Adventures in Food
Posts tagged basil
Bistro pizza week–margarita
Sep 20th
I’m keeping it simple and fun this week by passing along a few mini-meal ideas we’ve been trying out–welcome to bistro pizza week! Now you can definitely make your own pizza dough, but to keep this meal fast I buy pre-made dough from an Italian grocery store near our home. With dough at $1 per bag, I pick up three and make four mini pizzas with each.
It’s fun to play around with the small sizes and experiment with the flavors. But to start off, I’m passing along a classic–Margarita pizza, topped with only three fresh ingredients: mozzarella cheese slices, roma tomatoes and basil. Named after an Italian queen whose visit to Naples inspired the idea, I find the simple ingredients are appealing to picky eaters. Maybe it’s that the ingredients are so easy to identify, or that every part of the pizza is fresh, but this is the most requested pizza at my house. We even picked up yellow tomatoes to make it again this week–gotta tweak right?
Note: It’s easy to double or triple this recipe and it makes for great leftovers to send in kids’ lunches–or to have for breakfast…
Recipe
Prep time: 15 minutes
Servings: 4 mini-pizzas
Ingredients
1 bag pizza dough
2 roma tomatoes
1 bunch basil
8-12 ounces fresh mozzarella
olive oil
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
- Divided the dough into four equal pieces using a floured knife.
- Roll each dough piece out into a 5-6 inch circle, then place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment.
- Brush each dough piece generously with olive oil.
- Place tomatoes, mozzarella, and fresh ground pepper on top.
- Bake for 10 minutes, remove pizza and add basil then cook for an additional 5-10 minutes or until cheese is golden. (You can leave the basil on the whole time if you don’t mind it getting a little crispy. I actually like the basil crisped so I put it on at the beginning of cooking, it’s up to you!)
Coming up later this week:
- Meatball margarita pizza
- Breakfast pizza failure
- Apple gruyere pizza (a new favorite)
Caprese omelet
Sep 1st
We’re trying to have veggie dinners at least once a week around here. The bounty of fresh vegetables certainly helps. That, and having friends with gardens who drop by their extras. Yesterday a surplus of ripe tomatoes and basil gave me an idea for dinner: My kids like caprese salad, which is simply fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. To make that a meal I added the cheese into an omelet and chopped the tomatoes and basil to serve on top. I used fontina cheese instead of mozzarella since it melts better and has a stronger flavor, but you can use whatever you have on hand. Also, I like a little meltiness in the inside of the omelet so I added a bit of American cheese. If you’re not an American cheese fan, you don’t have to include it. Another addition: sauteed portobello mushrooms. I cooked them in a basil oil to bring out even more of the herb’s flavor; regular olive oil is fine too.
Recipe
Per serving, ingredients
2 eggs
1/4 shredded Fontina cheese
1 slice deli American cheese
1/2 tomato, diced
4 basil leaves, minced
handful shredded fresh Parmesan cheese
Directions
Whisk the eggs together and add salt and pepper to taste.
In a large saute pan bring 1 teaspoon olive oil or butter to medium high heat.
Pour the eggs into the pan and just when it starts to heat through add the cheeses, and mushrooms if you’re using them, in the center (except for the Parmesan).
Once the cheese melts, slide the cooked eggs gently off the plate, folding them over twice or once, depending on how you like your omelet.
Add sliced tomato, basil and Parmesan cheese on top. Serve immediately.
Your turn–have you had any good veggie meals lately you care to share?
Inspired by Man v. Food: The Italian Melt
Aug 19th
Lately, when friends or family come to visit me in Cleveland they have one restaurant request: Melt. I’ve got to thank The Travel Channel and Adam Richman for that. When Richman visited Cleveland, he took-and won (sorry for the spoiler!)-the Melt challenge. The grilled-cheese-on-steriods packs 13 different cheeses, 3 slices of bread, and a hearty helping of fries to make for 5-pounds of food. Yikes! No way, I’d ever want to eat that much food in one sitting.
But what I did like about his trip to Melt, and the popularity of the restaurant, is that grilled cheese sandwiches are considered, cool, even trendy. Now I haven’t had a Melt sandwich yet (so far the lines have been way too long for me, despite the host assuring me, “It’s not too bad, 45 minutes or so, and that’s pretty short for us). I wasn’t up for waiting. Neither were my kids-so I grabbed some ingredients at the store and told Mr. Squid, “Surprise me.” He did.
Using a few finds from our garden (okay, my basil plant that has survived a whole month-that’s a record for me and growing greens), and sauces and such from the fridge, he came up with ‘the Italian.’ That’s the only name I could come up with for this creation, but if you have a better one, please do tell!
*Note: Mr. Squid has two ‘must-dos’ when it comes to grilled cheese. The first is that all of the main ingredients need to be heated before adding them (“No one likes to bite into a cold part of a hot sandwich”) and second that the slices should be crisped and the cheese melted separately before putting them together at the end.
Here’s how Mr. Squid put ‘the Italian’ together:
- First, he added a little basil olive oil to the griddle and then placed thin slices of Roma tomatoes, strips of fresh basil and grated Parmesan cheese on top. He let that heat just until the Parmesan started to melt and then set it aside.
- Next, he heated a combination of roast beef and smoked turkey on the griddle.
- Now that all the mixins’ were heated, it was time to put the sandwich together. He used thick cut Italian deli bread that he’d coated with a thin layer of butter. On the top piece he also added mayo mixed half and half with Balsamic vinegar.
- He placed both on the griddle then added the tomato-basil mixture to the top piece followed by sliced peperoncinis for a bit of vinegar spiciness and then a slice of Swiss cheese.
- On the other piece of bread he added a slice of American cheese followed by the deli meat.
- Once all the cheeses are melted, he carefully pressed the two sides together and pressed them down with the spatula.
There you go-grilled cheese worth the wait. Plus, I didn’t even have to tip the waiter. One of these days, I gotta go to Melt, but for now I’ll keep letting my hubby and kids come up with tasty grilled cheese combos.
Your turn-do you have a favorite grilled cheese creation? Are you a Man v. Food watcher?
Portobello basil burgers
Aug 13th
That's not beef--that's mushrooms!
Forget the beef, earthy portobello mushrooms taste even better. And when you top them with pesto mayo, fresh basil and thick-cut bacon? Tasty. My meat-loving brother-in-law even asked for a bite–having never had a portobello mushroom before–and liked it! In fact, I think I even saw a hint of envy…
Recipe
Servings: 4
Prep time: 5 minutes + grilling
Ingredients
4 large Portobello mushrooms
¼ cup olive oil
Grill seasoning mix
Garlic powder (optional)
Onion powder (optional)
Salt and pepper
Hamburger buns
Fresh basil leaves
Sliced tomato
Bacon (if desired, you know you want it!)
1/4 cup mayo (or reduced fat cream cheese if you’re trying to go light)
1 Tablespoon prepared pesto
Directions
- Wash and dry the mushrooms. Remove the stems.
- Bring the grill to high heat.
- Brush the olive oil on one side of the mushroom. Sprinkle with seasonings as you would hamburgers. I use a mesquite grilling mix along with garlic and onion powders and then salt and pepper.
- Place the mushrooms on the grill with the oiled side down. Grill until the mushroom starts to soften, about 5 minutes.
- Brush the non-oiled side and then flip the mushroom. Grill 5 more minutes or until browned and tender.
- Mix the mayo and the pesto (I added a few sun-dried tomatoes too).
- Slather the hamburger bun top with pesto mayo. On the bottom part layer the mushroom, tomato and basil.
Pineapple sage and my mother’s garden
Jul 21st
Borage, or starflower
“I was so excited when I found borage at the nursery,” gushed my mom recently. Borage, or starflowers are edible, beautiful and just happened to be a regular sight on our dessert plates growing up. (My mom would also freeze starflowers in ice molds to suspend in punch bowls during parties; I loved it.) Frequent visitors to MKES might wonder where I got my hankering for trying new flavors. Maybe from frequent trips to my mother’s garden to trim edible flowers, like borage, or pansies, to dress up dishes. Now, I have none of my mother’s gardening skills, but I do love experimenting with spices, ingredients and techniques in the kitchen.
Pineapple sage
And herbs? We had mint, chocolate mint, parsley, sage, rosemary, and oregano thyme. Just the other day I asked my mom what kind of basil she had in her garden. “Sweet, cinnamon, Thai…” I have no pictures of my own gardening efforts to pass along, I’ll just have to rely on hers for now. Update: I have kept my indoor basil plant alive for a week now. It’s looking good although the cilantro plant didn’t even make it 3 days.
a peek at my mother's herb garden
Your turn–what culinary skill did you learn from your mom? And hey, if it’s how to read the back of a box of brownies, that counts!
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