chopped!

do you watched chopped? it is russ & my late sunday night tradition and we love it!

it's basically like iron chef, except each competitor has to make a dish with three secret ingredients instead of one. chopped loves to try and stump the chefs with seemingly unrelatable ingredients, i.e. cornish game hen, black garlic & lemon drop candies. of course they always end up turning something delicious-looking out. with each round we pause it after the ingredients are unveiled and tell each other what we'd make. 

this weekend russ wanted to make chopped happen at home. i picked his ingredients for our entree, and he picked my ingredients to make dessert with. i'm sure i've mentioned that russ thinks he's hot stuff in the kitchen & will tell anyone who will listen that he was named iron chef in high school foods class... there was a plethora of trash talking throughout the evening.

russ: salmon, radishes & dried mangoes.

emily: oranges, coca-cola & french bread.

 russ seasoned the filets and "poached them in a white cooking wine." his words.

he "put them on a bed of mashed potatoes and radish with a splash of lemon and topped it with a reconstitued dried mango & radish slaw." again, his words.

his offering was delicious, as i knew it would be, even with my constant hassling, my best "alex guarnaschelli" comments- whom he, respectfully, does not care for at all. 

the lemon mashed potatoes were so good, i'll be adding lemon to my tates from here on out.

the slaw was even pretty tasty. so weird.

as for my dessert:

can we all agree that my task at hand was a little bit trickier than his?

my original plan was to make an orange zest french toast with a coca-cola caramel syrup.

i know, sounds gee-ross.

i very innocently googled if coke could indeed be made into a caramel 

& saw this recipe for coca-cola chocolate cake.

i then, not so innocently, quickly copied it onto the palm of my hand.

 cal did not approve.

the cake called for marshmallows and lemon juice, so i figured why not swap those out for french bread and orange juice. i know! gross. i added orange juice to the batter and the icing, so you could definitely taste it, and it wasn't even that bad!

 can i just tell you, if you ate around chunks of french bread, that cake was the booomb.

make it as the recipe calls for, and i promise you'll love it. it's like an even airier texas sheet cake.

i'll be making it again the right way, because as i am typing this russ is eating his, ahem, third piece.