MasterChef Cookoff!

Today you get a 4 for 1 special.

My friends and I LOVE MasterChef with Gordon Ramsay. Last week was the finale, so to celebrate we had our own MasterChef cookoff! We drew randomly for one of four courses: Appetizer, Entreé, Side dish, and Dessert. Then we each drew 2 secret ingredients, and had the option to veto one of them. 

Katie drew appetizer and her ingredients were cheese and corn. She vetoed corn. 

Ryan drew dessert and I drew side dish, so naturally we switched. (For the sake of everyone else really) Ryan's side dish's secret ingredients were Beer and...he doesn't remember...He got beer and vetoed whatever else.

Mike drew entreé and his secret ingredients were tequila and chocolate. He, like Ryan, saw tequila and vetoed whatever else. (He wasn't about to make a molé)

My dessert secret ingredients were sweet potatoes and bacon. I vetoed bacon. 

The only rules were that it had to use your ingredient and you weren't allowed to copy a recipe word for word. You could use recipes as inspiration, but ultimately, it had to be original.

Once we picked our courses and ingredients we had a couple days to think about what we wanted to create. Creating and cooking our dishes was great, but eating the dishes was even better!! We all got to enjoy the fruits of our labor. And the finale of MasterChef of course!!! And that was great for us, but awesome for you because you get to enjoy the recipes that came of it! P.S Thank you to my friend Julian for his absolutely gorgeous photos of the dishes we created! (Don't worry, he got to eat in exchange for the photos. We dont starve our photographers here at S. Pres, Oh!)

Katie made Cream Cheese Jalepeño Poppers

Ryan made Beer Sliders

Mike made Tequila Marinated Pork Loin

I made Scalloped Sweet Potatoes

Cream Cheese Jalapeño Poppers by Katie

P.S, Check out Katie on her Uloop blog and her own personal blog: Conkerr the World

Makes 30

2 8oz packages of cream cheese
1 cup cheddar, shredded
1 lb. Bacon
2-3 stocks green onion, diced
3-4 cloves of garlic, diced
15 jalapenos

Dice up the bacon into small cubes about ¼ in. wide. Tip! Stick the bacon in the freezer for a little bit before you dice it so it wont slide around so much when you do so!

Cook the bacon in a pan over med-high until bacon starts to crisp and turn orange. Add the 3-4 cloves of diced garlic and immediately remove from heat. Another tip! To drain the bacon and garlic so you dont lose any pieces, place a paper towel over whatever you are using to collect the bacon grease and pour the contents of the pan into the paper towel to strain out the bacon and garlic! Place bacon and garlic in the refrigerator.

Pre-heat the oven to 360 degrees. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add the peppers and allow  to boil briefly, about 3-4 minutes. This will soften them up and make it easy to cut them open and shell out the ribs and seeds. Pull out the peppers and cut them in half. Use a spoon to scrape out all of the white stuff and seeds. Be sure to rinse the peppers so no stray jalapeno seeds end up in the mix.

Mix together the cheese and cream cheese until well incorporated, then fold in the bacon/garlic mix. Add the green onions and mix the filling until everything is evenly distributed. 

Use a spoon to stuff the pepper shells. If you like, grate some thick slices of cheddar on top of the poppers. Place in the oven for 10-15 minutes, or until the cheddar is melted.

Beer Sliders by Ryan

Makes 18 sliders

2 lbs ground beef
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 cup of a strong heavy beer of your choice, preferably an IPA. (We used Arrogant Bastard from Stone Brewery)

1/2 onion, diced
Worcestershire sauce, to taste
BBQ sauce, to taste

1 bag of potato dinner rolls

Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl. You can add more beer if necessary, but if you can see the beer in the beef, you've added too much. Form the beef into small patties. Heat some oil in a pan and cook patties, covering with lid, flipping every couple of minutes. Cook to desired doneness. 

Tequila Pork Loin by Mike

2-3 pork loins

1/2 cup tequila

1/4 cup olive oil, plus more for searing

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

1/4 bunch of cilantro

2 onions, cut into quarters

1 finger chili, sliced

2 limes, quartered

salt & pepper, to taste

3 tbsp Hot Salsa of your choice

chili powder, to taste

Cut a slit in the pork loins, an inch deep. Place in a Ziploc bag. Add the tequila, olive oil,  garlic, cilantro, onions, chili, limes, salt and pepper. Let it marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Sear the marinated pork loins in 2 tbsps. of olive oil until lightly browned.

Transfer to a baking dish. Fill incisions with hot salsa. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 15 minutes. Flip meat, sprinkle with chili powder and bake for another 15 minutes.
Remove from oven and let rest under foil for 15 minutes. Slice and serve!

Scalloped Sweet Potatoes by me!

5 medium sweet potatoes

1.5 cups of brown sugar, divided

2 tbsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp ginger

3 8oz packages of cream cheese, softened (see the Tip below for how I soften cream cheese)

1.5 cups of powdered sugar,

5 tablespoons of milk

1/2 package of chopped pecans, optional

Grease a 9x14 baking dish and preheat the oven to 375˚. Tip! Once you turn on your oven, place your cream cheese in the wrapper on the stove top and flip occasionally. While your oven preheats, it will soften the cream cheese!

Peel the sweet potatoes and use the side of a cheese grater, or your own vegetable slicer to slice the sweet potatoes into thin strips.

Mix 1 cup of brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger in a small bowl. 

Whisk the cream cheese with the powdered sugar until light in color. Separate half the mixture into another bowl and slowly fold in the milk to one of the mixtures. Whisk creating a thin cream cheese frosting.

Place a layer of sweet potato into the prepared baking sheet. Top with the brown sugar mixture and top with 1/2 of the thinner cream cheese frosting. Repeat these three steps one more time and top with a final layer of sweet potato. Top with the thicker cream cheese mixture.

Bake for 60 minutes or until the sweet potatoes are tender.

While baking, mix the pecans with 1/2 cup of brown sugar and a little more of the cinnamon. Sprinkle the pecans on top halfway through the baking. You can also mix the pecans throughout the layers before you bake if you would like.

Mmmm the layers!

I hope you enjoyed our homage to MasterChef!