The Masterchef Ingredients Challenge

This is the second time I've done this with my friend Tom. It's roughly based on one of the tests on Masterchef, where the chefs are given a box of ingredients and told to make a dish from it under timed conditions.

We've had to modify it slightly. We didn't have a time limit as sadly my kitchen does not have two professional standard cook stations with hobs, sets of pans each etc. We also take it in turns to do savoury and sweet so that we actually have a meal out of it. We set a budget of £10 each, down from £15 last time as it seemed a bit too high.

So here is what Tom presented me with this evening:

Chicken breasts, peppers, cherry tomatoes, conference pears, couscous and feta cheese. There was also balsamic vinegar which I strangely omitted from this photo

And here's what I bought for Tom:

Eggs, blanched almonds, Green and Black's Maya Gold dark chocolate, tinned apricots, cream, sauvignon blanc and gelatin

Tom selected his ingredients with help from The Flavour Thesaurus. We both took a few minutes to plan out our ideas and in about an hour and a half produced the following dishes:

 

Main Course

I stuffed the chicken breasts with the feta and rolled into a ballentine, held in place with cling film and foil. These were then poached and the pan fried for some colour.

The pears and balsamic vinegar were reduced down then and the pureed to make the dark sticky puree on top of the chicken. This contrasted well with the sharp feta. 

I skinned and finely chopped the green and yellow peppers and mixed into the couscous with the roasted cherry tomatoes. Finally the red pepper was blended with stock (admittedly too much, I didn't want it so liquid!). Overall I was very happy with the flavours but could have done a bit more with the presentation...

Tom's dessert was an ambitious chocolate panna cotta with apricots, almonds and a chocolate curl. The texture was very smooth but there was some difficulty getting them out of the moulds, leading to it melting a bit on the plate. He first heated the cream and some sugar then slowly whisked in small pieces of chocolate to melt it without catching. The chocolate curls were made by using a large sharp knife and pulling it over melted and solidified chocolate. We didn't realise at the time but the Maya Gold chocolate has hints of cinnamon, nutmeg, orange and vanilla. Luckily for us these flavours combined really well with the almond and the apricot!

Dessert