Cut first of ham in daze (7)
I believe the answer is:
tranche
'cut' is the definition.
Both the definition and answer are singular nouns.
Perhaps you can see an association between them that I don't see?
'first of ham in daze' is the wordplay.
'first of ham' becomes 'h' (1st letter of 'ham').
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'daze' becomes 'trance' (I've seen this before).
'h' placed inside 'trance' is 'TRANCHE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for tranche that I've seen before include "Slice (of income)" , "shares in single issue" , "portion of shares" , "batch supplied" , "Part of the loan" .)