Bacon Jalepeño Mac

The audacity.

I once brought this to a friendsgiving full of people I barely knew, and every single person had an allergy/sensitivity to gluten, spice, or animal products, so I was the only one to eat my own dish.

Ready In: 31 Minutes & 16 Seconds

Serves: 6 people

Ingredients

  • 1 lb box of macaroni

  • 4 jalepeños

  • 6-10 slices of thick cut bacon

  • 21 oz of cheese (I like 9oz medium cheddar and 12 oz brie)

  • 3c heavy whipping cream

  • 1.5T unsalted butter

  • 1/2t sea salt

  • ground black pepper to taste

Preparation

  1. Weigh out your cheese, then shred.

Cook

  1. According to the box directions, cook macaroni til al dente (it’ll cook more later).

  2. While boiling, chop jalepeños and bacon, then fry them together.

  3. Strain/sift bacon & jalepeños from the grease (I just use the noodle strainer).

  4. Turn heat to low and add cheese, cream, butter, salt & pepper until the cheese melts.

    1. If tacky, add a little more cream until it gets saucy. Sometimes it just needs to melt more.

  5. Now you can add more salt & pepper if needed.

  6. Add your noodles and goodies back and mix them up.

  7. Serve immediately.

Tips

I dig this recipe with sourdough bread chunks added at the very end, then baked at 325 for 10 minutes to get it all crispy. For brownie points, make/save a little cheese sauce for drizzling on top when it comes out. Credit to Hayden Owens for the sourdough and baking idea. This made me fall in love with this recipe again. 

This recipe is hard to mess up but extremely hard to keep, so I recommend portioning for the exact amount you plan to serve and serving it fresh. If you do have leftovers, I find adding heavy cream and a lot of stirring is well worth it.

Grandma’s Red Curry

Staple banger

It requires little effort and a bit of a wait. If you substitute chicken, it also makes a bangin' vegan dish.

Ready In: 90 Minutes

Serves: 4 people

Ingredients

  • 2 cans of coconut milk

  • I tsp Thai curry paste

  • 1 chicken breast

  • 1 can bamboo shoots

  • Basil for topping

  • 1tsp fish sauce (or substitute with sea salt)

  • I tsp sugar

  • Veggies (your preference)

Preparation

  1. Cut chicken to the desired size

  2. Cut veggies to the desired size

Cook

  1. Bring 1 can of coconut milk and curry paste to a simmer.

  2. Cook chicken.

  3. Add bamboo shoots and veggies.

  4. Add meat and cook until done.

  5. Add the second can of coconut milk to the consistency preference.

  6. Add fish sauce.

  7. Add sugar.

  8. Add basil.

  9. Bring to a boil and shut off to cool and serve.

Tips

Serve over rice & contribute to an IRA when you’re young.

Pickletini

It’s fkn brine time

Brooke has brought countless wonderful things into my life, most topically, pickled things. I made this one afternoon and then, presumably based on demand, many afternoons afterward.

Ready In: 5 Minutes

Serves: 2, but 1 & a sidecar is completely fine too.

Do not fear the dill grubbins in the pickle juice. Embrace the swamp.

Ingredients

  • 100 ml Tito’s vodka

  • 300 ml Grillo’s pickle juice

  • 1tsp olive juice

  • 2 cups ice

  • 1 Chalkidiki olive, halved

  • 1 pickle spear, cut in 1/2” chunks

  • 1 long toothpick

Preparation

  1. Throw it all in shaker.

  2. Assemble your garnish with pickle, olive, pickle, olive, and munch on the rest of your pickle spear.

  3. Shake the living fuck out of your shaker for 30 seconds. It should be an embarrassingly physical endeavor, but it makes a difference.

  4. Serve asap while it’s still frothy.

Tips

The ratio is just 3:1 PJ to vodka, with a splash of olive juice, so if you’re making this in a batch, as I am often asked, using a mason jar’s markings is a great alternative to measuring out your shots.

Thai Tacos & a Spicy Peanut Sauce.

It's a refreshing little side.

Thai tacos (as we call them) are a bit of a family treasure, and honestly, I’ve never made it as well as Grandma does, but it’s fucking phenomenal and deserves to be shared.

Going up in Thailand, my grandmother didn't have access to venison (or many undulates, really) like we do here in the States. When my parents would hunt a bear or deer, she would use the backstrap and other tender cuts as an added protein source, and that was my introduction to this dish. This recipe doesn’t include the meat because I think it’s beautiful as a vegetarian dish, but if you want to experiment or just like a little steak in your salad, I think a diced tri-tip should do just fine.

This dish was my introduction to enjoyably consuming spicy foods, and I remember forgoing anything green in this recipe and just eating handfuls of rice noodles with venison, all slathered in peanut sauce. My parents didn’t love my grubby mitts sifting through the fresh ingredients, but my grandma insisted that food was for your hands and that it was an inconvenience to add utensils to a dish like this.

This meal taught me to love food. I remember this dish came with a sense of occasion, like it was a friend you invite over when there’s something to celebrate. I make it when I’m smiling.

Ready In: 120 Minutes

Serves: 8 people

Ingredients

Peanut Sauce

  • 4 garlic cloves

  • 3 Thai chili peppers

  • 1 lime

  • 1.5 cups of peanuts

  • 3 tablespoons of crunchy peanut butter

Tacos

  • Green leaf lettuce

  • Thin rice noodles

  • Chives

  • Cucumber

  • Another lime

Preparation

Peanut Sauce

  1. ​​Smash peanuts, garlic cloves, and chili peppers in pestle & mortar

  2. Add lime juice to the mortar (to taste)

  3. Add 2 tbsp of crunchy peanut butter

  4. Mix and add the remaining PB, water, and lime juice to the desired consistency and taste.

Tacos

  1. Soak rice noodles for 30 minutes, then microwave noodles in water for 30 seconds, and let soak again for 30 minutes

    1. you can follow package directions, but this was my grandma’s little trick when she was in a hurry.

  2. Dice cucumber & chives

  3. Slice lime into wedges

Assembly

Make a lil’ taco using the green leaf as a shell and Thai Peanut sauce as a base layer (for adhesion), then get wild with it. Squirt lime to taste.

Tips

Add a splash of water to the peanut sauce before refrigerating. Keeps for a week.

Pasta

So damn easy.

You got this. This pasta isn’t flashy and has a good, neutral taste, so it’s extremely diverse and a regular in my kitchen.

Ready In: 30 Minutes

Serves: 2 people

Ingredients

  • 2 eggs

  • 1C flour

Preparation

  1. Scoop a cup of flour onto a large, flat surface & create a well large enough to hold your two eggs.

  2. Crack the eggs into your well.

  3. With a fork, slowly beat the egg, drawing in flour from the outside of the well. Continue until you get a dough that’s manageable with your hands.

  4. Knead the dough around, picking up little bits of flour along the way. The dough should still have some bounce to it once you’ve cleaned your surface.

  5. Dust the surface below dough, and roll the dough into a square about 1/8” thick

  6. Trim into a shape you like with a knife or pasta maker and set aside.

Cook

  1. Heat water to a rolling boil and back off to a low boil; likely medium heat.

  2. Drop in pasta and let boil for about 1 minute for al dente or further until your preferred texture.

Tips

If you want to make this in advance, just hang uncooked noodles indoors for about 4 hours. It should crack if given any resistance.

Piña Colada

It's a patio slammer to really kick off the weekend.

I want a Piña Colada almost every day of this goddamn existence.

Ready In: 5 Minutes

Serves: Me, bitch.

Ingredients

  • 100 ml rum

  • 100 ml pineapple Juice

  • 100ml coconut cream

  • 24 oz ice

Preparation

  1. Throw it all in a blender.

Tips

Get a mason jar out of your cupboard, go to Goodwill, and find a blender with a pitcher that has the same threading as your mason jar. It’s probably going to be an old Oster line. Buy it. Toss the pitcher and whatever Ninja bullshit you bought in college. Now you have a blender that you can fix yourself with some light googling, get parts at any Goodwill, and instead of dealing with that fat pitcher fuckery, you can just screw on literal mason jars and toss them in the dishwasher when you’re done. Added bonus is a 32oz mason jar already has the 100ml markings on it.

Hot Philly Cheesesteaks

The New Staple.

I’ve been asking everyone to pick me up a hot Philly for 6 years, and I recently discovered just how easy it is to make one.

Ready In: 16 Minutes

Serves: 2 people

Ingredients

  • 8 slices roast beef deli slices

  • 2 forkfuls of Mama Lil’s peppers

  • 1 Tbs of butter

  • 2 sandwich slices of Cheddar cheese

  • 1/2 of a yellow onion

  • ¼ cup of warm water

  • 2 hoagies, halved

Preparation

  1. Heat a cast iron pan on medium

  2. Thinly slice half of your yellow onion. Shoot for 1/8th” or thinner

Cook

  1. Drop your butter underneath your onions on one half of the pan; scoop in the Mama Lil’s in the other half.

  2. They can touch but can't canoodle

  3. When your onions are golden, and your peppers are charred, evenly distribute them into your hoagies.

  4. Make two hoagie-shaped parallel piles of meat in your pan.

  5. Top the meat with the Cheddar.

  6. Pour in the water and cover the pan for about 30 seconds while the cheese turns into a gooey mess.

  7. Scoop into your sandwiches

  8. Grub

Tips

Your South Philly impression isn’t as good as you think.