Monday Snack 1

The simple shame of At Hand Cooking is that often you don't have enough to make full meal for everybody unless A. You are incredibly lucky with what happens to be around or B. You are only cooking for yourself. It takes alot of practice with At Hand to really be able to make something for nothing in the form of an actual meal for one than one person, and is a skill I'm still developing.

However, on the reverse side of At Hand Cooking, is the beauty that is making snacks. You don't need alot of food, you don't need to fill anyone completely, your options are damn near boundless if you have something crunchy around, and everyone will love you for the effort.

This particular snack was made last night so late that I unfortunately did not get this up yesterday as I had planned. In fact, I didn't get up this morning as planned either... but that really is a story for some other time.

All I had this time around was:

1. 2 Handfuls of Sharp Cheddar, shredded

2. Tortilla chips, the scoop variety, not in picture.

3. Black pepper,

4. Cayenne powder

5. Garlic powder.

Obviously, quick microwave nachos were in order. However, good microwave nachos are considerably more difficult to make then just throwing cheese on chips and calling it a day. Oh no, there is a bit more too it.

1. Put the cheese into a bowl, and sprinkle black pepper in. Mix throughly.

2. Repeat step one with the cayenne and the garlic powder. The amount of each is entirely up to you, but generally speaking you want more garlic powder than black pepper than cayenne in this case, otherwise the tastes will be dominated by the cayenne.

3. Place chips on a microwave safe plate, sprinkling cheese/spice mixture across nachos. I personally like a little nacho with my melted cheese, but a nice middle ground if you are serving others is to sprinkle the cheese in a single layer cross the chips, and then once again, so you can still see plenty of chip, but plenty is hidden by unmelted cheesy goodness.

4. Microwave the whole thing, covered, for around a minute. Much more than that and you end up with the cheese looking awfully cratered.

5. Eat immediately. As mentioned in my quesadillas recipe, cheese does not retain heat at all.

Either serve on their own on the plate you cooked them on, or maybe bring out some salsa or sour cream to top them off.

My batch, as you can see, turned out a little on the cratery side, as I cooked them a wee bit too long. However, they were still delicious, with my band mates remarking on them being surprisingly tasty. The garlic taste kinda melds with the cheese and the corn of the chip to make a new taste that is certainly very nachoey. They smell something like Mexican inspired garlic bread.

These took about 3 minutes of prep, and a little over a minute of cooking. They are fast, easy, and a definite crowd pleaser. At some point I'll do my super ridiculous take way to much time nachos, but for now these will have to do.

Spatulaa!

Noah

EDIT: It's Tuesday, so I'm going to post this to BlesswithGrace's Tempt my Tummy Tuesday . Thanks BWG for running this carnival! Go check out the others over there. Really neat food.