Roast Veg and Apple-basted Ham

Some nights Cormac arm wrestles me to cook dinner. Sometimes, I let him. Tonight was a delicious little roast. We found the ham we picked up at Lidl was a little meh, however. I basted a ham for New Years from the butcher (it was a smoked joint) and it turned out much, much nicer. So, lesson learned. If you are going to eat pork (which I do infrequently anyways, outside of nice sausages from our butcher in the village), make sure you get a decent cut.




The roast veg are an idea stolen from my good friend, Angelica. At dinner recently she served up the same sort of roast veg. Here we have carrots, sweet potato, white potato, and red pepper. Toss in generous amounts of olive oil, sea salt and pepper, a bit of garlic, thyme and rosemary. Just put this in a very hot oven for about an hour, keep tossing them around so they won't stick (honestly if they start to stick you aren't using enough oil). Delicious. We're going to start making this healthy sidedish more often. It's handy if you are like us and find yourself pathetically staring at one potato, one sweet potato, one carrot and half a pepper in your pantry!

I'll post the ham glaze later when I've got my recipe notebook in front of me.

Ham and Potato Quiche

Another delicious comfort food-- and easy to make! Another recipe born of necessity. What's in the fridge? Left over ham, eggs... any veg... potatoes, spinach... excellent!

Something you will notice is a lack of onions in recipes that scream "onions!". I have a strong distaste for onions. That said, I acknowledge which dishes should have/need them. This is probably one of those.




Ham and Potato Quiche
Filling:
1 cup chopped ham
8-10 sliced baby new potatoes (3-4 diced regular sized potatoes)
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
optional: handful of spinach, and an onion

1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
1 tbsp thyme (fresh is best)
4 eggs
salt and pepper

Crust:
1 cup butter
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cup plain flour
pinch of salt
-- add milk until forms a non-sticky dough. About a cup maybe? Probably less.

1. Make up crust and line a greased pie pan/quiche pan
2. whip cream, milk, eggs and seasonings
3. add in ham, potatoes, cheese and veg
4. pour into crust
5. bake 30-40 minutes at 180C/350F