It's a competition in which 4 chefs must prepare 3 parts of a meal- appetizer, entree, and desert. Sounds fairly simple, right? It is until you add that in each round the chefs are given baskets containing several "secret ingredients," which could be anything from potatoes (doesn't sound so bad) to cheetos, honey and herb cough drops or spam. Sounds considerably more challenging now, eh? On top of the secret ingredients, the chefs are given an insanely short amount of time to cook each course (we're talking 20 minutes for appetizers and 30 minutes for the entree and desert). So in the end Chopped is a race against the clock to make creative, tastey and well composed dishes out of seemingly inedible ingredients.
I think it's quite exciting. Watching it has kind of become a family affiar at my house. My siblings and I will gather aound the T.V. and watch episode after episode (we have at least a dozen recorded).
A couple nights ago my brother decided try their hand at Chopped. One of them was the judge who got to pick the secret ingredients (which were considerably more tame then those on the real show- tabasco sauce, twizzlers and strawberry jelly, although the Instant Breakfast was a pretty tough one), and the other two were the contestants. I was dissapointed that they did it without me (I was working), but I'm looking forward to trying it with them sometime soon.
I was trying to think up possible secret ingredients when I saw a bottle of Kahlua in our pantry. I remebered that on a recent episode one of the chefs made whipped cream with vodka in it.
"Kahlua Whipped Cream," I thought, "YUM!"**
It's moments like these I wish I could be a chef for real. But for right now I'll just keep pretending I am whenever I cook something here in my own kitchen.
**Try Kahlua Whipped Cream on coffee (especially coffee with chocolate)
or on top of chocolate cheesecake
Bon appetit!!!
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