Playing Chopped

Since the husband and I have found cause to trim our budget down to the minimum, we've had to find ways to keep ourselves busy. Last night, we played scrabble with the catch that we could only use words we could use in a factual sentence about ourselves. (It got goofy quickly)

Tonight's game: Chopped. Alan (husband) LOVES the food network show Chopped . I'll admit, it is entertaining, even if I'm not as into the foodie shows as he is. To bring those of us up to speed, basically each chef opens up a basket that contains 4 mystery ingredients to make a delicious dish. His challenge is dinner. Here are the ingredients I chose for him:

His "basket" (it's actually my sewing kit, but for effect, it's there!) includes:

• What I've been calling "Beef Strings". Basically strips of inexpensive steak. 
• Greek yogurt (plain flavored)
• Naan flat bread
• Green cauliflower

So I've basically given him meat meant for stir fry, and bread designed for Indian food, Greek yogurt, and a mutated hybrid veggie. To meet his challenge, Alan fried the "beef strings" in some Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, garlic, and onion powder. He made a tzaiki type sauce with the greek yogurt, Worcestershire sauce, honey, salt and pepper, and butter. Steamed green cauliflower and toasted the naan with olive oil. He ended up with this:

Well played, Alan. Then it was my turn. Dessert! My ingredients were the following: 

Yes, Alan went far easier on me.

• Nilla wafer coookies
• Marshmallow Creme (fluff)
• Sweetened Condensed Milk
• Dark Brown Sugar

So, I could easily make some kind of sauce with sweetened condensed milk, but with brown sugar, I almost certainly had to bake... so this is what happened: 

1. I crushed about 1.5 cups of Nilla wafers. Which did give me an opportunity to use my meat tenderizer, which is always fun:

2. I used that as the basis of a cookie recipe. Added to it 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour,1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup butter, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon vanilla and beat until it seemed like cookie dough consistency. Baked at 325 for about 15-20 minutes. Turned out like this:

So 2 ingredients aside, I made a sort of fudge topping by heating up the sweetened condensed milk in a small saucepan. I immediately added 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips and when they melted completely I added a "healthy dollop" of fluff. Then I poured it into a lightly sprayed (Pam) muffin tin and popped in the freezer to cool and set. I also made a marshmallow frosting (going for a s'mores type of flavor) but I will not post those instructions because the frosting was far too sweet and, in my opinion, ruined the whole dessert.

Once I scrapped the overpowering frosting off, the chocolate topped nilla-remake cookie was phenomenal. I do think Alan won this edition of Chopped even if he won't admit it. Also, I highly recommend playing Chopped with a partner or two. We'd be making dinner anyway, so it was just a fun way to spice that up.