery decorations seem appropriate. I do have to say that our new place is so small that a small part of me is looking forward to getting the square footage back in my living room that the tree is taking up right now.

The 12 days of Christmas all lead up to Epiphany, and while that isn’t part of how my family traditionally celebrates the holidays it seemed like a really nice thing to add to our celebrations and a nice way to cap off the season.

We’ve got our Epiphany dinner set for Sunday and I’ll be making a ham. I thought I’d share the recipe I used for the glaze today. Feel free to adjust this to whatever flavours you like. I you don’t have something or don’t like a flavour go ahead and try something different (and if you do I’d love to hear about it in the comments)! Because the dinner hasn’t actually happened yet I won’t have anything in this post about cooking the actual ham, but I’ll try to remember to take a photo to update this post when I do!

Our first time celebrating Epiphany in Kamloops with some dear friends. Read all about it here.

For this glaze, I started with the sumac in my mortar and pestle. I’ll be talking more about this ingredient and where I find it in a later post, but for now you should be able to find it in specialty spice shops. I think I’ve been seen ground sumac powder in the spice section of my local Bulk Barn. Sumac berries have a hard seed inside, so I crushed them with my mortar and pestle, until the dried berry surrounding the seed was crushed and sifted that through a fine mesh sieve. Don’t discard the larger bits either - you can steep those in cold water in the fridge overnight and make a lemonade-ish drink. I’d say from one drupe of berries I wound up with about 1/2 a teaspoon of powder, although I could have been more thorough and gotten more out of it. I wasn’t too worried about that though because I’m going to be steeping the larger pieces anyway for another upcoming recipe.

After the sumac berries were broken down, I added the other whole spices and continued to crush them. After that I added fresh ginger and a clove of garlic, and continued to grind it in my mortar and pestle until the whole mixture formed a sort of paste. At this point I took it out and mixed it with local honey, nasturtium flower infused white wine vinegar, a little bit of molasses, and salted the mixture to taste. It’s a delightful mixture of tangy, sweet, and warm from all the spices and ginger.

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Honey Glaze for Epiphany Ham

Ingredients

• 1/2 tsp sumac powder
• 3-4 whole allspice berries
• 3-4 whole cloves
• 1/4 tsp multicoloured peppercorns
• 1 dried smoked chilli pepper
• 1 thumb fresh ginger
• 1 large clove garlic
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 tbsp honey
• 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1/2 tsp molasses

Takes 15 minutes, Serves enough glaze for one small ham.

Instructions

1. If you are using dried sumac berries, pound and grind them in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder until the berries are mostly powder and the hard seeds are all exposed. Sift this mixture and use only the powder for this recipe. Discard or save the larger pieces that don’t make it through the sieve.
2. Add the whole dried spices and chilli to the mortar and pestle along with the sumac powder. Continue grinding until all the pieces are a fine texture and roughly the same size.
3. Add the fresh ginger and garlic one after the other, and continue grinding the mixture together in the mortar and pestle until it all forms a paste.
4. Transfer the paste to a small bowl, and combine with the honey, vinegar, molasses, and salt to taste. Adjust all the spices as necessary - go ahead and grind more of anything that you feel is missing. This is all about adjusting to your own preference, but remember you are making a glaze, so the end result should be rather on the sweet side. You want it to caramelize on the ham in the oven while you are cooking it. If you think you might not have enough for your ham, feel free to scale up the ingredients until you have enough to cover it.
5. Follow your preferred method for roasting your ham, and add this glaze when there are about 30-60 minutes remaining to the cooking time. You want this to caramelize on the outside of the ham, but not to burn.

How to Make Naturally Flavoured Sugars

Recently I've found that one of my favourite ways of working with new or interesting ingredients is to make flavoured sugar out of them. I love having unique salts and sugars on hand to add something a little different to whatever I am cooking. I'm imagining that both of these sugars would make beautiful additions to baked goods, or sprinkled on top of pancakes, or anything like that. Since I've found this to be so enjoyable, I thought I'd put the tutorial here on the blog. I should also mention that if you are local I do have some of these for sale at the Dallas Barnhartvale Farmers' Market if you want to try them and not worry about making them yourself.

The first step in making these is finding the ingredient you want to use as the flavour. This year I've used a lot of lilac, and also some immature Douglas fir cones. I have an idea to go source some spruce tips, rose petals, and other things to give this a try with as well. 

Once you have your ingredient, combine it along with about a cup of sugar in a food processor, or high powered blender (such as a Vitamix). The amount you use can vary a lot. With something like the Douglas fir cones a little goes a long way. You'll have the opportunity to adjust and add more sugar later if you feel the mixture is too strong. Usually I have done about a cup or less of whatever flavouring ingredient I am using. Blend until everything is broken down and fully mixed together. You can have a look at the photos below to see what I mean by that more clearly. After this, dump the mixture into a bowl, and add a few more cups of sugar. Taste it and smell it along the way to make sure you like the strength of the flavour and aroma. When you're happy with it spread it out on a cookie sheet, tray, or really large plate to air dry.  It will take a few days, so put it somewhere you can keep an eye on it, but that is out of the way. Give the mix a stir a few times a day - I usually just do a little every time I walk past - so that it dries out evenly. Try to break up any clumps, but know that the consistency will be a little more rustic than regular granulated sugar.

The sky is basically the limit with how you use these once they are dry. They make fabulous items to use as gifts, or wedding favours, since they are so unique and it is easy to do large batches. Feel free to combine ingredients, and come up with your own unique blends to use. Maybe you'll develop something that becomes your go-to secret ingredient!

As always, if you try this tutorial I'd love to hear about it in the comments, or if you post on social media use #aforagershome so I can see it! 

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To support my blogging endeavours, this post contains affiliate links from which I receive a small commission if you make a purchase.  Every product linked here is one I have used personally and would recommend based on my experience

Dandelion and Friends Pesto

Ok everyone, to me this is the weirdest time of year.  The weather is warm, the sun is shining, and things are starting to grow in the garden, but there is nothing ready to harvest yet!  Just look at those tiny garlic sprouts!  Sure I have some herbs, but a few chives and a sprig of mint hardly feel like an actual harvest of anything.  

HOWEVER

Don't forget the humble dandelion and his friends known collectively as false dandelions!  In my area none of them are flowering yet so this is the perfect time to eat the leaves as they are not too bitter yet.  If you've never been out foraging dandelions are the perfect thing to start with since they have no poisonous lookalikes.  If it looks like a dandelion you're good to go!  When you get home with your bounty of beautiful green leaves soak them in a combo of water and vinegar just in case a wandering animal used them as a toilet.  After that rinse them with plain water and they'll be ready to eat!  If you're still leery you can sometimes find dandelion greens in the grocery store, but why pay for something you can get for free for almost no effort!

Ok so you have your dandelion greens.  Now what?

Use them like any other green in your kitchen!  Make a salad!  Wilt them in with your scrambled eggs!  Purée them in a green smoothie or a soup!  Since in my family we love condiments I made pesto.

Isn't that a beautiful green?  In case you were wondering #nofilter.  In my recipe I guessed a bit on the amounts so scale them up or down a bit depending on how much of the greens you gathered.

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Dandelion Leaf Pesto

Ingredients

• 3-4 cups Dandelion Leaves
• 1/2 cup Pine Nuts or Walnuts
• 1/4 cup Olive Oil plus more to add at the end to get the consistency right
• 2 Garlic Cloves
• 1/4 Cup Parmesan Cheese
• Juice of One Lemon

Takes 15 min, serves 6.

Instructions

1. Gather and wash your dandelion leaves. If you are worried about the cleanliness of your foraged leaves add a little vinegar to your water and soak them for a couple minutes in that solution.
2. Toast the nuts in a pan on medium heat just until you can start to smell them. Do not multitask at this part because they will burn quickly.
3. Put ingredients - liquid first - in a high powered blender or food processor, and blend until the mixture reaches a paste-like consisency. Add more oil as needed until it reaches your desired thickness.