Ree Drummond Just Re-Invented Green Eggs And Ham
Do you like green eggs and ham? Do you like them, Sam-I-Am? While the idea of green ham is understandably troublesome, eggs, it seems, can turn green for reasons as benign as cooking them in a cast-iron pan while still being perfectly safe to eat. While restaurants such as Subway will sometimes do their own take on this Seussian classic, they typically employ a harmless food coloring agent, while more upscale versions such as the one served up at Pike Place Market's The Crumpet Shop may use something along the lines of pesto.
Ree Drummond, also known by her sobriquet The Pioneer Woman, created her own homage to the children's book penned by Theodor Geisel (Geisel, of course, is the real name of another celebrity better known by his nom de plume, Dr. Seuss). Her green eggs and ham recipe, like that of The Crumpet Shop, employs pesto as the green element. Instead of crumpets, though, she uses puff pastry to make hand pies that somewhat resemble gourmet Toaster Strudel.
How to make green eggs and ham like The Pioneer Woman
Drummond's recipe, as shared on her Food Network show "The Pioneer Woman" (via YouTube), isn't too terribly complicated as she's more of a home cooking-type cook than one who feels compelled to add cheffy flourishes to everything she does. To make these pesto egg puff pastry squares (that's what Drummond calls them), you'll need just eight ingredients, plus salt and pepper: butter, a whopping seven eggs, spinach, three tablespoons of pesto (she uses the jarred kind), grated fontina cheese, a box of frozen puff pastry, slices of deli ham, and spoonfuls of everything bagel seasoning.
Scramble half a dozen of the eggs in the butter with the pesto and spinach — voilà! They are now green. The rest of the recipe involves making an egg wash to glue the pastry pockets together and crimping the edges to make them into hand pies. We'd definitely eat it in a box with a fox! Or maybe while reading from a first edition of "Green Eggs and Ham," like the one listed on Bookbid for $3,900.