The Foodie's Dirty Little Secret, Part One

By Caroline Clough in Food on Mar 30, 2007 2:14PM

Chicagoist feels a need to come clean with all you lovely, fresh faced readers. We realize that this may come to a shock for some of you, but perhaps you've been harboring doubts all along and are ready for this burst of honesty. It's hard for us to admit, but we feel it's only right to confirm your most uncharitable of thoughts: sometimes we don't cook. As much as we love foie gras (when and where we can get it), truffles, eccentric cuts of beef, raw fish, obscure and biting cheeses, caperberries and a host of other non-mainstream foodstuffs there are days when we don't even have what it takes to make a casserole of mediocre proportions. These days usually come when we're sick, tired, lazy or poor (how to fix yourself a nice meal when your refrigerator's stocked with obscene amounts of yogurt, carrots and not much else?). The weather, also, has an effect on what kind of cooking we get done. But a Chicagoist has got to eat and one of our favorite lazy/sick day foods is Amy's Kitchen Cheese Enchiladas. We can't help ourselves. We love scraping the last bit of sauce from that cardboard-like trough. We're enamored with the oozing cheese and molten sauce and we're not going to apologize. In fact, we're going to give you all the opportunity to confess your darkest and most unculinary secrets ... what food item do you go to, time and time again, though it lacks the refinement your palate usually requires? What is your dirty little secret? You can learn how to make ours after the jump.

The steps involved in the preparation for this dish are, for the most part, more on the psychological level. There is no mincing, dicing, steaming or broiling to be done and your list of ingredients are pretty low.

What You Need:

1 box of Amy's Kitchen Cheese Enchiladas (not bean and cheese, just cheese)
1 microwave
1 knife
1 fork
1 bottle of champagne (to get the microwave and enchiladas more comfortable with one another)

What You Do:

1. Open the box and pull out your entree.

2. Make a one inch incision in the plastic surrounding the dish.

3. Allow the microwave and enchiladas to get to know each other a little (we had a really great photograph of this interaction but we can't make it work, so we'll hope that your imaginations are as good as ours).

4. Follow the directions on the box and then eat.