Monday, August 11, 2014

Chopped Challenge: Sometimes It's just not interesting

So I have been trying to be REALLY original with my Chopped Challenges. I've been working on upping my flavors, and being creative, and meeting the challenges head on. Unfortunately, the honest truth is sometimes the food that results, just isn't that interesting. I mean, it's edible and all, but boring, ho-hum, despite what the basket may have contained. And you know what is REALLY hard to write about? Boring food. Take last week for example. The Husband brought me home the following:
Dragon Fruit, Pork Chops, Tomatillos and Dried Edamame.  The ingredients seemed so exotic that I was eager to dive in. But the surety of what to do was lacking and the best I could come up with was to slice the chops thin, pound them out, crust them with edamame and some cumin and give them a good fry. Then I made a gravy with the Tomatillos (roasted slightly along with garlic, onion and a hot pepper) and the dragon fruit, which, although it looks pretty, tastes like barely sweetened water. I just kept adding and adding the fruit to the sauce, and then reducing it down as much as I could but no matter what I did, it just wasn't interesting.

In a desperate effort to do something creative I took the Parsnips from the Farm Box and tried to make parsnip fries. The only problem was the Parsnips from the box were too thin and not conducive at all to slicing into even fries. The Result: burned parsnip fries, only a handful of which were worthy of the plate.

In the end, my pork chop was dry, the breading to meat ratio was off with way to much breading to meat. The Sauce tasted interesting, but not yummy and mostly bland. The parsnip fries were overcooked and lacked seasoning. And the overall image, brown on brown on white. Not at all what I wanted.

This was a very frustrating meal. Unworthy of even writing down the recipe. But Failures come with the territory when you are cooking without a plan and when you are dealing with new ingredients. Every now and then you either eat the result despite it being lack luster, or if it is truly bad, that is why God invented Pizza Delivery Men.

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