Chopped

It's no secret that the Watts like food. We love to cook it, eat it and watch shows about it. Lately, one of our Food Network favorites has been Chopped. The premise of the show is that the chefs come in not knowing what the ingredients are until the competition begins. They open their baskets to find the, sometimes-surprising, required 3-4 ingredients, and then have 20-30 minutes to prepare and plate, depending on the course. Ruth particularly loves this show and wanted to challenge her dad to a Chopped-like competition. I chose the required ingredients, based on what we had on hand and what we had enough of to divide between the baskets. Neither Ruth nor Jeff knew what I was putting in the baskets ahead of time. On the actual show, they prepare an appetizer course, a main course and a dessert. We decided to just do a main course, and we decided to allow 40 minutes instead of 30. The required ingredients were jalapeño-cheese venison summer sausage, rice, sweet potatoes and lentils. It was a great competition, and both chefs held their own. Ruth did pretty much everything herself--from chopping to cooking to plating. I only assisted her once or twice in moving hot pans off the stove. Ruth ended up preparing a very tasty soup with the sweet potato, rice and lentils. She also fried some rice with some of the sweet potato, and she pan fried the sausage and then made it into a little open faced sandwich topped with BBQ sauce. I was pretty amazed at her ability to put the ingredients together in such a tasty and interesting way. Jeff made onion rice over a mornay sauce, topped with the sausage, along with a sweet potato/lentil hash. We all had such a good time, and I'm sure this will not be our last Chopped competition.