Ja cię kocham…

I have so much leftover ham from Christmas Dinner!  I could feed a family of 15 or 20 with the ham that I have left!  This means that it’s time to get creative.  Sure I could just reheat the ham and eat it, but that gets boring by the end of the second day.  I want to feel as if this is an entirely different meal and not just reheated leftovers.

The day after Christmas I made Jay and I homemade biscuits using left over ham.  Boy these were good.  I’m not exactly the best baker in the world, but I managed to bake biscuits while still throwing in ingredients allowing me to feel as if my personality shines through.  Normally when I do this with baking I end up with disastrous results, but not this time!  This time there was much success!!

Ham and Cheddar Biscuits with Lemon and Chives

Yields 12-14 biscuits

Mildly adapted from: Thibeault’s Table

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1 Tbs. baking powder
1 Tbs. paprika (I used smoked paprika)
1-2 Tbs. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
1 cup milk, cream, or buttermilk*
*if using buttermilk add 1/2 tsp. baking soda
zest of 1/4 lemon
handful chives, finely chopped
handful cooked ham, cubed

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Mix the flour with the baking powder, paprika and salt. Cut in butter until it resembles coarse sand.

Add lemon zest, ham, cheese, and chives.  Stir milk or cream in to flour mixture.  Mix quickly with fork until dough comes together. Using hands gently pat the ingredients together. Do not over mix. Pat out to about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick on a lightly floured board. Cut with biscuit cutters and place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and bake for approximately 12 to 15 minutes.

Then you can make a delicious breakfast sandwich out of your biscuits using MORE leftover ham, cheese and eggs!

I love pesto.  Basically anything with basil in it gets a thumbs up from me.  What I never thought about was how versatile pesto is.  Basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, cheese… that was pesto to me.  Oh how I was wrong!   You can change up the pine nuts with walnuts or almonds… change the basil to thyme… throw in red pepper flakes… or even sun-dried tomatoes!

A little bit of this particular pesto goes a long way.  I think I actually made too much.  Because I have so much left over, I’m putting on my chicken, crackers with cheese, on my sandwiches, as a dip for my raw vegetables, and anything else that I can think of.

I’ve cut the recipe in half.  The changes are reflected in the recipe below.

Sun-dried Tomato and Basil Red Pesto

Adapted from 101 Cookbooks

Serves 4

Ingredients:

12 plump, chewy sun-dried tomatoes (about 2 ounces)
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
a couple big pinches of red pepper flakes
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
handful of fresh basil
1/4 cup walnuts or pine nuts, lightly toasted
zest of half a lemon

Directions:

Pulse all ingredients in your food processor until it reaches a crumbled texture.  If you are using the pesto with pasta, add 1/2 cup of the pasta water with 2/3 of the pesto sauce and then add the rest of the pesto to the mixture.  If not, use a small amount of hot water to thin it out.  I suggest gradually adding the water so you can get the consistency that you prefer.

If someone told me that I was only allowed to eat one type of cheese for the rest of my life, as painstakingly awful as this would be, I would definitely choose goat cheese.  When I go out to dinner, if I see something with goat cheese on it – a burger, a salad, a veggie sandwich – I order it.  No questions asked.  Goat cheese is the bomb.

See my Grilled Vegetable, Herb and Goat Cheese Sandwich or my Roasted Rainbow Pepper Sub for other fun things to do with goat cheese.

What I didn’t realize about goat cheese is its low calorie and fat content in comparison to other cheeses – 70 calories per ounce as opposed to 100+ calories per ounce.  Gotta like that!  Another thing that I didn’t realize about goat cheese is that you can put it on PIZZA.  So yummy.  FYI – if you aren’t a goat cheese fan, by all means use YOUR favorite cheese on this pizza.  It doesn’t have to be spreadable; it just needs to be delicious to eat.

If you are going to use goat cheese the only recommendation that I have for this pizza is to spread A LOT of it on the dough.  I don’t think that I had enough because the cheese cracked a lot in some places by the time it was done baking.  It still tasted good, but it could have looked better.  That’s just me.

At first, you may be put off by using a large quantity of goat cheese because of its expense.  If you’re fortunate enough to have a local Trader Joe’s (I know… I’m giving them yet another shout out), you can buy 11 ounces of goat cheese for a few bucks.  In a typical grocery store 4 ounces costs $7!!  I can get almost three times that at Trader Joe’s.   This is also where I get my pizza dough.  For $0.99 I get a big ball of dough!!  Although, I recently discovered a recipe on Oven Love (a food blog of one of my sister’s best friends…) for a quick and easy pizza dough that doesn’t take hours.  I’ll have to try it one of these days!

Lemony Zucchini Goat Cheese Pizza

Source: Smitten Kitchen

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 batch  store-bought pizza dough that will yield one small (approx. 11 to 12 inches across), thin pizza
1 lemon
4 ounces goat cheese, at room temperature
Few leaves of fresh basil, cut into thin slivers
1/2 medium yellow zucchini, sliced as thinly as you can pull off with a knife or your mandoline
1/2 medium green zucchini, sliced as the same as above
Drizzle of olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Roll your pizza dough into a thin 12-inch circle and lay it on a tray or stone that has been dusted lightly with cornmeal.

In a small bowl, stir together the goat cheese with the juice of half your lemon. Season it with salt and freshly ground pepper, and spread it over your pizza dough. Scatter fresh basil slivers over the cheese.

Arrange your zucchini coins in concentric circles over the goat cheese spread, overlapping them slightly.  Squeeze the juice of the second half of your lemon on top of you zucchini, then drizzle with olive oil and finish with more salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes (your baking time will vary, so please watch carefully), or until the edges of your pizza are golden brown and the zucchini looks roasted and a little curled up at the edges.