French leftover ham
"The leftover in a French cook's hand is a precious ingredient to be turned into something exquisitely delicious." Susan Loomis
A new year and a new round of special meals for David which will hopefully stimulate me to try new recipes. Today he gave me the challenge of French leftovers. He did say stir-fry, but that's not very French. So I have discarded that idea. And to be honest the only real leftovers I have in the fridge are the remains of my sort of paella. Also not French and anyway it's already cooked. And short of turning it into arancini (Italian), I think all you can do with it is reheat it really. But then I thought of the remains of the Christmas ham, which I guess is technically a leftover. I wish mine had looked as absolutely delicious as the one above, but alas, as always the glaze was really rather burnt, and so I have to discard that. The ham is OK though. So I settled on ham.
I'm not really sure whether you can count ham as a leftover. I mean it's an ingredient in it's own right isn't it? Ham is already cooked, or cured or smoked so in a sense it's always a leftover. But I guess I did cook it for Christmas, and so if you split hairs, it's a leftover. All of it did not get eaten in its original cooked form. So a substantial amount was left over.
Before I started looking up what I could do, I had in my head some kind of ham fritter. Hachis was a word buzzing around my brain, which vaguely meant minced ham to me, so I thought of fritters. But I don't really think that the French do fritters - it's more a Spanish thing it seems.
Hachis Parmentier however is a genuine French dish, shown on the left. It's a kind of Shepherd's Pie really, and I didn't think it was all that tempting. So no Hachis. Indeed one of the sites I checked described it a children's food.
Before I hit the net I had checked Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's book on leftovers, and whilst he did have suggestions for ham they weren't French. I have also checked a couple of French cook books but not with a lot of joy. I was actually feeling a bit underwhelmed at the whole idea. This was just too much of a challenge for me.
Yes I could cook a quiche, but that's not an original recipe thing - well I could probably search for one but I doubt that they would be very different from what I normally do. We eat quiche a lot. Or ham omelette too, but that's a little difficult to do for four people - my sister and husband are dining with us.
So I hit the net for ideas, and of course there are hundreds, some of which were obvious really and I have no idea why I didn't think of them. Below are some of the ideas that I should have thought of, but which I have discarded for various reasons.
They are croque monsieur and croque madame on the top line - yummy but snack food really, and maybe a bit tricky to cook for four. Ham and cheese cake - not really suitable and ham and potato gratin - well potatoes are not David's favourite food, and really to me it doesn't quite seem like a proper meal. More of an accompaniment. So I have discarded these ideas.
I was tempted by the idea of a soufflé. I've never cooked a soufflé which would make this a prime candidate for a really special meal. But I suspect it might be a bit too eggy for David. He's not that keen on eggs, so I used that as my excuse to again avoid making a soufflé. I think it's really fear of failure that prevents me giving this a try. I should make a resolution to overcome the fear this year.
Then there's soup. I am not quite sure that there is really a French soup that features ham but I did find a recipe for a very delicious looking version of French onion soup. For a while there this was going to be my meal of the day, but then I looked at the recipe in detail and found that I needed 5lbs of onions which is a lot of onions, and I currently don't have a lot of them. Besides it involved lengthy caramelising of the onions. I might make it some other time though. There are also lots of recipes for pea and ham soup of course, but I don't think that's particularly French.
The French are very definitely into sauces and I found a recipe called Jambon au chablis - which is basically slices of ham covered in a creamy tomato sauce, flavoured with chablis.
This also looked very tempting, but I suspect I am down to the scrappier bits of the ham and don't think I would be able to get enough respectable looking slices from the carcass. Jane Grigson had a similar recipe with a different sauce that she had pinched from Elizabeth David - called Saupiquet de Jambon. But I think I have made this in the past. And besides it also needs nice slices of ham.
So what to do? Well I think I have finally settled on stuffed crêpes. There is a Parisian snack food which consists of crêpes wrapped around a slice of ham and cheese, but that's not what I am thinking of here. What I am aiming for are crêpes stuffed with ham and béchamel sauce and maybe some peas and/or silver beet, then heated in the oven with cheese on top. There's sauce, there's crêpes and there's ham. Here is a picture of one recipe I found. I don't think it's quite how I shall make it, but hopefully it will look something like this.
Served with a simple salad it should be good. Mind you almost all of my garden salad which was thriving so well has been burnt to extinction by yesterday's temperatures of 44 degrees. The silver beet suffered too, but I think there is enough to add to the filling. So for the salad I shall just have to return to good old Iceberg.
So ham and the French. A bit of a love affair for them and how on earth could I have forgotten all the ways that they use it. It's not really a leftover though is it?
