Food and Fandom: Marco's Super Awesome Nachos

I realize I'm a bit late to the party on this one, especially since Star Vs the Forces of Evil finished up its third season back in April. But man oh man, what a charming show. My current binge of the show has even inspired me to return to the kitchen to do another "food from fiction" item. This time, however, I'm going to take a bit of a different spin. We're going to make the item not once, but twice!

Early in the series, Marco presents Star with his Super Awesome Nachos. As soon as I saw these, I knew that this would be a good beginner's item for those who share an interest in food in fandom. In this post, I go through two of the approaches I often take when working on recreating a new food item. Think of it as a primer to not only provide an easy recipe but share my thought process as well.

If you've seen any of my past posts, you'll see that I often choose between one of two approaches. The first is total accuracy. I will choose this method when I either have a great image of the food item, or when I'm provided with a lot of detail on the item itself. Example, that time I made Cartoon Sara the Kiki's Delivery Service Cake for her birthday:

The other approach is to just go out on your own and create something epic. Sometimes inspiration can strike in surprising ways and the mere name of an item creates a need to see it actualized in this world.  If you want to know what I mean, check out this past post when I made the Cthulhu burger from Kristen Gudsnuk's Henchgirl.

Approach one: Make the thing as true to the source material as possible

The show doesn't spend too much time on this item, but we are given two key elements. The first is this picture:

The second is Star's enthusiasm for triangle shaped food.

Basic elements are all there. Triangle chips, yellow cheese, and olives. Oh, and the other hint we get is seeing Marco remove them directly from the oven.

So here we go with recipe one - combine all ingredients in a pile and heat it in the oven before stuffing your face. I did take the time to cook my own cheese sauce for this item, since shredded cheese wasn't going to provide me with huge shiny blobs of orange cheese like you see in the pic.

TA-DA! I even made it a point to buy the most triangle-y chips I could find. Get it? Triangle? Point? Ok, moving on...

Approach two: Making truly awesome nachos

Marco, I think it might be time to discuss the true meaning of "awesome." And while I respect the choice to make a very basic nacho as a snack, when I dream of "super awesome nachos" there are a LOT things involved - most importantly meat and guacamole.

So, let's take the this up a notch by adding the following to our nachos:

Fresh salsa, guacamole, bbq pulled pork (made just for this post), peppers, and multiple kinds of cheese. When it comes to nachos, you can't overdo it.

A bunch of these items can just be purchased, so feel free to choose your level of effort here. I don't think I need to give you a specific recipe for making your own dream nachos, but I'd love to share a few tips that I learned.

• Choose a sturdy chip that can stand up to all the toppings
• Create the nachos in layers so you get an even distribution of the good stuff
• Put the wet stuff on last or keep it on the side, soggy nachos are not for everyone
• Again, if you don't want soggy chips, eat your nachos as soon as you get them out of the oven
• use a low setting on your oven to bake your nachos and don't be afraid to babysit them so you can make sure you don't burn anything

And now for the final product!

Needless to stay, these were quite popular in my house and they served as a meal rather than a snack. They also sparked a surprisingly long conversation about nacho personalization and the definition of the word "awesome." And trust me, an in-depth discussion about nachos is a whole lot more fun than a discussion about the current political climate or how work went today.

Marco buddy, thanks for the inspiration. Oh, and thanks for the excuse to stuff my gullet with two rather yummy rounds of nachos. I might never eat again, and I'm off to spend some quality time with my treadmill. It was worth it though, and hopefully, I've inspired someone to make a batch of these babies for the Star Vs the Forces of Evil season 4 premiere...whenever that may be.

Got a food challenge you'd like to see one of the Ladies tackle? Want the full story on poor Smalerie's attempts to make "the gray stuff?" Let us know in the comments below and who knows what we might come up with.