Fuck Your Shit Up With This Ham Tetrazzini, AKA, “Hamtrazzini”

I live in a house with three people and one of those three people is a tiny person of meager age, and despite all that, I made a 9-lb ham on Easter Sunday. Which means that I presently have enough ham to fill a tote bag. I have all the ham. It is an endless tornado of ham. A HAMNADO. And this isn’t a Hamilton reference. I’m not being sly. I mean that I have a fucking shitload of proper once-pig in my refrigerator.

Leftovers from holidays present a challenge because most folks fall into the lazy pattern of making a set number of expected leftovers. With ham it’s, what? You might make ham salad. Or ham sandwiches. Maybe you stick some in an omelette. Or you make a ham hat. Or a ham shirt. Maybe you put a couple googly eyes on there and have a HAM-BASED PUPPET SHOW. Eventually, though, you get burned out on it. Monday rolled around — one day after I made the ham — and I was already like, fuck this ham. Fuck this ham sideways. Stick this ham back up the pig’s ass, because I am done with it. Ham is stupid. Why did I buy 47,000 lbs of ham? Why didn’t we just eat cereal for Easter? Cereal is delicious. You peel a couple Cadbury eggs, drop them into a bowl of Cheerios, and feast like fucking royalty. Ham? Why did I do that? Ugh.

So, I was trying to concoct something to do with the ham that was unexpected, while at the same time still utilizing a goodly portion of the ham. And I thought, okay, once in a blue moon I make chicken tetrazzini, which is a pasta dish from my youth that used cream of mushroom soup, which is to say, it’s super disgusting when you make it like that, but it’s super awesome when you make it with fresh ingredients. And I thought, I’ll make that. I’ll throw out this stupid ham and make chicken tetrazzini, instead. But I didn’t have chicken. All chickens had abandoned me.

I had ham. Of course. Shit.

So, HAM TETRAZZINI it was.

Here, now, is how I made this ham tetrazzini, aka, HAMTRAZZINI.

It was amazing.

So now, you will make it, too. You will take the tote bag full of ham leftovers that you possess, and you will combine them with awesome ingredients and you will then Paypal me a bunch of money for the huge favor I just did for you. You will tattoo my face on your body. You will tattoo my beard onto your face. You will thank me by forming a religion around me.

Let us begin.

Get an onion. One onion. Sweet. Medium-sized, which is to say, roughly the size of a baseball and not a softball. You are going to slice it thin, and then you’re gonna put it in a hot pan with a generous dollop (1-2 TBsp) of unsalted butter. Sprinkle a little salt on that bad boy. Cook the onions till they are soft and weak and pliable. Cook the onions till they unfailingly do what you ask them to do even if what you ask them to do is against their moral code.

Now, mushrooms.

Mushrooms are kinda fucking gross because they’re like nodules of fungus that grow up out of heady, poo-rich earth, and they’re doubly gross when they’re out of a can or in bad Chinese food. As a kid I hated mushrooms because I was pretty sure they were actually little human ears. Thing is, you gotta know how to handle mushrooms — that means buying good mushrooms, ones that aren’t slimy, ones that aren’t out of a can, ones that you didn’t buy from some guy who had the mushrooms in his foul-smelling trenchcoat. In this case, some white mushrooms. The basic 101 mushroom. I got like, a half-pound or something? Came out to about two cups, sliced. Slice them up, as noted. Then put them in with the onions. You might need another pad of butter in there, I dunno. You do what you like. This is your food. I’m not eating it.

Oh, shit, somewhere put a little garlic in there, too. I did like, three cloves, minced. You can do more if you really like garlic. My father used to eat whole cloves of garlic because my father was disgusting. He was convinced that it cured all kinds of diseases, including cancer, but of course he died from cancer so either he didn’t eat enough garlic or that shit just didn’t work. Either way, his breath could melt a garage door. He’d eat garlic cloves and also hot peppers right out of the garden. Pop a jalapeño into his mouth and just, chaw chaw chaw. If I did that, I’d create a volcanic channel of pure heartburn in my chest and then I’d crawl behind the couch, weeping. My father also chopped off his own finger and wrestled a whitetail buck to the ground so he could hog-tie it, whereas the toughest thing I can muster is opening a pickle jar without one of those jar-lid-opener-helper-flappy-things, so I’m clearly almost as tough as he is. Was. Whatever.

Enough about that. I’m way the fuck off track here.

While the ‘shrooms and onions are soaking up the butter (5-10 mins in the pan), get yourself a receptacle (bowl, jar, jockstrap) and mix into it: 1 cup of dry vermouth, 2 TBsp sherry vinegar, pinch of salt, 1 tsp thyme, whisk that shit around in the jockstrap, then pour it into the pan.

Simmer it until it reduces down to a magnificent slurry.

Now, get yourself a pot of water boiling. For pasta. Actually you probably already should’ve started this because, c’mon, boiling water for pasta is the slowest activity in the history of man. Well, actually, publishing a book might be just a hair slower, but whatever.

Time to talk ham.

#HAM4HAM

Sorry, Hamilton reference. I guess. I’ve never seen Hamilton. I’ve listened to some of it and I like it but I’m afraid to listen to more because if I don’t like it, then people will kill me. They will find me, and they will burn me as a heretic. And I’ll admit that I was profoundly disappointed to learn that Hamilton contains no actual ham. When people first started going gonzo for the show, I had no idea what it was. I Googled it and found the show, and thought, “A musical about American history, oh, ha ha ha it can’t be that,” and I continued to believe that surely, surely actual ham was involved. But it wasn’t. It goddamn wasn’t. Expectations? Dashed.

Anyway, you have two metric butt-tons of ham, so cube enough it of to fill three cups. Ham cups. That was my nickname back on the football team, by the way. “Ol’ Ham Cups” Wendig, they called me. “Go long, Ham Cups! Go long! Secure a goal tally for the home team, Ham Cups!”

Whatever. Cube your ham, you rube.

I will wait. And I will watch as you sensually chop ham.

Mmm. Yeah. Ham it up, you. Ham it hard. Cube it hot. Mmm.

OKAY HAM VOYEURISM OVER.

By now your shroomy onion goop should be good. Put it in bowl and set it aside to think about what it’s done. Let it simmer in its own juicy shame.

Take the same pan, and you’re going to make a roux, which is French for buttery flour clump. Put into the pan 4 TBsp of butter, let that melt, and whisk (great word, say it with me: whisk whisk whisk) into it 1/4c flour. Then let it get golden brown but not like, dark diarrhea brown.

Now it’s time for the wet stuff. Which sounds pornographic but isn’t.

Mix in:

1 cup of heavy cream.

3 cups of milk.

1 cup of chicken broth/stock.

(If you’re one of those cocky hipsters who laboriously makes his own stock, good for you, go groom your precious mustache. Me, I use this shit, because it’s really good, and also I am fundamentally lazy.)

Then, 1/4 tsp nutmeg.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Whisk periodically while periodically drinking whisky.

This yummy DAIRY CAULDRON should bubble for about ten minutes on low-med heat.

Cook your pasta. Really, I don’t give a shit what kind of pasta you use. I think tetrazzini uses linguine, but I had spaghetti, and I’m sure there’s some argument about what pasta goes best with what sauce but really, for me, who cares? Use what you like. Use pasta shaped like little Darth Vader faces, I don’t give a flamingo shit. Hell, maybe you don’t even use pasta. Maybe you just rice. Or Cheerios. Or driveway gravel. I don’t control what you do at your stovetop, reader.

Pasta done, drain and strain and lovingly caress it. Like it is the hair of a dead lover.

Dairy cauldron done bubbling, too. Good. Great. Yes.

Mix into the now-empty pasta pot: the dairy goop, the shroomy onion goop, the pasta, and mix ’em all together. Now mix in: one bag of frozen peas. Now mix in the cubed ham. Mix, mix, mix. Then pour in in: 3 TBsp more sherry vinegar. Sherry vinegar is an epic secret to a lot of great dishes. For years my chicken noodle soup was fairly mediocre until I learned to put in a splash of sherry vinegar right at the end and suddenly it became sublime. SHERRY VINEGAR ALSO GET YOU CRUNK. Okay, it doesn’t really. Just drink red wine or gin like a fancy grandma. I am a fancy grandma. Why aren’t you?

Now, get yourself a big-ass baking dish and set the oven to 425F.

Actually, you probably should’ve set the oven to 425F earlier.

But you didn’t, because you’re a jerk.

WHATEVER DO IT NOW.

Into the baking dish, pour your MILKY PASTA MAGMA.

Now it’s time to talk topping.

For my mileage, I don’t use breadcrumbs because I never ever have them. And I never feel like taking the time to make them so I’m always saying fuck these breadcrumbs and just going without. But I will note here you can do a couple nice substitutions for breadcrumbs:

a) potato chips, no seriously, this can be amazing

b) saltine crackers, also delicious

c) dandruff, but only if it’s really crunchy scalp-flake, and don’t forget beard dander, too

d) crickets, live or otherwise

e) grated LEGOs

Anyway.

Take 1.5c of fresh grated Parmesan cheese, and sprinkly-dinkle it over top the milky pasta magma in the baking dish. Then if you’re using the breadcrumb-or-substitute, use about 1/2 cup of it and sprinkle it over the top of the whole affair.

NOW BAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT

BOOM

Which is to say, 20-25 minutes in the scorching doom-cube that is your oven.

Now it’s done, it’ll be about 1000 degrees, and won’t cool down for approximately 7 hours, so just sit and stare at it until it finally chills out. And then when that’s done, it’s dinner time. It’s ham leftover dinner time. Take the pasta and shove it in your pasta hole. That is the round, largest hole in the center of your dumb face. Just grab it with your hands and cram it into the pasta hole until your cheeks are bulging like those of a greedy hamster.

Enjoy. Now send me money.

#HAM4CHUCK