Chopped 2

For dinner tonight we decided to do another Chopped night. So we called our brother, told him what we were doing and asked him to give us the first four ingredients that came to his mind. We have hooked him on watching Chopped so he knew that we were looking for unusual combinations. He gave us celery, eggplant, pork cutlets, and acini de pepe pasta (the pasta used in frog eye salad). We have never cooked eggplant and celery is not our favorite ingredient (except in turkey stuffing)...so needless to say we were struggling to come up with an appetizer, entree/side dish, and dessert. But with a little creativity we made it work. Here is what we got:

Creamy Eggplant Soup (James): Pork loins, Eggplant, celery, onions, garlic, basil, cilantro sauteed in olive oil. Added water, chicken broth, whipping cream and cooked pasta. Sprinkled with feta cheese.

Pork Loin and Eggplant Panini (Kathy): grilled pork loin, sauteed eggplant with onions and celery. In between sourdough/sesame seed bread. Topped with pesto/pasta combo, three cheeses (cream, feta, and cheddar), grilled til golden brown. Side dish of frog-eyed salad (couldn't pass it up).

Eggplant Ice Cream (James) This was alot better than it sounds...trust me. Eggplant was boiled, pureed with pasta, cream cheese and sugar, frozen into ice cream. Put in Mrs. Field's dark chocolate dessert cup, topped with whipped cream and peanut butter crumble. Now I know this sounds odd, but it actually tasted good. We took it over to our neighbors to try and they gave it two thumbs up. It was very creamy and had good flavor.

The best part was just getting to spend time in the kitchen cooking together, while taking turns keeping MaryKate out of trouble. Thanks to Ben for the ingredient suggestions.