These were our ingredients for this battle: Leeks and Lamb

The ingredients of choice.

So, once again, and I know this because we ate them together, I managed to make almost the exact same dish as my competitor. We both went for a lamb burger slider. This was the basic recipe I used:

Lamb Burger Sliders

- 2 pounds ground lamb
- 6 ounces feta
- 2-3 Tablespoons of rosemary and parsley, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- Salt and Pepper
- A few glugs of beer (I probably used about half of a beer). This keeps the burger nice and moist.

Now you could stuff the feta into the center of each burger, but I like to mix the feta in. That way as the feta melts, it provides extra moisture to every bite.

Adding feta makes it salty and juicy.

I also wanted to add a bunch of herbs to this burger. But let’s talk about one herb I wanted to add, but couldn’t find anywhere: MINT. I have two theories why I couldn’t find it in any of the three stores I checked: 1) Pete knew I was making burgers and tried to spite me by buying up all the mint in the entire Metro area or 2) We happened to be making these dishes on Kentucky Derby weekend. (Mint juleps anyone?)

Anyway, I did my best.

Adding other stuff except no mint!

I formed these into perfect 4 ounce patties because I like my mini-burgers (sliders) to be about half as large as a normal burger. Any smaller than that and I find that they get a bit dry. 4 ounces is perfect though.

For me, mini equals 4 ounces.

Since I was just making burgers, I thought I would kick it up a notch by making my own buns. I must say that these turned out fantastic and were possibly the best part of my dish. The recipe which I got courtesy of the Wild Yeast Blog, was pretty intense. It requires a preferment batch of dough and some interesting ingredients (molasses), but it is all worth it. They turned out beautifully.

Sweet buns, dude.

Now lets talk about the leeks. I had two things I wanted to do with these guys. First, I wanted to make some caramelized leeks to put on the burgers. Anytime you caramelize something, you need a lot of it. I used six leeks and cut them into fairly uniform matchsticks.

This was like 6 leeks.

I sauteed these for about twenty minutes on medium heat in a few tablespoons of olive oil until most were browned nicely. Leeks don’t have as much liquid as onions and they don’t caramelize quite the same. They will burn easily if you take your eye off them.

Caramelizing and frying!

See the pot in the back? That’s filled with canola oil. I also had the idea to split up a leek and make a blooming leek! I’m sure most people have tried the awesome blooming onion appetizer that when deep-frired, opens like a flower. Then you can break off each delicious fried section.

I thought it might be possible to split a leek open so that it opens in the same way.

For the batter for this, I used a traditional beer batter:

Buttermilk Beer Batter

- 2 Cups Flour
- 1.5 Cups buttermilk
- 1.5 Cups beer (I used an IPA because that is what I happened to have.)
- Big pinch of salt
- Lemon zest (optional)

A good batter will most likely have both of these.

For the blooming leek I sliced it vertically into eighths, hoping it would kind of peel open. I also left a large section of green on it, which made it super easy to dip into the oil.

Blooming leek!

I was expecting this to be a pretty big FAIL, and it didn’t “bloom” perfectly, but it tasted okay. Tasted like fried leek which tastes pretty darn good. To serve it I cut off the green stem and people just kind of peeled off parts, like they would the onion variety.

Turned out okay!

But let’s get down to business: The burgers. We both decided to make burgers and they were both stellar. Here is something you don’t get to see often on food blog battles: an actual side by side photo of the two dishes:

Tough call.

I should also mention that Pete’s Lamb in a Slanket where really inventive and amazing. They were a really cool appetizer. No doubt about it. I didn’t take a photo of them, but I’m sure he has a few photos of them up on his post which you should obviously check out.

This battle was the exact reason why I wanted to start doing this. It was awesome to get to meet someone else who likes cooking and food as much as I do. We had a few beers and a few burgers and it was a great time.

So check out Pete’s post, and obviously, vote for your favorite!

Also, the polls close at noon EST tomorrow (Wednesday).

I’m always up for a good challenge and this was a tough one. I mean she clearly has a pretty large advantage on me as I’ve never purposefully tried to make a vegan dish although sometimes I make one by accident I’m sure.

To make things even more difficult, these were are chosen ingredients: Fruit preserves and raisins!

I'm pretty much at a loss.

Honestly, I’m not sure what I would’ve done even if I could’ve used meat and/or dairy. I poured over recipes for days trying to think of something that would work with both of these things and satisfy the Vegan deal. I decided to use an Apricot preserve that I had left over from my very non-vegan calzones. No real reason other than it was in my pantry.

This is the approximate thought process that eventually got me to my recipe:

“I want to make something good. Something with apricot and raisins. Maybe I could make a sauce? And put it on what? Salad? Gross. Tofu? Ugh. Veggies? That wouldn’t be filling enough. Yes. Filling. I want something filling. Something filled with apricots and raisins. Ok. I’m really on a roll now. Wait. Roll. I can make a roll. A roll with filling. But my filling would be a jelly. A JELLY ROLL. Kick ass.”

And the dessert was born: Vegan Apricot Raisin Jelly Roll

I had two huge problems right away: 1) I’ve never made a jelly roll. I knew they have eggs in them though. 2) I’ve never substituted anything for eggs or baked anything Vegan at all.

I did some research and found this eggless baking guide. I decided to do a mix of two different substitutions and use some banana and some silken tofu in place of eggs. Why? I have no idea. I’ve never done this before. It just felt right okay?

Who needs eggs?

This was the recipe I ended up with.

Vegan Jelly Roll (Adapted from Baking Sheet)

- 1 banana, mushed up
- 1/3 Cup Silken tofu
- 3/4 Cup sugar
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla
- 3/4 Cup sifted cake flour
- 3/4 Teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 Teaspoon salt

With a hand mixer, I combined my banana and tofu until they were fairly smooth and then added my sugar and vanilla. In a separate bowl, I sifted together my flour, baking powder and salt. Then I mixed them all together.

No animals were harmed in the making of this batter.

To make the roll you need to make a very thin layer of cake that is moist and flexible. The last thing you want to do is overcook this batter.

I got a large baking sheet and lined it with parchment paper. Then poured the batter and spread it out to form a thin layer. At this point, I figured I had about a 10% chance of success with this.

Here was when failure became a distinct possibility.

Bake that for 8 minutes at 350 degrees. You might need up to 10 minutes, but definitely start checking it early. You don’t want the cake to crisp up at all.

Meanwhile, get a large kitchen towel and sprinkle it with powdered sugar. By sprinkle, I mean cover.

When the cake comes out of the oven, loosen the edges around the parchment paper, take a deep breath, and flip the parchment paper over onto the towel! If you have any kitchen karma points stocked up, now would be a good time to cash them in.

Peel back the parchment paper and dust your cake with more powdered sugar. If you are lucky, you might see this:

Oh glorious day!

Start on one of the shorter ends and roll the cake up with the towel! Basically, the dish towel is acting as the jelly while the cake cools. Set the entire towel deal on a rack to cool.

Cool it down.

As this was cooling, I decided to focus on the jelly filling. While I could just mix together the preserves and the raisins, I thought I would kick things up a notch with some of this Vegan ingredient:

Whiskey = Vegan!

I soaked the raisins in about 1/4 Cup of whiskey for 20 minutes or so. Stirring every few minutes. I probably used 1/2 Cup of raisins.

Drunken raisins.

Then I added the whiskey and raisins to about 2/3 Cups of preserves. Yes. This makes this dessert alcoholic. At this point I figured it would give the dessert some kick and also someone would probably need to be drunk to try it anyway…

Goop!

When your roll is completely cool, you can unroll it, spread your filling on and roll it back up! That part is super-easy.

Umm... okay.

Once it is rolled up, sprinkle it with a good dusting of powdered sugar and you are all set!

Success?!

This turned out much better than I thought it was going to turn out.

I know... Overkill on the sugar.

A few honest assessments on this recipe:

1) The cake part wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t quite as fluffy as if I had used eggs I think , but it was still decent. It tasted like bananas and you couldn’t taste the tofu at all.
2) The filling was super sweet. If I were to for some reason make this again, I would add probably 2 Tablespoons of lemon juice to cut the sweetness.
3) The entire time I was making this, I was singing the Coolio classic, “Rollin’ with the Homies.”

Check out Veggie Girl’s dish and don’t forget to vote for your favorite! Voting closes on Sunday at 9AM EST.

For each battle there are two ingredients. Each competitor gets to pick an ingredient. This battle’s ingredients: Anchovies and Oyster Mushrooms.

The chosen ones.

These ingredients are tough. First, neither of them are ones that I have used a lot. Second, when I have used them I usually eat them in their most basic form. I love anchovies on a bit of toast. I love oyster mushrooms sauteed in butter. Using them as ingredients is tricky. Third, oyster mushrooms have a pretty mild flavor and anchovies have a stronger flavor that I was worried would overpower the shrooms.

Fourth, I really wanted to find some fresh anchovies, but it turns out that these are not easily available this time of year in DC. All the markets I checked out only had ones that were preserved so that is what I had to go with.

All that in mind, after thinking about it for a few days, I came up with two things I wanted to try. First, an appetizer: Anchovy, Mushroom and Salmon Mousseline.

A mousseline is a pate that is processed with cream and egg white. You can use many different kinds of meat to make it. I have never made one before but I’ve been interested in them ever since reading Michael Ruhlman’s “Charcuterie.” The recipe in the book is actually shrimp based and makes a slightly larger pate than I wanted. So I reduced the amounts a bit and substituted anchovies for shrimp. I also planned to add in a bunch of oyster mushrooms to try to get some of their flavor to come through.

Anchovy, Mushroom and Salmon Mousseline

- 1 Tablespoon butter
- 7-8 ounces oyster mushrooms
- 1 Tablespoon kosher salt
- 10 ounces of anchovies (the original recipe calls for 1 pound of shrimp, but I tried to tone it down a bit because anchovies can be strong in flavor.)
- 1 large egg white
- 1 Cup heavy cream
- 1 Tablespoon basil (optional)
- 6 ounces of salmon (I found some great wild caught salmon. I’m not a big fan of the farm raised stuff.)

The important part about making the mousseline is to make sure that everything is very cold. This will help it all combine. Following Ruhlman’s advice, I put my processor bowl and blade, along with my anchovies, in the freezer about 20 minutes before I was ready to go.

Meanwhile, I added my butter to a sautee pan and added my mushrooms to the pan which I roughly chopped.

Chopped and sauteed.

After about 5-7 minutes these were cooked. You then need to chill these before you get started.

Once you have all your stuff ready and cold, put your anchovies in a processor with the salt, half of the mushrooms, and egg white. Once it is processed, then slowly add in your cream until everything is combined. I actually had to do mine in two batches because I only have a small processor.

Gray matter.

Once I processed all of my mixture, I wanted to use the other half of the cooked mushrooms to give some texture to the dish. I folded them in after the mousseline was processed. So half the mushrooms were processed and half were folded in.

The whole time I was doing this, I was tasting the mixture and adjusting the flavors a bit. I was pretty worried about the anchovies overpowering everything.

Now. I needed to cook this stuff to have it set. If you have a terrine pan then more power to you. I don’t and I didn’t want to buy one just for this dish, so I read through the chapter on Pates in the book and Ruhlman also mentions that you can wrap your mousseline in plastic wrap and lightly poach it.

That sounded like something I could handle although I will say that it was far from easy.

First, I laid down a layer of cheese cloth on a baking sheet, and then a layer of plastic wrap. I added a layer of the mousseline, followed by sprinkling the basil, and then the salmon, which I cut the skin off of and cut into long fillets.

This is getting weirder and weirder.

This was not easy to roll up. Eventually though I got it rolled up with the salmon in the center. I tried to stay calm and work carefully and it ended up okay.

All rolled up.

Why the cheesecloth? Well, for starters I was skeptical that the plastic alone wouldn’t just fall apart in the water making anchovy-mushroom soup. Second, it is near impossible to handle a hot tube of mousse filled plastic. So I wrapped the cheesecloth around it and very tightly secured both ends with butcher’s twine.

Water tight is important.

This felt pretty sturdy so I thought I was ready to poach. I kept my water at about 180 and let this poach for about 30 minutes. It was at this moment that Betsy walked in to our anchovy smelling kitchen wondering what the hell I was doing.

It was at this moment, that Betsy became skeptical.

After I took my mousseline out, I encountered yet another problem with this dish. Ideally, you are supposed to weigh down the pate and refrigerate it. However, since I didn’t cook mine in a dish, I couldn’t really weigh it down because it would just flatten out.

I rigged up the following insanely complicated setup that would apply a bit of pressure to the pate while it chilled. And yes. Those are beer caps and a piece of aluminum foil.

What?

The next day I was anxious to try this. I unrolled it and pulled out some tiny toasts to serve it on along with some arugula that I thought would work to lighten the spread up a bit.

I give it a rating of not bad.

As the caption says, I give this an honest rating of not bad. It was actually better than I thought it was going to be. The flavor was pretty good. The texture was a bit runny though and I think there is some rule that it is hard to make gray food appetizing. And unfortunately, this turned out gray which I think was due to the mushrooms. As I feared, the anchovies also completely overpowered the mushrooms.

I’m glad I made it though. It was a challenge, but gave me some confidence that hopefully I can use to make another one in the future.

The second part of the meal I wanted to make was a bit more classic: Anchovy and Mushroom Pizza.

I chose pizza because I thought that was maybe the best bet of getting the mushroom flavor to come through a bit.

I don’t want this post to go on forever so I’m not going to detail exactly how to make pizza dough. I’ve detailed it before in this post, so maybe check that out if you are interested.

Once I had my dough made, I decided that a white pizza would be a good option to show off the anchovies and mushrooms.

I drizzled about 2 Tablespoons of olive oil on my crust and then topped it with a few ounces of ricotta cheese and mozzarella cheese. I also added about 4 ounces of mushrooms and 6-8 anchovy fillets which I chopped into quarters and distributed evenly. I topped it with some pepper and basil.

To really do this right you need a pizza stone and peel.

Piled high.

In the oven for 18 minutes at 500 degrees and I was very happy with the results.

Out of the oven.

I topped the pizza with a few leaves of arugula. The tartness of the arugula worked perfectly with the other flavors. I thought this pizza was fantastic and guess what?! I could taste the freakin’ mushrooms which was really my only goal. The anchovies added a nice flavor and saltiness, but the mushrooms stayed nice and whole. Betsy, myself, and a friend devoured the whole pizza in a few minutes.

Worked out great.

One more photo for good measure.

A good slice of pie.

So that was my take on these fairly difficult ingredients. Thanks for reading this battle. Be sure to check out Ryan’s and Sheila’s creation before voting. You can vote below or on their page. Both sites link to the same poll and you can’t vote more than once.

Voting is set to close on Tuesday at noon!

And the secret ingredients that we picked for this battle are:

Mangoes and chili powder.

I think we picked two great ingredients out of the possible ingredients. They actually go together pretty nicely and could be used in a ton of different dishes. I thought about doing something curryish, then considered using a nice piece of pork to bring the two ingredients together. I also considered making my own chili powder which isn’t too hard, but I couldn’t easily find good dried chilies.

Ultimately, I decided to go sweet. Dessert.

I wanted to apply the two secret ingredients to an old-fashioned recipe: cobbler and ice cream. So I made a Mango Cobbler with Chocolate Chili Powder Ice Cream.

Let’s talk ice cream first. I don’t have one of those nifty ice cream machines so I had to do it the old fashioned way which isn’t really hard but does take some time. Start with these:

Ice cream deconstructed

There are a lot of recipes out there for ice cream, at the end of the day I adapted this one from David Lebovitz. Obviously, I changed it to add the special ingredients.

Chocolate and Chili Powder Ice Cream
Make time: About 3 hours, mostly unattended.

- 1 1/4 Cups whole milk
- 3/4 Cup sugar
- A pinch of salt
- 5 egg yolks
- 2 Cups heavy cream
- 1/4 Cup cocoa powder
- 2 Teaspoons chili powder

First thing is to combine everything except the cream and eggs into a medium sauce pan.

The magic.

Whisk this together really well over medium heat until it starts to boil. Then you need to add this mixture to your eggs to make a custard base. Start by adding a little of your warm mixture to your eggs to temper them. This will get your eggs up to temperature. After your eggs are warm, you can add them back to your sauce pan without fear of making scrambled eggs.

I added about half of my hot mixture slowly and then added the egg mixture back to the other half of hot milk.

Then return this to the heat until this thickens a bit – probably 5 minutes on low.

The smell of chili powder was in the air.

The finger test.

Once your custard passes the back of the spoon test, strain this custard mixture into your bowl of cream. You strain it just to get out any little bits of egg that accidentally cooked. If you are super confident in your custard abilities then you don’t need to strain it I guess.

Then chill that mixture over an ice bath until it is cool.

Nobody likes scrambled eggs in their ice cream.

Once it is chilled, pour this mixture into a 13 by 9 baking dish and put it in the ice box. After about 45 minutes, take it out and with a whisk or fork, or electric mixer if you are a wuss, beat it up. Your goal is to break up all of the ice crystals that have formed and make it smooth.

It's a little bit of work. Don't be a wuss.

Return it to the freezer and repeat the beating every 30 minutes until it turns into, well, ice cream. I made mine the day before I made my cobbler and it keeps great for days.

The Cobbler. A good cobbler, in my mind, has a rich fruity filling with a thick crust. A good cobbler also requires ice cream so it is a good thing we have that covered.

Mango Skillet Cobbler (Adapted from The Best of America’s Test Kitchen)

Filling:
- 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
- 6 Tablespoons sugar
- Pinch of salt
- 5 Mangos (cut into 1 inch cubes)
- 1 pint assorted berries (if I made this again, I would use less berries and not raspberries. Probably just blueberries.)

Thickener:
- 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 1/2 Teaspoons corn starch

Topping:
- 1 1/2 Cups all-purpose flour (I actually used closer to 2 Cups. Start with less though and add more if you need it.)
- 5 Tablespoons sugar
- 1 1/2 Teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 Teaspoon baking soda
- Pinch of salt
- 3/4 Cup buttermilk
- 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Chili Sugar:
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- 1/2 Teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 Teaspoon chili powder

First, peel your mangoes. If you are good, you can do this.

Extra points for keeping the peel in one piece!

Then get a large, oven-safe skillet and add about 3/4 of your mangoes and berries and all of your other filling ingredients. Cover this with foil and let it cook on the stove over medium heat for about 15 minutes. This will cook down the fruit so your end result isn’t too runny. Nobody likes a runny cobbler.

Healthy!

After it cooks down for 15 minutes, I added the rest of my fruit. This gave the final product different textures which is good. Also, it was at this moment that I realized the berries may have been a bit overkill.

Gives a different texture.

Once the fresh fruit is mixed in and warmed, add your thickener mixture of corn starch and lemon juice. Mix together the corn starch and lemon juice before you add it.

Ready to get a topping of deliciousness.

Ok. Cover that so it stays warm (I just use a piece of foil) and work on your topping. Combine all of your topping ingredients in a bowl and they should come together into a pretty wet dough. I added a bit more flour than the original recipe called for because it was too wet to work with. Eventually I got it into a ball.

Gooey topping.

Oh also, I made this while my cobbler cooked:

Chili sugar.

Back to the dough, knead your dough a few times on a floured surface. Just knead it for a few seconds, you want to keep it pretty light. Then roll it out into a 1/2 in thick rectangle and rip it up into chucks and throw it on your cobbler filling. It’s supposed to look kind of messy. Nobody likes a clean cobbler.

I also sprinkled it with a good amount of my chili sugar.

Cobbles added.

This goes into a 425 degree oven for 18-20 minutes or until it look like this:

This produced a great smell. The smell of VICTORY.

It will be hard, but let this cool for 10 minutes before eating. Then serve it up!

Lookin' good.

It looks good on a plate, but I like mine in a bowl so I can mix it all together.

I like mine in a bowl.

The Verdict. I had about 10 different people try this combo I created and I think it went really well. The only criticism was that the mangos got a little bit lost in the cobbler. Luckily, I kept my pieces pretty large so there were still large chunks of mango. The color of the raspberries took over the dish though.

The ice cream was a unanimous winner. The savory chili flavor was enhanced by the cocoa powder and it worked perfectly. It also paired perfectly with the cobbler.

Do your part!

This battle is all in good fun, but Dan and I still wanted to give our readers a way to vote. Use the below poll to vote and as I said before, the poll on his site and mine are linked so no need to vote twice and it doesn’t matter which site you vote on.

We didn’t really think of specific criteria to judge on, so use whatever criteria you want I guess!

Hope you guys liked my sweet take on these ingredients!

Update: Dan and I decided to close the polls at Noon on Tuesday, so vote by then.