14. Ham Rolls with Pecans

Quickie weeknight meal!

For this I used the leftover Canadian Bacon/ham from the Filled Omelet brunch a few days before. There’s no reason to waste perfectly good ham, am I right?

I also liked the name of this dinner because ham rolls makes me think of Pork Roll a.k.a. Taylor Ham, which is one of the finer things to come out of northern New Jersey. Well, aside from the Manzo, Giudice, and Gorga families. Speaking of which, I think that Joe & Melissa Gorga are well and good (their penchant for hats and beanies is fantastic yet inexplicable) but they are no replacement for the divine craziness that is Danielle Straub, the prostitution whore to end all prostitution whores.

But I digress. I want to talk about Pork Roll. Since I am from Pittsburgh, I never knew about Taylor Ham until I was with my ex (a Jerseyite). They sell it throughout NJ and NYC, and I hadn’t seen it since I left that part of the country. But lo and behold, do you know where they do have it? The Charles Village Safeway.

Speaking of my Safeway–on the night that I made #14, at 7:35pm, I assembled the relish tray of olives and celery. Cleve isn’t a fan of regular ol’ black olives so I purchased a variety of olives from the Safeway’s olive bar. Yep. They don’t carry veal chops, Canadian bacon, or whole fish, but they have an olive bar. And fucking Pork Roll. Weird. Weird. Weird. Damn, the next time I go to the Safeway, I’m gonna have to get myself some pork roll. Yum.

7:40pm  I wanted this to be as easy as possible so I went the canned yam route. I drained half of the canned yam sauce and put the other half in a small saucepan with the yams, some light butter, and brown sugar. I didn’t turn the burner on yet, but later I cooked it down and it became all yammy smushy glazey globby goodness.

7:45 I took the cooked ham and, per DiS! directions, rolled them up, pinned them with toothpicks, and brushed them with cider vinegar. I followed by sprinkling them with light brown sugar (I don’t have dark in my kitchen).

7:50 I put the chopped pecans into the hot oil to toast.

7:55 Cleve arrived at home so he leant a hand and washed and cut the fresh broccoli. While he was doing that I put the ham rolls in the pecan oil and browned them.

8:05 I put the yams on (this is when the aforementioned syrupy yammy goodness happened) and the broccoli was dunked in the boiling water. The nuts, boiling water, sherry were added to the ham to cook down.

Sooooo about 10 or so minutes later I plated, squeezed fresh lemon juice and sprinkled salt/pepper on the broccoli. And ta-da!

8:20 Dinner is Served!

So #14’s rolls were more uniform, and not as brown, and the yams weren’t as mushy but this isn’t bad. I apologize for the lack of daisies (and I typically have them all over my house!) but the tablecloth is close, right?

Aesthetics aside, this was a win. What’s not to like? Relish tray? Broccoli? Nope. Yams? C’mon. Ham? Ham is delicious. In a pecan/brown sugar glaze? YES. There is not a damn thing wrong with any part of this. And my cooking time was less than an hour.

Dessert was interesting. Well, or not. #14 called for Pineapple Sherbet with Creme De Menthe. It’s an odd combination that I was looking forward to because it sounds a lil’ bit nasty. Mint and pineapple? Huh? I like both separately but together…? Sadly, I wouldn’t get the opportunity to sample pinemintapple because:

1. Discount Liquors only carried Creme De Menthe in the BIG bottle (and it was clear, not green).
2. The Safeway doesn’t offer pineapple sherbet, as they do fancy olives and Taylor Ham.

What to do? What to do? What to do?

Well, me and the young kid who works behind the counter at Charles Village Discount Liquors (we share a love of Fantasy Football) and I brainstormed. What would be a good substitute from the selection they carried in smaller bottles? What would go with pineapple? We decided on Triple Sec (plus, it’s a good staple liquor to have in the house).

As for the sherbet, after going up and down and up and down and up and down the ice cream aisle at Safeway in my futile search for Pineapple Sherbet, I settled on Haagen Dazs Pineapple-Coconut Ice Cream.

I served the ice cream with a side of Triple Sec that could either be imbibed as a shooter or used as an ice cream topping.

Damn was this ice cream good. I am happy to say that we showed some restraint and didn’t eat the entire pint in one sitting. But shit, it required a lot of restraint.

Sadly, I don’t have a photo to accompany the dessert. But to be honest there wasn’t much to photograph. So instead I am going to leave you with this video, which is the antithesis of the goodness that was Pineapple-Vanilla ice cream. It’s bad. So bad. I can’t adequately describe it, but I think that YouTube commenter Kw33N85 said it best with “this is the gayest thing i’ve EVER seen..and im gay..!”

OK. I lied. That was just as good as the Pineapple-Vanilla ice cream. It’s totally bad for me, has no nutritional value whatsoever, and yet there is something about it that I love oh-so-much and I’m eating it up with a spoon.

I miss you, Danielle. Love and light, bitch!