I'm really excited to share this recipe today; it was fun to make, it was delicious,
and I know a little bit about where the recipe came from!
These Ham and Broccoli Rollups were amazing - Ham, swiss cheese, steamed broccoli and sauce (which I would say is comparable to a slightly less heart-attack-inducing Hollandaise sauce...)
A little history about this recipe; my mom worked with a woman named Chris Moxsmeth many, many years ago. She got this recipe from her. A few years back, after my mom had moved to another province, she was at a community school as part of a choir and met another "Moxsmeth". Turns out that this lady's husband and Chris' husband were related somehow.
What a small world!
Mom gave this recipe to grandma, so it is quite obviously the 'newcomer' to the red tin box.
The Recipe Card
The Process
All I can say about this is that I'm SO glad I had an extra set of hands! I was totally unprepared for the amount of 'stuff' was needed for this; ingredients, steps, kitchen space! I think the trick to this one is prep. Prep, prep, prep!
Here's how I went about it:
First, I sliced up the ham - I tried to get it as thin as possible, but had a hard time with that. Definitely the thinner the better on this one. The thinner it is, the easier it will be to get the toothpicks to hold it all together.
Then I steamed the broccoli and set it aside. These are going into the oven again to heat up, so you don't have to worry about keeping everything warm. I sliced the cheese and set it aside as well.
The sauce was probably the most labour-intensive part (aside from the assembly, but I'll get to that!)
From my understanding, most cream sauces are made the same way; butter, flour... add the wet ingredients. While the butter was melting, I mixed the "add in" ingredients (PS I'm not the 'tidiest' cook...)
After the butter melted, I added in the flour and the mixture from above. Yum!
Then the milk.
It already looks amazing now, but just wait... you still have to add the egg yolks and reserved pineapple juice. Divine!
Then comes the fun part. I took a picture of all them at each step: slice of ham, cheese, broccoli, sauce, roll-up!
Off it goes into the oven - hurray!
The Recipe
Ham & Broccoli Roll-ups (make's 2 servings)
Rollups
4 slice Ham
2 slices Swiss Cheese
1 10oz pkg Broccoli
1 8oz can Pineapple
Sauce
1-1/2 tsp Flour
1-1/2 tsp Butter
1-1/2 tsp Horseradish
1 tsp Prepared Mustard
1/4 tsp grated Onion
1/4 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1/8 tsp Salt
1/4 cup Milk
1 slightly beaten egg yolk
1. Cook broccoli (steam). Drain pineapple and reserve 1/2 cup juice.
2. In saucepan, melt butter and stir in flour and horseradish, mustard, onion, worcestershire sauce and salt. Add milk. Cook and stir until thick and bubbly (let cool slightly). Combine egg yolk and reserved juices and stir slowly into hot mixture. Cook and stir over medium heat again until thickened. Cool slightly.
3. Place two slices of ham one on top of the other. Place 1 slice swiss cheese on top of ham. Place broccoli florets on top of the cheese (at one end since this will be rolled). Spoor 1 tbsp sauce over broccoli. Roll up and secure with toothpick. Poor rest of sauce over rollups.
Cover and bake at 350 for 25 minutes. Garnish with pineapple.
 |
I forgot to pour the rest of the sauce over them before I cooked the ham.
I'm kinda glad I did! They got nice and browned (since I also had no foil to cover them with) |
My Personal Notes
- As I mentioned, the thinner the ham the better
- I doubled the recipe as we had guests over, and I had plenty!
- The recipe says to lay two layers of ham on top of each other and then add the insides - I did not do this. I used 1 piece of ham for each rollup. In hindsight though, it might be that two pieces were supposed to be overlapping only a little, so that the ham rolls up and around to make a complete cylinder. Know what I mean?
- I totally forgot to garnish with pineapple, and I think that would have been the icing on the cake!
- I omitted horseradish because I couldn't find any... :P
- I used chives instead of grated onion.
- In step 2, it says to cool the sauce slightly after it is done. This is very important if you don't want the sauce oozing out. Since it's already thick, it doesn't pour all over the place, but if you let it cool slightly it because even thicker and stays in place. Makes the rolling part a little less messy.
All said and done, this was awesome. I don't remember grandma making this, but I'm sure she rocked it. She had a way of taking the most simple ingredients and making something magical with it. You know how food always tastes better when someone else prepares it? Maybe it was something like that - but let me tell you, she could make me a sandwich with veggies from their garden and it would be like the heaven's opened up and angels sung with every bite.
Her hugs were perfection, too.
Up next is
Cauliflower Parmesan!
*~Tara-Jane~*
