Hawaiian Baked Rice

1 cup sliced ham, chopped
1 cup pineapple chunks
1 cup rice
1 cup pineapple juice
1 cup water/broth
1 cup pizza sauce
mozzarella, to taste
salt and pepper

Lightly brown the ham in an oven safe pot (wide/shallow is best), transfer it to a bowl then add the juice/water or broth. Cook the rice, then add the pineapple, ham and stir, reserving some of the ham and pineapple for topping if you want. Spread the pizza sauce on top. Put the cheese on top, as much as you like, and the toppings. Bake at 425 until just browned. Eat.

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Love this, it's so easy and spectacular. I got the idea when I read this post from Noob Cook (got idea=stole idea). It couldn't be simpler and it's wicked good. Wiffy uses cream of mushroom soup instead of pizza sauce, which I'm sure is lovely, but I wanted to make it more pizza-y so I used sauce. I don't see any reason that you couldn't use other things instead. You could use gravy and make it like Hawaiian haystacks, I bet that would be good. Or maybe a garlicky white sauce. Whatever floats your boat. So, shall we? Lets.

First, I took my ham and fried it up a bit. Gives it a little color and also adds some fond for extra flavor to the rice. Then I added the juice and water and let it come to a boil. Then the rice. Wiffy used a rice cooker, but I don't have one. Plus this way it's all done in one pot which makes for easier clean up, which is always good. Then reduce the heat, cover and simmer until done. Mix in most of the ham and pineapple, leave some out for topping if you like. Next, sauce. Spread that stuff around. Then cheese and toppings. Mmm, cheese. I don't care for bagged shredded mozzarella but I also hate shredding it myself. So I don't usually bother, I just chop it up. Much easier and it works just fine. Now into the hot oven until brown and delightful. Doesn't it look good? Yes it does.

Now another part of the recipe that I changed from Wiffy's is she added garlic to the rice. I didn't because my pizza sauce is pretty garlicky, but there's nothing stopping you from doing it. Hell, there's nothing stopping you from changing it up however you like. This here is a concept, not an absolute and don't let anyone tell you not to experiment. If you need ideas, stay tuned. I'm going to be making more baked rice, I enjoyed it very much.

Unplanned Silence

Sorry I've been so distant lately. It's not you, it's me. It's not that I've found something new, it's just.... Well, it's the fact that the computer that has all my pictures on it is in another town and I can't find my frigging camera. Plus I haven't been doing much cooking lately, too busy trying to find an apartment and sort out all that big life change crap.

So, here is the only food picture I have on my brothers computer. It's a turkey, ham, coleslaw and potato chip sandwich on wheat. It was wicked good, really, although I should have toasted the bread. Actually, the coleslaw is the best, I'll have to do a post on it when I find my camera.

Camera Cleanup #7

Found some shots of this years Christmas dinner, which was as always, wicked good. My sister in law does the lions share of the cooking, which usually features classic brown sugar/mustard glazed ham with pineapple and cherries. Good times and killer sandwiches later.

This year she made this awesome pumpkin cake with a chocolate glaze. The glaze was like a ganache and it was also wicked good.

Then there's these. These are called Holiday Bacon Appetizers and they're from Ree, the illustrious Pioneer Woman. It's bacon, crackers and cheese all heated and crisped and fatty and stuff. Look, they're rich enough that even she only makes them for the holidays. That should tell you something. Something good.

WTF, Ham Salad.

No, that's not what it's called, it's more my reaction to said salad. See, I had never had ham salad before I made this and I have to say for something that is loaded with stuff I like I really wasn't impressed. Although it might have been my fault, which is why I'm asking you, my readers, for help. Perhaps I should start from the beginning.

I had a chunk of ham and I wanted to make salad out of it. So I did. I looked up several recipes, realized it was just like any other mayo based salad and just kind of whipped it up. It had mayo, mustard, pickles, some chunks of cheese, you know, good stuff like that. And it was way, way too rich.

I don't know if I added too much mayo, if I should have put the ham in a food processor to make the chunks smaller (I cubed it originally) or what but it was just too rich. I do think part of it is that I used too much mayonnaise. When I make chicken salad I expect the chicken to absorb a certain amount of it, but ham doesn't seem to do that so I miscalculated how much I needed a bit. I think. I also might have wanted to use a less smokey ham, the one I used was pretty strong. So, does anyone have a good recipe for ham salad? I want to not let one bad experience with it ruin it for me, but damn, it just wasn't very good.

A Sandwich of Substance

It's serious business. Want to know what's in it? Ha! Did you think it would be that easy? That I'd just tell you? Well, I'll do better than that, I'll show you.

It starts with two boiled baby red potatoes. If you look closely, you'll be able to tell from that picture that I'm an idiot. I completely forgot about my little potatoes boiling in my little pot and they ran out of water. Heh. Fortunately crash hot potatoes are very forgiving and that is what we're making with these. See I had just those two 'tatoes left and I couldn't think of a better use for them. Next you fry some ham. You could use deli ham, but this is leftover Easter ham so it's nice and thick and smokey. Good times. Then you toast a nice, big, soft roll in the same pan. So far so good. Now we fry an egg and saute some onions. At some point the potatoes are going to be almost ready, so you need to pull them out and put some cheese on there. Whatever kind you like, I used cheddar because that's what I had. Pop them back in the oven to melt it and we're ready to assemble. First, a little mustard, because mustard is good with all this stuff. Then, the ham. Now the cheesy potatoes. Then the onion. Next the egg, with the yolk broken and swished around. That's an important step. And now some lettuce. See, not only does lettuce add great texture, but it has such a low calorie content that you actually burn more calories eating it than you get from it. Or so I've been told. Which means when you add lettuce to things you're actually taking calories away. I'm sure there's a study somewhere verifying this, but I'm a busy man and don't have time to look it up.

So there you have it, a big ol' sandwich. The only problem I had was I have no idea what to call it.

Western Stuffed French Toast

Omelets are hard for me to make. I've complained about it before. So when I had a craving for a western omelet I decided to make stuffed french toast instead, since it's quite a bit easier. Now I've also covered stuffed french toast before, but this time I have a trick to share that makes the savory ones a little easier. Let's just dive right in here.

First off, western omelet fixings. That would be ham, peppers and onion, often cheese. Now you want to prep your bread a bit by topping two slices with some cheese. You want it on both sides, it's going to be what keeps this from being a huge mess. What kind of cheese is up to you, but I think cheddar is the best for eggs. Now, brown up some diced ham. You want it fairly small, big chunks will be more prone to falling out. Once the ham is starting to brown toss in some diced onion, again diced small. You also want some finely diced peppers, but when you add them depends on how soft you like them. The earlier you add them the softer they'll be. Mine were frozen, so they were going to be squishy no matter what. Now here's the trick, while the filling is still hot put it on one piece of the bread then top it with the other. Press it gently and let it sit for a minute or so. This will melt the cheese just enough so when you dip it in the egg it doesn't go all flopping around, spilling the filling everywhere. Which is what you do, on both sides. Now you just cook it in a medium hot skillet, I used the same one I made the filling it since it had enough grease left from that, until brown on both sides. And that's that. Western stuffed french toast. This was wicked good kids, I highly recommend it.

Ham and Corn Quiche

filling:
3 eggs
1 1/2 cup of whipping heavy cream
1/2 tsp of salt
1/4 tsp of pepper
1/2 cup diced ham
1/4 cup corn

Whisk everything together.


for the crust

1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup olive oil or canola oil
1/4 cup ice water (I use refrigerated water)


Mix flour and salt. Beat oil and water with whisk or fork to thicken. Pour into flour and mix with fork. Press into 9" pie crust. Fill with quiche mixture and bake at 400F until done.

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Ok, this was my very first time making a quiche. And I re-learned a valuable lesson. Just because something gets good reviews on the internet doesn't mean it will be good to eat. This crust sucked. I hate to be so harsh, but it really did. It just tasted like olive oil and made the whole quiche taste funny and greasy and was wicked squishy. Not what I was looking for at all. If I had replaced the olive oil with butter and prebaked it a bit it would have had some promise, but I think next time I might just make pie crust (what I was trying to avoid, for time reasons) and have done with it. It's also possible that I did something wrong, it sure wouldn't be the first time. Heh. I got the crust recipe from Recipezaar and it's the first time I've gotten something I didn't like from there. Oh well, it's bound to happen eventually. The egg part was good, but very soft. I seem to remember quiche being a little firmer. Next time I think I will cut the cream down and add another egg. But here is what I did anyway, you know, for educational purposes.

First I made the crust. Flour, salt and I also added some mustard powder and black pepper, but you couldn't taste it at all in the final product. Then I whisked together the water and oil till it looked, oddly enough, like egg. Mixed it all together and got a chunk of dough that was pretty easy to spread out into my tart pan. I finished off shaping it with a glass. Then I grabbed the cup and a half of cream. Shuddered a bit and added the salt, pepper and eggs. Then I realized there was no way I could whisk it in the measuring cup so I poured it into a bowl and whisked it in there. Added the ham and corn, mixed it around and poured it into the shell. Baked it at 400 for half an hour or so and there it was. Looked good, although I don't know if quiche is supposed to brown so much. The crust looked good, held it's shape well and didn't stick (gasp). But it made the whole thing taste like olive oil and pretty much nothing else. So I might try it again with butter instead of olive oil if I ever need a quiche wicked quickly, but next time I think I'm just going to make a pie crust. Or use phyllo. Spryte suggested over at Bakespace using slices of muenster cheese for the bottom. That sounds good too. I'll do one of those, and before too long.