Chopped!

So we got home from church today and we realized that we had nothing planned for dinner. We hadn't had time to go grocery shopping yesterday so didn't really have a lot to work with. So I told James that it was his turn to cook dinner. He has a knack for coming up with random meals from random ingredients. He decided to take the challenge but wanted to do it in the form of our favorite Food Network show, Chopped. In case you don't know how it works, four contestants get a basket with four unknown ingredients. They open the basket and have to make an appetizer in 20 minutes. The judges chop one of them and then three of the chefs make an entree with another set of four unknown ingredients. One more chef gets chopped, and then the two left have 20 mins to make a dessert with four other unknown ingredients. A winner is then chosen.

So James left the kitchen and asked me to pick out four random ingredients from which he then would make an appetizer, entree and dessert. These were the ingredients:

Canned Pineapple, Bread Crumbs, Whole Stewed Canned Tomatoes and Hot Fudge...



So here is what James came up with. I told him I gave it a nine out of ten. The vegetables in the entree had been in the freezer a little bit too long :). But that is not all his fault.

Appetizer: Pink Tomato Pineapple Puree on Spinach topped with Feta

The puree is the tomatoes, pineapple, breadcrumbs, cream cheese, garlic, salt, mozzarella cheese and pepperoni. The puree was served on spinach, a slice of pineapple and half a pepperoni with Feta sprinkled on top. This was actually very good. It was light and had a lot of flavor.

Entree: Chocolate Berry Chipotle Chicken on Brown Rice with side of sauteed vegetables

The chicken was sauteed with onions, garlic, balsamic, Rosemary, Basil and pineapple juice. The sauce was two teaspoons of Hot Fudge, 1/4 cup of Raspberry Chipotle sauce, cream, and pineapple juice. It was served over brown rice. The vegetables as mentioned above were...forgettable. When I gave James chocolate I didn't think he would really use it, but his sauce was just the right about of chocolate. Surprisingly, it was turned out really well. Very tasty.

Dessert: Pineapple Breadcrumb Cream on an Animal Cracker Tart

The tart is made out of ground up animal crackers, oatmeal, brown sugar, bread crumbs, butter and pineapple juice. Baked it for 10 minutes in mini muffin tin. The cream is pineapple, bread crumbs and cream cheese, and a teaspoon of sugar, pureed together. There was Hot fudge and strawberry put on the plate as garnish.

It was a fun meal to eat, trying to guess what he had done for each. As the only judge besides MaryKate (who only ate the rice and chicken), I told him I would have passed him on to the next round.