Spicy Goat Cheese Dip

Since Im fessing up to my astronomical failures as a cook allow me to confess to another ridiculous thing I cannot manage to succeed at.  Nachos.  You heard me correctly.  Melted cheese and tasty fixings over chips.  Couldnt be simpler, right?  Anyone can do that.  Yeah anyone except me it would seem.  Having never attempted to make them before I thought the broiler would be the way to go.  30 seconds later I was waving out the fire on my organic blue corn chips.  Another dinner ruined.

In my defense nachos were never something we ate in my house growing up.   And the horrible alien cheese sauce drenched corn chips at the fair or the mall arent nachos those are just wrong.  So I dont have a food memory of this dish to lead me to create a long forgotten favorite recipe.  All I had was a strange craving for cheesy corn chips after eating a quick meal at the Great Dane (a locally famous brew pub with good beer and a gluten free menu) and being mocked by the monster nacho plate being eating by people at a neighboring table.

Giving up cheese in Wisconsin is like giving up on snow in the Arctic, it just isnt possible.  It is everywhere and it knows where to find you when you least expect it.  Once you stop eating it you suddenly notice how prevalent cheese is.  Where as you once thought phrases like "cheesehead" or "the cheese state" are just cute metaphorical terms of endearment we use to talk about the area, you know now that the place literally is made of dairy and you cant escape seeing it.

Ive gotten pretty good at ignoring all the amazing cheese this town has to offer and hardly mind that everyone around me makes yummy noises while nibbling on their latest gourmet cheese discovery at parties.  But everyone once in a while as I happily eat my bunless burger and salad a little rodent somewhere in my head will start screaming "Cheese!"  I try to ignore it but it gets more specific, "Ooey gooey sinful cheese drenched macaroni and cheese hot and fresh out of the oven!"  Then things go down hill into something along the lines of "Nachos! Nachos! Nachos! Nachos! Nachos!"  Until the part of my brain that hasnt been taken over by gerbils riffles my brain to find a solution that will make the cheese obsessed brain animals happy and not make me sick.  Anyone who read my vegan mac and cheese post knows that it is no small order to fill.

Thankfully I have a very understanding fella who is no longer surprised that the woman he lives with occasionally (okay on a very regular basis, shut up) goes crazy and insists that directly after lunch we must go to Whole Foods so I can look into making nachos immediately.  It probably helps that he usually benefits from my moments of madness by being rewarded with delicious food for the low low price of doing my endless dishes.

So the only way I could see this nacho thing going down was to indulge in goat cheese which I allow myself every couple of weeks because it doesnt seem to negatively effect me too much and lets face it I need some sort of cheese or I really will snap in the face of all this temptation.  However the goat cheese dribbled chips burst into flame because nachos under the broiler probably wasnt my greatest idea ever.  The cheese sauce I salvaged off of the wreckage on the other hand was amazing!  So whereas I cannot suggest asking me to ever making you something as simple as nacho I can tell you that this accidental goat cheese creation is a great dip.

Now world please do tell me how in the hell does one make nachos?

Spicy Goat Cheese Dip

1 5-ounce log goat cheese
1/4 cup heavy cream or coconut milk
1-2 chipotle peppers, chopped
1-2 teaspoons adobe sauce from chipotle peppers
1 jalapeno, finely chopped


Place goat cheese in a oven safe bowl.  Heat for 20 seconds or so until it becomes soft and easily mixable.  Add heavy cream or coconut milk until the cheese is the constancy you like, you might not need all the liquid depending on the goat cheese youre using.  Stir in the chipotle, adobe sauce and jalapeno until well combined.  Place in oven at about 375 degrees until cheese begins to brown on top.  Serve warm with good quality corn chips.

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Pumpkin Black Bean Soup

This soup is autumn in a bowl. Its filling, warm, healthy and involves pumpkin. What more could you ask for? Oh its also embarrassingly easy for such a tasty dish.

Im not usually excited about cooking that involved pouring things from cans and the spice cupboard, adding heat and eating. But sometimes thats all you have the energy for, and this is the perfect thing to make while in one of those moods and still having a great dinner no one will realize you put nearly no effort into. And those cinnamony roasted pumpkin seeds I made the other day are a amazing on top of this.

The chef and I decided this soup is pretty great but its probably missing bacon. It needs a little something extra to amp up the flavor and take it from yummy to out of this world. Oh darn guess Ill have to cook it again and experiment with adding bacon next time. Unless someone wants to do that arduous task and let me know what happens.

Pumpkin Black Bean Soup

2 cans black beans (15 oz each), drained and rinsed
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes
4 cups vegetable broth

4 Tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup red onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tablespoon ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 can (16 oz) pumpkin puree
3 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Baked pumpkin seeds, for garnish

In a food processor puree the beans and tomatoes with half of the vegetable broth.

Warm oil in a large pot then sauté red onion, garlic, cumin, salt, cinnamon, allspice, pepper and cayenne on medium heat until onion and garlic are brown; about 3 minutes.

Add pureed ingredients, pumpkin and the rest of the broth to the pot. Simmer uncovered until thick, stirring often and scraping the bottom, about 40-45 minutes.

Before serving stir in balsamic vinegar. Garnish with baked pumpkin seeds.

Original recipe from Noble Pig blog.

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Organic Gluten Free Low GI Double Down Insanity

Unless you are very lucky or have been living under a rock you may have heard of the new sandwich Kentucky Fried Chicken recently released called the Double Down.  It is two breaded chicken patties (or you can get the grilled version if youre watching your girlish figure), bacon, cheese, and the frightening sounding Colonels sauce which is basically spicy mayo.  No bun, no bread, instead it gets wrapped up in a baggy so the copious amounts of grease dont roll down your sleeve.  Sounds great, right?

It has been impossible to ignore especially as a serious foodie.  At least once a day someone is talking (okay usually rending their hair at the creations ick factor) about this sandwich.  The Jamie Olivers of the world are declaring it the food equivalent of the apocalypse and basically acting like it will be the down fall of civilization.  While the Anthony Bourdains shrug at its impressive caloric content while admitting that it kind of looks like it would be fun to try just once.

I fall somewhere in the middle.  It is a rather unnecessary calorie bomb and the world doesnt really need another bit of junk food.  On the other hand people already eat crap and this actually isnt near to the worst thing you can get in the world of fast food.  Its kind of impressive actually how much press this silly breadless sandwich has gotten and though they are a bit late to the trend it was nice to see a low carb option being marketed.

But mostly Im just sick of hearing about it.  So after an acquaintance of mine ate one and lived to write about it I decided I would make a Double Down that I could eat.  It would be my protest against fast food to try to make a less coronary inducing version of this monstrosity.  The joke was on me however.  By trying the old low carb meat dredging trick of substituting ground nuts for breading  I may have actually made a sandwich even worse for you than the original.  Now that is impressive!

I did however make it will all organic and gluten free ingredients which is not something you are ever going to find in a fast food restaurant any time soon.  So with that small victory I will admit the most embarrassing part of this whole qualifier heavy post is this... 

This was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten!

There I admitted it and as an proponent of healthy eating I shall now hang my head in shame.  The thing is though, Michael Pollan is right, if you are going to eat something this bad for you then you should make it for yourself for two reasons.  One is you can control the quality of the ingredients, limit the calories where possible and if you have to take the time to prepare it you cant impulse eat it.  And secondly after you learn what goes into certain things and how gross and greasy they are you will never ever want to put them in your mouth again.

For example I decided to make homemade mayonnaise for this recipe because I never had before and didnt want to buy a tub of it at the store.  Like so many things Julie Child makes it sound so freaking easy.  This woman had to have the arms of an ox because halfway through the process the fella and I were all out of arm strength in all of our combined appendages.  And after whipping a cup and a half of oil into two egg yolks I realized how sickening mayonnaise is, now that I really truly know what goes into it I have no desire to ever consume it again. 

Which is how I ended up feeling about this entire experiment; it was a fun adventure but I will never do it again.  In fact if I had to suggest to someone how to make a less evil Double Down I would say add some cayenne to the breading, skip the bacon and go light on the cheese.  The mayo and the bacon added nothing to the sandwich.  I know, its blasphemy to speak poorly of bacon but hear me out. 

The fake KFC seasoning mixed in with the ground pecans were what really made this a treat.  That was the truly delicious part and the copy cat blend of spices did taste amazingly like how I remember the real Kentucky Fried Chicken tasting.  So I would perhaps bread chicken that way again in the future.  The other crazy piles of stuff on this sandwich and the extra chicken breast are really just for show.  And it succeeded, we now how far KFC is willing to go to get press.  It worked, were talking about them, even I gave in to the trend.  Darn it.

Organic Gluten Free Low GI Double Down Insanity

1 cup finely ground pecans

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon garlic salt

1 teaspoon onion salt
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried rubbed sage
1/4 teaspoon dried powdered rosemary
1/4 teaspoon dried powdered thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 egg 

1/4 cup rice flour

2 large chicken breasts

4 tablespoons oil

4 pieces of cooked bacon

4 slices of cheese (I used organic goat "cheddar")

2 tablespoons of spicy mayo (recipe to follow)

Using a spice or coffee grinder, finely chop the pecans.  They will turn wet and sticky very quickly while being ground so make sure to watch their consistency so that you dont end up with pecan butter.  Also use the grinder to powder any of the spices that arent already ground.  Mix the spices and the ground pecans in a shallow bowl.

Whisk the egg in another shallow bow and set aside.  Place the rice flour in yet another shallow bowl.

Using a mallet pound the chicken breasts until they are an even thickness, about 1/4 inch.  You should have two very large mostly flat chicken breasts.  Cut each into 2 equal sized pieces so that you now have four pieces of thin chicken breast.

Warm the oil over medium high heat in a non-stick pan while you batter the chicken.  First dust the chicken breast with the rice flour.  Next coat the chicken in the egg.  Lastly dredge the chicken in the pecan and spice mixture until well coated.  When the oil is warm pan fry each piece of chicken, trying to avoid burning the pecan coating by flipping the chicken often and keeping the temperature low.  Cook until the inside of the breasts are cooked through then set aside.

Place two chicken breasts on a plate to beginning assembling the sandwich. Place two slices of bacon and  2 pieces of cheese on one of the chicken breasts and 1 tablespoon of the mustard on the other breast.  Fit the two prepared chicken breasts together like a sandwich.  Repeat with the remaining ingredients to make the second sandwich.

Copycat KFC seasonings from this website.

Spicy Mayo

1/4 mayo (make your own or from a jar if you like)

1/2 teaspoon cayenne

1/4 teaspoon paprika 

In a small bowl mix everything together well.

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Cinnamon Pumpkin Seeds

The end of CSA season meant Ive had seemingly one of every kind of squash in existence sitting in my kitchen waiting for me to be inspired to do something with them. Then the chef brought over a couple more squash just to mock me the other day. At that point there was no point in delaying it any longer, I took a knife to every squash in the kitchen and roasted them. This will force me to find something to do with their various roasted flesh as every time I open the fridge there they are tempting me. Tonight I simply warmed the acorn squash in some butter in a frying pan and was very happy with it.

However Im very much my mothers daughter (no worries, I mean it in a good way mom) and the thought of all those squash seeds going to waste was unthinkable, I had to do something with them. Ive never made roasted squash seeds before so it was fun to grab the first spice that came to me out of the spice cupboard. Cinnamon with salt sounded divine and it was. I was very pleasantly surprised with the results and made this same combination twice since then.

Even better than the cinnamony seeds themselves is that they are awesome in a salad. Ive been hooked on throwing them in mixed greens and spinach with feta cheese and a vinaigrette of olive oil and fig vinegar. Its tastes way too good to be that simple.

Cinnamon Pumpkin Seeds

pumpkin seeds
olive oil
salt
cinnamon

Reserve however many seeds you get from pumpkins and other random squashes you have around for cooking. Toss the slimy pits from around the seeds. Rinse the seeds then spread them over a baking sheet.

Heat oven to 350. Put just enough oil over the seeds so that they are coated. Sprinkle with salt and cinnamon to suit your taste.

Bake for 20 minutes or until well toasted.

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