Iron Chef: Cilantro

Erik took all three kids to the store to buy my secret ingredient. I was a little concerned since he said Matthew screamed the entire time at the store that he would just pick something at random for my secret ingredient (dirt, motor oil, brussel sprouts....), but he picked something awesome: cilantro!

Of course Erik loves Mexican food so what do you expect?

This iron chef was very successful for me.  I made:



1. Avodoco skins.  You may have seen potato skins at a restaurant as an appetizer.  Well I put a twist on that and hollowed out an avocodo, put bacon, tomatoes, avocodo, and onion to fill it. Then covered it with cheddar cheese and baked it to melt the cheese. This was delicious and Erik said he could see it at a Mexican restaurant as an appetizer!
2. Crab cilantro nachos.  I loved this dish (I love all things crab!). I combined crab, cilantro, cream cheese, and cheddar and heated it. Then provided a fresh salsa to mix with the hot crab dip. This mixture topped the chips and was fancy yet yummy.
3. Cilantro pork quesadillas with black bean salsa.  This was a very pretty dish (Erik gave me 5 points for plating!).  I cooked pork with a cilantro, paprika, cayenne powder rub.  Then used the pork in quesadillas with cheddar cheese and additional cilantro.  Then I made a black bean salsa to pair it with.  The salsa was fantastic and so fresh.  I mixed black beans, corn, tomatoes, green pepper, red pepper, onion, lime juice, and (of course) cilantro.  This dish was delicious - Jenna's favorite.
4. Cilantro pesto. Erik and I love pesto. Traditional pesto with basil, olive oil, garlic, pecorino romano, and pine nuts. We love to just throw it in the food processor and you have a nice topping for pasta or sandwiches.  Well instead of using basil, I wanted to try this with cilantro. At first I just substituted cilantro for basil and kept the same ingredients. That wasn't happening. I mixed a few other things (white wine vinegar, avocodo) anything to make it taste good but it just didn't.  Then I had to resort to asking Erik my sous chef for help.  He suggested lime juice. Well I didn't want to use lime juice since I had already used it with the pork quesadillas but I added lime juice.That's what it needed. How interesting - no wonder lime is often paired with cilantro. It complemented the flavor enough to make the dish edible :). It wasn't nearly as good as traditional pesto but we still liked it.

This was one of Erik's favorite Iron chef competitions. My favorite was blueberries :).  So our last two iron chef competitions have been really successful.  Hopefully the next one will be just as successful!

Usually when we do iron chef we have tons of leftovers.  This was no exception but I also had another idea. I had seen a recipe for avocodo chocolate mousse and wanted to try it (since we had an abundance of avocodos).  I used 1 avocodo, 1 cup cocoa powder, 2/3 cup honey, and 1 tblsp vanilla extract.  It was good but needed a little milk to thin it out. Wow was this dark!  It was yummy with a good texture and interesting flavor. It was also much healthier using avocodas as a base than heavy cream. I'd like to try this again and experiment a little more to see if I can get it right.  I might experiment on my friends Tim and Jen which is what I did last weekend.

Last week I tried to perfect my chocolate caramel bars.  It is a recipe I created from bringing together a few different recipes in my cookbooks. 

I made this chocolate caramel bar recipe 5 times.  In one week.  5 times.  Yep - I think I'll be heading to the gym this week.  Anyway, I think I've come upon a recipe I like and am planning on submitting it to a contest.
I've submitted my mounds bar chocolate bread recipe and my snowtopped brownie recipes to contests before but didn't win.  Both of those I made several iterations of until I perfected it.  Erik likes it when I try to perfect recipes but then if it is something he really likes, I usually don't make it all that often after I perfect it.  Of course, I did perfect my chocolate chip cookie recipe and I make those every other week.

The best thing is that I got to make the word "baking" today on Quiddler!  56 points!