Ham-Burger - 9/30/2007

I had a good deal of extra ham steak, so I decided to make another type of ham sandwich. This one is more traditional American in inspiration. I found mini square bagels from Thomas' in the grocery store. They were too cool and different to pass up. I grilled the ham the same way as yesterday and put it on the bagel. In hindsight, it may have been better to toast the bagel a bit to add some stability, but it was fine without doing that too. I sliced up some tomato and added pre-chopped lettuce (you can see the bag in the background). On the top part of the bagel, I smeared on some honey mustard. Around holiday time, this could also be good with some cranberry sauce added to it. Since these bagels are not so mini, I did not make a side dish. Otherwise I would have exploded.

Hawaiian Hammy Sammy - 9/29/2007

I had the hankering to make some sort of sandwich using ham steaks and one of my favorite pairings with ham (especially on pizza) is pineapple. I put together the details for this sandwich and side dish based on that.


Originally, I thought about putting the sandwich on a large honey wheat bun, but then I was struck by inspiration: Hawaiian rolls. Each person would receive three mini-sammies. I cut up the ham steak into roll-sized pieces then pan friend them with butter. On top of that is a piece of pineapple. For an extra boost of flavor, I used an orange glaze that I parasitized from Tyler Florence. For decoration, I used another chunk of pineapple because I forgot I had bought a starfruit. I wanted to put a slice of starfruit at an angle on top of each sammy, but I guess I'll have to do it next time.


On the side, I have rice with some cashews and raisins mixed in for that extra tropical island flare. I like my nuts crunchy and as these absorbed liquid, they became a bit more chewy, but it still tasted good and went well with the sammies.

PB&J Bars - 9/14/2007

My goal for this was to make a dessert that looked like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I wanted to find a peanut butter brownie recipe to use so that they would be dense enough, but I could not find anything. I ended up using a Paula Deen recipe for Peanut Butter Cake. I doubled the peanut butter and reduced the shortening accordingly, and the result was a large moist cake. I wanted to make all of the bars at once originally, so I sliced the cake in half at this point. The cake was so moist and my cutting skills are so underdeveloped that I ended up with uneven slices in some areas. I cut the cake into large squares and spread a healthy layer of strawberry jelly between each layer. To mimic the look of PB&J sandwiches, I cut each large square into two straight or triangular halves and served them in pairs. Despite the extra peanut butter, the flavor of the cake was very mellow. The next time I make this, I will definitely have to change that since PB is one of my favorite foods on earth. ;-) Below is an extreme closeup.