How To Transform Your Leftover Holiday Ham Into A Tropical Breakfast

True confession: I don't really care for ham as a holiday meal as I much prefer roast beef, turkey, or lamb. Still, I won't turn down a care package of leftovers when offered, which is how I happened to stumble across a recipe for leftover ham that's so good I've purchased ham for the sole purpose of making it again and again. Even odder: It calls for two other ingredients I usually don't care for, these being bananas and canned pineapple rings. If the combination sounds gross to you, hear me out. For some reason, these disparate (and somewhat dubious) ingredients combine to make something far greater than the sum of its parts.

To make my favorite breakfast, you'll need a thick slice of ham, a good chunk of butter, half a banana, a pineapple ring, and two or three eggs. First, fry the pineapple in the butter for a few minutes on each side. While water-packed pineapple will work, the syrupy kind is even better since it lends some sweet flavor to the butter. Once the pineapple is lightly browned, take it out of the pan and replace it with the banana that you've split down the middle. Add more butter, brown the banana, take it out, add butter, and fry the ham. When the meat is brown on both sides, take it out, add still more butter, and fry the eggs. Put everything on a plate, add salt and pepper, and eat it while listening to the melodious strains of Don Ho singing "Tiny Bubbles."

If you're asking "Don Who?" you probably missed the whole tiki revival thing sparked by the TV show "Mad Men." Retro tiki cocktails were trendy in the 20-teens (here's a 2016 drink recipe from America's top tiki bartender at the time), but my beloved breakfast recipe dates back a lot longer than that. Ham and eggs Hawaiian –- for so it was called — is something I discovered in my favorite vintage cookbook, "American Gourmet: Classic Recipes, Deluxe Delights, Flamboyant Favorites, and Swank Company Food from the 50s and 60s." While the book was published in 1992, as the title indicates, it celebrates the cuisine of an even earlier era. This particular recipe, in fact, was on the menu at the famous faux-Polynesian restaurant Trader Vic's as far back as the 1940s.

The recipe's roots, however, go back to the early 1900s. Trader Vic, born as Victor Bergeron, aka the original Tiki Daddy, was a real person who invented the mai tai (and may have indirectly inspired the whole Trader Joe's concept in later years). The future restaurateur grew up in California around the turn of the previous century where he had a French-Canadian dad who liked to tinker in the kitchen. One of Bergeron's creations was ham and eggs with a side of tropical fruit, and it was such a hit with the family that it became a regular Sunday breakfast. Trader Vic's patrons must have liked it too, since it kicked off a whole trend of Hawaiian-inspired foods.