Cook of the Week Challenge: Judges try their hand at the mystery baskets
So our home cooks don't think I'm picking on them and so the judges don't think I'm letting them off too easy, I ask those judges to pick a mystery basket and come up with a recipes. Some of the judges eagerly play along, others have to decline due to other work commitments. (Or are they afraid of amaranth and plums??)
2013 Cook of the Week Challenge winner Dan Rich jumped at the chance to show his stuff picking what I think was one of the toughest baskets: whole chicken, mango, almonds and licorice extract courtesy of our sponsor Marquardt of Barrington Buick-GMC. The dealership is locally famous for passing out red licorice sticks to customers.
"Since I battled Twizzlers in last year's event, the licorice challenge seemed to be a natural for me," Rich said. "Kind of. I still have PTSD and flashbacks from that event."
Rich added licorice extract to a brine for chicken before he split it, rubbed it with jerk spices and grilled it.
"I knew that I had to come up with a nice accompaniment that integrated all of the mystery basket ingredients and after grinding some fresh spices I knew that the paella dish was the answer," he adds.
Rich gives a shoutout to 2012 Cook of the Year Michael Pennisi for inspiring his other side dish.
"The mango salsa garnish is inspired by a sauce that Mike Pennisi made during a grilling event this summer. He did this cool thing with mango, pineapple, peppers, a bunch of seasoning and some rum paired with grilled chicken. It was killer!"
Pennisi selected plantains, which he grilled back at the September event, to add to his budget challenge basket. The contestants were given a can of corn and $10 and had to make dinner for four. For his recipe, Pennisi grated plantains and turned them into potato pancake-like "spiders" that he serves with spicy corn soup.
Penny Kazmier, winner of the inaugural Cook of the Week Challenge in 2011, picked up the ground beef, barley, pear and Roth blue cheese basket.
"I immediately thought of a Buffalo-style burger," she says. "Pears and blue cheese are a favorite combination at my house, and I often make salads using farro which is similar in size and texture to barley, so using all the ingredients in a salad sounded good. The result was delicious, in part because of adding apple juice to the barley cooking liquid, but the rest of the ingredients worked perfectly."
My recipe - I'm taking on the hot dog/delicata squash/Emmentaler/flour basket - will appear in our special Cook of the Week Challenge wrap up section that publishes on Nov. 19. In the meantime, I'll be adding these recipes to the Cook of the Week Challenge Facebook page and would love you all to be the judge. Let me know if these previous Challenge champs still have their chops.