Gang Up Volume 2

I wanted to get this published earlier in the week but life got in the way and I haven't had much of a chance to sit down and write until now. After serving my gang-up dish last Monday, I wanted to follow up with the dish my mom came up with for anyone who in interested. Besides, she gets mentioned enough throughout my posts I figured it was time for her to be in the spotlight. Her face when I put my plate down in front of her on Monday looked slightly shocked. She told me it was eerily similar to what she had planned but wouldn't tell me what it was. So on Tuesday night, I sat down and this is what wound up in front of me...

I know it doesn't really look anything like mine, but the concept is similar. Mashed potatoes with the beef and sauce served over the top and bread on the side. The difference is, I made a joke about my bread being made out of barley and potatoes and hers really was. I guess as far as competition goes, she has a one-up on me there. She called this dish "Beef Ragout with Mashed Root Vegetables & Potato Barley Flatbread" Not sure what Ragout directly translates to, but I'm going to guess "stewed beef in a chunky tomato sauce." She used all 10 ingredients and added an onion and an egg. The onion was used in the mashed potato mix-up. It was mashed potatoes and turnips with caramelized onion. The addition of the onion was a good choice - these were good. The pumpkin went into her Ragout, but I don't know any of the specific details on how this was put together. All I know is that it was put together well. The flat bread was an interesting addition to the meal. It tasted a little bit like a cream of wheat cracker if you can imagine that. The fact of the matter is, it was made using only the ingredients allowed so that in itself is impressive to me. She ate more of the flat bread the next morning toasted with jam. So it looks like she got a couple of meals out of this. So versatile!

Normally we make a competition out of this complete with judges and scoring sheets but we didn't go to that trouble time around. My brother ate mine but I don't think he had a chance to taste hers. So just because she made homemade barley potato bread and used a fancy French title AND got breakfast out of it the next morning, I'm going to go ahead and say its still up in the air as to who won this one.

Her friend Deb, who put this whole thing together wrote up a blog presenting all of the final results. It's kind of interesting to see what everyone was able to come up with using the same ingredients. If you are interested, check that out here! Gang-Up Challenge Results

Gang Up Challange

Something that my mom, sister and I have been involved in throughout the last couple of years is what's called the "Gang-Up Challenge." It started on Allrecipes, where my mom and many of her proclaimed "AR friends," as well as anyone else on the website who wanted to participate would partake in a friendly cooking competition. I don't think it was meant to be a competition at all, but between the three of us we always made it that way. The premise of the competition is that 10 random ingredients are suggested by those who decide to participate. Once the ingredients have all been decided on participants must make a dish (or a meal) containing all 10 ingredients. 2 changes may be made (omitting 2 ingredients, adding 2 ingredients or omitting 1 and adding 1.) Water, salt and pepper are always freebies. Long story short, this competition doesn't take place on Allrecipes any longer, but my mom and her friends wanted to keep the tradition going amongst themselves so they decided to set one up for the month of October, and of course I wanted to play along.

The list of ingredients that was decided on is as follows:
Beef (any cut)
Potatoes
Pumpkin (my contribution)
Tomatoes
Red Wine
Beef Stock
Sage
Oil (olive or canola)
Barley
Turnips

This time around was obviously no "Chopped" competition, all of the ingredients are pretty coherent. No marshmallow cream or Lucky Charms to throw me for a loop. The set up was there for me to make some kind of Beef Barley Stew, but I wanted to try and come up with something slightly different. I had to work all day today so I decided to call upon my crock pot to get the job done for me. I omitted the barley and added butter. And my final product was...

12 Hour Beef and Turnip Roast with Pumpkin Mashed Potatoes 

...or "Fall on a plate" for short. The fact that it literally cooked for 12 straight hours deserved a mention in the title.

You'll notice the bread in the background. No I didn't bake that out of barley and potatoes. Call me a cheater, but I just thought bread would be a nice addition to the meal. Here is how I made it:

Around 6 o'clock this morning I put most of it together before I went to work. First thing I did was get out a pan and sear all of the sides of my roast in olive oil. I ended up using a chuck cross rib roast (or something to that effect) Normally I coat the roast in flour before doing this but flour wasn't one of my ingredients. This makes a crust on the meat and seals in all of its juices...from what I hear. Then I stuck it in the crock pot and added 3 C of water, 2 t beef stock, half a can of diced tomatoes, about 3/4 C red wine, salt, pepper, and sage. I set it to cook on low and went to work. When I got home I started my potatoes. Just peel them, dice them up and boil them in a pot of salt water. When They were fork tender I drained them, added a can of pure pumpkin (not the huge can, just the normal size one) and a half a stick of butter. Then used my mixer to whip them up. These actually turned out as good as I had hoped they would. I'm glad I thought to do this, because I'd like to make them again. Around an an hour and a half before serving I added the turnips to the crock pot. I've never cooked with turnips before, and frankly I didn't know how to handle them or what they even taste like. I peeled them and used my mandolin to slice them up thinly and threw them in the pot. They also came out as good as I had hoped...kind of had a carrot taste to them. My mom came over for dinner at 6 and I put it all together on the plate. I was pleasantly surprised with how well everything turned out. If this meal isn't the epitome of Fall on a plate then I don't know what is. My mom will serve hers tomorrow night and hopefully it isn't exactly the same as mine. Otherwise that will pretty much nullify all the creativity that I thought was using.