Ham Pastry: Easter Leftover Edition

Oh god I have so much ham! In the week after Easter all I eat is ham. I put ham in everything. My mom uses leftover ham to make "ham stuff" (or, if you are not as polite as my mom, you can call it "ham crack" like I do, because it is so freaking good.) Normally I eat ham stuff on King's Hawaiian Sweet Rolls. Spread it out, put it in the oven until it gets all melty and toasts the bread. Delicous. But I had so much ham leftover I've been finding other ways to use ham crack and have found ham crack nirvana. Ham crack + pastry crust = heaven.

Behold! This was super easy to make. I didn't even make the pastry crust myself (I know you are disappointed in me.) I used a store bought pie crust I had left over from making a quiche earlier in the week (with, you guessed it, ham!) To get the nice looking golden crust you coat it with an egg wash before sticking it in the oven.

Om nom nom. Okay, here's how to make ham crack. This recipe is flexible, I do it from memory normally and don't measure anything. It works best if you have a food processor.

Ingredients:
2 C chopped ham
1 C shredded cheddar cheese (I like medium cheddar, but any cheese you want will work)
1 medium onion chopped
1 stick of butter (or less. But as Bobby Hill says, the secret is double the butter)
1 tsp poppy seeds

Directions:
Put the ham, cheese and onions together in the food processor and blend throughly. It should almost be a paste, but still have discernible onion and cheese bits. Soften/melt the butter and add it and the poppy seeds to the mixture. BAM! HAM! You can now put this mixture on pretty much any kind of bread, stick it under the broiler for a few minutes and enjoy. This recipe is great scaled up or down.

To make the ham pastry, cut one pie crust in half. Scoop some of the ham stuff on there, probably a little less than a fist sized amount. You want a full pastry but you don't want to over fill it. Put a little beaten egg around the edges, fold it over and seal it with your fingers and a fork. Try to squeeze the air bubbles out as you seal it. Once sealed brush the outside with more beaten egg and put on a cookie sheet. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes at about 425 F or until it looks done. The great thing about this is that the filling is already cooked, it just needs to get melty so whenever your pie crust looks done you can pull it out.

Just in case you missed it.

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while. I have been working on perfecting the recipes for hamburger buns and apple pie, so look forward to those two posts soon.