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!