Surely this should be in Tower Hamlets...?

A couple of weeks back it was reported on the excellent Londonist website that the City of London will soon be gaining another high-rise office block. This wouldn't be particularly news-worthy anywhere, let alone on this blog, were it not for the current fad for giving new London buildings a nickname based on their shape. We already have the Gherkin, the Cheesegrater and the Walkie-Talkie, and this new building will give us the "Can of Ham".

Although officially to be known as 60-70 St Mary Axe, the designs by Foggo Architects do indeed bear an uncanny (sorry) resemblance to a tin of ham standing on its end, which as Londonist points out is perhaps a little unfortunate given its proximity to the Bevis Marks Synagogue just across the street. But luckily the nearest tube station will be Aldgate - on the Hammersmith and City Line (sorry again).

 

* (there's that asterisk that isn't an asterisk again)

In terms of me keeping up my new year's plan of being a lot more on the ball and up-to-the-minute with the blog, writing about a news item that was announced a couple of weeks back isn't too bad. Don't be too impressed though, as the story reminded me of yet another tin that I had tried ages ago, and never got round to writing up. A tin of ham, of course - Tesco Finest* Danish Ham, no less - which you will note from the photo has "New!" emblazoned on the front. It most certainly wasn't new by the time I opened it though - in fact it was out-of-date, and from what I could tell from the Tesco website, no longer available for purchase. Whoops. Anyway, now seems the perfect opportunity to tell you all about it.

A huge, skyscraper of a tin

I'm amazed actually that I hadn't tried it sooner than I did - as tins go, it's pretty exciting. I mean, just look at it. A pear-shaped tin. It is unbelievably retro. This type of ham is formed from different cuts of the pig, so could in theory be made into any shape you care to think of. I suppose that making it pear-shaped was originally an attempt at making the ham look natural, like a gammon steak, or a cut from a joint of meat, and the tins were then made to fit the shape of the ham. Perhaps consumers were once fooled by this, but surely not in this day and age - we all know that ham doesn't really look like that. Or at least I hope we all do.

Also, in an age where most tins have a ring-pull to get into them, almost rendering tin-openers completely useless, to come across one which has a key to open it is quite a treat, even if it is potentially quite dangerous. I say that as everyone seems to know a horror story about someone who has drawn blood/severed an artery/lost a finger on the incredibly sharp sides of an open tin of corned beef, which is the only other tinned product I know of that still seems to use this old-fashioned method to get into it.

With a far larger circumference than your average tin of corned beef though, opening up the ham was no mean feat. I almost came unstuck on the home straight, when the strip of metal that winds round the key as you open the tin started to unravel. Fortunately however I was able to rescue it without slicing off any of my digits on the open sides of the tin, and then prised off the top to reveal the big chunk of meat sitting in the base.

Like the tinned turkey breast that made up part of my Christmas dinner, the ham seemed to be coated in a lot of very salty gelatine, much of which I discarded as it really wasn't very appetising. I hacked off a small chunk from the ham itself, which tasted much like the slices of reformed ham you can buy in packets, but with a bit more of a real gammon-like texture to it, given its thickness.

Everything you could (n)ever want to
do with tinned pineapple...

With such a large piece of ham, I didn't really want to subject myself to days of plain old ham sandwiches. Given the delightful retro feel of the product though, I felt it necessary to do something equally "old-school" with the ham - and what could be more so than a baked ham...with pineapple and cherries, a photo of which I had recently seen on the cover of an old cookbook. Naturally, I had tins of both fruits in my stash, so cracked them open, pitted the cherries and started to adorn the ham with them.

Into a hot oven it went, and twenty minutes later came out, the pineapple looking browned and caramelised, the cherries slightly shrivelled, and a sweet-salty, sticky mess baked onto the tray, presumably a mixture of the remaining gelatine and the juice/syrup from the fruit. With a splash of boiling water I was able to turn this into a sort of gravy - a restaurant would probably call it a 'reduction', or maybe a 'jus', but I'm not sure I'd go that far.


The ham itself didn't appear to have been altered much by its time in the oven, but I think I preferred it warm. With some pineapple and cherries, a few boiled potatoes and some spinach, it made for quite a tasty meal, especially with a good drizzle of the gravy stuff over the top of it.

And there was still plenty of the ham left for a few sandwiches - including a Hawaiian pizza-style one with the remaining pineapple, and, of course, one with Gherkin and one with Grated Cheese, in honour of the proposed 'Can of Ham' building's tall neighbours.