The Complex Amateur Food and Drink Blog

This Mac n’ Cheese is not for the faint of heart, or those lactose intolerant. If you are used to making a traditional craft mac n’ cheese, then prepare to have your mind blown. This uses Cowgirl Creamery’s Wagon Wheel cheese, as well as a white cheddar for a little kick. Again, this turns out amazing, but is a little fatty to put it lightly. Also this make an insane size portion. So I hope you are cooking for a huge family or a dinner party, or if you want leftovers for a few days like me, or you can half the recipe. In the recipe, they also used Rotelle…

Another pasta? Yeah I know, slight obsession. This one intrigued me because I had never really worked with fresh beets until this week, let alone in a pasta. Word of warning, they are not the easiest to work with. Red beets stain literally everything, they are not as easy to peel as advertised, and it’s just a messy process. The end result is impressive, but just a heads up, try not to get frustrated, and your hands might be red for a few hours but it washes out. So a beet stuffed pasta? Beets have never been my favorite, in fact I have usually avoided them. In the past they…

“The more basic the soup, the more critical the details”. French onion is quite a basic soup, but with cheese, bread, sweet vegetable, and meat broth, it’s is an amazing classic for good reason. Everything melts together and tastes even even better when the weather is cold. Dip some bread from a baguette to amplify it even more. This will most likely be the most onions you work with at one time. I used 7 onions, the recipe calls for 8, but my large bowl was overflowing and my eyes were sizzling. It was actually hard to be in the room! When working with onions, I am always impressed with…

Baking bread is freaking hard. Really makes me appreciate what actually goes into a baguette. It also takes an insane amount of time. For a baguette, if you start perfectly at 10:00am, they might be ready at 4:00pm. So, think about those fresh baguettes that are delivered in the morning… For a little inspiration, we actually went up to Bouchon Bakery to get some bread and pastries over this past weekend. We figured there would barely be anyone there, but nope. Probably ~30 people in a line around the block, as it is one of the only place actually open in all of Yountville. Still worth it, basically everything at…

You will be surprised by this dish. I definitely felt a sense of indulgence when eating since there is no eggs, cream, or butter in the entire dish. Plus asparagus are in season, so it’s the perfect time to make this very simple preparation to help give a healthy boost to your asparagus. I am always looking at ways to help spruce up my asparagus when cooking, and the crema is a great compliment. It’s not heavy at all, actually quite light, and only takes about 20 minutes to make. This is definitely a repeat dish. Hope you enjoy as well! Cookbook – A16 Ingredients – Walnut Crema – Salt…

This is an awesome egg souffle to try at home for breakfast. It’s fuffy, it’s light, what is not to like? I usually stick to extremely easy and simple breakfasts like cereal, yogurt and granola etc, so having this egg souffle around is a great change of pace. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Cookbook – Cowgirl Creamery Ingredients – Bechemel – Whole milk or half and half – 1 cup Egg Yolk – 4 (save the whites) Unsalted butter – 2 tbsp All purpose flour – 2 tbsp Thinly sliced chives – 1 tbsp Ricotta cheese – 1/2 Cup Sea salt – 1/4 tsp Fresh…

This is not your typical pasta/gnocchi dish as the broth is quite liquidy, almost like a soup. However this turned into one of my girlfriends favorite dishes that I have made so far, so it must have been pretty good. The meatballs are mainly made from pork shoulder, which was a surprise since I have only slow cooked pork shoulder for a few hours since you need to have it very tender. However, I guess if you grind it down it cooks like a typical meatball which made the prep easy since we had already made the gnocchi dough. Ideally, make the dough beforehand. It’s so much less to do,…

I don’t think I have ever made good gnocchi at home. There is always something missing, every damn time. Kind of frustrating since I’d like to think I have gotten pretty good at pasta, but this is different. That said, I have also only made potato gnocchi, which I thought was the only kind of gnocchi. Nope. Gnocchi made with potato were the only recipes that I had seen, so when preparing for this recipe, I kept expecting it to show up in the recipe, but never did. Turns out cheese can be substituted for potatoes. Ricotta for this recipe, is that gives the little dumplings their awesome fluffiness. I…

Mustard and fresh horseradish, never thought I’d see the day. For those that don’t know, I used to be a really picky eater, and honestly still don’t really enjoy most mustards and definitely not horseradish, wasabi, and anything really around that family of foods. For me, horseradish kind of tastes like how gasoline smells, just worse and more pungent. I was surprised to find that this was actually a much more pleasant experience, fresh horse radish is lighter and more delicate, and actually quite a nice compliment on in the dish. Yet here we are. This is probably the easiest recipe coming from the Rich Table book and only takes…