Crabtree, Mac Intosh play with amaranth, artichokes hearts, plums and Italian sausage for final Round 1 recipe challenge.
Jack Mac Intosh vs. Chris Crabtree
Jack Mac Intosh
Well, when I got my ingredients the first thing out of my mouth was "what the heck is amaranth?" The obvious choice to me was to use the Italian sausage and artichoke hearts in a pasta but that seemed too boring. I reached out to several friends for ideas and used the Internet to research the amaranth. The idea for the grilled fruit and yogurt dessert just seemed to work and once I tasted the amaranth toasted, knew I was going to top it off with the crunch. The addition of the shrimp to the kebabs seemed to put that dish over the top, as it worked great with the spicy plum hoisin sauce.
I had 31 people over to the house to try out six different dishes. That was a lot of prep! I had each person rank their favorite dishes and I just went with their decision. They are all hoping I advance to the next round so I can do it again.
Chris Crabtree
When I opened my basket and saw a bag of amaranth, I had no idea what I was looking at, yet alone how to pronounce it. The other ingredients - Italian sausage, fresh plums and canned artichoke hearts - were all familiar and easy to use in a variety of dishes, so I went straight from the Daily Herald office to Whole Foods. I decided to sit in the parking lot and look up what amaranth was online. I saw words like ancient grain, Aztec culture, porridge and gluten free. At that point I knew this was going to be a real challenge and my goal for myself was how I could incorporate amaranth a few different ways. A flatbread I decided, and I wanted to make one that was gluten free since that was a benefit of eating amaranth. I grabbed amaranth flour and corn flour. Then some veggies to compliment the sausage and artichoke hearts, plums and a few cheeses that might work. … This challenge was a lot easier than I thought until I tasted artichoke hearts and plums in the same bite and realized I didn't want them together in the same dish. … Then I tried to think how could I make a porridge into a dessert and realized amaranth was similar to tapioca in texture, so maybe I could make a pudding. Using the plums I made a simple compote for color and chose almond as the flavor for the pudding because it would complement the plums and also work with the earthy flavor of amaranth. Once I felt confident in the flatbread and pudding idea, from there it became just a matter of fine tuning amounts and working on presentation. I now had amaranth in raw form, flour form and cooked form, while keeping the entire meal gluten free.