BvP Challenge II

Last summer, we presented my dad with the first BvP Challenge: a Food Network Chopped inspired basket of four mystery ingredients. Overall, he fared pretty well.

For Christmas, he passed the basket back to us with four mystery ingredients to test our own culinary prowess:

BvP Challenge: Round Two consisted of... animal crackers, Vienna sausages, hearts of palm and bacon and cheddar flavored cheese spread in an aerosol can.

A couple immediate observations:
1) Does the city of Vienna know that their good name is being sullied with this can of meat flavored food byproduct?
2) How can Libby's do something so awesome like canned pumpkin (which directly leads to awesome pumpkin pie) and at the same time do something so foul

Mary was up to bat first with a cheese souffle, utilizing the canned bacon-cheese, and toast points topped with a mousse made from a pureed blend of Vienna sausage, hearts of palm and animal crackers.

The souffle turned out real nice, but the Vienna sausage mousse was a little off-pudding.

For my attempt, I tried to mask the flavor of the Vienna sausage as much as possible by adding in a bunch of dried herbs and forming them into meatballs. I cooked the hearts of palm with some garlic and lemon juice, and turned the canned baconcheese into a spicy fondue/dipping sauce.  

After tasting both courses, Mary and I agreed that she put the canned cheese to better use, while my hearts of palm tasted actually pretty good. While no one wins with Vienna sausage, I claimed the slight edge there by drowning them in tastier herbs and giving them a light pan fry.

For the next round, it looks like some addendums are in order:
1) No canned "meats"
2) At least two of the four ingredients must by non-processed items.

Otherwise, we are going to need to include a bottle of Tums Extra-Super Strength with every basket. The bulk-buy size bottle.

Bring on the next round!

--Isaac.

Zombiefest

When the zombie apocalypse eventually descends upon us, what I may lack in the zombie-slaying-broomstick department, I will be able to make up in the culinary-zombie-themed-grub department.

The Walking Dead, season two, part two, picked up right where it left off a couple months ago: amidst a pile of zombie leftovers. Mary and I have some friends that fall into one or more of the following categories:

1) Had not seen the new house
2) Think zombies are fantastic
3) Enjoy food

The solution here, obvious even for your average shambling zombie, was to host a zombie-food themed party to watch the newest Walking Dead episode. Nailed it.

While I wasn't going to venture down the route of classic, stereotypical zombie food (brains or other glandular options), I was inspired by the large packet of short ribs I had in my freezer from last fall when Mary and I bought an eighth of a cow. The connection from zombie food to ribs seemed pretty solid.

The first cooking technique that came to mind during the planning stages was braising the ribs low and slow. The recipe I used let me utilize both my awesome blue dutch oven and almost a whole bottle of red wine, which meant I could have braised a shoe for three hours and it would have been delicious.

I thought the flavor of the short ribs turned out really nice. However, since I have no prior short rib experience to use as a comparison, I can't say for sure that they turned out how a perfectly cooked short rub should turn out.

My side dishes for the short ribs consisted of some BBQ chicken wings (going further with the theme of gnawing meat off of a bone) and mashed sweet potatoes with poblano peppers and orange (because zombies need a starch with their meal?). Now those, I can say, were done well.

Mary's contributions consisted of some very artsy deviled egg eyeballs...

 ...and a hummus/veggie tray which could have benefited from a brain mold had I been thinking ahead far enough.

The guests offerings included some very appropriate maggot empanadas (filled with bacon naturally)...

...and some "It Came From Beyond the Grave" spinach and artichoke dip made with a fantastic amount of the "People's Cheese" as it was described.

The entertainment during intermission included some thought provoking dialogue about overcoming obstacles, then it was on to dessert (the best part).

As I remarked recently to Mary, I would like an opportunity to bake some cupcakes with various flavor profiles, but all be damned if devil's food chocolate cupcakes with seafoam frosting aren't just the most delicious cake item out there, so why bet against a sure thing? Sure there would be a near 100% success rate with other cupcake flavors, but devils food is at least a 103% guaranteed successful transaction.

To zombify these cupcakes, I added a filling in the middle of the cupcakes made from strawberry and marionberry jams, with the idea that it would ooze out when bitten, and topped them with some semisweet chocolate skulls made from a Halloween mold I had stashed away.

I'm pretty sure zombies would have even given up human flesh for this spread.

--Isaac.

National Pie Day

January 23 was National Pie Day. Hopefully you celebrated accordingly.

I caught wind of a pie baking contest being hosted by a local pie shop the day before Pie Day proper (as a Sunday afternoon is much better suited for a pie contest over a Monday afternoon). I thought this was a perfect opportunity to test my pies abilities at the next level.

There were two judging categories, sweet and savory, so clearly having 800% more experience baking sweet pies, I wisely decided that going sweet was my best option. I elected to go with an apple pie because I knew I could make an apple pie blindfolded, with one arm tied behind my back, hungover, and in a blizzard.

Some assembly still required.

To make my apple pie a bit sexier though, I ground up some slivered almonds into flour to add into the crust and incorporated sliced almonds in my crumble topping.

It truly turned out exactly as I envisioned:

It is a winner in my book.

The pie contest was scheduled at the same time as the NFC Championship in which my 49ers were trying to get to the Super Bowl for the first time in 17 years, so I wasn't present for the judging or the announcing of the results. When I didn't get a congratulatory phone call by 6pm that night (4 hours after judging), I deduced that I did not win.

And then the Niners lost. Lame.

Mary and I drove back to the pie shop to pick up my pie dish and eat some of their sausage rolls and other various meat-cheese-herb stuffed savory pies.  I was very pleasantly surprised to see that some of my pie survived the judging process:

Just need a fork now.

I gave a chunk of my pie to one of the workers at the pie shop who didn't get to sample any of the pies previously during judging, and almost asked for a fork so I could eat my pie on the car ride home to hopefully ease the pain of a pie contest loss and a championship game loss in the same day.

While I did not place in the pie contest, I did win a raffle of sorts by commenting on the pie-centric blog maintained by one of the judges (www.makemesomepie.com). The pie shop used a nifty product called "Pie Contest in a Box" to run the contest, and afterwards, a second copy was raffled off to those who submitted comments on the judge's results roundup blog entry. So now I should be all set to host my own pie contest! Booyah.

I've got to think that I would be the early favorite to win this next pie contest if I am the one hosting it...

-Isaac.