Petite Puffs of Ham

PETITE PUFFS OF HAM

Since I’m continuing to force myself to try recipes that are not familiar to me, I ventured into The Ground Meat Cookbook for this dainty meal. As a pre-warning, the original recipe for these “puffs” makes for more of an appetizer or finger-food than it does for an actual meal. But, if dinner is more your style, look to my revisions at the bottom!

Puffs

½ C flour

½ tsp dry mustard

½ C hot water

¼ C butter

¼ tsp salt

2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese

2 eggs

Sift together flour and mustard and set aside. Boil water, salt, and butter in a saucepan. Add dry ingredients all at once. Beat vigorously with a wooden spoon until mixture leaves sides of pan and forms a smooth ball. Remove from heat and add cheese, stirring until melted. Quickly beat in eggs. Continue beating until smooth and glossy.

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet. Bake at 450^oF for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350^oF and bake for 5 minutes longer. Remove to cooling rack and cool completely.

Filling

½ C ground cooked ham

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp flour

¼ tsp salt

¼ MSG

Pepper to taste

1 C milk

1 tbsp capers

2 tsp minced onion

1 tsp lemon juice

Melt butter over low heat. Blend in flour, salt, MSG, and pepper. Heat until mixture bubbles. Remove from heat. Add milk gradually while stirring constantly. Return to heat and bring to boiling, stirring constantly. Cook 1 to 2 minutes longer. Add remaining ingredients and heat through.

Cut top off of each puff and fill with ham sauce. Replace top.

First, before I get to the revisions, these are very tasty. We enjoyed them as a quick snack before our evening rock climbing.

Revisions

My only revision for the ham sauce would be to add some parsley -- it made the flavor of the sauce a little more fresh and bright.

While the sauce is delicious, the puffs could use some work. If I make this recipe again, I will add more mustard and cheese to the dough recipe. Additionally, the puffs did not rise the way I was expecting. In the future, I would recommend adding 1 tsp or so of baking powder to help the puffs do what their name promises. Dropping the dough by tablespoons, or making a second batch of dough, might help this recipe as well, since I ended up with more ham sauce than puffs.

As a second variation, we decided to use the remainder of our ham sauce with the Golden Gate Snack Bread. Yum!

Have a question or a request? Put it in the comments below and I’ll be sure to respond. Fröhe essen!