August 22nd, 2014

J.R.R Tolkien: "If more of us valued food and cheer and song, above horded gold, it would be a merrier world!"

It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our third Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's my turn to pick the four mandatory ingredients and Damon's turn to cook.  

So after watching a few more episodes of Criminal Minds on dvd, and having a good sturdy shot of Crown (because I had one hell of a crazy week), Damon gets to open his mystery bag!

Recap: The rules are simple; Damon has to make dinner using each of the 4 mystery food items that I put into his mystery bag.  He can also use other items that we have in the fridge and pantry, but he MUST use some of each item from the mystery bag, and MUST be ready to plate-up dinner before 1 hour has passed after seeing his ingredients for the first time.

And here's what he ended up with!

A pound of ground turkey meat, a bag of russet potatoes, a yellow onion, and Worcestershire sauce.  

Take a minute and think about what you would make for dinner with those ingredients?

Honestly, I felt like I might be really screwing him with such basic ingredients... We always try to use ground turkey instead of ground beef in recipes when we can, just because ground turkey has almost no fat at all in it, and it also costs about a dollar less per pound compared to ground beef, but there really aren't a lot of recipes out there that call for ground anything, except burgers, spaghetti, etc. so we're trying to be more creative!  

After seeing what he had to work with, Damon decided to make a funky spin on the classic British dish, Shepherd's Pie.  Surprisingly, that is one of the things I thought of when coming up with these ingredients for him!!!  He came to it pretty quick too, under 10 minutes for sure!  Great minds think alike! lol!

So, having an idea of what to make, he's off!  Here he is frying up his turkey, pealing his potatoes for his mashed potatoes, and cutting his carrots!  

Thank goodness Damon didn't feel like I totally screwed him!

Next Damon is getting some beef broth ready and making a flour and water slurry to thicken the broth.  Let's face it, ground turkey may be healthier but it's sooo not beef, so you have to be creative! Turkey can still be healthy and taste every bit as good as the all American goodness that is BEEF, if you do it right!

Like I said, Damon came to his decision quick, so he's got a plan and 30 minutes in, he's doing great!  

I so would not have come up with a take on Shepherd's Pie without my research on the lovely internet, so yea him!!!

35 minutes in and the kitchen smells awesome!

Damon is tasting everything and seasoning as he goes, which I'm sure Gordon Ramsay would be proud of!  Slightly before his potatoes are done, he's breaking out what he wants to put into his mashed potatoes... some shredded cheddar cheese, milk, butter, Parmesan cheese, and green onions.  How could those potatoes not taste like pure yummy goodness????  

  

 

He has about 15 minutes to go and he has drained the potatoes and is ready to mash them with our lovely ricer, which we got as a wedding gift just a few months ago. 

 

 

 

I'll take this time to tell you that, after each of us have done one mystery bag challenge, we thought we should expand on our scoring system.  

 

Now we are going with a 10 point scale...  

 

being done on time = 0-1 point

dish presentation = 0-2 points

dish creativity / originality = 0-3 points

dish flavor = 0-3 points

portion size = 0-1 point.  

 

We did this because we quickly realized, after our first challenges, that we needed to be able to give a broader range of scores for each category.

 

Damon's down to the wire and is plating his unusual take on Shepherd's Pie.  First, using a ziploc bag, he piped his mashed potatoes over the top of the beef broth, vegetable, and meat mixture.  Then he topped that with cheddar cheese and put it under the broiler, with less than five minutes to go!  I'm giving Damon the minute countdown and he's getting nervous! 

Finally, with less than one minute to spare, Damon pulls his dishes out of the oven and sits before me his yummy looking take on the classic Shepherd's Pie!

What's important to note is that neither of us have ever eaten Shepard's Pie, much less cooked it before, so Damon really is out on a limb here.  But it turned out sooo good that now we have a new ground turkey dish we can make!

We did our scoring and I counted Damon off one point for flavor, just because I thought it could use a little heat, maybe a little pepper flake or something for some spiciness.  Damon also counted himself off one point for giving me too much mashed potato compared to the meat mixture.  So, in the end, he ended up with an average of a solid 9 points!

Damon = 13, Christina = 4, can't wait to figure out Damon's next Mystery Bag!!

                                Next week is my turn to cook!

August 15th, 2014

Gordon Ramsay (Hells Kitchen): "You fat useless sack of fucking yankee danky doodle  Shite."

It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our second Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's Damon's turn to pick the four mandatory ingredients and my turn to cook.  So after a few episodes of Criminal Minds and a glass of wine to calm my nerves, I get to open my mystery bag!

In case you don't remember from last week's "Firday Night In Winslow", the rules are simple.  I have to make dinner using each of the 4 mystery food items Damon put into my mystery bag.  I can also use other items that we have in the fridge and pantry, but I MUST use some of each item from the mystery bag and MUST be ready to plate-up dinner before 1 hour has passed after seeing my ingredients for the first time.

So here's what was in my bag!

Damon decided to give me boneless skinless chicken breasts, club crackers, pickled jalapeno's, and yellow mustard.  I have to admit, at first I didn't know what I wanted to do.  We're playing this game to challenge ourselves to create something different, so that we're not constantly eating the same dishes over and over, but we also want to have fun with it and be creative.  Anyway, I still didn't know what I was going to do, but immediately got to work opening all those damn little packages of crackers!

Thanks a lot for that my love!

Next I went on to the chicken, I was still really in my head and trying to decide for sure what I wanted to do.  I immediately came up with stuffing the chicken with the pickled jalapeno's and maybe some cheese, and then use the crumbled up crackers as a breading/crust, but the mustard was confusing me a bit.  I didn't want to go that route because I wasn't sure I was being creative enough. We've made stuffed chicken breast before, just with different ingredients, but I assure you I've never used crackers as a crust.  I thought about making a soup and that would have been easy to do, it would have been a spicy/mustard chicken soup with some veggies.  Damon doesn't care for soups and I like to let my soups/stews simmer for a long time and I felt the hour just wouldn't do my soup justice.

Mind you, I'm going through all this in my head but I never stopped working.  I crushed all the crackers, I chopped the jalapenos, chopped up my celery and squash for the side dish I wanted to make; Now I've got all my mise en place! I finally decided that I was going with "Jalapeno and Cheddar Stuffed, Cracker Crusted Chicken Breast".  I used the mustard as a sort of egg wash to hold the crackers onto the chicken, and pan seared them on each side and then got them into the oven.  Now I'm getting nervous as the clock is running down, another glass of wine please!!

Okay so the chicken is in the oven and I'm starting to really think that I might lose my point for being done in time.  So I get my pan heating for my vegetable side; celery and squash medley.  I don't like soggy vegetables, I like them to still have a little crunch to them so while I can put the celery in a little early, I can't add the squash until the last minute!

At this point I think I've got ten minute left and I'm nervous!!!  So I check the chicken and it's just about done, I pull them out and stuff them and put them back in the oven.  Now I fire the vegetables and start thinking about my plating and now I've got just under five minutes!!  

So I finish the vegetables and get them on the plate and then pull the chicken and get it plated.  I served Damon his plate with just one minute to spare, OMG!  

I didn't think it would be that hard! I could have made the dish with more time to spare but I was in my head too much.  Just a slight strategy change next time and I think I will be good.

After dinner we both graded my dish based on being done on time, the presentation/appearance of the dish, creativity in the concept of the dish, and of course the flavor.  

Out of 5 possible points, I gave myself a 4, counting myself off for creativity because I think I should have done something more "different".  Damon gave me a 4 as well, noting that I could have been a little fancier in plating/presentation.  We averaged the scores and I am now tied with Damon at 4!

Damon = 4, Christina = 4, can't wait to figure out Damon's next Mystery Bag!!

                                Don't forget to tune in next week!

August 8th, 2014

Julia Child: "I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate."

Thank God it's Friday!!!!

I swear I thought this week would never end!  Thankfully, it's Friday and that means it's our first Mystery Bag Challenge!!  It's Friday night dinner and here is Damon's mystery bag:

Okay, it looks a little like a trash bag but I had to use something that he couldn't see through, and I don't have a fancy box with a big M on the side of it lol.

As you a may recall from last week's "Firday Night In Winslow", the rules are simple.  Damon has to make dinner using each of the 4 mystery food items I have chosen to put into his mystery bag.  He can also use other items that we have in the fridge and pantry, but he MUST use some of each item from the mystery bag and he MUST be ready to plate-up dinner before 1 hour has passed after seeing his ingredients for the first time.

So what was in his mystery bag you ask?

For Damon, I went with two Pork cutlets, a tube of refrigerated buttermilk biscuits, a small block of chipotle pepper white cheddar cheese, and a bottle of Chardonnay.  I knew early on I was going to go with pork and then slowing came around to a spicy cheese because I thought that could taste pretty bad ass stuffed in the pork.  Then I started thinking a spin on chicken cordon bleu or a beef wellington and thought, biscuits!  I figured that could be pretty good if the pork was stuffed and then wrapped in biscuits.  I struggled all week for the fourth ingredient, mostly because I figured the new cheese and the biscuits could throw Damon for a loop.  So after work today, I stopped by and picked up the bottle of wine. I figured he could cook with it or at the very least just serve it as is.

  

Ten minutes into the challenge and Damon doesn't have a clear idea of what he's going to do, but he figures he can at least trim the fat off the pork while he continues to brainstorm on what to make.

Twenty minutes in and Damon's made up his mind, he's going make what he is calling "Chardonnay Braised Pork Medallion Sliders".  So he's prepping his biscuits to go into the oven and quartering the pork cutlets.  So he could do something with the wine, he first tried to make a chardonnay infused aioli, to act as a spread for the sliders, but after he made it, he didn't care for the consistency of it and decided to scrap it, so he decided to use the wine to cook the pork.  The hour time limit was maybe a little too much for this dish, but I'm sure Damon enjoyed having the extra time so he could think through what he was doing.

And here we have it ladies and gents, Damon's Chardonnay Braised Pork Medallion Sliders, served with a Greek Yogurt and Parsley spread on the side, and a glass of Chardonnay. 

They were absolutely yummy!!  I'm sure people have done pork cutlet sliders sandwiches before but we never have, and the point of our challenge was to get us to try new things... and it worked!!

I made little score cards for us to fill out after dinner. We both graded his dish based on being done on time, the presentation/appearance of the dish, creativity in the concept of the dish, and the flavor.  

Out of 5 possible points, Damon gave himself a 4, because he thought the spicy cheese didnt make the sandwiches spicy enough and thought he could have added a cumin or chili powder rub to the pork to punch it up some.  I also gave Damon a 4, just because two little slider sandwich's for dinner wasnt quite enough food.  We averaged the scores and Damon came away with a solid score of 4 out of 5!

Next Friday night, it's my turn.  Damon will be picking ingredients for me and I hope I do as well as he did!  

Damon = 4, Christina = 0, game on!!

What we do in Winlsow to entertain ourselves on a Friday night, right! lol

                                Goodnight Winslow!

August 1st, 2014

The West Wing's, President Bartlet:  "You know what we're starting with tonight?"
Josh Lyman: "No, Sir."
President Bartlet: "Hot pumpkin soup with cheese gnocchi and a chevre brioche."
Josh Lyman: "Was anything you just said food?"

We're heading out to Tulsa tomorrow for dinner with Damon's parents and for my brother's belated birthday celebration so tonight we're pretty much just hanging out and getting ready for our little road trip.  We made some dinner, homemade pizza with salad.

and watched some more of our Criminal Minds marathon, we're just about to finish up season 4 and the show is still just as addictive as it was when we started it!!!

Anyway, you all should know by now that we really like to cook, we're also into a lot of cooking show competitions.  Master Chef, Hell's Kitchen, and I recently started watching Cutthroat Kitchen and Chopped.  So, we got to thinking that it might be fun to do our own little cooking challenge!  We don't want to start out being as mean as Cutthroat Kitchen is to their chefs, and make the other person cook with the worlds smallest pan or something like that, so we're opting for our very own mystery box challenge!

Tonight, we set up our  ground rules.  Next week will be the first time and Damon's up first.  I'm going to pick four ingredients that he HAS TO USE in his dish, one protein, one starch, and two wildcard items, and he will still have full access to our kitchen and pantry.  For example, if I give Damon pasta as the starch in his mystery box, he can't switch it out for rice, but he could add an additional starch or protein if he's so inclined.   

If we find that's too easy, we'll crank it up a notch, maybe a bigger mystery box and you can only use what's in it?

This should be fun!!!

                                Goodnight Winslow!