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If anyone exists who doesn’t love nachos, well they’re probably a stupid jerk. If your nachos aren’t delicious, then you’re doing it wrong. One of my favorite ways to healthy up delicious nachos is to add some shredded baby spinach and chopped grape tomatoes.

The ones pictured above are undercooked by about two minutes, but that decision was made purely out of a desire to eat them ASAP.

Tips: - Always put your extras under the cheese; if you put them on top, they will overcook (or dry out) before the cheese melts. Baby spinach is great to keep on hand, because it’s ubiquitously available in pre-washed, affordable packages. - If you like medium heat, drizzle some Cholula hot sauce over the nachos before baking; if you like real spice you should definitely try Tapatio, but I find it doesn’t cook well and is best drizzled on after removing your nachos from the oven. - My favorite chips are Garden of Eatin brand unsalted Blue Corn tortilla chips. I’m a big fan of salt, but salted chips are generally over-salted to the point that they completely overwhelm anything you put on them. So do your palate a favor and salt your toppings, not your chips. - My cheese of choice? Cabot Vermont Cheddar. It melts well, and has great mild-medium cheddar flavor. It’s a great standard to keep in your fridge. - Eyes bigger than your stomach? Count out a single serving of chips to avoid an I-feel-grossly-over-full situation. - Arrange your chips in a single layer without gaps, both for even cheese distribution and to minimize any cheese falling down and baking on the pan. - Everyone I’ve ever met that has said they hated tomatoes ended up liking them once I fed them an actual ripe tomato. Most tomatoes at the supermarket are either bred so they are hard and will ship well, or are picked while super immature and artificially ripened with gas; this results in watery, grainy, tasteless tomatoes that are generally awful. Seriously—if you’re thinking about buying tomatoes that are an orange color, and they aren’t heirlooms, I recommend you save your money and possibly also punch yourself in the face for considering subjecting yourself to something so gross. Unless it’s tomato season and you can find legitimately ripe tomatoes at the farmers market, I find that my co-op’s grape tomatoes are generally very good. The BEST ones (not pictured, as they were out of stock) I’ve found are Lady Moon Farms brand (http://www.ladymoonfarms.com); they are almost always bright red and have the ripe flavor to match their color.

Happy eating:)

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A grown-up rendition of my Mother’s pasta —— My Mother’s cooking generally lacked variety, but there are a few things she made during my childhood that I look back upon fondly; one of which was her Sour Cream Pasta.

The gist of Sour Cream Pasta is pretty much just cooking some tri-color rotini and tossing it in sour cream and Parmesan cheese. The trick to it is finding the right ratio of ingredients (too little sour cream makes it bland, too much makes it too tangy, and too much Parmesan ruins the texture), and to toss everything in the still-hot pot so it gets properly creamy.

I recently had some goat cheese to use up, and it occurred to me it could be used to make a revamped version of sour cream pasta. Here is my revamped version:

Creamy pasta (single serving): 2 oz spiral pasta* 1/3 cup organic frozen peas** 1 oz nice goat cheese (chèvre) 1-2 Tbsp finely grated Parmesan cheese*** 6 grinder turns of pepper

1. Liberally salt a pot of boiling water and toss in your pasta. 2. Measure out your cheese; I just put a bowl on my food scale, zero it, and squeeze the ounce of goat cheese into the bowl. Then I eyeball the Parmesan cheese and grate the pepper. 3. Halfway through the cook time, toss the peas in with the pasta; this way, they should just finish cooking when the pasta is done. 4. When the pasta is al dente, strain it and pour it back into the hot pot. Dump in the cheese mix and stir until creamy. Add more pepper to taste. Fun fact: sour cream pasta was the ONLY thing I would ever eat with pepper on it as a child. You could also get fancy and use a pepper spice mix seasoning, but I would stay away from one containing salt (the salt won’t dissolve, also both chèvre and Parmesan are generally plenty salty) Lazy variation? I frequently use a small pot for this and don’t want to get the pot fully dirty, so I will dump the strained pasta and peas into my bowl of cheese/pepper and leave it covered for 2-3 minutes so the heat diffuses into the cheese, and then stir the pasta in the bowl until it’s coated. The results are slightly less creamy, because the bowl won’t have the residual heat the pot would have, but it’s still a great way to limit your meal to one dirty dish. The pasta in my photo was lazy method.

*e.g.: rotini, rotelle, or gemelli (pictured) **Cascadian Farms sweet peas are hands down the best frozen peas I’ve found anywhere. Frozen peas are a staple in my freezer, because it’s an easy way to work something green into even the quickest and laziest of meals. I frequently use them in pasta dishes and omelettes. ***I recommend freshly grated. I used to buy it buy the block and chop it in my food processor, but my co-op sells some pretty good freshly grated parm in decanted bulk containers in the refrigerated cheese section that I buy for convenience. Just don’t get something like Kraft (or other canned stuff), because it’s not cheese and therefore doesn’t melt or crisp.

Disclaimer for vegetarians: please be aware that many goat cheeses and parmesans (especially ones from Italy), are made using animal rennet, which is a digestive enzyme taken from the stomach of calves used in the cheese making process. I try to avoid animal rennet cheeses, but I will still eat them. I believe Organic Valley’s parm uses vegetable rennet, not animal, but the ingredients lists on most of your better cheeses will disclose what type of rennet is used.

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Creamy, delicious magic. Crimini, leek, and spinach risotto

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Risotto for lunch....again....

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Graze box!

I finally signed up for Graze, based on recommendations from other people. I'm eagerly awaiting my first box! Go to https://www.graze.com/us/p/NCC9PYKQU if you want to give it a shot, too. The first box is free when you sign up for the service, which can be canceled at any time.

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Vanilla fairy cake, lemon buttercream

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Vanilla Fairy Cakes and paying homage to Nigella

I know I haven't posted anything in quite a long time, but I've been fiddling with cupcake recipes all week and have something I think is worth posting about. But first, my inspiration:

Nigella Lawson has long embodied all the major qualities that I feel a woman should have; she's smart, funny, gorgeous, a great cook, radiates kindness, doesn't take herself too seriously, and quite obviously takes pleasure in living. 

Comfort food has been both my passion and forte since childhood, so when I spotted How to be a Domestic Goddess on the shelves at Bear Pond Books in August of 2002, I was instantly smitten. A single white cupcake shone on the cover, stark against the black background, and the bronze and white lettering, as well as the bronze peeking out from under the dust jacket, all gave me the sense that this book had an underlying theme of pleasure. I had never heard of Nigella before, so I opened it and read the mini-bio on the dust jacket and flipped through the recipes, marveling at their diversity and appreciating that some of the savory ones were either vegetarian or modifiable to be so.

Having spent many years, especially during my formative ones, thinking about the type of person--and more importantly, parent--I want to be, when my 17-year-old-self closed Goddess after skimming the recipes and saw a the photo of Nigella on the back, looking relaxed and casual and beautiful in a simple-yet-classy black shift dress, I thought this--THIS--is my bible.

Twelve years later, Nigella is still my cooking spirit animal, and Goddess is still my favorite cookbook. Cooking from it is always comforting, and twelve years of batter and spatter only adds character to its glossy pages. To me, her books and recipes are about bringing people together through food, in all its simplicity and wonder, and enjoying yourself in the process. I've never had a 'bad' recipe from Nigella. Her recipes range from good to amazing, and the things that are merely 'good' are easily tweaked to outstanding; this also reinforces one of the central philosophies of her books, which is that cooking should be enjoyable and you need to relax in order to find your own perfection. This approach has helped me to grow as both a baker and a cook, because the 'good' things give me a solid launching point to exercise my creativity and the amazing things give me another ace to pocket in my recipe repertoire.

So, below is my current modified version of Nigella's Fairy Cake recipe from Goddess. After making multiple batches, I finally broke down and got a $20-something food scale from Target, because I bought an enormous roll of amish butter to use for this (I figured I would probably save money), wanted to be precise, and making multiple batches of cupcakes while only owning one set of measuring cups isn't easy.

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Fairy Cakes

Makes 24 very finely crumbed mini-cupcakes, baked for 12 minutes at 400 degrees. If you can manage it, try to have all your ingredients (namely butter and eggs) at room temp before baking.

Part 1: 4 oz unsalted butter (1 stick/8 Tbsp) 7 Tbsp organic cane sugar 1/2 tsp salt (I use coarse french grey sea salt)

Part 2: 2 eggs 1 tsp Vanilla

Part 3: 3 Tbsp Grapeseed oil

Part 4: 3.5 oz cake flour (King Arthur Flour, Unbleached) 1/2 tsp Baking Powder

Instructions:

Step 1. In a stand mixer (e.g.: KitchenAid Artisan), beat the Part 1 ingredients until white and fluffy; start on a low speed and increase to high once the sugar is worked in enough to not go flying everywhere. The sugar will be almost completely dissolved by the time it's done. This generally takes at least a few minutes and the only way to screw this step up is by not beating it until it's white and fluffy, so feel free to vacuum a room or something and come back and check on it. If you're using a finer sugar (like white granulated), your sugar may completely dissolve before it's properly white and fluffy.

Step 2. Add the vanilla. While beating at low-medium or medium speed, add your (room temp) eggs, one at a time, making sure that the first one is fully incorporated before adding the second. I keep the speed between medium and high until it's a homogenous and even fluffier, yet slightly yellow, mixture that looks like good buttercream. 

Step 3. While running the mixture on medium speed, slowly stream in your Grapeseed oil. What you're doing at this point is more or less making mayonnaise, so you don't want to dump in all three tablespoons at once and risk messing up the emulsification. Continue to beat it at medium or medium-high; the whole mixture should take on a new sort of glossiness. If it breaks a little, it could be that you added the oil too quickly or even something like your butter is too warm, don't get too bent out of shape about it because your cupcakes should still turn out fine as long as you don't let the batter sit and completely separate.. note: you can probably substitute another mild oil (e.g.: coconut), but stay away from any medium or strongly flavored oils (e.g.: avocado, olive)

Step 4. Mix your flour and baking powder together, and dump them on the batter. Turn on the mixture to a stir speed, turning it up to medium once it's mixed together enough that flour won't fly everywhere when the speed is increased. Then I scrape down the edges and give it a little more mixing at medium, just to make sure everything is incorporated. I would say that during this step, it gets mixed for 60-90 seconds. Because I'm using cake flour, it's really difficult to 'over mix' this batter.

A few notes on flour:

if you're not using something labeled as cake flour, I accept no responsibility for how your cupcakes turn out. Cake flour has less to much less protein in it than Pastry, All-Purpose, or Bread flours, respectively, and cake flour is what is going to give you a super-super-fine crumb on this. Pastry flour will likely be an OK substitution, however most of the pastry flour I see in stores is wheat pastry flour (especially the organic stuff) and that stuff will result in dry cake. Because I did the flour by weight you might be OK with All Purpose as long as you gently fold in the flour with a spatula instead of using the mixer (like when making muffins). AP flour will also result in a texturally different cake. A lot of websites say to swap out about a Tbsp of your AP flour with corn starch to approximate the protein content of cake flour, but this is not something I've tried.

If you are using self-rising cake flour, DO NOT ADD THE BAKING POWDER. Self-rising flour is pretty much just flour with baking powder in it, so I personally view it as a waste of money. 

I've tried many different types of flour, and KAF always gives me the best, most consistent results.

Variation: For lemon cupcakes, zest a lemon into your sugar before starting your batter. Use a spoon or other utensil to work the zest into the sugar for maybe 2 minutes; this works the oils into the sugar and will make the flavor uniform. I recommend organic lemons, so you aren't zesting pesticide residue into your cake; use a Meyer lemon if you can find one, otherwise you can use 2 standard yellow lemons.

This is a mildly flavored cake with a lovely, fine crumb. It's not a super-sugar shock, because it's meant to be topped with some sort of icing or frosting (I. Love. Buttercream). For an easy lemon buttercream, whip a stick of butter (4 oz; add up to 1/2 tsp salt if your butter is unsalted) using the paddle attachment. Sift in 1.5 cups of powdered sugar, a half a cup at a time, until it's light and fluffy. Add a splash of vanilla (a teaspoon?). Roll the lemon you zested for your cake on the counter and then puncture it with a fork; juice the lemon straight into your buttercream (fork puncture should be too small for seeds); this serves the dual purpose of both making your buttercream taste like lemon AND it thins out your buttercream to a creamier consistency. The biggest rule in cooking is to taste anything you can as you're cooking it; buttercream is no exception! Every time you add a little lemon juice, taste the buttercream to see if the flavor is where you want it to be! If you didn't make lemon cupcakes and just want to make lemon buttercream, I recommend you zest the lemon and add it to your buttercream for an extra kick. If you want to intensify the lemon flavor you can use some spice-rack lemon zest, but it's going to taste like garbage unless you have some FRESH (not bottled!) lemon juice to hide the processed taste; spice-rack lemon zest also doesn't have the flavorful oils in it that fresh lemon zest or even lemon extracts have. If you're using extract instead of fresh juice, you will need to thin out your buttercream with a few tablespoons of heavy cream. 

note on sifting: I never use those stupid can sifters, which are not only painful/tedious to use but impossible to properly clean. I dump anything I need to sift into a strainer sifter and tap the side until everything sifts down. Strainer sifters are also really nice because the little nub on the far side of the handle can be rested on top of your mixing bowl while you're dumping stuff into the strainer sifter (less mess), and they are also great for cleaning and straining tiny grains (like quinoa). I force any clumps through my strainer sifter using the underside of a spoon or measuring cup. 

Superfine crumb:

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Spinach Tortellini with Peas and Goat Cheese

Like many of the things at TJ’s, the spinach tortellini can be made great with minimal effort. Alone, they are terribly bland. The filling is pretty much just unseasoned mature spinach, but the dough is delicate and fresh. Even though they’re not standouts on their own, I think these tortellini are a great buy because they are healthy and cook in 4 minutes. As a side note, they are not technically vegetarian (Parmesan cheese and rennet are listed in the ingredients). I also think they could do without a lot of their filling ingredients (ingredients list size is concerning), as the filling only tastes like bland spinach. But I digress.

This was quite literally a five minute meal. Boil some water. Salt it liberally (I probably used a tablespoon of French grey sea salt for my tiny pot) and drizzle in a bit of good quality olive oil. Toss in a generous amount of frozen peas (I have tried every kind of organic frozen peas I could get my hands on and the only ones that are worth eating are Cascadian Farm), wait about 30 seconds for the temperature to come back up, and toss in the tortellini. I let it cook for four minutes (timed), drain everything, and smother it with goat cheese crumbles. I really like TJ’s goat cheese crumbles; it’s great creamy generic goat cheese that melts beautifully. It’s a really nice five minute meal. I think it would also be tasty with Gorgonzola, or even sautéed mushrooms.

A note on quantity: when it comes to pasta my eyes tend to be bigger than my stomach, so I almost always cook measured amounts. I’m cooking for one and will generally snack during or after, so I cook 20 dumplings. I eat small meals every 2 hours or so, so you may want to cook a lot more if you prefer large portions.

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Reworked double chocolate cookies with walnuts and toffee bits. Tastes like happiness.

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Banana bread with house made caramel and whipped cream #torches #buffalo

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Norwegian gold cupcakes with lingonberry buttercream

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Gnocchi pan fried in butter. What more could anyone want? Totally worth the hour.

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Cream cheese buttercream

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Since I was able to go to the Farmers market yesterday.... chili garlic veggie soup with feta #yums

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Just destroyed this. All of it. #cantinaloco #buffalo (at Cantina Loco)

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Spinach/feta/garden pea omelette with baked sweet potato fries and kale chips. And watermelon, but I already ate that part.... Took about 40 mins because of the sweet potatoes, but worth it.

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How to eat an entire avocado.