My Grandmother’s Ham and Olive Savoury Loaf

My grandmother is a great cook and has many lovely French dishes in her repertoire including this delicious and versatile loaf. Each time I have cooked this for a british audience I have had to encourage people to eat it (savoury cake!!?), but once people start, I never have any left over!

My grandmother serves this as a canapé with generous helpings of Champagne* for aperitif at all family gatherings and it is one of my firm favourites.

*For the family champagne favourite treat yourself to a trip to Mutigny in the Champagne region in France and visit the Serge Humbert vineyard where you can buys great Champagne by the case for between 10-16 euros per bottle. This is the champagne we drank at our wedding and have had rave reviews.

Preparation Time: 20 minutes	Cooks in: 50 minutes	Feeds: 10
Effort: Medium	Price: Cheap

Ingredients:

• 250 grams plain flour
• 4 eggs
• 200 ml vegetable oil
• 150 ml dry white wine
• 1 small glass of vermouth
• 200 grams green olives, stoned
• 200 grams smoked ham or gammon slice (thick slice)
• 150 grams grated gruyere or emmental
• 10 grams baking powder

Method:

Preheat your oven to 200C. Grease or line a medium size loaf tin.
If you are using Gammon, lightly fry, chop and let it cool down completely before using in the recipe.
Mix the flour and whole eggs together until smooth.
Add the oil, the white wine and the vermouth.
Drain the olives well, roughly chop and add to the mix.
Dice the ham or gammon and add to the mix. Ensure this is cooled completely before adding if you cooked this previously.
Add the cheese and mix well with a spatula or a mixer on a low setting.
Lastly mix in the baking powder well with a spatula.

Pour the batter into the loaf tin ensuring you do not fill over to 2/3 the height of the mold. Clean up any spillage so that the loaf rises evenly, and sprinkle a pinch of grated cheese over the loaf. Place in the pre-heated oven and bake for 50 minutes. Insert a skewer to the centre of the loaf and if this comes out clean, your loaf is cooked. Let the loaf cool in the tin and turn out onto a cooling rack. This will be quite dark in colour on the outside and very buttery and yellow inside.

Serving Suggestion:

You can serve this hot or cold. My grandmother likes to serve this by slicing off thick slices and cutting in four, re-heating in a medium oven for 10 minutes and serving or aperitif with bubbly. Guaranteed hit with all. Alternatively it can be served with a light salad or as part of a buffet.

This can be frozen in sections until you are ready to use. Defrost thoroughly before serving.