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.