And I don’t mean vegan cheese. Yes, people, one of the mandatory ingredients for the third show of Chopped Canada was a childhood favourite, processed cheese slices. It’s so gross to see! So rubbery! Blech. But the chefs had to use it in the first round. Judged once again by Roger Mooking (along with Lynn Crawford and John Higgins, who is the director at George Brown College’s Chef School), the four competitors, all male, this time, included someone from Yellowknife, one from Guelph and two from the west. Of course, there had to be an “interesting” story – one guy started apprenticing as a chef at age 15 (didn’t know you could do that!) and also lost all his hair due to a health issue.
Processed cheese, wrapped like this, was one of the mandatory ingredients in the first round. YUCK!
In addition to fake cheese, chefs had to use ground turkey, baked beans and chokecherry jelly. With the ground turkey and beans, chili was, of course, the first thing on people’s minds. And sure enough, one of the chefs made chili. Not too creative. Another chef used the ground turkey and fake cheese as a filling for soft spring rolls (really, more like summer rolls. Aren’t spring rolls fried, while summer rolls aren’t?), a great fusion dish. Stuffed meatballs and turkey stuffed in Swiss chard. The latter dish, while appetizer-looking, was plated on a barely-filled plate. A judge complained that there wasn’t enough “crunch” to it. and to be quite honest, would have been more appropriate as an hors d’oeuvre for a cocktail than an actual plated appetizer. I think I might have made a mini turkey mac and cheese (served in a ramekin) with an artichoke salad tossed in a chokecherry vinaigrette, had I been a contestant.
Round two was quite interesting. Ingredients were razor clams, artichoke, hickory smoked potato sticks (which are a Canadian “invention,” according to the host) and mint. One of the chefs created a gumbo, another a soup. The third remaining chef, on the other hand, went for a more “plated” route. Unfortunately, one of the plates did not have the best presentation, with a piece of clam barely hanging onto the plate. I think I would have created a baked seafood rice (or quinoa, since it’s quicker to cook than rice) casserole, Hong Kong diner style.
The dessert round had a classic Chopped twist – an ingredient that definitely doesn’t belong in the course. This time, it was beef jerky. Along with more “dessert-appropriate” ingredients (mint and peaches) as well as creamed wheat, the remaining two tried to make a creative dish that would please the judges. One contestant made toast. Yeah, toast. On the grill. And yeah, let’s just say that it was a bit over crisp (yes, there were plenty of “I smell burnt toast” Tweets going). The peach spread helped a bit, but to be honest, it’s better served as a breakfast item. The other remaining contestant used the peaches to make a sorbet. He also made a chocolate cake (it was more molten than a traditional cake, since there wasn’t much time for it to fully bake) and the creamed wheat was turned into a fritter of some sort. As for what I would have made – this is hard, probably one of the hardest baskets I’ve seen in Chopped or Chopped Canada to date. I might pair the beef jerky with maple syrup (think bacon and maple syrup), mint and creamed wheat, creating some sort of sauce for baked peaches. Don’t know how the judges would react to that, though.
Image credit: Steve Spring [Attribution or Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons
