Cabbage and Ham Stir-Fry

Ginger, garlic, and jalapeño perk up this quick and tasty dish

Need a quick weeknight dinner that you can assemble from what’s in your pantry and fridge? Here you go!

This dish combines green cabbage with cooked ham. Because we always seem to have extra cabbage around St. Patrick’s Day, and often have ham in the freezer.

Mix in some spicy Asian flavors, and it’s stir-fry for the win!

Senate Bean Soup

This hearty (and historic) soup will warm you up

Cold, gloomy weather? You know what that means. Soup!

With a new Congress in session – and the US Senate preparing to hold a historic trial – what could be more timely than Senate Bean Soup?

Its flavor will earn your family’s vote of confidence. By unanimous consent.

Pasta Salad with Tonnato (Tuna) Sauce

Ham and peas add scrumptiousness to this summer classic

Pasta salad is a summer staple. And why not? It’s loaded with flavor, easy to make, and generally delicious. Plus, you can prepare it ahead of time.

It’s also versatile – you can change up the ingredients or the pasta shape to make a new (yet comfortingly familiar) salad each time.

Just think of the pastabilities.

Creamy Pasta with Asparagus and Ham

Luscious and easy – and perfect for spring

Asparagus season? Yes! We like to celebrate its iconic springtime flavor whenever the local crop is available.

Asparagus combines wonderfully with ham and cream. Add some pasta to the mix, and you have a simple (but wonderful) main course. Or serve half portions as a starter.

The season for asparagus is fleeting. So spear this recipe while you can.

Braised Ham with Port

Flavorful and easy, perfect for celebrating

Need a festive dish that can feed a crowd? Maybe something for Easter dinner, or a graduation party?

Enter Braised Ham with Port. It’s more succulent than baked ham, and just as easy to prepare. Those who know only its baked cousin will be delighted to meet this dish.

But accept your guests’ accolades with modesty. No need to ham it up.

Roast Peach Salad

Ham, goat cheese, and balsamic kick up the flavor

Fresh peaches are one of the glories of summer. But sometimes the peaches we find at the market are less than fully ripe. What to do?

Roast them, we say (grilling works too). It brings out their sweetness and concentrates their flavor.

You don’t need to save them for dessert, either. Their sweet intensity plays well with savory ingredients (we like to use salty ham or prosciutto, plus goat cheese). Mix in some balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and you have a scrumptious salad.

A versatile one, too. This salad is fancy enough to start a summer dinner party. But it’s easy enough to serve as a quick weekday main.

White Bean and Quinoa Soup with Ham

Healthy goodness to tame winter’s chill

Polar vortex got you down? Tired of shoveling snow? Then come inside and warm up with a nice bowl of homemade soup.

Here at Kitchen Riffs central, we often turn to soup when winter wallops us. Soup makes an easy (and hearty) one-dish meal. And this bean soup is loaded with lots of healthy flavors.

So it’s just the thing to put Old Man Winter in his place.

Homemade Deviled Ham

Leftover ham gets a spicy re-do for sandwiches and canapés

Got a big ol’ ham left over from Easter? Wondering what to do with it? Meet deviled ham—your new best friend.

It’s basically spicy ham salad (often with mustard-forward flavor) that’s been ground to a paste in the food processor. It makes a great spread for sandwiches, crackers, or whatever.

Deviled ham is an old-fashioned treat that many of us have forgotten. Too bad, because it has great flavor. Plus, it takes just minutes to make, so it’s easy for you.  And once people taste it, their smiles (and praise!) will come easily too.

Red Beans and Rice

This Creole Dish is a Mardi Gras Favorite

Red Beans and Rice is a traditional Creole (not Cajun) dish popular throughout Louisiana. This long-cooked comfort food used to be a staple every Monday — the day many people did their weekly laundry — because it could simmer unattended for hours, and be ready when dinnertime rolled around. Nowadays, we often associate the dish with New Orleans (where it’s available in many restaurants) and with Mardi Gras (because a batch feeds a crowd).

Red Beans and Rice is great any time of the year, but it’s particularly good in cold weather. So with chilly temps throughout much of the US at the moment, and Mardi Gras coming up later this week, maybe now is the time to cook some up for yourself.

Chef's Salad

Deconstructing, Reconstructing, and Reviving this Classic

Chef’s Salad used to be a popular main-course choice for people who wanted to “eat light.”  Particularly from the 1950s into the 70s, it was a go-to among “ladies who lunch.”  Then people realized how much fat and sodium were in the cheese and cold cuts that typically garnish it — and the salad promptly fell out of favor.

Too bad.  Yes, Chef’s Salad has a fairly high caloric count, but then it’s supposed to be a main course.  Really a meal in itself. 

It’s also exceptionally tasty and easy to make.  So why not toss one together now?

Split Pea Soup with Greens

Ham Shanks Add the Long-Cooked Flavor

How do you make Split Pea Soup without hambone?  

Most of us prepare a whole (or half) ham once or twice a year at most, so ham bones are scarce.  Does that mean we have to limit our consumption of Split Pea Soup — an exceptionally tasty and satisfying dish — to once or twice a year?

Fortunately, no. Last year we discussed how to make Split Pea Soup with Bacon. That recipe uses bacon and ham base as a hambone substitute and it is relatively quick to prepare. But good as the flavor is, it lacks a certain oomph.

If you want Split Pea Soup with traditional flavor— but without the traditional hambone — you’ll need to look for a “secret ingredient” in your supermarket meat department:  smoked ham shanks or ham hocks.  These inexpensive miniature “hambones” are the perfect size for soup making.

Ham, Bacon, and Cheddar Frittata

If your refrigerator is like mine, after a major holiday you have a shelf loaded with bits and pieces of food — all carefully wrapped.  There’s never enough of anything to serve alone, but it’s too good to throw away.

All too often, at least in my kitchen, those little food packages get shoved to the back of the fridge, and then forgotten.  Until I rediscover them a month or two later, by which time they’re inedible (and sometimes unrecognizable).

Recently, my leftovers included 3 slices of deli ham, a modest-size wedge of sharp cheddar cheese, and a nearly empty package of bacon.  What was I going to do with those?