Update Angular ngModel of a Select changed by jQuery

I have a 3rd party jQuery application that I have minimal control over, and I cannot and do not want to use anything else, so please don't tell me that I shouldn't do that... so this application make a <select> change to an empty value (that I have control) and I want my AngularJS ngModel to be made aware that jQuery changed that select to another value.

I can't seem to make it to work except using eval() and I seriously don't want to use that so I tried all kind of different solution but nothing is working (apart from eval() as I said). My solution would actually work if my ngModel would be a simple name (name), but it's in fact a complex name (object.name) and so this is were I'm stuck.

var optionObj = $('#selectId').val('');
angular.element(optionObj).triggerHandler('change');    // this fail
angular.element(optionObj).triggerHandler('onchange');  // this doesn't do anything

var scope = angular.element(optionObj).scope();
scope.$evalAsync(function(optionObj) {
    var ngModelAttr = optionObj.attr("ng-model"); // get the ng-model attribute     
    scope[ngModelAttr] = ''; // this does not work with complex object
    scope.user.language = ''; // this work, but since this could be dynamic naming, I can't use this way        

    console.debug(scope.user.language); // not empty 1st attempt, but empty on 2nd solution but is non-dynamic

    // using eval() works but it's dangerous
    eval("scope."+ngModelAttr+"=''");
}(optionObj));    

So from the code that is there, and knowing our Angular looks like the following <select ng-model="user.language">...</select>, how can I advise Angular that jQuery made a change? Again don't forget the fact that I might know it's user.language here, but inside the jQuery application it doesn't know it, so everything has to be dynamically working.

If I use eval then it works, but it's not only ugly but also dangerous...



Also worth to know that I'm using AngularJS 1.3 and that is the reason why I use $evalAsync() instead of $apply()