Recipes for the New Yorker Who Orders Too Much Westville
I can’t with a straight face claim to be talented in the kitchen. I can follow instructions well without causing an utter disaster, as 4-years of college chemistry labs can attest, seeing I made napalm and the University of Chicago is still standing. But in New York there are so many gifted chefs and restaurateurs, when you factor in the price of food, time to cook, clean up required…it’s often cost efficient to dine out. Not to mention the manual labor of physically hauling groceries considerable distances like we’re still living in the 1800s.
But then the holidays come around and you find yourself in the suburbs where there are full-sized ovens, cars that you can use to transport groceries, options that aren’t artisanal and small batched, and a chilling lack of any non-Dominos delivery choices. Do you want to prove to your hosts, family, and loved ones that you too can cook but have an embarrassingly lackluster repertoire of recipes to chose from? Well here are three incredibly easy, guaranteed crowd pleasing, and probably not the healthiest options that the most Chipotle-dependent 23 year old man in finance can make:
Appetizer – Cheesy Onion Dip
What you need: 2 cups chopped sweet onion, 2 cups mayo, 2 cups shredded cheese (calls for swiss but if there’s another cheese you prefer, knock your socks off), a few shakes of tabasco
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
- Mix everything together and put in a baking dish
- Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown on top and bubbling
- Take out and serve with whatever chip or dipper you desire
Side dish – Broccoli salad
What you need: 3 heads of broccoli, 1 cup golden raisins, very small finely chopped onion (don’t use a lot), 10 slices of bacon (fried, drained well, and crumbled), 1 cup. of mayo, 1/4 cup of sugar, 4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
- Mix everything together and pretend this is a vegetable
Dessert – Mini Reese’s chocolate chip cookie cups
What you need: mini Reese’s, frozen chocolate chip cookie dough (roll or break apart), mini muffin tray
- Heat the oven to the degrees required by the dough
- Put mini muffin holder on a cookie sheet to hold it firm
- If a tube of cookie dough, cut into ~one inch slices then into quarters and put each quarter into a cup. If pull-apart, break off pieces that fill but not overfill the cup
- Put the tray in the oven. While they’re cooking (~11 minutes), unwrap as many Reese’s as there are individual cups
- Once the cookies are golden brown, take them out and immediately put the Reese’s into the cookie dough and press them down
- Immediately put in the freezer and enjoy once frozen! These are incredible served/kept cold