UPDATE b_b won! He will set the rules of Grubski Challenge #9!
This Grubski challenge was to make a dish with only three ingredients (excluding oil, butter, water, or dry seasonings).
The CHALLENGE #8 dishes are:
Spaghetti Squash with Walnuts by kleinbl00
THIS MELANCHOLY SLOP by thenewgreen
Huevos Diablos by myself, although I am recused from voting
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I too am voting for b_b. He also deserved to win the fire challenge in my opinion, so it's only fitting that he win this one. That melancholy slop wasn't even made by me, just reheated by me. I was so busy this week I had no time to cook. However, I shall return with a vengeance for the next challenge!!
We don't have to have eaten this to vote do we? The squash gets mine. It looks the most like it could be a hearty meal on its own. I could serve it to my wife for dinner and she wouldn't blink, whereas the others would get me the stinkeye. The Slop is a runner up for same reasons.
Trust me, b_b's is probably better. We redid the squash a couple days later with the addition of chicken sausage and parmesan. that was fucking delicious and if you wanna keep it vegetarian, mushrooms or grape tomatoes would work fine. However, that pushes it up to 4 or 5 ingredients which makes it ineligible.
As much as I hate to do this, I gotta vote for myself. I'm certain that I would've enjoyed others' food, especially the flap jacks and eggs (apparently flap jacks means something quite different in the UK, rezzeJ, as in the States it typically refers to a flour and egg based batter that is poured onto a griddle), but the pomme dauphine was one of my favorite things I've ever cooked. I plan to become an expert at making them, and I will do it often.
Certainly. Ingredients: Pate a choux: 6 T Butter 1 C. Water 1 C. Flour (sifted--very important to maintain consistency) 4 eggs 1 tsp salt Heat water and butter in a saucepan until the water comes to boil. Turn off heat and add all of the flour at once. Stir with a wooden spoon or stiff spatula to incorporate. The mixture will have a doughy consistency. Turn the heat back on to low and cook, continually stirring, until the dough is a bit shiny, about 3-5 minutes. THe dough will start to form a film on the saucepan when it's ready. Transfer the dough to a mixing bowl, add salt, and mix in the eggs one at a time on the lowest mixer setting (all the chefs I watched on You Tube were using Kitchen Aid mixers, but I don't have one. A hand mixer worked fine). With each egg, the dough will get thinner. It is ready when is has the consistency of a thick batter--flowing, but stiff enough to hold its shape a bit; use fewer or more eggs to achieve this consistency). At this point you have a completed pate a choux that you can use in any number of delicious pastries--cream puffs, eclairs, etc. Meanwhile, boil 2 lbs of good mashing potatoes. I used baby golds, but I suspect you'd have an easier time with full size yukon golds, as they're easier to peel. When the potatoes are cooked through, drain them, peel them, and pass them through a food mill or potato ricer. (I suppose you could mash them with a masher, too, but the food mill or ricer will introduce air that makes the consistency easier to work with. So now, we have two cooked bowls of ingredients, the pastry dough and the potatoes. Combine them with a mixer on low until you get a smooth consistency. I added a bit of pepper at this point, as well. The low setting is important, even though it takes a lot longer than high would. High settings will make the flour get really sticky, and you want to avoid that. Heat enough cooking oil (I used canola, but whatever floats your boat) to fill a pot about 3-4" to 350ยบ, which you can monitor with a candy thermometer. Drop spoonfuls of dough into the hot oil. When the oil is the correct temp, the dough should sink to the bottom, then rise within a few seconds. If it takes longer to float, turn the heat up. I didn't have a candy thermometer, so I used trial and error. I only had four people eating, so I had plenty of dough to experiment. The dough balls will have to be flipped once or twice since they float. The high water content in the dough will make them puff up and even kind of crack open a bit. If they don't do that your oil probably isn't quite hot enough. They are ready when the outside is golden brown. Set them on paper towel to dry and salt liberally, as you would with fries. Eat while still warm. The outside will be crispy while the inside has roughly the consistency of mashed potatoes and is slightly hollow.
Thoughts: 1) These things are fucking delicious. Although my wife considers them too fidly for the level of reward. 2) Holy shit are they messy. Hot oil aside (which involved some mondo cleanup) I managed to dirty three pans, a bowl and a potato ricer that I didn't even know we owned when I started (my wife insists it's a tincture press, even if it was purchased as a potato ricer). 3) Powdered sugar is a poor substitute for leftover pork, parmesan cheese and fresh rosemary. This makes them real close to my local pizza place's interpretation of panzarottos, which I also love. Apparently you can bake them, too? May have to try that. My wife asked me what they were called because my daughter wanted to know. They became "potato donuts." By the end of the day she was asking for "donut thing." They do reheat rather well.
Congratulations b_b! Now get cracking on that next challenge, I'm headed to the grocery store tomorrow
Cool, I'm excited about this one as I'll have TIME. That's something I didn't have for 3.