Chopped, the Final Round

Sour grapes aside, I did tell the judges that they shot themselves in the feet.  Let's face it, I'm a dessert girl, and I knew I would have rocked this round.  But, the nicer side of me said that by eliminating me and my liquid gold caramel (which I planned to make regardless of other ingredients) the judges leveled the playing field for the 2 remaining teams.   Both of them were captained by guys who were more grill masters than treatmakers.

Their desserts had to include:

Buttermilk; Imitation Bacon Bits; Cilantro; and Salt Water Taffy.

One team hit the ground running.  Two of the kids on their team knew how to make a butter crumble, so they got to it.  The captain began improvising immediately, and directed his other sous chef to start melting the taffy.  They had many fits and starts, and one minor burn--the team captain scalded his son, who cried out in pain, and the father said, "Get back to that crumble, we've only got 15 minutes left! Sorry, bud, I burned myself too."  They ended up with this:

Buttermilk pancake topped with strawberry and crumble,  banana and salt water taffy filling and a side of bacon-chocolate sauce.  The accompanying beverage was a buttermilk and condensed milk shake infused with cilantro.

 The other team sat at the table for quite some time.  They started with a riff on candy apples, attempting to melt the salt water taffy and drizzle it on the peeled Granny Smiths:

 This resulted in a burned, sticky mess, which they promptly discarded.


They eventually presented bacon chocolate fondue with bananas, strawberries and apples and a buttermilk/salt water taffy/cilantro drizzle.

The winner:  the pancake crumble.  Unfortunately for the fondue team, the salt water taffy they chose to melt into their buttermilk sauce was a very strong fruity one and it dominated the entire dish with an artificial flavor.  Had they selected a vanilla or more neutral taffy for the sauce, the round would have been closer.

For me?  I'd have made buttermilk donuts with three dipping sauces:  chocolate infused with bacon; caramel infused with salt water taffy; and strawberry cilantro.     Now THAT sounds like a winner, don't you think?

For the 11th Birthday, I think we'll stick some cash in a card.

Chopped, Part II

Our Chopped party carried on...and then we were 3.  The main course awaited us, along with 35 very short minutes to make an entree.  The mystery ingredients were:

Fennel (which I loathe and have no experience cooking)

Imitation Crab (ick)

Plantains

and Farina

My plan from the get-go was to fry some potatoes up for the main course.  Everyone loves a roesti--grated potatoes pressed into a pancake and fried to a crisp.  I figured that no matter what else was thrown at me, that would carry my team a long way toward victory.  Integrating the plantain into that was child's play, and the farina could also be buried into that crisply fried potato.  I set C to work slicing the fennel, X grating the plantains and potatoes, and K making the Farina according the package directions.  

And I stared, trepidatiously at that imitation crab.  I didn't want to adulterate my beautiful potato pancake with that gross fake shellfish.  We had been told by the judges that we had to use the ingredients in a way that showcased them.  So I made a crab and fennel salad with watermelon, lime juice, onion, and chili pepper, and I arranged it in an artfully displayed Romaine lettuce leaf.  The potato-plantain-farina cake fried to a crisp perfection, we leaned it jauntily against the lettuce boat, quickly made a Sriracha Ketchup for dipping, and wrote the initials of the birthday girl in the sauce.  Nice touch, huh?

Our competitors concocted the following:

Farina breaded crabcakes with salsa and a ragout of sauteed plantains and fennel;

Crab tacos with fennel-beet slaw, chipotle farina and fried plantains.

Alas, the fried potato cake was not enough to carry the day.  We were "chopped", primarily on the grounds that our dish was more of an appetizer than a main course.  Later, my nephew, who advanced to the dessert round said, "Aunt Ker, when I saw you just standing there staring at that crab for a long time I knew that was good for us!"  He was right.  The crab flummoxed me.

With this basket of ingredients, what would you make?

Next post:  the dessert round.

Chopped, Part I

Chopped as a birthday party?  Yep, that's how my niece wanted to celebrate her 10th.    Since the birthday occurred on a late summer-at-the-beach weekend, the entire family was drafted to participate.  I was nominated as the Captain of Team 1, and was assigned 3 kids of varying ages as my sous chefs.

The procedure followed that of the show; 4 mystery ingredients were given to each team, we had 25 minutes to create an appetizer using all 4, and we had access to any of the pantry items made available to us but nothing more.

And if you are wondering if I was nervous about 16 people speeding around a kitchen, many of whom had limited experience with cooking, let alone hot stoves and sharp knives, the answer is yes.  Fortunately, the kitchen is large and there are minimal casualties to report.

The first round presented us with the following ingredients:

Spicy Chicken Sausage; Prunes; Chick Peas and Cola Champagne.  The last was a cloyingly sweet, fruity soft drink which was, to say the least, a challenge to use.

My team set right to work:  X sliced the sausages thinly and seared them in a skillet.  C cut the prunes into chunks.  K took the chick peas and made them into a salad with feta, prunes, onions, cilantro, and watermelon.  I chopped onions, dumped them into a saucepan with some prunes, poured in the revolting cola, a generous amount of red wine, and balsamic vinegar and made a reduction sauce.  When the sauce reduced, I strained it into the sausage skillet and further reduced it to meld the flavors.  Then we arranged the chick pea salad in a mound in the middle of a plate,  layered the sausages around the exterior, drizzled the sauce, and for added panache, made crostini cut into the number "10" as a nod to the birthday girl.

The other Teams' entries were:

Grilled sausages with a hummus of chick peas, goat cheese, prunes, and cola.

Chilled fruit soup made with the cola, accompanied by chick pea and prune spread and a grilled sausage.

Gnocchi with sausage, cola infused tomato sauce with chick peas, and prunes.

Guess who got "Chopped"?

Fruit Soup, of course.

What would you have made?

Next post:  The main course.