For our third challenge, we opted for seafood. The weather was warming up and we wanted a lighter fare. This time, Liz did the food shopping. Check out her blog for the highlights, particularly how hard it was to find a chocolate cookie!
Our menu consisted of:
- Lia's Olive Oil Poached Shrimp, page 86.
- Ilan's Fideos with Clams and Saffron, page 164
- Cliff's Marshmallow and cookie ice cream, page 234
Liz and I were joined in the kitchen by Le. Liz and Le took lead on the appetizer, which was very complicated. Liz didn't have a vegetable peeler; the recipe called for us to peel the zest of the lime. Luckily, Le was able to get the job done with a paring knife. The rest of the recipe had multiple steps to make a sauce, which would only be a dollop on the final dish! Another highlight of this recipe called for a chargrilled jalapeno, which can be done over a gas stove. TIP: the recipe called for us to just leave it on the stove, but we found that using tongs and being able to turn the jalapeno worked much better! 
What made this appetizer recipe complex was the sauce mentioned above, as well as the lime syrup. I can't even begin to go into the intricacies that Liz and Le had to go through. My contribution to this appetizer was the poaching of the shrimp. I washed the shrimp and made sure that they were dry. The recipe called for a whole bottle of olive oil, but here's a TIP, you only need to use enough to cover the shrimp, which for us came out to be able less than half a bottle. Poaching it in olive oil was quite a treat. It made the shrimp taste even sweeter, but oddly enough, I didn't get too much of that greasy, oily feeling. The appetizer was quite a hit and we probably could have used more shrimp than the recipe called for. 
Moving on to the main course. Since we had to double the recipe to make enough for 8, it was a LOT of pasta. We weren't able to get the appropriate color of brown on the pasta since we didn't have enough baking pans, or space in the oven to place the uncooked fideos in one layer on each pan. In hindsight, we could have done it in batches, but at this point, we just wanted to finish the cooking to start eating! ;)
The sauce was easy to make; the tough part was mixing the pasta in with the the clams and the sauce. TIP: separating it into multiple pots made it easier to mix. Just make sure that you also add enough sauce and clams!
Last but not least, dessert! Since ice cream takes a while to set, it was the first thing that we made. I took the lead on the ice cream. What I found difficult was making sure that everything was precise -- this tends to be the case in making desserts! What took forever was getting the cream mixture up to temperature. It took longer than the recipe said it would, but I was uncomfortable with taking it off the stove before it hit 170 degrees. After that, everything was a breeze -- probably because the ice cream maker machine did the rest of the work. TIP: make sure that the ice cream maker bowl is COLD. We left it in the freezer for over 24 hours. When the consistency of the mixture looked like ice cream, that's when you add in the other stuff, like marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate cookie crumble. The ice cream was fairly easy to make, particularly compared with the appetizer!
Overall, another successful top chef meal!
(Note: this blog entry is backdated to reflect the actual date of the meal)
(Note: this blog entry is backdated to reflect the actual date of the meal)
