Week 3: Chopped Challenge

This week we picked the Chopped Challenge! I was actually super excited about this one! For those who aren't sure what the Chopped Challenge is, it is a show on T.V. where chefs are given four (quite random in my opinion) ingredients and they have to come up with a delicious dish incorporation all four ingredients. They are also given a time limit (30 minutes I believe).

To begin our date we started by going to the grocery store to pick out the ingredients we would use. We put our own twist on this and didn't do it quite as the show does. We decided I would create an appetizer (Greg would pick out the ingredients for me), Greg would create the main course (I would pick out his ingredients), and we would work on dessert together. The catch for dessert is I would pick out two ingredients and Greg would pick out the other two (without the other knowing what was picked) and we had to create something based on those four ingredients.

After picking our our ingredients we headed home and started cookin'!! For the appetizer Greg picked out for me an orange, small tortillas, cilantro, and chicken strips.

I didn't think this would be very difficult, but I was stumped by the orange for a bit.

I ended up adding a few extra ingredients that we had to my four in order to complete my appetizer. I included an onion, tomato, cheese, lemon juice, and some of the Mrs. Dash seasoning

I started by warming up the precooked chicken strips on the stove. I added some onion to cook with it and seasoned it a little more with the Mrs. Dash seasoning. I then make some pico de gallo by adding together some chopped onion, chopped tomato, chopped cilantro, lemon juice, and orange juice from the orange. 

When it was all completed I put all of in a small tortilla and added some cheese to make a taco. 

Voila!

Not to bad if I say so myself. It was really good too!! The orange gave it a slight sweet flavor, but was not overpowering. 

I was so excited to Greg to try it and as he took a bit this is the reaction I got...

SERIOUSLY?!?! I know it was not that bad. Turns out he was just teasing me and he actually really did like it. :) 

Once our appetizer was devoured, it was Greg's turn to get on with the main course. I wanted to give him a good challenge, so I picked out for him boneless beef ribs, a cantaloupe, vanilla wafers, and zucchini. 

Of course when I was picking out these ingredients I was brainstorming all kinds of ideas of how he would create a main course with these ingredients. I was sure he would make something with the cantaloupe and vanilla wafers as a side dish or something. He certainly surprised me though. 

Greg decided to crush the vanilla wafers and use them to bread the ribs. He cooked that up and then decided to add some zucchini to the mix. Then he did it...yes...he added cubed cantaloupe to his creation. With the remaining zucchini he fried it up with some season salt, and also cut up the rest of the cantaloupe to have on the size. I can be somewhat of a picky eater, so I was definitely nervous. 

Yes, the orange pieces you see above are the bits of cantaloupe...mixed with beef (that has been breaded with vanilla wafers) and zucchini. 

Greg was very excited to try his creation....

Me? Not so much.

To give him credit, it actually wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be. When he asked me if we should ever make it again I quickly said no!! It had kind of a savory/sweet flavor to it. It was...to say the least...interesting. 

My dear husband and his creative ideas. :)

Our last task was to complete a dessert together using four ingredients that we split and picked out without each other knowing the others ideas. Here is what we came up with...

I picked out sugar cookie mix, and cream cheese (yes, my thoughts were on a dessert pizza of some kind!). Greg chose french vanilla pudding mix and mini chocolate chips. This was not very difficult to come up with an idea! 

First we mixed the sugar cookie mix according to the directions, and spread it out like a pizza. We cooked it as directed on the package. While it was cooking we combined the cream cheese and the french vanilla pudding mix (we did not add milk at first, but ended up adding a little to help it mix better). 

When the cookie pizza crust cooled we spread on the french vanilla cream cheese "sauce" and then sprinkled the mini chocolate chips on top. It was actually very delicious! 

A great successful dessert to the end of an interesting meal. :)

We had a lot of fun on this date, and plan on doing it again! We gave this a $$ due to our ingredients coming up to just over $28 (anything over $20 is $$ or more). This date can easily be $ though based on what ingredients are picked out. It was a great challenge, and very interesting!