Dad's (Also Delicious) Chopped Menu

Tonight is Night Two of our Chopped-style competition, wherein each of us (me, Dad and J) cooked a three course meal for our family of four using only $16 worth of GO Grocery Outlet goodies.

Here are our basic rules:

1. We must make three courses for four people. 
2. There can only be 60 minutes between courses. Pre-prep is allowed. 
3. We can only spend $16 at Grocery Outlet for all of our main ingredients (tax not included). 
4. Cannot use coffee/caffeinated items (including chocolate) for dietary restriction reasons. 
5. We must include Mom's sabotage item - course and item chosen sight unseen. 
6. The following pantry staples are allowed free of charge:

• Up to 2 c. flour
• Sugars/honey
• "Basic" spices - not things like zatar or Chinese five spice
• Onions
• Up to 4 eggs
• Milk
• Oils/butter
• "Basic" condiments - ketchup, mayo, mustard

I cooked last night, and set a damn fine example. Tonight, it was Dad's turn. 

He did a very technique-savvy menu that was pretty impressive using this $16 set of ingredients. 

Including Mom's diabolical mystery ingredient - Little Debbie Starfish Cookies - in the appetizer round! 

Appetizer: A chorizo-style Scotch egg with deep fried pickles and honey vinaigrette. Normally, a Scotch egg is made with a boiled egg cased in sausage breading. Dad took the time to scrape the blue icing off of the starfish and crumbled them with oyster crackers and mixed it with pre-cooked, frozen chorizo breakfast sausage - now that's working through adversity! And, I have to hand it to him because I despise pickles but actually enjoyed the thin, not overly sour fried pickles. 

Entree: Italian sausage stuffed cabbage and zucchini boats with smoked oysters and habenero cheese. The cabbage reminded me a lot of our Russian favorite, golubtsi. It was filled with sausage, spices and rice (another pre-cooked, frozen ingredient!) and was so hearty. Instead of individual rolls, dad was really creative and stuffed the entire cabbage, wrapped it in cheese cloth and served it like big slices of cake! The zucchini boats were refreshing and full of flavor - that cheese was SPICY! This was such a filling course for so little cost; I couldn't even finish my plate.

Dessert: Now this is exactly why I was terrified to compete against J and Dad. They've both worked in a variety of food service jobs and are stellar cooks with great technical skill. So, I wasn't surprised that Dad made a pear and mini cinnamon donut gallete (homemade pie crust of course). We actually started a movie while he finished up his dish and the smell of cinnamon, roasting fruit and toasty crust filled the house. It was an intoxicating scent and the flavor didn't disappoint, either. We added a spoonful of vanilla ice cream (not from his items) to each plate, just to finish off the quart - had he included a whipped cream or ice cream this would have been sheer perfection (or that's what I tell myself to feel better). 

I was thoroughly impressed with this meal; especially the creativity and technical skill. 

J is our final chef-testant tomorrow night and we're all excited to see what he makes. Because of the sheer awfulness of the sabotage item, he was given it early and has been frantically rearranging his groceries and scouring the web for recipes. We shall see! 

Tune in tomorrow for another installment of good family-food-fun!