Buffalo Chicken Boxes

Yeah, this was a weird thing that happened, gentle reader. Look, I figured the Pats are probably practicing for the Super Bowl, so I should too.

So I made a trial run of my fave Super Bowl dish, buffalo chicken dip—using the leftover shredded chicken from recently documented chipotle tacos; a squirt of sriracha; and a couple ounces each of cream cheese, crumbled gorgonzola, and shredded jack. I know. Weird.

Then I lined one of these weird little box-shaped dishes that my mom got me for Christmas a couple of years ago with a flour tortilla, and then I added maybe 1/4 cup of the chicken mix and crimped the tortilla edges over it.

Then I baked it in the toaster oven at 350° for maybe 15-20 minutes until the crimped edges of the tortilla had nice brown highlights, and plopped some sour cream and salsa onto it.

I took a risk on this weird little box, but it turned out pretty darn delicious. I can only hope that my other Super Bowl boxes will pay off like this one.

7 Layers of Kevin Bacon Dip

I’ve already expressed how much I enjoy the Super Bowl from a food perspective despite my utter apathy about football. But this year, with the big rematch between the Pats and the Giants, I have a real reason to actually get excited about the game itself…yes, MADONNA is performing!!! (Hehehe, I can’t wait to hear what Alyce has to say about that one… No, but seriously, I'm pretty excited about Madonna.)

For this year’s Super Bowl party at Fredna’s place (that would be Rob’s Aunt Edna and Uncle Fred, who are kind of like the Brangelina of Super Bowl parties), I’m planning to bring a mash-up between seven-layer dip and the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, and make a contest out of it—since it's a day for betting, after all.

The game plan (see what I did there?): I printed up sheets with a multiple-choice quiz, and everyone who ponies up $1 fills out a sheet matching the layers of the dip to the movies they represent. Either one person will get the most answers correct, or we do a random drawing from the entries tied for most correct (even if that number is zero). Surely this will be a fun gaming alternative for people who don’t care/know enough to bet on the actual football game. Download the quiz to play at your own Super Bowl party!

Here are the dip layers (in top-down order, 1-7), which, in a nod to the original “degrees” game, symbolize six of his movies, plus a bonus layer honoring Kevin himself. Can you match up which layer symbolizes which movie?

Quiz answers and explanations, as well as dip assembly instructions, after the jump.

7 Degrees of Kevin Bacon Dip (layers in top-down order)
1. Bacon
2. Spicy cheese
3. Corn
4. Sour cream
5. Ground beef
6. Salsa
7. Navy beans

And, emphatically not in order, since that is the whole point, the movies those layers represent:

a. Footloose
b. Diner
c. Friday the 13th
d. Kevin himself (seriously, if you don’t get this one…)
e. A Few Good Men
f. Wild Things
g. Apollo 13

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Answers, in top-down order:

Taco Night!

As countless NYC food carts have proved, there are an infinite ways to make tacos—with a matrix of practically every meat/fish/veggie/legume you can think of, tons of topping combos, and of course, soft vs. hard/corn vs. flour tortilla. I grew up with Taco Night starring the classic American incarnation of ground beef/hard corn shell, but I have no use for the hard shells, which invariably shatter as soon as you take a bite if they haven’t already shattered in the box (plus they’re overpriced and a huge waste of packaging). So, this is my alternate take on the ground beef taco using soft tortillas.

When I made this recently, I heated some bacon fat—but you could use a couple tablespoons of olive oil—to brown 1.5 pounds ground beef over medium-high heat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan (you could use a cast iron skillet or a non-nonstick frying pan; nonstick doesn’t brown the meat properly).

Sprinkle kosher salt, ground cumin, chili powder, and paprika over the meat before using a wooden spoon to break it up so it crumbles as it cooks.

You can make this yourself: Green Salsa!

Dear readers,
It has been a hot and humid summer, the city is emptying out for August vacations, and we are coming up on a weekend of Red Sox-Yankees action. All of these factors are contributing to good moods, good times and an excitement about the food and sporting events that I will get to consume over the next few days.

With that in mind, I want to share a super easy salsa recipe that is perfect for a hot summer day, a bbq, sitting on the couch watching sports, or an accompaniment to a multitude of dishes- my favorite, Tomatillo salsa.


Tomatillos are small-to-medium sized hard, green tomatos that have a papery husk on them.