METHOD

- Buy the best quality 3-5kg bone-in ham that you can find. Free range is definitely best here if you can manage it.
- Carefully remove the skin, leaving the fat layer underneath intact.
- Make a glaze with a cup of apricot jam, a cup of good quality orange juice, a cup of raw sugar and a good slug of your favourite tipple (brandy or rum are our favourites) - blitz this in your food processor to dissolve the sugar a bit.
- Set the oven to 160 degrees celcius.
- Score the fat layer of your ham with 2cm diagonal cuts to form diamond shapes all over the ham. Try not to cut through to the meat layer.
- Dot the intersecting cut lines with whole cloves and sit your ham into a generously sized roasting tray (lined with baking parchment or foil if you hate cleaning up sticky trays).
- Pour over the glaze and put your ham into the oven. Baste every 10 minutes: open the oven and spoon the glaze over the ham.
- After about 45-50 minutes, the ham should be coloured and gorgeous - leave in longer if it is not and keep basting till it is.
- Remove the ham from the oven and transfer to your serving platter.
- Pour any remaining glaze from your roasting pan to a small saucepan and reduce over a medium heat until you have a heavy syrup. Be careful here - you don’t want to turn it to toffee.
- Once thick, pour this over the ham to coat and further glaze - again, be careful, this caramalized syrup has big burn potential.
- Decorate the bone end of your ham with herbs and ribbons to complete your ‘visual symphony’!