KITCHEN ADVENTURES: PACK YOUR KNIVES AND GO! OK, so I’m a total geek, and decided to do modified, cheapjack versions of some of the challenges from “Top Chef.” Thus far none of them have turned out ridiculously well, so I’m also giving you guys a bonus adventure at the end, from several months ago….

season 1, episode 1, “signature dish”: I… don’t have one, you know? I just cook stuff. So I made spicy squid with capellini. I blanched 1/4 lb. squid (boil water, dump in squid, cook 30-40 seconds, dump into colander and rinse in very cold water–yes, should be ice water, but as we’ve discussed, my freezer doesn’t work). Then sliced the bodies into rings, melted butter in a pan with lime juice, cooked the squid in the lime butter with minced garlic, chopped plum tomato, cayenne, black pepper, possibly cumin?, and a hint of cinnamon, and ate it with the angel hair pasta and more butter.

the verdict: Better luck next time! I think the problem here was that I made too much pasta, and/or didn’t cook the pasta in the sauce. When I could taste the lime and squid and cinnamon, it was delicious!–but those flavors got overwhelmed by the starch. I’m terrible at judging how much capellini to make. Using a broth of some kind, ideally something like lime-garlic-jalapeno(-shrimp?) stock made with a cinnamon stick, might also have helped.

s1, e4: gas station: The challenge was to make a dish using only things you could buy at a gas station, plus dried herbs and spices. My apartment building has a very well-stocked convenience store, so I raided that, but tried to confine myself to things I might plausibly find at a less-well-stocked gas station.

So I made a croissant sandwich with Munster cheese and spicy black beans. I cooked canned beans with cayenne, black pepper, cumin, cinnamon, a bit of curry powder, and I think a bit of chili powder, then cut the croissant in half lengthwise, topped the halves with cheese slices, and toasted it in the toaster oven. Then filled the sandwich with the black beans.

verdict: The beans were great! But I knew they would be. That combination of flavors is hard to ruin. The croissant, on the other hand… didn’t work, at all. I’d hoped it would crisp on the bottom, with the melted cheese on top. Instead, it got soggy and limp.

s1, e2: fruit plate: This was really supposed to be a challenge about “knife skills.” I have the hand-eye coordination of a monkfish. So I just tried to use fruits and cheeses that would taste good together. I used a pink lady apple, an Asian pear, some goat gouda, some Parrano (a nutty, grainy, delicious yellowy-orangey cheese), and some Morbier. I also tried out black pepper and balsamic vinegar on the fruit.

verdict: Hmmm. The fruit went really well with the Parrano (and also the pepper; not so much the vinegar). Fruit + goat gouda was okay. The Morbier was too stinky for me, and not nearly stinky enough for my cheese-loving snacking companion.

I think the leftovers here would’ve been really good in scrambled eggs. I ended up not doing that, but I think if you diced the fruits, the Parrano, and the gouda, you’d be ready to go.

and now, success: Whiskey Pork with Apples & Onions. I made this a while ago, as I said, so I don’t really remember how long I cooked everything. Besides which, my oven doesn’t always seem to work the way recipes think it should–sometimes it cooks much faster than predicted–so I tend to play it by ear, check up on the food and stir it and so forth.

Anyway, this is what I did: Turned oven to 375. Thickly sliced a red baking apple. Covered a baking tray with foil. Laid the apple slices on the tray, doused them with Jack Daniels, peppered them, added cayenne I think (possibly I only added cayenne to the pork–as you may have noticed, I’m crazy about it), and cooked for maybe ten, twenty minutes. Then stirred the apple and added two pork loin… chops? The things you get at the store that say “pork loin on sale.” A bit more whiskey, more pepper, cayenne. Back into the oven. Cookity for ten to fifteen minutes, while chopping a peeled medium onion into big chunks. Turned the pork, stirred the apple, added the onion. Cookity for fifteenish minutes more. Stirred, tasted; it was ready. Consumed!

verdict: Oooh this was good. Moist, porky, whiskeyed, peppery, sweet. I microwaved the leftovers for lunch the next day and it was still fantastic. This is obviously more of a wintry, comfort-food dish, but I’m going to keep it in the repertoire, for sure.

I received some help from Cooking with Booze.