Ham-as-Bread Sandwich

Tonight I had to work a bit late, so I was thinking of what to do with what was on hand. With two fresh ham steaks in the fridge I figured I'd save one and fold the other with some stuffing into a sort of ham calzone. But it turned out there were some lovely bones and fat that I didn't want to get rid of, but that would make it hard if not impossible to adequately flip into a nice calzone shape. So I decided on a ham sandwich. For the bread, two nice ham steaks. This will last us tonight and tomorrow (I hope!) , so I'm saying "serves 4". The cabbage half is blanched already - was leftover from this year's CSA abundance.

The first picture shows the ham steaks, and you can see why I couldn't just fold or roll them up! Next is the "open face" stage - one ham steak and the stuffing, with one of the cabbage wedges thrown in for interest. The third is before I added pepper but otherwise as it was when it went into the oven - second steak on top and other wedge fitted into the pan.

Courtney's Ham-as-Bread Sandwich
Serves 4

2 ham steaks (see picture for approximate size)
1/2 medium onion
1 large stalk celery
1 large mushroom
3 sprigs parsley
1T tomato paste
1/2 c water
3/8 c pecan meal
spices to taste
50 g shred swiss or similar cheese (I used a locally-made smoked swiss)
1/2 small head of cabbage (see picture for approximate size of each quarter)
Lard for greasing the square pan and frying

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease an appropriately-sized baking dish (mine was 8" square) with lard.

If you aren't using put-aside cabbage, take 2 quarters of a small head of cabbage and blanch (steam, don't boil) for 5 minutes.

Dice the onion and celery and mushroom fairly small (1/4" or so). Chop the parsley medium-fine. Mix the tomato paste and water.

In a heavy frypan, saute the onion. When soft, add the celery. When soft, add the mushroom. When soft, add the parsley. Saute 15 seconds more and add the tomato paste and water. Season to taste (sage, marjoram, cayenne, a bit of cinnamon, whatever. Be creative). Turn off heat.

Put one slice of ham in the dish. Spoon the mixture from the frypan over. Sprinkle half the cheese on top.

Put the other slice of ham on top. Arrange the cabbage quarters on the side. Distribute the rest of the cheese over. Salt and pepper to taste (I used pepper but no salt because of the cheese)

Bake for 40 minutes.

Cut ham steak into quarters so that each portion has the same amount of meat. Allow people to fight over fat and bones. Cut the wedges in half. Divide among 4 plates and serve.

The picture shows it out of the oven. The top steak especially has plumped up nicely and is a wonderful medium-rare (no, you don't have to cook the you-know-what out of pork).

And it was a definite success. The smoked swiss nicely complemented the ham flavor and because there was only 50g total it didn't end up like a bad case of French onion soup (i.e. a down comforter of cheese smothering the heck out of everything else). The stuffing was a little on the delicate side - I think next time I'd use a little more and also a bit more spice, but that's really quibbling.

I'm a big fan of pecan meal over bread crumbs, but I think bread crumbs would have been fine and would have had the added advantage that if you'd used them (or maybe some millet) to soak up the ham juices it would have made a sort of bonus stuffing.

Leftover possibility: I added some panko and some frozen peas to the liquid left in th e bakind dish, and it was enough to make two really good main lunch dishes for Phil's bento.