Ham & Asparagus Breakfast Roll-ups
We had some friends in town over the weekend and I was asked to make brunch after all the girls came back from a morning workout. Trying to stay low carb, Jennifer found a recipe for me to try. She is great and finding some really good dishes to try. This one was a huge success although I modified it slightly. Details to follow.
Lets start with a recipe. Make sure you read through as I think the adjustments I made to this dish really made it a tad better.
Click here for original recipe
I used black forest ham from the deli at our local grocery store. I usually like honey ham but this was definitely a good choice. I created my own cheese sauce, which I will describe below. I think a really well executed hollandaise sauce would be amazing on this one as well.
Follow the recipe above and this one should be pretty easy to execute. All you have to do is lay some ham out, I used 2 pieces per roll so that I could make them a bit larger. I had some pretty sizable asparagus to use as well and it just worked better for me this way. Roast the asparagus and place them onto the ham slices with your egg mixture on top. Roll up like an enchilada and poor the sauce on them when all are complete.
Cheese Sauce
Start with roux. I use clarified butter and AP flour. You can certainly use regular butter as well. Combine in a sauce pan equal parts, by weight, of fat and flour. Cook until the flour begins to brown ever so slightly. Then pour in cold milk and whisk until it comes together into a bechamel. It will be a thickened white sauce, add more milk if it feels to thick.
At this point you can add any kind of melty cheese that you like. The included recipe calls for parmesan which would make a sort of alfredo sauce if that is what you like. This recipe felt more like a Croque Madame to me so I chose to use gruyere and some parm to taste. I also added about a tablespoon of dry mustard powder and then salt and pepper to taste.
A good cook always tastes their food right? Well there happened to be some blue corn tortillas in the pantry so I grabbed one of them to dip into the cheese sauce, just to make sure it was good. . . . One chip turned into two chips which turned into me standing in my kitchen losing count of how many chips I had eaten. Ooops. . . but it was sooo good. I’m glad someone walked into the room and busted me or I may have never stopped. I saved some for the roll-ups.
Once I had a glass baking dish full of the ham roll ups I proceeded to dump the remaining cheese over the assembled dish and placed under a broiler until the cheese sauce bubbled and browned slightly. I served each of the ladies a single serving topped with a garnish of chives and a cup of coffee after the gym. It was a huge success. This one is going into regular circulation for us. It was absolutely wonderful.
Conclusion
Start this recipe by throwing all of your tortilla chips in the garbage. Just avoid the temptation altogether. Super simple and super delicious. Give this one a try. It was a big hit and extremely low effort as far as a quick brunch meal is concerned.