Oh, the wonders of Christmas ham, served as a centrepiece of the Christmas table! Glazed with ginger, pineapple, or thyme. Decorated with red and green maraschino cherries. It’s mouth-watering on Christmas Day. Delicious on Boxing Day. All right on Day 3. By Day 4, you don’t want to look at it. Fortunately, you can simply slice it and freeze it. When a few weeks pass, and you feel like ham again, you can use it in these simple dishes.
(All these recipes work well with leftover Christmas turkey, too!)
Red & green soup
Makes: 4
Time: 10 minutes prep + 30 minutes cooking
Ingredients
- 3 tins diced tomatoes
- 6 green capsicums
- 4 cups diced ham
- 1 teaspoon chopped garlic
- 1 teaspoon salt
Method
- Open the tins and decant the tomatoes into a large pot.
- Throw in the ham.
- Slice and add the capsicums.
- Add the spices.
- Bring to the boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer for another 20 minutes.
- Serve with grainy bread rolls or sourdough bread.
Savoury pikelets
Makes: 4
Time: 10 minutes prep + 10 minutes cooking
Ingredients
- 1 teaspoon oil
- 3 cups leftover potatoes and cooked vegetables (carrots, peas, corn, pumpkin, kumara)
- 2 eggs
- 2 Tablespoons flour
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon dry oregano
- 1 cup grated cheese
Method
- Mash all your potato and cooked vegetables.
- Add the eggs, flour, paprika, oregano and salt. Blend into a uniform mass.
- Stir in the cheese.
- Heat the oil in a large pan.
- Spoon the pikelet batter into the hot pan to form little pikelets. Allow to cook for 30 seconds, then flip over with a spatula and cook for another 20 seconds.
Ham omelette
Makes: 4
Time: 10 minutes prep + 10 minutes cooking
Ingredients
- 8 eggs
- 1 teaspoon oil
- 2 cups diced ham
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 tin green peas
- ½ cup grated cheese
Method
- Heat the oil in a large pan.
- Meanwhile, beat the eggs and the paprika in a large bowl until the yolks and whites combine totally.
- Pour the egg into the hot pan. Allow to cook for a minute, then use a spatula to lift the edges of the omelette and allow the liquid egg to flow underneath.
- Repeat until there is no more liquid egg. The top of the omelette will look moist – that’s good.
- Sprinkle one half of the omelette with cheese.
- Throw the ham on top of the cheese.
- Drain the peas and pour them on top of the ham.
- Fold the empty half over the cheese-ham-and-pea half.
- Remove from the heat.
- Serve on lettuce leaves with seed loaf on the side.
Faster-than-takeaway pizza
Makes: 4
Time: 5 minutes prep + 10 minutes cooking
Ingredients
- 2 large ready-made pizza bases
- 2 sachets pizza paste
- 3 cups diced ham
- 2 cups grated cheese (mozzarella or edam)
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C.
- Spread the pizza paste over the bases.
- Add the ham.
- Sprinkle the cheese.
- Bake for 10 minutes until the cheese melts.
- Serve with salad.
Sweet fingers
Time: 10 minutes prep + 1 hour cooking
Ingredients
- 6 slices bread
- 6 teaspoons butter
- 6 teaspoons cinnamon
- 3 teaspoons sugar
Method
- Preheat the oven to 100oC.
- Butter each slice of bread. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.
- Cut the bread slices into thin strips.
- Arrange on a baking tray lined with baking paper.
- Bake for an hour to dry them out.
Salty fingers
Time: 10 minutes prep + 1 hour cooking
Ingredients
- 6 slices bread
- 5 teaspoons olive oil
- 2 teaspoons dry oregano
- ½ teaspoon salt
Method
- Preheat the oven to 100ºC.
- Cut the bread slices into thin strips.
- Arrange on a baking tray lined with baking paper.
- Drizzle with olive oil, oregano and salt.
- Bake for an hour to dry them out.
- Serve on their own or with a dip.
leftover potatoes
Leftover potatoes are a nuisance. They don’t keep in the fridge longer than a day or two, and when reheated, they taste … well, reheated. Freezing them is even worse, unless you’re planning to make mash, because in addition to the reheated taste, defrosted potatoes feel quite grainy in the mouth.
So, what to do? If you have to reheat them, grill them in the oven with a tablespoon of olive oil and a teaspoon of herbs, bake them with grated cheese, or make pikelets.
leftover bread
Leftover bread is a problem year-long, but especially after Christmas. Even the ducks at the local park seem to have had enough (and the latest scientific research warns against feeding bread to birds, anyway).
too many strawberries
If you find yourself with too many Christmas strawberries in danger of over-ripening, you can use them up in a:
- smoothie
- strawberry tart
- strawberry mousse
- strawberry juice (zap them in a blender, pour into a large jug, add many ice cubes and serve).
By Yvonne Eve Walus
