Martha Stewart has not just one, but two ways to indulge your craving for green eggs and ham today (the B-day of Dr. Seuss)
#1 Spinach Ham Omelet
Ingredients
2 cups tightly packed curly- or flat-leaf spinach, trimmed and washed (3 ounces)
2 large eggs, room temperature
Coarse salt and ground pepper
1 teaspoon unsalted butter
2 tablespoons sharp cheddar, shredded
2 thin slices deli ham
Directions
In a small nonstick skillet, heat 1 tablespoon water over medium-high. Add spinach and cook, tossing, until completely wilted, about 1 minute. Transfer to a colander to drain, pressing out as much water as possible. Finely chop spinach; transfer to a medium bowl along with eggs. Whisk to combine and season with salt and pepper.
Return skillet to heat and melt butter, tilting to coat pan; add egg mixture. Cook, stirring with a heatproof rubber spatula, until eggs begin to thicken, 30 seconds. With spatula, pull edges of omelet in toward center, tilting pan so uncooked eggs flow underneath. Cook until just set, 15 to 30 seconds.
Arrange cheese and ham on top of omelet. With spatula, fold omelet in half. Transfer to a plate and serve immediately.
Place arugula, parsley, basil, and cheese in the bowl of a food processor; with the machine running, slowly add olive oil until a smooth paste forms. Season with salt and pepper and set pesto aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together eggs with 1/4 cup pesto, saving any remaining pesto for another use. Season egg mixture with salt and pepper.
Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Using a heatproof rubber spatula, gently pull the eggs from the side of the skillet. As the eggs start to set, stir them gently until curds form. Serve immediately with ham.
Being originally from New York, rarely a day passes that I don’t day dream about real NY pizza and bagels. You know, they say that it’s the NYC water that makes these things the phenomena that they are, and that they can't be duplicated in other cities because of it.
A few pizzerias in Los Angeles were rumored to import water from Manhattan to make their dough. Actually, some of the best pizza I’ve ever had outside of NY was in LA – at “Two Guys From Italy”, in Glendale. Man they really knew what they were doing.
In addition to an awesome Mexican pizza; chorizo, jalapenos, cilantro, red onions (jeez, I'm really hungry today), they’re the ones that first introduced me to my favorite pizza configuration; what they named “Pizza A La Checca”.
Alla Checca sauce is traditionally just a simple, uncooked sauce of diced roma tomatoes, fresh basil, mozzarella and garlic.
Here’s how The Two Guys made they’re pizza version (in these photos I used my usual Chef Boyardee pizza kit for the dough and my pizza stones from Pampered Chef):
Pizza A La Checca
Pizza Dough 3 TB Extra virgin olive oil 4 cloves chopped garlic 10 whole leaves of basil (Italians consider chopping basil bad luck, so if you want smaller pieces you can tear it) Palm full of toasted pine nuts 2 diced ripe roma tomatoes Shredded mozzarella Sliced Pepperoni (optional)
Make your pizza dough and spread onto your hot pizza stone (I bake my pizza stone for 15 minutes on 425) or greased pizza pan.
Brush the dough liberally with olive oil (you won’t be using sauce, so this helps moisten it). Spread mozzarella. Add basil, garlic, tomatoes and pine nuts.
I always add pepperoni, because I just need pepperoni grease on my pizza – but you can drizzle a bit more olive oil instead and keep the whole thing vegetarian.
Bake at 425 for 15 minutes.
We (of course) also had to make a traditional American sauced version for the buddy boys (but Marley does like pine nuts on his side too!).
As I’ve stated before, I suck at gardening (despite my love of it). Sucking doesn’t stop me from spending lots of time doing it, but it does cause the death of lots and lots of my plant friends; I have a dead house fern on top of my china cabinet I keep forgetting to throw out. I need a step stool to get it down, but I just keep passing it, thinking “Poor fern”, and then forgetting….which is why it’s dead in the first place.
But just look at my kitchen herbs on the sill above my sink! Their health is a shining testament to the ease with which these guys can be grown. I guess because they’re right there – right above the faucet, they get drinks when no one else does.
I have two types of basil (one is a cinnamon basil with a greatspicy scent to it), oregano, chives and…..something else. I’m just a terrible gardener. Could be a different type of oregano….
The pots are from the dollar store (the dollar store where everything is actually a dollar) and they’ve been doing a great job for almost two years. I use enough of the fresh herb cuttings for cooking that they don’t over run the place.
If you’ve never made pesto, you probably don’t know how ridiculously easy it is to make – you may never want to buy the overpriced, itty, bitty jar at the grocery store again......
Basil Pesto
4 cups packed fresh basil leaves 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil 1/3 cup toasted pine nuts (I use a garlic roaster to toast nuts - in 350 oven until golden - watch them closely!) 3 cloves garlic 1/3 cup grated parmesan 1 tsp. salt black pepper, to taste
In a blender or food processor, blend the basil, oil, nuts, and garlic until they make a thick paste.
Dump in the parmesan cheese and the salt. Blend.
Scoop pesto out into a bowl and stir in pepper to taste.
Serve immediately or cover surface of pesto in a fine layer of olive oil and store in the fridge up to five days in ajar or tupperware container. Makes one cup.
[CLICK TO ENLARGE AND PRINT]
Then you can make this Tomato Pesto Pizza (from Pillsbury).
Hey! You can’t make EVERYTHING from scratch!
Tomato Pesto Pizza
1 can (11 oz.) Pillsbury® refrigerated thin pizza crust
¼ cup basil pesto
2 large plum (Roma) tomatoes, chopped
1 cup shredded Italian cheese blend (4 oz.)
2 tablespoons fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced
Heat oven to 400°F. Unroll dough on olive oiled cookie sheet; starting at center, press dough into 15x10-inch rectangle OR preheat an oiled pizza stone, shape pizza with dough on cutting board or second sheet, then transfer to hot stone.
Spread pesto to within ½ inch of edges of dough. Top with tomatoes; sprinkle with cheese.
Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until crust edges are golden brown and cheese is melted. Sprinkle with basil (and maybe add pepperoni! I can’t eat pizza without pepperoni…..).
I also like to use (believe it or not) Chef Boyardee's "Pizza Kit". It's much faster than starting dough from scratch, and you can keep the kit in the pantry longer than the refrigerated Pillsbury dough. I also like the pizza sauce it comes with. Don't get the pepperoni kit, though, because there are weird little pepperoni pieces in the sauce ..... no one wants their pepperoni in the sauce. Ew.
#2 Herby Scramble
