Chomp!

By Ron Aiken

 

Mid-Week Dinner Surprise!

The surprise to begin with is you’re getting a mid-week dinner cooked for you in the first place, you greedy soul, you. I mean, we cooked Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, and now, instead of gleefully and with great gratitude enjoying the heaps of leftovers bursting out of our refrigerator, you say you want something special? What are you, 10?

Oh, you are 10. Never mind. Here’s something for you – and for all you out there looking, as Chomp! did, for a mid-week bang for not a lot of bucks or, even, effort really, though you can be the judge of that. For courtesy of the mind and heart of Chomp!’s amazing wife Leesa Aiken, I give you her creation for the situation, her tasty treat for tiny feet, the gut-pleasing biscuit that can’t  be beat … the, uh, something clever. We have no name for it. We tried, believe me we tried. But we could not name it. Nothing stuck – except this biscuit to your ribs!

Well, it’s a roll, really. Sort of like a slider, sort of like a sandwich, it allowed us parents to APPEAR as if we were cooking when really, we weren’t. Because really, on a Wednesday, who wants to? “So, what’s in it already, Chomp!??,” I can hear you asking. Patience, my child! Let’s take this nice and slow, OK?

First, you get your rolls. Any basic dinner roll you can find will do – even those amazing Hawaiian rolls. And, not for nothing, but when the heck did Hawaii suddenly become the world’s-best dinner roll maker? Because that they certainly are, and this somehow has happened in my lifetime without me being aware of its development. But hey, I’m not complaining. Hawaiians found a niche, grabbed it by the shortbread and blew away the competition like mighty volcano.

All of which is to say, use whatever roll you like. We used these made by the lovely Sister Schubert, and the good part with these is you can use the pan to bake the rolls in. First, you slice them in half, being careful to then line the bottom of the pan back like it was with the bottoms. Behold!

Easy, right?

Once you’ve done this – and oh boy, does it look like work! – you make the sauce for the biscuits to apply liberally. Not Hillary Clinton liberal, either. I mean full on Bernie Sanders liberal! You’ll need these here ingredients to make the pesto-based spread:

For the visually impaired, you have here your pesto, onion powder, oregano and minced garlic. (Not pictured: olive oil)

There’s no real specific amounts of the spread to use, just eyeball and season to taste. It’s pesto-based, so that’s the real flavor whammy. Here are the other two main ingredients to this splendid wonder:

Swiss cheese and shaved deli ham! You can use whatever kind of ham you like best – Black Forest, Virginia, Honey-Baked, Southern Style, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t eat pork, sub it out for turkey! Also, big shout out here to Alex and Anne Postic for the lovely cheese stone, which was a wonderful wedding gift. Thank y’all!

Once the bottom biscuits are covered in pesto, go ahead and lay the ham over those babies, being very, very generous with your ham distribution. Let no one say they didn’t get enough ham on their biscuit! No one!

Did I mention to use ALL THE HAMS? Do it. Do not hold back, like some timid teller clerk. Take it to the wall, then GO THROUGH THAT WALL.

Oh, a quick note here about additional cheeses. Use them if you like! We also added some shredded asiago cheese we had around, and there’s no reason you can’t have fun with this bit, because adding cheese is always, always fun.

Here’s the bottoms all done, with swiss cheese individually placed and the asiago cheese sprinkled on top.

Now, use that olive oil you had out earlier on the tops. Use a little basting brush to baste the underside of the top pieces then place the top pieces in the same order as before all down. Then, baste the tops of them so they can brown nicely in the oven.

When you’re done basting, it’ll look like this:

Glisteny!

Pop them in the oven at 350, then wait to take them out until perfectly golden brown. Or, if you’re like Chomp!’s family, you take them out a little before that point because the children are hungry RIGHT NOW AND ARE SICK OF WAITING.

Voila!

And finally, you bring them to the table, put ’em on a hot plate and serve. With the promise of these beauties, we also used the leftover sides we had (green beans, Vietnamese vegetables) and mains (crab cakes and steak) and made a salad.

Not bad for a Wednesday! If you think of a name for these little ham-pesto sliders, let me know at [email protected] and I will use them giving you full credit. The first time. Then the name rights transfer to me.

Til next week!!!

 

 

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