Stuffed Ham Rolls

Boise Friday. Won the Mountain West Award for nonfiction. Did not expect to. Stood up. Said the eight sentences I had written. Sat down. Sarah from the press cried. The other finalists were gracious. The dinner went late but I left at ten because I had a six-thirty Saturday morning flight and because I wanted to be back to the ranch by mid-afternoon. The award is a small piece of glass with my name and the book's title etched on it. I am sitting it on the bookshelf in the living room next to a photo of Patrick from 1995. It looks fine there. It looks like a thing I won, which is what it is. The two thousand dollars goes into the medications fund. Patrick said, when I came in Saturday afternoon and put the glass on the shelf, You did. Two words. He said, Good. He said, Let me see it. I brought it to him in the chair. He held it. He read it. He said, Your name. He looked at me. He said, You are a writer, son. He said it quietly. Three sentences. Patrick said three sentences in a row. I thanked him. I went into the kitchen so he would not see my face. Mom was at the stove. She said, I told you. I said, You did. She said, Now you know. I said, I know.

Tara called Sunday afternoon. Twenty-nine weeks. Doing well. Says hi from the baby. She watched the video Mom took on her phone of me in Boise. She says I looked good in the suit. She says Cole cried when she showed him. She says they are both getting weepy these last weeks of the pregnancy and that they both blame me, which I will accept. She is due in three weeks. Maggie is going to come.

Cole called Sunday night. He said, Dad would have been proud, you know. I said, He saw the video. He said, I know. But he meant Grandpa Gallagher, our grandfather, who built the ranch in the forties and who died before I was born. He said, He liked books. He said, He kept Steinbeck in his library. I had not known that. I said, Did he. Cole said, He did. He said, Mom says he would have read your book in a single sitting. I sat with that for a minute. I had not thought about Grandpa Gallagher much in adulthood — he had been a name and a face in photos, a story Mom told sometimes. I said, Thanks for telling me, brother. Cole said, You earned it. He hung up. I sat in the kitchen at the table with the lights off for fifteen minutes thinking about the line I have come from and how long it is and how unaware I am of it most days.

The week was steady on the ranch. Patrick sat with the Mountain West award on the side table next to his chair for three days, picking it up and reading it occasionally. He stopped after Wednesday. The award found its place on the shelf. The week resumed.

I shod three horses across Wednesday and Thursday. The work was the work. February cold is hard on the hands. The fingers go numb after the second hour and you have to take breaks to warm them and the day is long. I came home Thursday tired and ate the dinner Mom had made me and went to bed at eight thirty and slept ten hours.

Cooked Sunday a pot of cassoulet, which is the most complicated dish I attempt and which I attempt once a year in February when I have the patience and the time and the beans dried from last September. White beans soaked overnight, a confit of duck legs I had cured in November, sausage I had made myself in October from the cull cow and a hog Cole had butchered in February of last year, lamb shoulder from the Donnellys, all layered in a big crock with broth and breadcrumbs and slow-cooked for five hours with the breadcrumb crust broken three times during the cook to let the gravy come up. The result is the kind of food that does not look like food — it looks like a casserole, brown and unremarkable from above — but that, when you put a spoon in it, releases steam and beans and pieces of duck and sausage in a broth so rich that you eat it slowly because eating it fast would feel disrespectful. Mom said it was the best one I had made. Patrick had two helpings. I had two. We ate by the woodstove and the windows steamed up against the cold outside. February is short and hard. February makes you cook food you would not cook in May. The cassoulet was the meal. Saturday cookout was nine men. Marcus made one hundred forty-three days. The fire helps. The award helps. Patrick saying you are a writer helps most of all.

The cassoulet was the Sunday meal, and it belonged to the week it capped — the award, Patrick’s three sentences, Cole on the phone in the dark. But Saturday’s cookout for nine men called for something different: something you can make in quantity, something that moves fast and feeds people without ceremony. These stuffed ham rolls are what I reach for when the fire is already going and the men are already hungry and the point is not the food itself but the table it puts you around.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

8 soft dinner rolls, split
1 lb thinly sliced deli ham
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup finely diced green onions
1/4 cup finely diced roasted red pepper
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp poppy seeds (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.
Make the filling. In a medium bowl, beat together softened cream cheese, green onions, roasted red pepper, Dijon mustard, garlic powder, black pepper, and smoked paprika until well combined.
Assemble the rolls. Lay a slice or two of ham flat on a work surface. Spread a generous tablespoon of the cream cheese filling across the ham. Roll the ham tightly around the filling and tuck into the bottom half of a split dinner roll. Place top on roll and set in the prepared baking dish. Repeat with remaining rolls.
Make the butter glaze. Stir together melted butter and Worcestershire sauce. Brush evenly over the tops of all assembled rolls. Sprinkle with poppy seeds if using.
Bake. Cover dish with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 5 minutes until tops are golden and filling is heated through.
Rest and serve. Let rolls rest 5 minutes before serving. Serve warm directly from the baking dish.

Nutrition (per serving)

Stuffed Ham Rolls — The Kind of Thing You Make When the Week Finally Earns It