Well, I think it’s clear we don’t have pineapples growing locally or picked from a tree just a few fields away like many of our ingredients – but this rum glazed pineapple is just too good not to share, and a firm favourite pudding cooked over the flames.
This is a nice light way to finish a big feast around the fire, with a little clotted cream and some crushed ginger nut biscuits to just pull everything together nicely.
1 pineapple
175g light soft brown sugar
100ml The Gin Kitchen Resurrection spiced rum
2 limes
50g gingernut biscuits
Small tub clotted cream
1 bunch thyme
Handful of common sorrel leaves
Prepping
Let’s start by preparing our pineapple – first, we need to cut the base of the pineapple to give us a nice safe foundation to cut from. With the pineapple standing up begin slicing away the rind making sure to keep the green top intact. You will notice as you cut away the rind that the pineapple has little eyes or depressions, this is fine and we will deal with these in a minute, but don’t be tempted to cut deeper as you will just waste perfectly edible pineapple!
Basting
I’m a bit of a rum fiend and our good friends over at The Gin Kitchen in Dorking amongst making some delicious gin also produce two amazing rums, perfect for sipping neat. Today we are going to use their Resurrection Rum which is a rich, smooth subtly spiced golden rum, double distilled in the Surrey Hills and aged in seasoned local oak.
To make the glaze, place the sugar, Resurrection rum, lime zest and juice into a small saucepan. Place the saucepan over a medium heat and slowly bring to the simmer, stir to dissolve the sugar and set aside.
To apply the baste to our pineapple we are going to make a basting brush. Take a small length of hazel around the thickness of your thumb and shave the bark from around a third of the stick. Place the freshly shaved piece of hazel into the fire to char lightly. This just helps to remove any nasties and loose dirt from the stick.
Take the bunch of thyme and use a length of string to to tie the thyme around the shaved end of the stick, this is going to be our basting brush, you could use rosemary if you liked but it is a stronger flavour than thyme.
Cooking
Once marinaded in lots of sugar and rum the pineapple will just want to burn, so the key to today’s cook is indirect heat. This will help the pineapple to cook through but it will also allow the glaze to gently caramelise slowly creating sweet, rum spiked layers as it spins just above the fire.
We have a nice bed of coals and a few logs for a little flame and smoke, as the pineapple will be hanging we need the heat to be a little higher so that we aren’t just cooking the base of our pineapple.
Use a meat hook to pierce the green woody tops of the pineapple. Hang the pineapple around a foot away from the fire and place a skillet underneath it. The skillet is going to catch the glaze as it drips from the pineapple.
Use the thyme basting brush to start applying the glaze, repeat this every 10-15 minutes to create a nice sticky glaze. As the pineapple cooks we need to turn it every now and again, this is going to help it cook nice and evenly.
Cook the pineapple until it’s tender. Remove it from the heat and place onto a chopping board and leave it to cool slightly.
To Serve
Cut thin slices from the pineapple and lay over a nice wide platter. Drizzle over any leftover glaze or reduced glaze from the skillet which was below the pineapple as it cooked.
Take a large spoon and place it into a little pot of warm water. Take a large scoop of clotted cream and place it in the centre of the platter.
We source our clotted cream from Libby’s Larder who have produced Surrey’s first clotted cream using milk from their herd of Holstein Fresian cattle on their family farm. Their clotted cream is incredible, super rich and creamy, with that bright yellow crust you get from perfect clotted cream.
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