In Puerto Rico, we usually prepare the ham with pineapple slices and canned cherrys. I like to change the recipe a bit by using one of our most popular fruits, mango, and the drink that is our trade mark around the world, rum.

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

1 smoked precooked smoked ham with bone (10-12 lb)
Cloves
½ cup water

For the glaze

2 cups fresh mango pulp*
1 cup brown sugar
8 oz aged rum
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 stick cinamon
1 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tsp green lemon shavings
1 tsp grated ginger
2 tsp hot pepper flakes
2 tbsp cider wine

Preparation

Pre-heat oven at 325 ºF.

Rinse ham at room temperature to remove the solution that preserves it. Dry with towel paper. Remove excess of grease if necessary, leaving a thin layer of ½ inch and do perpendicular cuts on a diamond shape (rhombus), touching the meat barely. Put a clove on each intersection of the cuts.

On a deep pan, add mango pulp and the other ingredients. Cook over a low heat until it thickens and gets the consistency of glaze, a bit before than caramel. Remove cinamon stick. You can prepare this sauce up to two days beore its use.

Put the ham on a deep metallic recipient in a broiler. Pour water on the bottom. Cook following the instructions of the ham (usually 20-25 minutes per pound).

The last 30 minutes, remove the ham from the oven and cover with glaze with a brush. Continue cooking so it will brown.

Remove from oven. With a meat termomether, check the ham temperature has risen 150 ºF. Let it aside 10-15 minutes and slice.

Heat the sauce and serve together with the sliced ham.

* If you cannot find fresh mango, you can use frozen pulp, although it does not have the same taste. Once unfrozen, cook the pulp 5 minutes to diminish the excess of water, before continuing with the rest of the recipe.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 11.01 am and is filed under Blog, Main Course. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.