Christmas Recipe: Norwegian Juleskinke, or Christmas Ham

I received a box of Christmas foods from Creamline Dairies and I was asked to cook nice things with it, this Norwegian Juleskinke, or Christmas Ham is one of the nice things.

I’ve always had something of a fascination with all things Nordic, but in January I decided to put my money where my mouth is and learn Norwegian. It’s quite a fun thing to do, quietly learn a language by yourself. I’m confident that I could now tell you that a wolf is on the table and that the cook has several knives. I don’t think for one second that I yet capable of holding a whole conversation in Norsk, but it’s fun to try.

Alongside the language, I’ve been trying to watch Norwegian films and TV and given my slightly greedy interest in food, I’ve been reading up on that too. Each Christmas I usually make a ham for Christmas Eve, and it does us for cold cuts for many days after. This year I decided to give my Christmas a bit of a Norwegian twist and make Juleskinke – Norwegian Christmas ham.

Norwegian Juleskinke, or Christmas Ham

Last week I received a Christmas food box from Creamline Diaries. I chose a selection of foods from their Christmas range and it was delivered direct to my door, with no queuing or faff of any kind. The box is packed with brilliant locally produced food from independent producers. The meat is from my local butchers, the bread is from a fantastic local baker and fresh fish from the fishmongers. The fruit and veg are fresh from the market each day and you can even stock up your store cupboard.

My Creamline box was brilliant and contained pretty much everything I needed to make this lovely festive Norwegian Juleskinke. It’s just the thing if you want to shop local, but don’t really have the time to visit all your local shops, or if you just can’t carry all your shopping home. It’s also a boon at Christmas, saving you slogging around a supermarket, or queuing up for ages in the cold outside the local independent shops you love best, who are all part of this scheme anyway!

I ordered the gammon half joint (1.5kg). Gammon has already been salted or brined, so if you buy gammon instead of pork, you can skip the first stage of the recipe. If you want to do the whole thing from scratch, then you’ll need to buy a boneless leg of pork!

Because we are a small household, we used a small joint of meat. This recipe is fine for up to 2kg of meat, any more than that and you’ll need to be doubling your recipe.

Norwegian Juleskinke, or Christmas Ham

Ingredients
1 boneless leg of pork
150g salt
250g dark brown sugar
Dark beer, 2 bottles
Coriander seed, 1 tablespoon
Fennel seed, 1 tablespoon
Black peppercorns, 1 tablespoon

For the glaze
60g dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons of dry mustard
1 teaspoon of smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 satsuma, or some fresh orange juice
Whole cloves

Norwegian Juleskinke, or Christmas Ham

To make your Norwegian Juleskinke, or Christmas Ham

Skip this step if using gammon instead of pork. Rub the leg of pork with 3 tablespoons of salt and 2 tablespoons of sugar. I put the meat in a large mixing bowl and covered it in the fridge, leaving it for 24 hours.

In a large pan, put the beer, sugar, salt, coriander seed, fennel seed and peppercorns and bring to the boil. Leave the liquid to cool fully. It’s best to do this the night before you need it, so it’s fully cool.

After 24 hours, take the meat and rinse some of the salt and sugar rub off. Once rinsed, place the meat in the spiced beer mixture. Pop this in the fridge and leave it for at least 24 hours. It will be fine for up to two weeks, making sure you turn it every day. I left mine for three days.

When you’re ready to cook the ham, put the meat in a large pan of unsalted water and simmer for around 4 hours.

Once cooked through, remove it from the heat and leave it to cool slightly so you can touch it without burning your fingers. Using a sharp knife, carefully cut a diamond pattern into the fat. Pre-heat your oven to 180°.

In a small bowl, mix the brown sugar, dry mustard, paprika and cinnamon together. Juice your satsuma (or use a few drops of orange juice) into the spices and combine so it makes a thick paste which you can spread. Rub the paste all over the meat until it’s well covered. Place the meat into a roasting tin or oven proof dish and push a whole clove into each cross section of the diamond pattern.

Put the ham in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until you’re happy with the colour of the ham. It should go dark and the glaze should be a little bit crispy and nice. Once cooked, remove from the oven, slice and serve.

Norwegian Juleskinke, or Christmas Ham

You can eat it hot, which we do with buttery mash and vegetables, or it’s great cold with pickles and crusty bread. It keeps for up to two weeks in the fridge. We sometimes slice it and put it in portions in the freezer for a rainy day too.

Merry Christmas, or as they say in Norway, God Jul!

Creamline also offer a £10 credit for new customers which can be redeemed by visiting creamline.co.uk/register and adding the code GLASS10.

If you enjoyed this recipe, you might also like to try my Norwegian Inspired Cauliflower Cheese Soup.

Norwegian Juleskinke, or Christmas Ham

Christmas Recipe: Luxury Gingerbread Trifle

I received a box of Christmas foods from Creamline Dairies and I was asked to cook nice things with it, this gingerbread trifle one of the nice things.

Growing up, Christmas wasn’t Christmas without a sherry trifle made with so much sherry you’d fail to pass a breathalyser test on the way home. Trifle was always sponge fingers soaked in about half a pint of sherry, jelly with tinned fruit in, custard, cream and sprinkles. It’s a classic, and a classic for a very good reason.

These days, as much as a hanker for a traditional trifle, sometimes I like to mix things up a bit. The year of the black forest trifle was exceptional, but this year I’ve decided to serve up a gingerbread trifle. With all new things, it’s good to do a test run so you can tweak it to perfection on the big day. I have to say, there’s very little I’d change about this.

Christmas Recipe: Luxury Gingerbread Trifle

This week I received a Christmas food box from Creamline Diaries. I chose a selection of foods from their Christmas range and it was delivered direct to my door, with no queuing or faff of any kind. The box is packed with brilliant locally produced food from independent producers. The meat is from my local butchers, the bread is from a fantastic local baker and fresh fish from the fishmongers. The fruit and veg are fresh from the market each day and you can even stock up your store cupboard.

My Creamline box was brilliant and contained pretty much everything I needed to make this delicious gingerbread trifle. It’s just the thing if you want to shop local, but don’t really have the time to visit all your local shops, or if you just can’t carry all your shopping home. It’s also a boon at Christmas, saving you slogging around a supermarket, or queuing up for ages in the cold outside the local independent shops you love best, who are all part of this scheme anyway!

creamline dairies

Gingerbread Trifle

Ingredients:
4 Christmas Morning Muffins, or Jamaican ginger cake
Gingerbread syrup, approx 50mls
2 pints of custard, cooled
500mls Jersey double cream
Half a packet of ginger nuts, crushed
Some gingerbread men to decorate
Optional – a drop of rum, spiced is nice!

How to make your gingerbread trifle:

This is quite quick to make once you have everything assembled in front of you. So before you begin, make you custard an chill it thoroughly, whip your cream and crush your ginger nuts. Find a nice trifle dish or glass bowl and roll your sleeves up.

Take your Christmas Morning Muffins out of their wrappers and cut into three equally thick slices. You’ll need two muffins for each layer. If you can’t get hold of Christmas Morning Muffins, then a good substitute is slices of Jamaican ginger cake. Arrange them in the bottom of the dish and drizzle approximately 25mls of the gingerbread syrup. If you’re also using rum, now is the time to drizzle over some of that too!

Christmas Recipe: Luxury Gingerbread Trifle

Spoon over half of your cooled custard and smooth the surface. Give the bowl a gentle shake so it can fall into the gaps between the cake layer. Next, carefully spoon over half of the whipped cream and smooth that layer out too.

Next take about 4 biscuits worth of crushed ginger nuts and sprinkle them evenly over the top of the cream. It’s now time to repeat the process.

Lay another layer of Christmas muffins or ginger cake and drizzle over the with remaining gingerbread syrup and a bit of rum if you’re using that. Then spoon over the remaining custard, then the cream and make sure your top cream layer is nice and even. Sprinkle over some more crushed gingernut biscuits and then decorate with your little gingerbread men. I used three and propped them up together on the top. Feel free to let your imagination and creativity run wild at this point!

Christmas Recipe: Luxury Gingerbread Trifle

I left my gingerbread trifle to sit in the fridge for a few hours before serving and by gosh, it was delicious. If you really love ginger, you might want to be a bit more generous with the syrup, but it’s a great trifle. It’s rich, its delicious and it’s a real crowd pleaser! Everything you need this Christmas!

Big thanks to Creamline Diaries who saved me having to carry a heap of shopping home, for supporting local businesses and for having an excellent selection of great quality, locally produced food.

Christmas Recipe: Luxury Gingerbread Trifle

Vegetarian Recipe: Aubergine Bruschetta

AD/Complimentary ingredients. Aubergine is probably one of my favourite vegetables. Admittedly it took me a while to warm to it, if it’s not cooked properly it can be pretty disgusting. These days I am probably cooking with aubergine once a week. My recipe for imam bayildi is a firm family favourite, as well as the delicious dip, ikra, but I’ve also added Aubergine Parmigiana to my repertoire.

If I’m cooking a casual lunch for friends, I like to make a few simple things to go with a big salad. One of my favourite things to make are these tasty aubergine bruschetta. They’re packed full of vegetables, they’re pretty healthy and they always go down a storm.

Vegetarian Recipe: Aubergine Bruschetta

This week I ordered a Local Box from Creamline Diaries. With the Creamline Best of Local Box scheme, you can get brilliant locally produced food from independent producers delivered to your door. The meat is from my local butchers, the bread is from a fantastic local baker and fresh fish from the fishmongers. The fruit and veg are fresh from the market each day and you can even stock up your store cupboard.

Vegetarian Recipe: Aubergine Bruschetta

My Creamline box was brilliant and contained pretty much everything I needed to make this delicious aubergine bruschetta. It’s just the thing if you want to shop local, but don’t really have the time to visit all your local shops, or if you just can’t carry all your shopping home.

Aubergine Bruschetta

Ingredients:

1 large aubergine
1 medium onion, finely diced (I prefer red, but a white onion works too)
2 cloves of garlic
1 pepper, finely diced. It’s traditional to use green, but I used red for colour
Olive oil
12 ripe cherry tomatoes, quartered
Big handful of chopped parsley
Tomato purée, if you think it needs it
1 teaspoon of sugar
Salt & pepper
Ciabatta bread
A ball of mozzarella cheese.

Method:

I find it best to chop all the veg before I start cooking, so finely dice your onion and pepper, quarter your cherry tomatoes and put to one side while you prep the aubergine. Cut the aubergine in half lengthways and finely dice one half. With the other half, slice lengthways it in thick, 1cm slices.

Add a generous glug of olive oil to a deep sided frying pan, add the onions, pepper and aubergine and begin to soften the veg. This should take around half an hour on a low heat, stir occasionally. Add a splash of water to help the veg soften. After you’ve been cooking this for around 15 mins, add your tomatoes, garlic and a generous amount of salt and pepper. It’s cooked when all the veg are soft and the aubergine is melty and isn’t woolly. Once cooked, throw in a handful of chopped parsley and stir.

Vegetarian Recipe: Aubergine Bruschetta

As ever, taste the aubergine and add more seasoning if you think it needs it. I sometimes add a little bit of chilli sauce to add a bit of spice, but that’s up to you.

Meanwhile, take your aubergine slices and put them on a baking tray, add a very generous amount of olive oil and cook in a 200c oven, loosely covered in foil until they are soft and floppy, this will take about half an hour, turn them over about half way through.

To assemble your aubergine bruschetta, toast or griddle thick slices of ciabatta brushed with olive oil, top with your aubergine and veg mix, then artfully decorate with your slices of aubergine, some torn mozzarella and a sprinkle of chopped parsley. You can eat this hot or cold, though I like them still warm, but not piping hot.

For more information about Creamline Dairies, visit their website.

Vegetarian Recipe: Aubergine Bruschetta

Note, we were sent this box in exchange for a blog post mentioning the box scheme.

Review: Creamline Best of Local Box delivered to your door

Over the years we’ve tried all kinds of veg box schemes. We’ve tried those recipe boxes and we’ve had a milkman, then no milkman because the local diary closed, now we have another milkman because another dairy opened. Getting food delivered to the door isn’t just convenient, with the Creamline Best of Local Box scheme, you can get brilliant locally produced food from independent producers delivered to your door.

Review: Creamline Best of Local Box delivered to your door

I live in South Manchester and I was asked to give the Best of local Box a try. Where I can I do try to shop local, and I buy directly from a number of the Best of Local suppliers on a regular basis. I knew that the contents of the box would be of a really high standard, but would it be more expensive?

The Creamline website it really simple to use. Just browse and add to your basket the products you want delivered, choose your delivery day, pay and then wait for the knock on the door.

Review: Creamline Best of Local Box delivered to your door

I had a good look and what was on offer, then meal planned around that. I was excited that there was a baker, something we don’t really have locally anymore; so I did go a bit wild when ordering bakery products.

Here’s my order for my first box…

Review: Creamline Best of Local Box delivered to your door

The meat products are what I usually buy from the butchers who supply Creamline anyway. The meat were the most expensive part of my order; we ate some straight away and I put the rest in the freezer for another day. I always think it’s better to buy good quality meat and eat a little less of it, than cheap, low quality meat.

The bread, rolls and bakes were incredibly quality. I’m so used to bland supermarket bread that just some toast made with the bloomer was a real treat. If you order the Best of Local Box, them it’s well worth stocking up on this gorgeous bread. I can also highly (HIGHLY) recommend the millionaires flapjack, which was superb.

The fruit and veg come daily from Manchester’s Smithfield Market. It was as fresh as could be. The watermelon lasted for ages and made one boy very happy (watermelon is his favourite thing).

I really loved my Creamline Best of Local Box. I knew everything was made within a few miles of my home, by local people who really care about the quality of what they produce. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would order and will order in the future.

Review: Creamline Best of Local Box delivered to your door

I think that sometimes when you order a food box, you’re not really sure where the food has come from and what kind of quality it will be. I already shop with a number of the shops who supply the Creamline Best of Local boxes; so it’s just a more convenient way for me to shop, without the bother of carrying it home. It’s delivered to my door, well packed, free of charge and by a cheery person.

The box is no more expensive that going from local shop to local shop. It’s great quality and I feel like I’m still doing my “shop local” bit to help my high street.

They’ve even got a discount code on their website right now if you want to try it out for yourself!

For more information about the Best of Local Box, visit the Creamline website.

We reviewed the Creamline fruit and veg box a few years ago, you can read about that here.

Disclosure: I was given a Creamline Best of Local box for review purposes. All images and opinions are my own.

Review: A Creamline Dairies Fresh Veg Box

Living in Manchester my local dairy is Creamline Dairies. They offer doorstep deliveries of milk as well as a large range of other products. One of their newest offerings is a fresh veg box delivery and I was keen to give it a try.

I’ve previously tried veg boxes from most of the big veg box companies, but they just send you a selection of what they’ve got, rather than allowing you to pick and choose what you want and need. With the Creamline Dairies veg box you can choose what fruit, veg and herbs you need, add them to your box, choose your delivery date and as long as your order is over £10 they will deliver it to your door.

For the purposes of this review, they sent me a selection of the most popular fruit and veg. My box included – salad leaves, mushrooms, carrots, new potatoes, peppers, radishes, onions, tomatoes, apples, oranges, grapes and raspberries. They were well packed and presented in a sturdy cardboard box.

As it was delivered on one of the hottest days of the year, we decided a BBQ was in order so we set to work making use of some of our lovely fresh veg. It was all really good quality. I couldn’t fault the freshness of any of the ingredients. In fact the tomatoes were probably amongst the best I’d ever had.

Creamline Dairies

We made use of the salad leaves and made some veggie kebabs with the peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes. For pudding I made use of the raspberries and grapes and added some strawberries I had in the fridge and made a chocolate sauce to dip the fruit in. That was incredibly popular.

Creamline Dairies

Over the next few days I used all of the fruit and veg we’d been sent. It was great to have a fridge full of good quality fruit and veg which didn’t have too many food miles and had as much as possible been gown locally.

I think milkmen (and women) have had a tough time of things lately, and if I could step on my soapbox for a minute, I’m very much in favour of supporting local dairies and in turn, supporting local farmers and food producers who are feeling the squeeze. Eating food which hasn’t come far, is great for the local economy and also helps to give me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

I really like that Creamline Dairies offer not only milk, but also fruit and veg and the full range of groceries, all with free delivery. As someone who doesn’t drive and can’t really carry bags of heavy shopping, this is a real godsend and I know that I’ll be using this service in the future. I couldn’t fault the produce or the service and I fully support the local ethos behind it.

For more information about Creamline Dairies and their veg boxes visit their website.

We are sent our first veg box for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.