Chopped Campions!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/chopped.html

 Ok, so maybe it wasn't a true chopped competition, but we succeeded!  So, last week at a church activity they were giving out new and unique date ideas.  One of the ladies there suggested doing a chopped date.  Jake and I are big Chopped (its a competition show on Food Network) fans, so I figured this one was right up our alley.  In the show 4 chefs compete in 3 rounds.  This means one chef is eliminated each round, leaving a winner.  The rounds are appetizer, entre, and dessert.  The contestants are given baskets of mystery ingredients they have to use (4 for each round).  They are also given a pantry to work with.  Then they all try to make the best dish each round.

So Jake and I decided to try out our own version on Saturday.  So we decided Jake would do an appetizer and I would do a dessert (no competition really, just the desire to make something really good).  Then we decided to do it on a budget $5 to buy the four basket ingredients for each.  We started the date out at the store.  I bough the four ingredients for Jake and he bought them for me.  We easily stayed bellow budget.  Our pantry was just whatever we had in the house. 

 
Jake did his appetizers first.  I unveiled his basket ingredients for him, which were a plantain, tomato paste, Mexican chorizo, and biscuit dough.  After some debate over how to handle the plantain, he settled on making mini pizzas with chorizo and candied plantains as toppings.  They turned out very good.  Sweet and spicy pizzas.  Latter that night he unveiled my ingredients: whit chocolate pudding, cottage cheese with strawberry sauce, yellow cake mix, and nutty bars.  I started making the mix into a cake and baking it while deciding how to combine everything else. Finally I decided to puree the cottage cheese and add it to the pudding along with peanut butter.  This created almost a peanut butter/white chocolate/cheese cake pudding, which seams like too many flavors, but they mixed well.  The I made a trifle layering the cake pudding, broken nutty bars, and strawberry sauce.  It resulted in what I call a peanut butter and jelly trifle.  It was really unique, but good.

We had so much fun laughing at each other struggle with the ingredients.  And then of course trying each others creations.  Even the shopping was pretty fun.  We would suggest this date for anyone looking for new date ideas.  We'll probably do it again ourselves sometime.