Jambon persille with piment d'Espelette

I realised in doing this that the approach of throwing water away after the initial boil serves both to reduce the saltiness of the poaching liquid, but also to avoid having to skim off loads of scum.  This terrine makes a dang good sandwich.

Ingredients

1 ham hock, smoked or not
Water
Stock vegetables, herbs and spices (onion, celery, carrot, bay leaf, thyme etc)
Piment d'Espelette or paprika (mild or hot)
Finely chopped garlic and parsley

Technique

Place the ham in a large saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a simmer, hold it there for 5 minutes then pour into a colander. Run cold water over the ham to wash off any clinging scum.  Likewise clean out the saucepan.  Now return ham to pan, add more water and stock veg, and bring again to a simmer. 

Skim off any scum that does arise, adjust the heat, or coveredness of the pan, over the course of half an hour so that only a gentle stream of bubbles is occurring.  Hold at this point for circa 1.5 hours.

Fish the ham and vegetables out.  If there is a lot of fat on the surface of the liquid, lift it off with kitchen paper.  Now reduce the liquid until it is lightly syrupy and very salty, but not unbearably so.

Flake the meat.  Brush the inside of a terrine with oil and line with cling film (optional). Layer up the meat with piment, garlic and parsley between layers.  Pour over the reduced liquid slowly, to fill the terrine. 

Improvise some kind of compression platform, for example using cardboard wrapped in tin foil.  Place this on top of the meat in the terrine and place a light weight on top e.g. a full tin can or two.  Leave like this in the fridge overnight and then it's ready.  The weight can be removed and the flavour will improve over several days.