Vietnamese grilled cinnamon ham

Serve as an appetizer or with French bread, or use in any recipe of your creation.

Ingredients:

1 lbs pork loin or pork butt or shoulder, chilled
2 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp ground pepper
2 tbsp vegetable oil
30 ml cold water
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp potato starch (or corn starch)

For garnish:
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp honey
1 tsp oil

Method:

1) In a large bowl, mix together fish sauce, salt, sugar, pepper, oil.

2) Cut pork into 1-inch cubes. Add pork cubes to the liquid mixture, mix well. Then cover with wrap and refrigerate for 5 hours or overnight, or freeze about 1 hour until the meat is extremely chilled without actually freezing it.

3) Take the meat out of refrigerator, using a food processor, grind the meat, add cold water to process easily, working as quickly as possible. Grind about 1 minutes, then cover and return to the refrigerator or freezer, to chill down again. Repeat grinding three times or more until they are very finely ground and always keep it as stiff as possible.
Cover and chill again.

• Do not make the meat become warm if you do not want it tends to be mashed through the grinding plates, turn mushy and lose all of the juice in the meat. You will also notice that once meat has been minced, there is far more surface area for bacteria to develop, which is another good reason to keep it cold.

4) In a small bowl, mix well flour, baking powder and ground cinnamon.
In an other small bowl, mix well the garnish ingredients.

5) Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter an 8-inch square baking pan and line the bottom with parchment paper or wax paper.

6) Transfer ground meat into the bowl of an electric mixer, use paddle attachment, gradually mix on medium speed flour mixture into the ground meat.

7) Scrape the paste into the pan and smooth the top. Brush the garnish mixture on the top.
Bake for approximately 15 minutes. Rotate the pan 180 degrees for even baking and then continue baking for another 10~15 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool. Then slice and serve either hot or cold.
This will keep fresh in the refrigerator for a week, or you can wrap them air-tight and freeze. To reheat, wrap in foil and place in a 300°F oven for 15 minutes.