Virginia Woolf: "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."
I know this is Friday Night in Winslow but I have to tell you that today I earned high score on Ms. Pac Man! We went to celebrate my boss's 60th birthday at Arkadia Retrocade and it was awesome playing all of those old school games! My favorite, of course, is Ms. Pac Man, but if you add in Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, Street Fighter, Tetris, and Asteroids, what more can you ask for??? We had lunch from Hawaiian Brian's, the 5-0 burger was huge and tasted great!
Okay, so it's now time for our fourth Mystery Bag Challenge and it's my turn to cook!
Okay, so it's now time for our fourth Mystery Bag Challenge and it's my turn to cook!
After watching a few more episodes of Criminal Minds on dvd, we did a little house cleaning, more like decluttering. I'm not a hoarder, I just have a bad habit of not always putting things back where they belong. Anyway, my family is coming out on Sunday for a cookout on Sunday, so we want to get a head start on prepping for their visit. Then, I get to open my mystery bag!
Damon caught me in the middle of a "really????" look on my face lol!
Recap: The rules are simple; I have to make dinner using each of the 4 mystery food items that he 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.
A pound of ground hamburger meat, green onion, a yellow onion, and crushed red paper flake.
Take a minute and think about what you would make for dinner with those ingredients? The possibilities are literally endless depending on how creative you want to get, but the more creative, the more points!
I was a little thrown off because he didn't give me a starch, but I came to an idea pretty quickly. I wanted to make a deconstructed hamburger; making two burger patties, dipping them into an egg wash, then breading them with panko breadcrumbs, a little pepper, and Parmesan cheese. I was afraid to add salt to the breadcrumb mixture because the Parmesan cheese is so salty. In the hamburger meat I added some finely diced yellow onion, threw in a bit of crushed pepper flake, and mixed it all in.
Yes, I am using gloves to shape my burgers and get them breaded. I hate handling raw meat so get over it! I didn't get a starch so I thought a little macaroni salad as a side would bring the dish together. I wanted to try something different, so I mixed together some cream cheese with some red wine to dress the pasta; I think with more time I could have gotten there, but I quickly abandoned that idea and opted for cream cheese and ranch dressing as a sauce for the noodle salad.
Now, I've pan fried both sides of my deconstructed burgers and I'm feeling nervous. I'm getting low on time, so I throw the pan into the preheated oven to finish cooking the burgers in the oven while I make my macaroni salad. I mince up some sweet bell pepper, chop my green onion, sip on a glass of wine, and wait for the noodles to get done.
The noodles are almost done so I start thinking about plating. I'm thinking this is a burger of sorts so I go with iceberg lettuce and roma tomato. The noodles are finely done and I mix in the cream cheese, ranch, sweet peppers, salt and pepper to taste. I get a little nervous about the ranch flavor and I don't want to over power it so I add a little extra cream cheese and go relly light on the ranch.
I'm running out of time but the burgers are cooked through so I pull the pan out of the oven and get rocking on my plating. I get a large leaf of lettuce, slice the tomato, and put it on the plate, then I think I wanted this to be a little spicy (since I added the pepper flake into the patty), I figured I'd top it off with a pickled jalapeno!
Recap: The rules are simple; I have to make dinner using each of the 4 mystery food items that he 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.
And here's what I ended up with!
A pound of ground hamburger meat, green onion, a yellow onion, and crushed red paper flake.
Take a minute and think about what you would make for dinner with those ingredients? The possibilities are literally endless depending on how creative you want to get, but the more creative, the more points!
I was a little thrown off because he didn't give me a starch, but I came to an idea pretty quickly. I wanted to make a deconstructed hamburger; making two burger patties, dipping them into an egg wash, then breading them with panko breadcrumbs, a little pepper, and Parmesan cheese. I was afraid to add salt to the breadcrumb mixture because the Parmesan cheese is so salty. In the hamburger meat I added some finely diced yellow onion, threw in a bit of crushed pepper flake, and mixed it all in.
Yes, I am using gloves to shape my burgers and get them breaded. I hate handling raw meat so get over it! I didn't get a starch so I thought a little macaroni salad as a side would bring the dish together. I wanted to try something different, so I mixed together some cream cheese with some red wine to dress the pasta; I think with more time I could have gotten there, but I quickly abandoned that idea and opted for cream cheese and ranch dressing as a sauce for the noodle salad.
Now, I've pan fried both sides of my deconstructed burgers and I'm feeling nervous. I'm getting low on time, so I throw the pan into the preheated oven to finish cooking the burgers in the oven while I make my macaroni salad. I mince up some sweet bell pepper, chop my green onion, sip on a glass of wine, and wait for the noodles to get done.
The noodles are almost done so I start thinking about plating. I'm thinking this is a burger of sorts so I go with iceberg lettuce and roma tomato. The noodles are finely done and I mix in the cream cheese, ranch, sweet peppers, salt and pepper to taste. I get a little nervous about the ranch flavor and I don't want to over power it so I add a little extra cream cheese and go relly light on the ranch.
I'm running out of time but the burgers are cooked through so I pull the pan out of the oven and get rocking on my plating. I get a large leaf of lettuce, slice the tomato, and put it on the plate, then I think I wanted this to be a little spicy (since I added the pepper flake into the patty), I figured I'd top it off with a pickled jalapeno!
And with only a few minutes to spare, there you have it!
We eat our dinner and really enjoyed it, Damon thought I was really thinking outside the box because when he picked the ingredients, he was thinking I would make something like Salisbury steak or a beef stroganoff. I don't know where I came up with the idea, but overall I'm pleased and it was really fun doing something we've never tried before!
Don't forget our 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 our scoring and Damon didn't count me off for anything. I on the other hand thought I could have went a little further with the seasoning. I was nervous about going overboard with the pepper flake and the salt but I ended up going too light. So, in the end, I ended up with an average of 9.5 points!
Damon = 13, Christina = 13.5, can't wait to figure out Damon's next Mystery Bag!!
Next week is Damon's turn to cook!
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