You've Been Chopped

For Girl's Night Out this month, we decided to do our own version of the Food Network show, Chopped. We had 6 chefs, two for appetizers, two for entrees, and two for desserts. When I agreed to cook, I was thinking that we would find out what out ingredients were that night and have to come up with something. As the host, I should have thought better than that...how would I be expected to have a fully stocked kitchen? As it was, the ingredient list was sent to us a week prior and we just had the food prepared for dinner. The ingredients were:

Appetizer: Strawberries, Frozen Waffles, Sun dried Tomatoes

Entree: Quinoa, Spam, Pretzels

Dessert: Breadcrumbs, Boxed Brownie Mix, Stone Ground Mustard

All of the food turned out really good! I was assigned to dessert and decided on homemade brownie ice cream with a mustard caramel sauce and a breadcrumb cookie. While my first attempt at the caramel souce was a horrible desaster, David lit a candle to get rid of the burnt smell and I rallied to make what turned out to be a pretty tasty sauce. The ice cream was a Ben and Jerry's cream base to which I added the cooked brownies. For the breadcrumb, I did an internet search to find a recipe for a cookie, which was chocolate with wheat bread crumbs. While it tasted pretty good, I think it was the weakest component to my dessert.

While we did not decide on winners, I think everyone did a great job and this is something that we will do again in the future.