October 17th, 2014

George Bernard Shaw: "There is no love sincerer than the love of food."

This week we continued our process of watching every movie that has ever won an Oscars for best picture in history, and watching them all in order.  We watched All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) which was really slow for a war movie and like most war movies, it didn't have a very happy ending and that sucks!  Last night, we watched a western, Cimarron (1931). While it isn't going to be added to my list of favorite westerns, but it was okay.  Tonight we watched Grand Hotel (1932) which has to be my favorite of all the ones we've watched so far, it was just a little more upbeat, it had a better story line, and better acting.  

Anyway, It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our eleventh Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's my turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and Damon's turn to cook.  We talked about it after completing ten challenges and decided that we would turn things up a notch.  We talked about various ways to do that, including doing some just awful things to each other such as on the TV show Cutthroat Kitchen but we decided that we might not be ready to go that far just yet.  So, instead we just decided that we were going to be a little more devious on what we give the other person and see how that goes.  We figured we had been a little easy on each other for the past 10 challenges, so we wanted to see if we could still make an awesome dish when we turned up the heat a bit. 

Recap: The rules are simple; whoever is cooking has to make dinner using each of the mystery food items that the other has put into the mystery bag.  We can also use other items that we have in the fridge and pantry, but 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 the ingredients for the first time.

And here's what Damon ended up with for tonight!

 

Okay, so I gave him two pork cutlets, a green apple, balsamic vinegar, and honey!  

You're probably thinking that this isn't a big challenge but I know that Damon likes his meat and he doesn't think there needs to be any fruit associated with it, period.  I've been waiting to do this challenge to him and now I finally get to give him meat and fruit!

Damon expected to get something like this at some point so he wasn't totally surprised but he still has to figure out what in the world to do with the ingredients since he hasn't done this before.  

After a few minutes debating what he wanted to do, he cleans the fat off his pork, searches for some ingredients in the cabinet, and gets to work!

He decides that he's going to sear the pork and then throw it in the oven to pan roast while he gets started on his apple and begins thinking about presentation. 

Now he's got his pork finishing in the oven and he starts to making a glaze of some butter, honey, and cinnamon to poach his apples in.  

  

 

Doing great on time, he finishes up his apples, makes some mashed potatoes and is getting his plates ready for the big finale.

It turned out great, he made his mashed potatoes with adobo peppers, glazed the pork with a balsamic vinegar reduction, and added the yummy cinnamon sweet poached apples on top!  He had just under two minutes to spare, and his dish was delicious!

 

A reminder of our scoring system...  

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 in the end, he ended up with an average of 10 points, perfect score!  

Damon = 51.5, Christina = 42, and that puts him back in the lead!!

Next week is my turn to cook and his turn to turn up the heat on this challenge!