A 50ieth anniversary and I almost forgot it!!

Our Judge for this month, Kathy of Prospect: The Pantry, is more awake than me because she has noticed that it is the 50ieth edition of the Paper Chef and she is rightly celebrating this over at her blog where she has posted this month's 4 ingredients. So head over and celebrate and, most important, get creative and cook something for the Paper Chef while you are having fun in the kitchen!
Send me (paperchef AT gmail DOT com) the link to your entry sometime before midnight your time on Tuesday 9th of March (or even a bit later, I'm not fussy) or if you don't have your own blog, send me the recipe and eventual photos to me and I will post it here.

Are you still here? nonono, you should be here!

It's ingredient list time again!

orange, cloves, figs, dried dates, raisins, anchovies, cream, cranberries, salmon, cherries, salsicce, Savoy cabbage, Brussels sprouts, ricotta, apples, ginger, white fish, kale, honey, duck, meatballs, rosemary, thyme, fennel seeds, apricots, green beans, cherries, aubergines/eggplant), nectarines, passionfruit, peaches, lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini/courgette, chicken, quail, lobster, crayfish, pork shoulder, pigeon peas, taro root, sweet potato, dill, carrots, couscous, ginger, apricots, basil, beans, capers, cherries, chicken, currants, gooseberries, elder flowers, peaches, plums, quail, raspberries, lobster, tomatoes, chickpeas, candied orange peel, wasabi, artichokes, shrimp, dried mushrooms

This is the current list, please submit any ingredient that you think would make it even more interesting and challenging. Or that you like and want to give a chance to be chosen! And do come back on Wednesday when this month's Judge who is Karen from Prospect: The Pantry will post about this month's four Paper Chef ingredients!

Quiet Please!!!!!

Cath, our judge for this month's Paper Chef - the 49th - has handed me the envelope with the winner.
Who is it???
Go here to find out.

Paper Chef #49 - The Round Up!

Sorry about the delay with the round up, but we had a pretty severe thunderstorm here in Melbourne & we had to suffer a blackout & then no Internet for 2 days!!
Enough of the apologies & onto something more interesting, the round up for this month's Paper Chef!

As last month's winner, Cath from ShowFood Chef had the fun of selecting the ingredients. Her random selections were: Prawns, Fennel, & Sweet Peppers and a fourth ingredient of, a theme: Passion.
Very interesting ingredients, which I personally liked!

So what did everyone come up with......

First up we have a non-blogger, Bill, with Mothership Wit Superbowl Skewers. Perfect watching the Superbowl with the boys.
** Amendment: Bill does have a blog & posted his entery at Bill's Brew-B-Que **


Next there is Karen from Prospect: The Pantry with a delicious looking Seafood Pot Pie with Fennel and Peppers.

Markus & Jenny of I could even eat a baby deer! created a tropical dish of Prawns meet Peppery Passionate Pineapple

The lovely co-host of Paper Chef, Ilva has created a Fennel Seed And Grappa Infused Prawns with Chickpea Puree and Grilled Red Peppers.

Kizzy from Culinary Annotations created an intriguing
Prawns with Fennel, Sweet Peppers and Cognac.

Last entry is me, Mike, from Spikey Mikeys with an interesting Prawn & Fennel Rice Paper Rolls.

This is what I love about Paper Chef, 6 entries, 6 different creations! So if you're reading this & thinking to yourself "I would have made.." then next month's Paper Chef starts March 3rd. So what's stopping you from participating?

Cath will shortly select this month's winner & they will select the ingredients & then the winner of the next challenge, a special one at that - the big "five O" yes the 50th Paper Chef.

Mothership Wit Superbowl Skewers

Well my first entry into Paper Chef (49) is done!

Looking at the ingredients, (prawns, sweet peppers, fennel and Passion) I thought I would start with the esoteric ingredient first and work from there. What is my passion, in a culinary sense? What do I want to make, to try and eventually blog about? What is it that I want to share with the world? For that answer I have to look no further than the name of my blog; Brewing Beer and cooking on the BBQ. Also we have Superbowl 44 happening during this challenge, and many people are very passionate about that! I happened to be having few guests over to watch the game, so in addition to the normal snackykins that one finds at such events, I wanted to do something a little different.

So I have my cooking method down (Grill) and one extra ingredient (Beer). Beer makes an excellent acid base for a marinade, but what kind of beer would go good with the other 3 ingredients? Something light, so as not to overpower the flavor of the shrimp, but something that might complement the fennel. A Belgian witbierr sounded like just the thing. I decided to go with Mothership Wit by New Belgium Brewing. I have been enjoying it a lot lately and I haven’t gotten around to brewing my own witbier yet. Mothership Wit is a light organic wheat beer beer that is seasoned with coriander and orange peel.

Keeping with these light zesty flavors, along with the history of the fennel lead me to use a mediteranian feel with the dish, using garlic and dill to finish the marinade.
I’ve seen fennel on countless cooking shows, but I’ve never worked with it before. When I got it home I sliced off a tiny bit to taste it. It’s definitely got a unique flavor profile. The way I described it is anise crossed with the texture of an onion. Much of the research suggests that it can be roasted, and from that I extrapolate that if it can be roasted, it can be grilled.
Sweet pepper is basically bell pepper from what I’ve been able to find out.
From the kitchen dictionary at Recipezaar.com: “In the U.S. the term sweet pepper covers a wide variety of mild peppers that, like the chile, belong to the capsicum family. The best known sweet peppers are bell peppers, named for their bell-like shape.” So that makes that ingredient pretty easy to work with. Here is my final recipe:

Mothership Wit Superbowl Skewers
1 Fennel
2 Red Peppers
1 lb of uncooked, peeled, deveined prawns
Marinade
18 oz of New Belgiums Mothership Wit Belgian whitebeer
3 gloves of chopped garlic
¼ cup of olive oil
2 tablespoons of Fresh Dill
Dash of Kosher salt
Dash of freshly ground black Pepper.

Chop fennel, red peppers into chunks. Detail the prawns, place all 3 in large non-reactive bowl. In large measuring cup combine beer, garlic, dill, salt, pepper, and olive oil and mix to form marinade. Pour the marinade over vegetables and prawns and refrigerate. Marinate at least 2 hours. Get your charcoal ready and start skewering. Cook 7-10 minutes per side.

How did it come out? Pretty much everyone agreed that the prawns were the best they had ever tasted, however the marinade didn't penetrate the vegetables as well as it did the meat. Fennel was new to everyone I presented it to, and it didn't go over great. This is primarily a carnivorous Superbowl crowd, so that it far from surprising. Overall, I felt the dish was a success. It was a lot of fun and got me thinking about food differently, and trying new things. Isn't that what paper chef is all about?

Roundup coming soon

The roundup is coming soon, Mike is having some computer problems at the moment but he is working on it!

Paper Chef #49 Ingredients

The ingredients are up!
Last month's winner Cath from ShowFood Chef has selected the ingredients. Click here to see what they are.
The most important rule is to have fun and to let your imagination go wild with the ingredients but for the more formal rules, see here and when you have posted your entry on your blog (if you don't have your own blog you can send me your entry and I will post it here on the PC blog) please send in the url to paperchef AT gmail DOT com before (your) midnight Tuesday 9th February. I'm looking forward seeing what you come up with!

Ingredients Please....

Paper Chef #49 is just around the corner, and we need some suggestions for ingredients. Feel free to add to the list so far:

orange, cloves, figs, dried dates, raisins, anchovies, Prawns, cream, cranberries, salmon, cherries, salsicce, Savoy cabbage, Brussels sprouts, ricotta, apples, ginger, white fish, kale, honey, fennel, duck, meatballs, rosemary, thyme, fennel seeds, Apricots, Green Beans, Sweet Pepper, Cherries, Aubergines(Eggplant), Nectarines, Passionfruit, Peaches, Lettuce, Tomatoes, Zucchini(Courgette), Chicken, Quail, Lobster, Yabbies & Marrons (Crayfish), pork shoulder, pigeon peas, taro root, sweet potato, dill, carrots, couscous, ginger,.......

The Winner is...

I promised you a winner for today and you will have it but first I have to say that it wasn't easy to decide, not easy at all because I liked all entries a lot. I actually don't like being the Judge because choosing one winner means that I disappoint the other participants. But I have to do my duty.
In order to decide I had to enter into the details of each dish and it was a detail that made me decide January's Paper Chef winner who is.....

























...Cathy of SlowFood Chef with Rosemary Tuna Sliders with Pickled Red Cabbage on a Homemade Mini-Roll! It was her pickled red cabbage who did it in the end and let's be happy for that because otherwise I would still be here undecided between all the deliciousness you served us!
Congratulations Cathy and a sincere Thank You to the rest of the participants for their creative entries, I hope to see you all next month when Mike is the host!

Paper Chef #48 - The Roundup

It is time for the roundup!

The four ingredients for this PC edition was tuna, red cabbage, rosemary and something new and we have got some stunning entries here so keep on reading:

Karen of Prospect: The Pantry was the first to send in her entry, a surprising and enticing Tuna Burger With Red Cabbage Slaw where you find all the first three ingredients plus some other interesting ones, the new element being the techique she used for the bread rolls and that she got from Jim Lahey's (Sullivan Street Bakery) new book.

My fellow PC host Mike who has the blog Spikey Mikeys made this interesting and tasty looking Caramelised Onion & Red Cabbage Pizza with Tuna that he had to make with canned tuna because he couldn't find any that was fresh enough.

I was delighted to see that one of our more faithful Bread Baking Buddies, Astrid of Paulchen's Food Blog?!, have made an entry for this month's PC, she made a lovely Red Cabbage Salad With White Beans and Tuna & Rosemary-Onion Bread! Her

Kizzy from Culinary Annotations was so inspired that she made two entries, the first is a very good-looking Seared Tuna Niçoise Salad with Soft-Boiled Eggs served with Oven-Roasted Potatoes with Garlic and Rosemary where the new is the new take on a traditional salad,

the second is Tuna and Pineapple Skewers with Shredded Salad. Good job, keep all these entries coming!

And to finish we have Cathy of ShowFood Chef who made the prettiest Rosemary Tuna Sliders with Pickled Red Cabbage on Homemade Butter Buns you can imagine!

Thank you all and if I made any mistakes, please tell me and I will make amends! Come back tomorrow when I will announce The Winner and next month's PC Judge!

Curious about this month's ingredients?

Then click here!

Time for a new year ofPaper Chef, let's begin with the ingredient list!

It' s time again, on Wednesday the first Paper Chef of 2010 starts and I hope you will make it a glorious start by participating en masse! This is the ingredient list so far, please add on your suggestions!

orange, cloves, figs, dried dates, raisins, red cabbage, anchovies, Prawns, cream, cranberries, salmon, cherries, salsicce, Savoy cabbage, Brussels sprouts, ricotta, apples, ginger, white fish, kale, honey, fennel, duck, meatballs, rosemary, thyme, fennel seeds, Apricots, Green Beans, Sweet Pepper, Cherries, Aubergines(Eggplant), Nectarines, Passionfruit, Peaches, Lettuce, Tomatoes, Zucchini(Courgette), Anchovies, Chicken, Quail, Lobster, Tuna, Yabbies & Marrons (Crayfish), pork shoulder, pigeon peas, taro root, green bananas, plantains