Lyon & Burgundy · Starter
Jambon Persillé de Bourgogne
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with fresh herbs arguing happily on top, aromatics blooming from the first bite, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 1.2 kg unsmoked salted ham hock, on the bone
- 1 pig's trotter, split
- 500 ml Bourgogne Aligoté
- 1 onion stuck with 2 cloves
- 1 carrot
- green of 1 leek
- bouquet garni of thyme, bay and parsley stalks
- 10 white peppercorns
- 80 g flat parsley leaves
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste with salt
- 2 shallots, chopped very fine
- 20 ml white wine vinegar
- 2 leaves gelatine, only if the test spoon will not set
- coarse black pepper
The skills inside
Brining & curingThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilStraining & passing through a sieveSkimming: foam, fat and a clear broth
Allergen screen
Found: alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Soak the hock in cold water overnight, changing it twice, to pull the cure back out; the last water should taste barely salty.
- Cover hock and trotter with the wine and enough water to submerge, add vegetables, bouquet and peppercorns, and simmer at a bare tremble, skimming, until the meat pulls from the bone under a fork, about 3 h. 180 min
- Lift out the meat. Strain the stock, boil it down to about 600 ml and chill a spoonful on a cold plate: it must set firm enough to hold a fingerprint. Only if it stays slack, soften the gelatine and whisk it in.
- Tear the warm ham into coarse shreds with some of its fat, discarding rind and bone. Let the stock cool to a thick syrup, then stir in the parsley chopped at the last moment, the garlic, shallots, vinegar and pepper.
- Pack meat and green jelly into a terrine in alternating spoonfuls so the parsley marbles rather than layers, press lightly, and chill overnight until firm. Cut in thick slices and serve with pickles and bread.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes
- It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
- The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
- Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
- The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
- Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.
Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.
Brining & curing 88 recipes
- Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
- The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
- The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
- Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
- Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.
Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.