Monthly Archive for December, 2007

…was saved this year, thanks to relying on a regular Swedish ham instead of the more desirable American ham. The Swedish ham is cured in a salt brine and this year’s choice was one that already was cooked.

Attempting a compromise between both cultures, I placed cloves in the fatty part, rubbed in brown sugar and brushed “Liquid Smoke”, diluted 1:2 with water, over the top before popping it into the oven to heat up. A “normal” Swedish ham should be rubbed with mustard and covered with bread crumbs.

The rest of the dinner consisted of boiled eggs and two types of pickled herring. One ordinary type, pickled with the normal combination of spices and a 50/50 mix of sugar and special Swedish “vinegar” type called ättiksprit, and definitely not to be confused with normal vinegar which is completely different. The other pickled herring was in a great mustard and dill sauce that I make. Also on the table was a small toss salad, using a base of rosé lettuce with cherry tomatoes etc., home-grown baby potatoes splashed with dried parsley, small Swedish sausages with a strong, but sweet, mustard and the fantastic traditional soda “Julmust” to drink.

I can’t complain. Just enough to celebrate the Christmas day, but not too much to make small regrets of eating too much. As well, I got the opportunity to act as a gastronomy photographer and create a new blog category about food and its consumption in Lapland. Could be an interesting section?

Photo: A small Swedish Christmas dinner for two

Photo: www.flickr.com

…living abroad for many years can have culinary consequences. If you can understand the situation of living in another culture with different foods than what you’ve been brought up with? Americans living abroad easily are a brotherhood of food addicts experiencing food withdrawals when thoughts of childhood goodies float up in memories and the need for a “food fix” can be non-existent in the present resident country.

We Americans living abroad have dealt with real appetite challenges. Gone are Fritos, Oreo Cookies or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. We learn to live without Hershy’s Chocolates, varieties of BBQ sauces and real American baked beans. We learn to make fake Pumpkin Pies from carrots or whatever replacement food recipes available will be used to prepare loved dishes…as close as possible. Basically, we’ve learned to live without.

But, I have come to a dead-end street concerning a Christmas ham. Living in Sweden for so many years, I have eaten Swedish Christmas ham. A chunk of pig meat that is soaked in a vat of salt and heated to produce a salted-like Christmas ham. But my childhood memories want to have an American-style Christmas ham. Sweet, juicy and falling into soft savory pieces with each thick slice of a knife.

When she still was living, I’ve asked my mother several times how to make an American-style Christmas ham and she always explained about different toppings that can be spread on the ham as it was baking. I’ve asked an aunt and I’ve watched a brother make a ham and have listened to him explain everything. I have always asked if the ham was treated in some way before it’s bought at the local grocery store and each time I’ve heard, “Well, it’s a fresh ham bought at the store”.

So, this year my level of determination raised to a gold medal status and a week ago I specially ordered a fresh ham at the grocery store in Jokkmokk, with the goal and vision of enjoying the succulent sweet taste of an American-style Christmas ham. Yesterday, I picked the ham up and boyishly drove home with it and with enthusiastic expectations. I could almost taste the post-Christmas ham sandwiches this was going to give me.

After studying loads of recipes for Christmas Ham on a variety of cooking websites, I chose a simple recipe. I had decided to build up a few “hams of experience” before trying the more complicated toppings and put my faith into a simple brown sugar coating with cloves stuck into the fatty diagonally cut squares of the outer layer of fat. The recipe was also providing conversions and I could easily relate to baking my ham using Celsius and other metric weights and measures.

Having set the oven temperature for the recommended level, preheated of course, and preparing my fresh ham, I covered it with foil and popped it into the oven. I set the timer and went upstairs to watch TV as I anxiously waited for the baking time to tick away. I kept thinking…brown sugar? Check! Oven temperature? Check! Bread crumbs? Check! Baking time? Check! Great American Christmas ham on its way? Check!

During the baking time, I was several times downstairs to check on my baby. Finally, the timer rang out. The kitchen was filled with the aroma of sweet baked meat. Running down to the oven and taking the hot pads, I was filled with pleasant expectations as I pulled the pan out and lifted it gently on the top of the stove.

I looked at my creation. Well, I thought for myself, it sort of looked like a Christmas ham with the cloves and bread crumbs and all. But, the meaty part was kinda grayish and not the nice pinkish red of my childhood memory. I felt I had to inspect it closer, so I got a butcher knife and sliced into the meat, in the middle.

Opening up the steaming two halves of the ham, I looked into a grayish hunk of, not ham as it would be expected for a real-honest-to-goodness-American-Christmas-ham, but a pork roast!

A little dis-heartened, I could only chuckle for myself. My experiment failed and the American living in a foreign country would, again, have to celebrate Christmas with a Swedish Christmas ham. Baking a real American Christmas ham for the holidays will have to be put off for next year. I will have to become better with learning the secret of how to do it and to overcome my withdrawal symptoms for the coming year.

But, I’m not too disappointed. I now have plenty of pre-cooked pork roast that I can have with sauerkraut on New Years Eve…even if it does have brown sugar and bread crumbs on the outside layer.

Uh, wait a minute! Can I get a hold of sauerkraut in Jokkmokk?

PS/ from the above picture link, I now understand a little more about Christmas hams! By the way…I make an absolutely addictive chocolate cake with deadly chocolate frosting!