Ham and Cheese Pockets

New year. Two thousand twenty-three. Made black-eyed peas on Sunday because the tradition doesn't negotiate with the calendar — New Year's Day gets black-eyed peas and collard greens and cornbread regardless of what day of the week it falls on. The peas were soaked overnight, cooked with the last of the Christmas ham — a piece of the shank, fatty and smoky, perfect for a pot of peas that need depth. Cornbread in the cast iron. Collards cooked with a piece of fatback until silky. The holy trinity of New Year's food: peas for luck, greens for money, cornbread for gold. I don't believe in any of it and I make it every year because the making is the believing, the way cooking is the praying, the way feeding people is the sermon I preach every week without a pulpit or a congregation or anything except a stove and a pot and a recipe I learned from a woman who never wrote it down.

Connie and I ate at the table and she said resolutions. I said what about them. She said do you have any. I said I'm going to make better biscuits. She said that's not a resolution, that's an ongoing project. I said same thing. She said I want you to see the doctor about your lungs. I put my fork down. She said the cough has been worse this winter. I said it's winter, everybody coughs. She said not like you. She was right. The cough is there every morning, a wet, rattling thing that sounds like a engine trying to start, and it's been there since November and it's not going away. I said I'll make an appointment. She said when. I said soon. She said Craig Allen Hensley, when. I said January. She said good. She picked up her fork. I picked up mine. Resolution made. Under duress, but made.

That ham shank from Christmas did two things that week: it gave the black-eyed peas everything they needed, and it left behind enough meat to do something useful with afterward — because Connie would have words for a cook who lets good ham go to waste. These Ham and Cheese Pockets came together on the Wednesday after New Year’s, a quiet afternoon with no rituals attached and no resolutions being enforced, just leftover ham and cheese and the kind of cooking that doesn’t require a tradition to justify it, only hunger and a little bit of dough.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 22 min | Total Time: 42 min | Servings: 8 pockets

Ingredients

1 package (about 14 oz) refrigerated pizza dough or homemade biscuit dough
1 1/2 cups diced cooked ham (leftover holiday ham works perfectly)
1 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/4 cup finely diced yellow onion
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)
Flaky sea salt for topping (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
Make the filling. In a medium bowl, combine the diced ham, shredded cheddar, Dijon mustard, diced onion, melted butter, garlic powder, and black pepper. Stir until evenly mixed.
Divide the dough. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pizza dough to roughly 1/4-inch thickness. Cut into 8 equal rectangles, approximately 4 x 5 inches each.
Fill and fold. Spoon about 3 tablespoons of filling onto one half of each rectangle, leaving a 1/2-inch border. Fold the dough over the filling to form a pocket. Press the edges firmly together, then crimp with a fork to seal.
Apply egg wash. Transfer pockets to the prepared baking sheet. Brush the tops with beaten egg and sprinkle with flaky sea salt if using. Cut a small slit in the top of each pocket to vent steam.
Bake. Bake at 400°F for 18—22 minutes, until the tops are deep golden brown. Let rest for 5 minutes before serving — the filling will be very hot.

Nutrition (per serving)

Ham and Cheese Pockets — The Ham That Started Everything