January 7th, 2011

7 ingredient night!  I invited Ryan, Kevin, and Bethanie over to be my official judges, albeit my friends who aren’t in the habit of saying negative things (well  maybe Ryan if he’s in a snarky mood….but that’s why I love him).

The 7 ingredients:

1. Peppadews

2. Grapefruit

3. Steak

4. Bacon

5. Ginger

6. Pears

7. Heavy Cream

So I decided to make a ginger and soy marinated flank steak and serve that with wasabi mashed potatoes.  It was a Rachel Ray recipe and I highly recommend.  I followed the recipe completely and plan to make it again.  Good twist on steak and potatoes.  So now that takes care of steak, ginger, and heavy cream.

We started the meal off with Ina Garten’s Pink Grapefruit Margaritas.

That takes care of grapefruit.  Now to the peppadews, which I had to google. 

I love pickled or roasted peppers, however Trent HATES all peppers and won’t eat anything a pepper has touched.  It’s a deal breaker for him. Then I found this recipe from Guy Fieri for a peppadew aioli.  Now I have never made an aioli from scratch before, but the chefs on TV make it look easy.  I thought this might be a good use for the peppadews (although an aioli is a mayonnaise, which Trent doesn’t like either, so not sure why I think this will go over well). 

This isn’t my aioli.  I forgot to take a picture of it (which I do EVER SINGLE TIME I have people over!), but this is what it looked like.  I promise.  It was crazy fun to make, I felt like a scientist making a thick sauce out of thin ingredients.  Now an aioli needs something to go on top of.  Guy Fieri made cauliflower croquettes for the aioli, but I didn’t think it would go with everything and to have cauliflower and potatoes is alot of white food.  I had bacon left and a great Ina Garten recipe for zucchini pancakes.  I put the bacon in them.

And of course no picture of everything all plated together, which I intended to do.  That takes care of everything but pears.

We started with a pear salad with toasted walnuts, prosciutto, blue cheese, and mixed greens. 

So there it is.  I had such a great time doing this I think I’m going to do the 7 ingredient challenge once a month or so.  Thank you to everyone who left an ingredient as a comment!

So Trent, Ryan, and Kevin all agreed to do an honest review.

This is what Trent said (and yes, it’s my husband….):

I must say - I really thought the meal was delicious!* I was very surprised how well the 7 ingredients were incorporated to make a complete meal.  The dishes that were created were certainly well beyond my creative mind.  I was especially impressed with the how the pears were used to make a walnut and blue cheese salad - fantastic!  I was also really impressed with the use of the peppadews. I think everyone going in thought that this ingredient might give you the most trouble given that you hadn't ever heard of them and once you learned what they are you realized there was a good chance that (at least) I wouldn't like them. Actually, I  thought they added a great flavor to the aioli!  The surprise hit of the night, in my opinion, was probably the wasabi mashed potatoes - just the right amount of wasabi to keep you coming back for more!
Trent
*for journalistic integrity purposes I should point out that I am married to the chef.

This is Kevin’s review (and to be honest if I served Kevin raw ramen noodles with frozen fish eyes he would say the saltiness of the eyes brought out the crunchy earthly texture of the noodles, he’s that kind).

Jenny’s use of 7 seemingly “uncombinable” ingredients resulted in a truly fabulous dinner.  Two of my favorite dishes were Jenny’s ginger-glazed steak (ginger being one of the 7 ingredients) and her zucchini/bacon cakes (bacon being another of the 7 ingredients).  The steak was done to perfection, and the ginger brought out a sweetness and zestiness that reminded me of an Asian beef dish.  The combination of zucchini and bacon was incredibly delicious; the bacon brought out the zucchini’s earthiness in a way I never would have expected.  The star of the show, in my opinion, were the wasabi-infused mashed potatoes.  Wasabi can be a difficult one to balance.  Jenny’s use of it in the potatoes, however, resulted in a fantastic complement of flavors.  Overall, Jenny used great creativity in pulling together 7 rogue ingredients to create a fun, flavorful, memorable meal.

Kevin   

Ryan emailed me the morning of the meal and was sick and couldn’t make it.  I sent him a doggie bag via Kevin that he had a couple days later when he was feeling better.  He did not have the salad or margarita.

So it was a total home run!  I had mine as leftovers since I was home sick :(  The wasabi mashed potatoes were perfect.  I'm not a fan of wasabi in general, but this was a subtle hint of kick that made them perfect.

The steak was tender, perfectly seasoned.  I also greatly enjoyed the yummy zucchini cakes with the fun aioli.  I assume that was peppadew and i liked it--had a real kick. 

Everything turned out incredible and I'm, as always, beyond impressed with jenny's talents!

Yay!