Spicy ham rolls with squashed potatoes

A proper 'ready steady cook!' dish this one. I had ham, potatoes and some vegetables, along with some very stale bread. This is what happened.

1. Boil some new potatoes. Nothing smart here.
   
2. I had some crusty bread rolls that had gone hard over the past 3 weeks. These were destroyed into read crumbs using a rolling pin.
   
   
3. For the spiciness I used some caraway seeds, cinnamon, star anise, cardamon pods garlic a pinch of cloves and a little oil. I heated this in a pan until the first pod popped. Then I emptied out about half the pods and peeled the garlic before grinding it all in the pestle and mortar.
   
   
4. Next I sweated an onion for about 15 mins before adding a pepper, some balsamic vinegar and some sugar and then kept cooking this on a medium heat for about 10 more minutes.
   
   
5. After they were boiled I was meant to crack the potatoes next. I smashed them. I added a little oil and a lot of mint and then chucked them in the oven.
   
   
6. Next I added some mushrooms to the onions, and after about 30 seconds added the spice mix and the bread crumbs, taking the pan off the heat.
   
   
7. I laid out 3 large slices of ham, added a layer of lettuce (I wanted this to be healthy) and a good blob of the mix from the pan to each. I then rolled up each ham slice with the contents inside.
   
   
8. The 3 ham rolls were chucked in an oven dish thing, covered in the remaining mix and a little layer of cheese. This was then placed in the oven for about 5 mins.
   
   
9. Once the potatoes were slightly crispy and the cheese was going brownish I took it out the oven and served.
   
   
10. As a random special treat my housemate Gez had left me some profiteroles he'd made (white and dark chocolate). They were really good.
    
    
    
    
    Review
    I think this meal worked better than it had any right to so I'm fairly pleased. The filling mixture was a little dry maybe... some tomato might be used to make it more liquidy, or to coat the whole thing in the dish enchilada style. Saying that the food did taste a little Christmassy, as I think with the cinnamon and cloves I was most of the way to making a mince pie. I'm glad I didn't go with chilies- I think they would have distracted from the taste of the ham. I would have like for the potatoes to have had come out crispier as well, but they tasted fine anyway.