basics – Bake with Andrea

I love nachos. I do. They need to be crunchy, full of delicious melty cheese, and loaded with toppings. I don’t particularly enjoy spicy food so I usually love it when they’ve got guac, salsa and sour cream. When they’re warm out of the oven, cheesy, salty, zingy. They’re awesome.

Growing up I didn’t really eat avocado – I don’t remember seeing it much around! They’re obviously everywhere now but back in the day I thought of them as these strange “exotic” foods. And I think that nowadays they’re the kind of food that either you hate or you love. I love them. Problem is – like with most foods – that if you don’t season them properly, they doesn’t really taste like much.

Avocados are amazing, they’ve got lots of healthy fats and nutrients and they’re also really filling (as they’re so fatty!) so I really like incorporating them in my diet as much as I can, but let’s face it – if you always prepare foods the same way, they end up getting boring! So I love to find different ways to prepare avocados.

Same goes for tomatoes! I love them on so many things. I’m always looking for new ways to prepare them and have them on the side of lots of meals. They can get boring! And again, if you don’t season tomatoes properly they can be quite bland. I mean if you’re lucky enough to have beautifully ripe, gorgeous tomatoes you may not actually need to do anything to them and you may be able to eat them as if they were apples – lucky you! But living in England I’m unfortunately not that lucky. So they need a bit of dressing up!

Anyways, long rant just to say that I love these dipping sauces. Using them with nachos seems like the obvious way to use them (for a reason) but you can put them on – and as a side of – so many things. So let me show you basic salsa and guacamole 101.

Ingredients for the guac:

4 avocados
3 spring onions
A handful of parsley / cilantro
Juice of 1 -2 limes
Salt and pepper

How to make guacamole:

First, wash your spring onions and parsley / cilantro
Roughly chop up your spring onions and parsley
Cut up your avocados and scoop them out
Pop all your ingredients (avocado, spring onions, herbs) in a food processor

Blitz it all up until it reaches the consistency you like – I like it fairly smooth but if you like it a bit chunkier just pulse it until it’s where you like it.

Add in your lime, salt and pepper
- For this amount of guac I added the juice of 1 1/2 limes and 1 1/2 tsp salt but start with less, mix and add more until it tastes the way you like it

Spoon it onto a bowl and if you’re not using it immediately, cover with plastic wrap and pop it in the fridge

Ingredients for basic salsa:

4 tomatoes
3 spring onions
Handful of parsley / cilantro
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper

How to make salsa:

First, make sure to wash all your ingredients – the tomatoes, spring onions and parsley / cilantro

Finely chop your spring onions (green and white bits)

Finely chop your parsley / cilantro and add it to the bowl with your spring onions

Finely chop your tomatoes
- Note: if you don’t want your salsa to be too watery you should de-seed your tomatoes. This basically means to remove all of their insides and just use the flesh

Add your tomatoes to the rest of your ingredients

Mix all your ingredients together and season to taste with lime juice, salt and pepper
- For this amount I used the juice of 1 lime and 1tsp of salt but as before, start with a small amount, mix and taste and add more as needed.

Bonus – Basic nachos!

You’ll need:

Tortilla chips
Grated cheese – something like cheddar works best but any blend of cheese that will have flavour and melt well
Sour cream
Guac and salsa
Jalapeños (optional)

To make them:

In a baking dish (use one that you like so you can bring it straight to the table) arrange your tortilla chips and grated cheese in layers
- Nobody likes it when all the cheese is at the top and there’s nothing at the bottom!! I’d suggest putting a layer of chips with a healthy amount of cheese, then more chips and then even more cheese.

Pop your nachos in a 180C oven for about 10-15 min, until your cheese has melted and your chips start to look a bit toasty
Top with whatever you like and eat!
- I’d recommend a mixture of salsa, guac and sour cream.
- I also like to add some fried chopped up chorizo bits if I’ve got some on hand because let’s face it – everything is better with chorizo!
- Make sure to eat them immediately so you’re not left with soggy nachos – nobody wants that!

Top tips:

Even if you remove the seeds of your tomatoes when making salsa, it’ll probably still release quite a bit of juice so don’t be surprised if you go back to it and suddenly your salsa looks a lot wetter!
I’ve used parsley on both recipes because I cannot stand cilantro. I’m one of those people to whom it tastes evil so I like to use parsley whenever I can instead. If you like cilantro tough, you should definitely use it here instead.
If you like your dips to have a bit of a kick I’d suggest using a jalapeño – just treat it like your spring onions. Chop it slightly and add it to your food processor when making guac, and chop it nice and fine when adding it to the salsa.
If you’ve got the time for it, I’d recommend making either of these recipes ahead of time. Something magical happens when they sit in the fridge for a little while – the flavours just marry each other and develop even more and they become that much more special!
If you do make the nachos be really generous with the cheese! You’d be surprised with how much that cheese just disappears – you’ll end up wishing you had put more!
If you’re making the nachos, make sure that when you assemble them your cheese is at room temperature so it melts better.

And that’s it! I hope you enjoy these simple, basic recipes and you get to give them a try next time you think about buying them in the store – they’re so easy to make and honestly so much better than whatever you might buy in a package at the store!

I hope you give these a try and enjoy them and if you do, make sure to share on social media so I can feel proud from a distance!! As always, thanks for reading and see you again soon!

Roast chicken is one of those staple meals that everyone should know how to make. When I was growing up, my parents and I used to love getting rotisserie chicken every once in a while and it felt like such a treat! That distinct roast chicken flavour with the crispy skin and those beautiful juices at the bottom… if you know what I’m talking about then it’s very likely that your mouth is watering too.

Chicken is such a versatile meat, but to be honest I got so sick of it during my medschool years that I just didn’t want to ever see it on my plate! I still go in waves about this actually – it’s something that we eat so often that I just get so bored of it and I don’t know how to make it anymore. When this happens to me I always go back to making a beautifully golden roast chicken and every single time it helps. It never fails! Always delicious, with a crispy skin and yummy juices. Plus the potatoes – obviously.

So there are a few tips and tricks that will hopefully help you make the best roast chicken ever and also once you master it you can apply most of these tricks to any other bird – like a Thanksgiving turkey! (I know I’m not American but hey – any excuse to eat delicious food!). I will share a recipe on that later on.

First things first:

Get your chicken out of the fridge so it comes to room temperature – about an hour or so is about right, but a few hours won’t do it any harm either!
Take the butter out of the fridge to soften up – I usually do this at the same time as the chicken
Preheat your oven to 200C

Ingredients:

Whole chicken – I used a 2kg free-range chicken
100g butter
Potatoes – as many as you like, I used 1kg
Onions – I used 2
Garlic – as many or as few cloves as you lik
Rosemary – few sprigs
Dried herbs and seasoning (read below)

1 cup chicken stock (or stock cube)
1 cup white wine

How-to:

Prepare your butter – take the softened butter and mix in whatever herbs and seasoning you like – I like to add salt, pepper, garlic powder, mixed Italian herbs and onion powder but I change my seasonings depending on how I’m feeling.

Cut up your potatoes and onions and place them on a large roasting tray with your garlic and rosemary. Drizzle some oil, salt and pepper and mix them up until they’re evenly seasoned.

Make a little pocket under the skin of your chicken. Do not skip this step!! Might seem a bit gross but honestly it makes all the difference. Just near the opening separate the skin from the meat with your fingers and extend that opening through as much of the breast as you can.

With a small spoon, put the butter in those pockets you’ve just created and spread it with your hands. Make sure to also get onto the leg creases!

Once you’ve put the butter under the skin, rub the rest of it all over the chicken.

Place your chicken either on a roasting rack like I have here, or directly on top of your potatoes and onions. Either way would work!
Sprinkle a small amount of salt and pepper over your chicken and drizzle a bit of olive oil to maximize crispiness

Place your tray in the oven and roast for about 30-45min (about halfway through cooking). Then take it out and pour your chicken stock and white wine all over your chicken and potatoes mixture. Put it back in the oven and roast for another 45min or until it’s fully cooked through.

Top tips:

Lots of nice pictures online (and well-known chefs) will show you trussed chicken – that’s using twine to tie up the chicken so that the ends don’t burn and it all cooks evenly – but honestly for normal everyday home cooks I don’t think there’s a point in doing that. If you just leave it all loose, tuck the wings underneath and let the legs hang where they want to, it all cooks pretty evenly anyways. Plus you get lots of crispy skin!
If your oven heats up unevenly I’d suggest turning the chicken when you get it back in the oven halfway through cooking so it cooks evenly.
I don’t tend to use a meat thermometer very often but if you want to use it you should place it in the thickest part of your chicken, making sure to not be touching bone. When it reaches 73C it’s all good to eat.
If you don’t have a meat thermometer don’t worry! When you think it’s done, pull the leg away from the body and make a little incision in that leg meat. If the juices come out clear and the meat looks opaque, it’s fully cooked. If there’s any remnants of pink in either the meat or the juices, pop it back in the oven for about 10-15min and test again on the other side.
As a general rule, for a 2kg chicken cooked at 200C it takes it about 1h 20-30min to cook through.
Let the chicken rest when it comes out of the oven! Like when you cook any kind of meat, don’t cut into it as soon as it’s cooked. Let it sit for about 10-15min and then you can carve it. Don’t lose those precious juices by cutting into it too soon!
You can change up the veggies if you’re not that into potatoes (is that even a thing?!) or if you want to cut down carbs a bit. I’d suggest using things like carrots, parsnips, celeriac and sweet potatoes. Basically choose something hearty that will be fine in the oven for a long time.

And that’s it! It takes a bit of prepping but you can feed a crowd (or meal prep for the week) with very little effort! I love recipes where you don’t have to be standing over the stove for hours, particularly on weekdays or for dinner parties – it’s so much more convenient! These proportions will feed 4 people happily without any other sides but if you want to feed more people I’d suggest you give my husband’s favorite salad a try as a light but filling side! Also you can use a larger amount of potatoes or other veggies and a bigger bird if you’re feeding more.

I hope that you found this recipe helpful and that you give it a try – would love to hear your thoughts on it! Thanks for reading me and see you again soon!!

Tag: basics

Guac + salsa

Perfect roast chicken

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