Iron Chef Blogger Challenge Weeks 5 and 9

Nope, not a typo. I picked up a belated ICBC this week, in addition to my (slightly-cheating, and slightly-belated-as-well) recipe for last week's challenge. On one night I made two, count them, two recipes. Well, kind of.

Week 5 was mushrooms and Week 9 was bacon. (Can anyone say bacon without saying in that low "bay-cun" voice? Um, sure... you know what I mean, right?). So I made stuffed mushrooms and BLTs.

The background: I had been wanting to try stuffed mushrooms, as I have recently discovered that, hey, I do like mushrooms. This was all thanks to fabulous stuff mushrooms that my bookclub buddy brought to one meeting. Yes. Bookclub. And bacon was on sale, which means a lot if you're a budgeting bacon buyer (alliteration - nothin' but net). I've made BLTs before (cheater) but I made my challenge to see if I could cook large amounts of bacon in the microwave.

The prep: For the mushrooms, I had to pop the stems off and finely chop them. I'm always discouraged when a recipe calls for something to be finely chopped, because I can never get things to be that delicate and tiny. I end up with either smallish chunks or squished ingredients after too many passes with the knife. Luckily, the mushroom chunkettes shrinked with pan frying (oooh, spoiler alert). For the BLTs, it's just a matter of washing lettuce, slicing tomatoes, and rotating bread through the toaster, as I had three sandwiches to make.

The main event: The mushroom recipe called for browning the mushroom pieces (not the caps) with garlic in oil until no moisutre remained, but I found this just burned the ingredients and was near impossible. I ended up just pouring out the excess as best I could and allowing what was left to stick around. I also didn't have onion powder so I substituted finely chopped onions (that word again), throwing them in with the garlic and mushrooms. You're supposed to mix everything together in the pan, but it was much easier to stir the blob of cream cheese by transferring it all to a mixing bowl. I found that I could stuff way more mushrooms than six, and that it took much less than 20 minutes to cook. Watch 'em.

As for the bacon, I tried six pieces at a time, layered between two sheets of paper towels. Three minutes was no good, but four made them kind of tough. Crispy, but tough. I didn't know if opening the microwave worked against them, so I tried four minutes straight on the second batch of six. Still no good. But I did the final three slices at three minutes, and they were perfect. I don't know if any of this makes sense, but there you go. Three at three is the magic number.

The wrap-up: After stuffing little tasty blobs into the mushrooms and stacking my disappointing bacon, the dinner turned out fairly well - especially the mushrooms. Wow, wow, wow. Again, a recipe that I thought about the next day. And you can't go wrong with a BLT. Even though I almost did.

The final score: I hearby rename the mushrooms "Oh Wow Stuffed Mushrooms" because they were amazing - 6 out of 6 on taste, and 5 out of 6 on experience (sigh, finely chopped). The BLTs were 4 out of 6 on taste (some bacon was not so great), and 3 out of 6 on experience. Bad bacon makes me sad.

No pics, I'm sorry! I gobbled it all up, and so you will have to mosey on over to the mushroom link to check them out. Instead, I will leave you with a link to excessively large restaurant food.

The recipes:

Oh Wow Stuffed Mushrooms
From Allrecipes.com

Ingredients:

12 whole fresh mushrooms 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 1 tablespoon minced garlic 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper 1/4 teaspoon onion powder 1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

Directions:

1.	Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. Clean mushrooms with a damp paper towel. Carefully break off stems. Chop stems extremely fine, discarding tough end of stems.
2.	Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and chopped mushroom stems to the skillet. Fry until any moisture has disappeared, taking care not to burn garlic. Set aside to cool.
3.	When garlic and mushroom mixture is no longer hot, stir in cream cheese, Parmesan cheese, black pepper, onion powder and cayenne pepper. Mixture should be very thick. Using a little spoon, fill each mushroom cap with a generous amount of stuffing. Arrange the mushroom caps on prepared cookie sheet.
4.	Bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the mushrooms are piping hot and liquid starts to form under caps.

BLTs

Ingredients:

Bacon

Lettuce

Tomatoes

Bread (Sourdough is awesome)

Mayonnaise

1. Place a paper towel on a microwave-safe plate or dish. Lay three slices of bacon on it. Put another paper towel on top. Cook the bacon in the microwave for three minutes.

2. In the mean time, toast the bread, wash pieces of lettuce, and cut tomatoes into thin slices.

3. Spread mayo on the bread, if desired.

4. Place the bacon, lettuce, and tomato between the bread. Enjoy!

Adventures in bridal land

This past weekend, I had the inspiration that I wanted to experience a bridal expo. I think I wanted a last big taste of the biz before I wave goodbye at our reception and cross over to a time when you can no longer gaze at wedding dresses and table number ideas without feeling a little weird. I know it's still sixish (ahhhhhhhhhhh!) weeks away, but this will all fly by, as I have been told. Anyway, my mom, Brian, and I, ventured downtown to the Phoenix Convention center to experience over 600 vendors, six fashion shows, and more people wearing "Bride!" "Groom!" "Guest!" stickers than you'd ever want to see again.

We did the environment good by taking the one-year-old light rail from Mesa to downtown, saving us the pain of trying to navigate downtown's sudden one-way streets and $12 parking. I guess the scrapbooking convention and the stamp convention were also in town, so you can imagine that we were all a rockin' bunch. We found the bridal show side of things due to the giant red drapes (because draping, I guess, is in) leading to the largest mass of wide-eyed girls you will ever see. It put me in a fit of giggles, because it was so fun and so... silly at the same time. We were immediately met by a string quartet playing "Here Comes the Bride" and various renditions of Disney love songs (the quartet was available for hire, as was just about anyone not wearing a red or green "I'm getting married/Someone I know is getting married and I got was this lousy sticker" sticker. Once they gave you a giant (I mean, this thing was at least 3 pounds) bag of fliers, you were free to wade into the masses.

Wow, I had no idea that there were so many people in the wedding business, and just in Arizona! Photographers, and videographers (there's a 3D option now) and venues, and DJs, and limo companies, and dresses, and bakeries, salons, and liposuction, and the concealed weapon advocacy group (so serious)... it's stunning. I guess there really is a steady stream of people getting married, and so there is always someone who will be willing to have her and her fiance's place shellacked onto a plate (yes, you can). It's amazing that there is this corner of our culture where deep tradition meets the need to have the newest coolest thing that "guests will all be talking about!"

I felt excited to be caught up with so many other people who were going through many of the wows and whoas that I am experiencing, but I also felt moments of, "Huh, it may be our special day, but it's about 1,000 others special days too." I'm glad that we have most things settled, I think I would have taken my complementary wedding planner and hid under it if I was approaching all of this for the first time. I was looking for possible people who offer on-location make-up services, so I did have a purpose, though it was secondary to gawking. I even managed to see a few people I knew, which makes it a small world in a large convention center.


For some reason, I only took this picture at the show.

It became sensory overload after a while, and after one too many bottlenecks at the caterers' booths (free samples!) we finished up and headed to lunch. It was fun to be in a whirlwind of people offering you prettiness and pampering, but it's also nice that time (and this bride) marches on. And I did the environment one more small favor by recycling all three pounds of fliers.


So many companies.

(PS: Unrelated - I'm a little creeped out that there has been 157 views of the photo of me at the BEA convention that I posted earlier in 2009. I found this through my Photobucket stats (photos on here used to link to my Photobucket page). Why...?).

Iron Chef Blogger Challenge Week 7 and 8

Once again, I have a double ICBC post. I felt like I should get this posted since this week was my turn for picking.

Week 7

The background: Two weeks ago we had "something pickled" as our ingredient. I briefly looked into making my own pickles, but once the "super easy" recipe started talking about sanitizing your pickling jars, I glazed over and moved on. I decided to go with a sweet relish pimento spread, since relish is pickled (but thankfully, not pickled by me. I love pimento spread from the jar, which is salmon-y pink and really not good for you. My mom grew up eating it on white bread, and my grandma would always serve it as an appetizer on celery. So, I decided to make it myself.

The Prep/The main event: I don't remember much from the preparation of this spread. I do remember thinking that it contained a lot of cheese, and that the tastiest point was when I had whipped together the cream cheese and cheddar cheese mixture. This was another one of those put-it-in-a-bowl and you're done recipes.

The wrap-up: I was pretty disappointed in the spread, but it's not entirely the spread's fault. I had forgotten how much I don't like bread and butter pickles, and sweet relish (aw, that should have told me something) tastes just like b & b pickles. Ick. So it wasn't like the tasty treat. Maybe the nostalgia makes it hard to beat, too?

The final score: For prep, 5 out of 6 (easy, but I was sad that most of these ingredients ended up just sitting in a bowl in the fridge) and for taste, 2 out of 6.

The recipe:
Tom's Sweet Pimento Cheese
From AllRecipes.com


Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 12 ounces shredded mild Cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup creamy salad dressing (such as Miracle Whip®)
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 2 tablespoons sweet pickle juice
• 1/2 cup sweet pickle relish
• 1 (4 ounce) jar chopped pimentos, drained

Directions

1. Beat the cream cheese and Cheddar cheese together with an electric mixer in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in the salad dressing, garlic salt, sugar, and pickle juice, scraping down the sides of the mixing bowl. Stir in the pickle relish and pimentos. Refrigerate for at least one hour before serving.

Week 8

The background: It was my turn! Hurray! I had been pondering my ingredient for a few weeks, trying to find something unique but used in a variety of recipes. I considered doing chocolate, with the rule that you had to make something non-dessert with it, but I figured the only real option for that is a version of mole sauce. Not a big fan of mole, surprisingly. Anyway, when we were in Vegas for Brian's marathon, I managed to find the Citrus Marketing Inc. table in the exhibit hall, sandwiched between shoe vendors and wonder goo sales people. They were pushing grapefruit and I happily grabbed all their free samples. Included was a set of grapefruit recipes and from that I decided that some fun could be had with one of my absolute favorite fruits. So, there you go. I put the Texas Citrus Salsa to the test.

The prep: Grapefruit (and oranges) are about the only fruits in season so they were easy to find. The grapefruit in the stores right now are HUGE and so amazingly tasty.


On the chopping block.

The main event: Chop, chop, chop. The steps for making the salsa were simple, but gave me a chance to work my chopping skills. Food is hard to cut into pretty, small pieces. I thought about how nice it would be to have a food processor, but then thought about how nice it was to just spend some time preparing something, beyond dumping and heating up or venting and microwaving. Sometimes, the time you save just goes to surfing the internet for another 10 minutes. I learned how to section a grapefruit, a very useful skill, I'm sure.

The wrap-up: Despite my love for grapefruit (gee, have I mentioned that?) I almost didn't want to try the salsa! Something about combining fruits with onions and salt just seemed weird. But I love mango salsa! So I took a bite and - hurray - it was great. Very satisfying and good on corn chips. A warning, though, it's medium to hot if you put in the whole jalapeno. I definitely needed water after the first bite! I recommend throwing in more tomato, too.

The final score: Cooking experience was 6 out of 6, because I put on some music and enjoyed slicing and dicing (Got a CD by Jem for Christmas and highly enjoy it. No, not the 80s cartoon.) For taste, 5 out of 6 - fabulous, though the flavor was pretty quiet. Spicy, but quiet, if that makes any sense. Brian, the salsa king, refuses to use my 6 point scale, so he says 8.75 and continues singing "Jingle Bell Rock."


*Smonch, smonch, smonch*


I am not a hand model. Please ignore the cilantro under my nails.

The recipe:

Texas Citrus Salsa
From TexaSweet

Ingredients
1 Grapefruit, sectioned and chopped
1 orange, sectioned and chopped
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 cup of diced bell pepper
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
3 tablespoons chopped red onion
1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions
1. Mix all of the above ingredients in a large bowl.
2. Refrigerate until ready to use.
3. Drain juice before serving

The card recommends trying this over a baked potato, grilled fish, or grilled chicken. So there you go.

Unrelated pictures:


We saw Joel McHale (from The Soup and Community) for New Year's Eve. Very entertaining. He's also very, very tall.


My brother introduced my to Threadless last year and it has come to this - matching shirts. It took my parents about 10 minutes to notice as we casually talked to them in the kitchen.