Monthly Archives: October 2006

Carolyn of 18thC Cuisine has finished the judging. You can get all the results here!

Technorati Tags: paper chef

It was a quiet month for the Paper Chef event. Probably because it was a particularly challenging combination of ingredients. This time around, however, we did give everyone a week to come up with and cook their recipe and post about it. In a weird way that may have hurt entries as well – part of the essence of the challenge is the time constraint. But it wouldn’t be fun if we didn’t change things around all the time.

This time around our randomly selected ingredients were:

1.Barberries
2.Pumpkin
3.Spinach
4.Slow – anything slow including slow cooking, the slow food movement or even sloes.

Plus we allowed substitutions even more freely than normal for Barberries and spinach since barberries are hard to get and some people are currently afraid of spinach.

We ended up with five wonderful entries, highlighted by the Noodle Cook, who by now qualifies as the person who has entered the most Paper Chef events ever. But we also had some newcomers.

Noodle Cook of entered ‘Charred vegetables with balsamic butter sauce, served with lemon myrtle couscous‘ which qualifies as a simple dish for him, so I am designating at as in the ‘home’ category. (I am in awe of the extraordinary culinary confections Noodle Cook usually makes.)

Bron Marshall entered ‘Spinach and Cheese filled Pumpkin Tortelloni with a Blueberry, Orange and Pinot Noir Sauce‘ along with some stunning photos full of vibrant color and yummy food. And in consideration of a slightly higher degree of difficulty, this is a deserved antrant in the ‘haute’ category.

Jonskifarms (who has entered once before) entered ‘Oven-baked Rice with Barberries and Butternut Squash,’ and did so despite an immobilized arm. The dish is designated as being in the ‘home’ category but we’ll have to wait on whether or not the ‘tah dig‘ was good enough. And to find out what that means you’d better go read the entry…

Emma (aka the laughing gastronome) entered ‘Chicken Barberryani,’ along with a ‘Warm Pumpkin and Silverbeet Salad’ another Middle Eastern inspired dish. The name is a great play on words and the recipe looks fantastic for a family dinner so I’m going to call it in the ‘home’ category.

Anita entered a ‘Parsee Dhansak‘ that looks absolutely delicious and she accompanied it with a great exposition on the Dhansak and on the ingredients. Although I suspect that this is originally a very much home dish for the Parsee community, it is complex enough that I am going to go ahead and suggest it be considered ‘haute.’

First-time entrant Columbus Foodie entered a clever ‘Blueberry, Balsamic, Goat Cheese and Pumpkin Seed Salad‘ based around a recipe from a favorite restaurant.It is a little hard to decide whether it counts as ‘haute’ or ‘home’ so maybe I’ll let Carolyn decide during her judging.

For this slow edition of Paper Chef, you have until this coming Monday, the 16th, to get entries in. You can find all the details in the post right below this one….

paper chef, recipes

First off, a thank you to Noodle Cook who caught me in an error – it is indeed Paper Chef #22.

Second. Here is the final list of ingredients as suggested by our wonderful participants:

Peanut butter, Apple cider, Daikon, Blueberries, Cantaloupe, Crab, Pork, Something you or a friend grew, White wine, Sour cream, Cheddar, Mushroom, Ramen Noodles, Edible flowers, Vermouth, soda pop (any kind), frog (legs), coconut milk, wattleseed, broad/fava beans, barberries, ground meat (any kind), pomegranate, pumpkin, beef, spinach, lentils, ginger, maple syrup, apples, mace and something wild. Whew!

Next: for those of you wondering what the heck I am talking about, here is a link to the current ‘rules‘ such as they are for Paper Chef.

This time around because I have been so slow getting to things and because participants can take it slow since you have about a week until NEXT Monday noon (October 16th), this is the Slow Edition of Paper Chef. That means the special, topical ingredient to use will be ‘slow’. That means anything you can twist it to mean, like ‘slow food’ from the ‘slow food movement’; or it means using a slow cooker, or it means perform and action slowly (like dropping the olive oil in as you hand whip mayonnaise) or it can even mean sloes.

Here is the full list, with three extracted at random from the list above.

1. Barberries – OK – going out on a limb here – that is going to be hard to do for most people so we will allow ANY berries.
2. Pumpkin
3. Spinach (for those without access due to recent agricultural issues in the US, substitute frozen or any other green)
4. Slow

Our esteemed judge will be Carolyn from 18thC Cuisine.

OK – we are going to give it a shot…but because I have been late we are going to alter the rules a little.

Paper Chef will start officially TOMORROW sometime in the morning – so that you can get a quick ingredient nomination in if you can. And it will run all week – so this week you get a full seven days to come up with and make your dish and post about it. Entries will be due a week from Monday – on October 16th.

Current ingredient list is:

Peanut butter, Apple cider, Daikon, Blueberries, Cantaloupe, Crab, Pork, Something you or a friend grew, White wine, Sour cream, Cheddar, Mushroom, Ramen Noodles, Edible flowers, Vermouth, soda pop (any kind), frog (legs), coconut milk, wattleseed, broad/fava beans, and barberries.

So get your nominations in!

And I am going to try to take part this time – just for fun. I haven’t checked in with last month’s winner, Carolyn, but I am hoping she will judge. Although we had a small number of entries last time (who knew so many people were afraid of giblets? Anthony Bourdain and Fergus Henderson would not be happy) they were all very very good.

That was fast! Probably good to have roundups and judges aligned on different time zones so as one day ends another starts (or something like that). Ilva over at Lucullian Delights has judged and announced the winner! Just in time, too since I have to open ingredient nominations immediately!

This is I think the smallest Paper Chef gethering to date except for the very first one. And it is clear that there is one major reason for that and one minor reason. The major reason is one of the ingredients – giblets. This was just too far out of the realm of experience for many entrants and despite enthusiasm for the overall theme, many potential participants dropped out.

The other reason is that we are really only just ticking over here at Paper Chef – we need reinvigoration, enthusiasm, bravado and a lot more time and energy. For now we will settle for a cup of coffee.

The ingredients for this time around were the aforementioned giblets, eggs, fermented black soy beans and something that reminded you of Africa.

And these are the magnificent entries…

Emma of The Laughing Gastronome made some delightful looking Egg Rolls with wild rice representing Africa as an indigenous ingredient.

Carolyn of 18thC Cuisine, one of the most interesting and different food blogs out there, and a frequent entrant to Paper Chef made a Gizzard Salad – Hot or Cold – that is based on a recipe from 1702 and is totally amazing.

Susan of FatFree Kitchen made a well-reasoned case for a vegetarian substitute to the giblets – zucchini! And made us a Shiitake, Sweet Potato and Zucchini Foo Yung.

And finally, a new entrant, the semi-anonymous blogger in charge of the cleverly-named PhooD, made us Ah-Freekeh, which appears to be a dish based around a North African form of cracked wheat called Freekeh (I suspect it is a lot like bulgur from the picture)