Food is Food

There are nachos, obviously, topped with beef, avocado, tomatoes, a lovely cheese sauce from Stonewall Kitchen, cilantro, pickled onions and sour cream. Yum!

By now, if you're a parent, your children are probably back to school (if not, I offer you my deepest condolences). You're probably also in major "fall schedule" mode. Back-to-school shopping and haircuts and soccer and dance (and figure out those carpools!) and school open houses (with so many forms to fill out) and easing back into homework. It's a lot! It's so much! And on top of it all, you probably keep forgetting you need to feed your children breakfast and pack their snacks and lunches and figure out something (what!?) to make for dinner. Which is why I love finding things you can make the night before, or in the 20 spare minutes you find during the day, and can pop in the oven that night. Weelicious to the rescue! If you're not familiar with her site, check it out. She offers a slew of easy, healthy, kid-friendly recipes. Like these Pizza Balls you can stuff with anything! Cheese, marinara and then, if you think your kids will eat it... veggies. I added some finely chopped cooked cauliflower to mine. My kids loved them (oh, and I ate 10). Check out the recipe here.

Every time I use horseradish in a recipe, I get e-mails from people asking me how they can make it at home. They mention they can get the fresh root, but can’t find anything already prepared in the jar, which in some cases is hard to believe – like when the email originates from New York City – but regardless, this is still a very worthwhile thing to learn how to make.

Worthwhile, and somewhat painful, if you’re not careful. As I mention in the video, the fumes produced by this process are very intense, and will cause burning eyes and runny noses, if you’re not in a well-ventilated space. Having said that, using a little common sense, it’s really not that bad, and so totally worth it.

This really is quite easy if you have a food processor, but if you don’t, a heavy-duty blender will work, although you may have to add more water in the first step, to get the mixture fine enough. You can also grate this very fine on a microplane, but that would probably only be practical if you’re making a smaller amount.

Once your horseradish has been ground finely, the technique is very simple. I like to wait two or three minutes (this is supposed to make it hotter), before adding the salt and vinegar. Then, I’ll simply process, adding as much water as necessary, until I have a nice, smooth, creamy mixture.

And while this looks like something from the grocery store, the flavor is incomparable. Intensely hot, and aromatic; this is the real deal. So, whether you’re one of these people, who lives in a place where they don’t have jarred horseradish, like apparently New York City, or you always wanted to try and make some yourself, I really hope you give it a try soon. Enjoy!

Ingredients for about 3 cups: you read this please in here

1 pound peeled, cubed fresh horseradish root

cold water as needed (about 3/4 cup total)

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

1/3 cup white distilled vinegar

A few weekends ago I went to a Hatch chile roast.Hatch chiles are a very prized New Mexican variety. They are available fresh from August through September and once roasted, they can be kept in the freezer for up to 2 years. They are very high in vitamin C—one medium chile has as much as 6 oranges.

There are 5 or 6 different chiles that are marketed with the name “Hatch” and they are each named for the valley they are grown in. The most common Hatch chile is the NuMex 6-4 Heritage, which was bred for flavor, heat level and size at New Mexico State University. They are fleshy, long and narrow. Not generally eaten raw, roasting really brings out their flavor—they are smoky but also have citrus, herbal and vegetal flavors but with distinct heat. You can get mild, medium, hot or extra hot Hatch chiles.

A year ago I was sent some hot chiles from The Hatch Chile Store and it has taken me a year to use them. They are really, really hot so a little goes a long way. You might think I had learned my lesson and would get medium heat chiles this time but I did not. In fact the chiles I got from Mollie Stone’s Market supplied by Melissa’s were fresh off the grill and I made yet another mistake, not peeling them with gloves. Ouch! I didn’t feel the sting and burn until hours later. Fortunately it does go away, eventually.

You can still attend a 2015 Hatch chile roast at a Bay Area Mollie Stone's Market in September on the 12th in Sausalito, 13th in Burlingame, 19th in San Mateo or 20th in Palo Alto. Preorder them if you like. If you prefer having them peeled for you, you can order them from The Hatch Chile Store. They arrive frozen in a flat package and are easy to remove, one at a time.

So what do you do with Hatch chiles? You can use them in dishes that feature them as a primary flavor such as chile verde or in chile rellenos, but there are countless other ways to enjoy them too. Here are just a few ways to use them:

* Stirred into polenta or grits

* In scrambled eggs, frittata or quiche

* Mixed into macaroni and cheese

* As a topping for burgers or cheese burgers

* In a quesadilla

* In chili con carne or vegetarian chili

* Added to corn chowder

* In enchilada sauce or filling

* Added to cornbread or corn muffins

* To spice up spinach artichoke dip

Disclaimer: I received Hatch chiles from The Chile Store and from Mollie Stone's Market. I was not monetarily compensated to write this or any other post on Cooking with Amy.

Due to the Labor Day holiday, today's regularly scheduled video will air tomorrow instead. We'll be showing you how to make your very own prepared horseradish, using the fresh root. Spoiler alert: It's hot. Very hot.

Back-to-school for the kids, back-to-work for mama! I had a blast on The Rachael Ray Show this morning testing out 3 adorable snacks for the kiddos: edible crayons, rainbow pasta and homemade fruit leather. They were extremely easy and Rach and I gave them four thumbs up, because we each have four thumbs (you know what I mean). If you missed the segment, you can check it out here!

When I asked my daughter what kind of cake she wanted for her third birthday, her reply was simple: "pink!" So I went a little overboard, and made the inside of the cake three shades of pink, with pink frosting, pink edible glitter and pink heart sprinkles. Were there pink candles? Um, duh. And I splurged a bit on this cake topper from Etsy because an all-pink cake deserves a little bling.

To make the cake ombre, all you need is a little food coloring! Simply bake as many layers as you'd like, evenly distribute the batter into different bowls, and use varied amounts of food dye to create different shades. I made 4 different layers, but the cake started to look absurdly tall so I ditched one of them. I used boxed white cake (two boxes) with neon pink food coloring, and followed this recipe for the Vanilla Buttercream. It was a hit amongst the pink-loving crowd.

Now if someone could just help me figure out how to explain to a three-year-old that her next birthday is an entire year away...

This incredibly easy to make Alabama white barbecue sauce was invented in 1925 by Robert “Big Bob” Gibson at Big Bob Gibson's Bar-B-Q restaurant, in Decatur. When I first read this bit of culinary history, I had to smile, since I actually know the guy. Well, sort of.

I’ve been to two bbq “boot camps,” run by champion pitmaster Chris Lilly, who trained under a guy, who trained under Big Bob Gibson. Hey, that’s only three degrees of separation. Ironically, Chris never made, or used the white sauce on anything we cooked, but still, I know a guy, who knew a guy, who knew THE guy.

Some people find this concoction quite strange, but not me. It’s eerily similar to the Cornell chicken marinade, which I love. In fact, Mr. Robert C. Baker, the creator of the aforementioned recipe, may have borrowed the idea from Big Bob. I would investigate further, but I have real crimes to solve.

Don’t let this mixture’s appearance stop you from trying what is a devastatingly delicious marinade, baste, and sauce. One tip for basting on the grill: make sure you do it towards the end of cooking, and not over too-high heat. You don’t want flame-ups, as that will cause an off taste.

I brush on two or three applications to each side, over more indirect heat, and as you see in the video, it sears on nicely. As a table sauce, it’s great on any of the traditional barbecued meats, but since it’s really just a salad dressing, it’s also wonderful for making potato salad, coleslaw, and grilled vegetables. I hope you give this white barbecue sauce a try soon. Enjoy!

Ingredients for about 3 cups of sauce:

2 cups mayonnaise

1/4 cup prepared extra-hot horseradish

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

2 tsp yellow mustard

juice of one lemon

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

On one of our recent trips to Los Angeles, we went to the restaurant Love & Salt and fell in love (as seen in this post). They have the type of menu that makes you want to go back every day to try something new. Nothing disappoints, and I mean NOTHING. Like their salad that's made up of black kale, soppressata, olives, pickled peppers, breadcrumbs and ricotta salata. Everything about this salad is perfect, especially the way they julienne the ingredients so they are perfectly uniform. When everything is the same size it's just easier to eat! That's my jam. And then let's talk about the breadcrumbs which, if I had to guess, are toasted in olive oil or butter until they reach a crisp, golden perfection. The crunch they offer the salad is beyond... and such a nice change from biting into a big crouton. The pickled peppers and olives give off the perfect, salty bite. I can't imagine a better protein than the soppressata or a lovelier, creamier cheese than the ricotta salata and the black kale is the perfect vessel for this salad... a sturdy, earthy green that holds everything together.

My son would say, why don't you marry this salad??

Maybe I will, son, maybe I will.

As you can see, I tried to recreate it at home using a red-wine vinaigrette and it was pretty damn close to the restaurant version. Excuse me while I pat myself on the back. If you decide to try this combination... make sure to julienne your ingredients and do NOT forget to toast your bread crumbs. In fact, I took leftover focaccia bread from our pizza delivery, put it in the food processor and THEN toasted it in the best olive oil I had! I made a ton and now I put it on every salad. The End.