The Simple Things

Sometimes it's the simplest of ingredients that have the most impressive results. Johnnycakes and I certainly felt that way recently when we made a beautiful mozzarella caprese dish using the simple ingredients of fresh local Maryland tomatoes, olive oil, fresh basil and mozzarella cheese.

Mozzarella Caprese

Ingredients

1 large tomato

1/2 cup of fresh basil

1/2 cup of slice fresh mozzarella

2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper

Preparation

Drizzle the bottom of a dish with olive oil. Delicately space the salted, sliced tomatoes along the bottom of the dish. Gently place on basil leaf on top of each tomato and then stack a piece of mozzarella (about a 1/2 piece) on top. Drizzle the plate again with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and freshly ground pepper.

I like to each these little towers on top of freshly baked crostini, which is only sliced french bread topped with a bit of olive oil and baked until crunchy.

With the remaining fresh tomato, basil, bread and cheese. We even found time to make little pizzas. We topped the bread halves with tomato, mozzarella, basil, red onion, sausage and Parmesan cheese and baked for about 12 minutes.

As you can see, our efforts yielded spectacular results!

The Kitchen is Closed

Johnnycakes and I were pretty worn out tonight and didn't feel like cooking too much. We still haven't made it to the grocery store and we don't have any meat in the freezer for a full scale dinner. I'm sure others can relate to a desire to just put a hassle free dinner on the table without ordering takeout or going to a restaurant. We had a "Palermo's" frozen pepperoni pizza in the freezer for just such an occasion. Shoppers Food Warehouse sells Palermos Pizzas for $2.50 for a 12-inch pie! You just can't beat that. We did doctor up the pizza a bit. We topped the pizza with fresh tomato, chopped onion, chopped broccoli, grated Parmesan cheese and garlic powder. After about twelve minutes in the oven at 450 degrees, we dug in! I honestly have to say the pizza tasted great. The tomato and freshly grated cheese really added a lot of flavor.

I know that tonight's dinner is not exactly a culinary achievement. In fact, it's kind of pathetic but it's reality. It also didn't quite meet the third Couple of Cooks criteria (1. convenience 2. economical and 3. healthily) of being healthy but I estimate that two slices of the pizza was about 550 calories which is definitely reasonable.

I know it's nothing fancy but I hope others can relate to this dinner of convenience!