A Daring Kitchen with David & Stacy rss

Edible Containers (savory)

Ok, so our hearts weren't in this one at all.  Happily, we can report that our knives and pots & pans and oven and dishwasher were.

We signed up (almost a year now) to learn about and try new things in the kitchen - to be daring! - which we feel we've done quite well at in-an-overall-big-picture sort of way. 

We did not sign up to try to win popularity contests. 

We did not sign up to show off our pretty pictures (which for the record, we stopped even trying very early on because, well, they just weren't very pretty...). We did not sign up to invent or interpret the dishes presented as part of the challenge. 

We just wanted to try something new and be guided along the way.  But we are exceptionally grateful to those who do take (and show) great pictures and those who interpret and invent the dishes because we've certainly learned some new and fun stuff from reading about (and seeing) what other members get up to as part of each challenge - a wonderful bonus to our choice to being daring.

We promised ourselves we'd be daring and if we got past our first two challenges (we did, quite easily, safely and well in case you were wondering) there'd be no reason to skip anything that came our way.  So, here we are...

Hopefully next month will get back to 'normal'?

Pumpkin Bowl filled with Creamy Shrimp (Bisque?)

We had some friends coming over for dinner during the challenge and we had been unable to lock in a menu. We really like the family style approach to dining (at home and out and about - which occasionally gets our Server a bit wound up) and a pumpkin full of goodness shouts nothing but family style. 

Catch is, we failed miserably at the Pumpkin Bowl part of the challenge. 

The things that went wrong...

1. We couldn't find one big Pumpkin but found some good looking smaller ones which we thought would do the job as individual bowls rather than a serving bowl.
2. We couldn't get them to cook.  The recipe said 25 minutes x 2.  We had smaller 'dudes' and although we classified them as cooked at about the 1 hour 40 minute mark it definitely wasn't 'puree like'.
3. Our designated carver could not get the good bits out without completely (and yes, completely is the correct word) destroying the shells.  Not even close!
4. And not related to our pumpkin issues, but we grabbed up headless shrimp so the stock we came up with probably was missing a little something something due to it just being born of the shells.

We did not, however, fail at the Soup making part of the challenge.

The things that went right...

1. No blood drawn whilst chopping onions, garlic and tomatoes.
2. The shrimp 'veins' came out nice and easy.
3. The kitchen smelled nice.
4. The soup turned into soup.

Result

If you take out the Pumpkin Bowl part of the equation it worked out just fine (which sadly, was the main part of this challenge).  One of us really liked it, the other went with a good-but-we've-made-better-soups feeling.  Our friends liked it and their 2 year old was happy to play with it.

And, who was the clever person who figured out adding cream cheese to a soup is a good thing?  Cudos to them!  It turned out to be quite thick, which we could have thinned down easily enough but we chose not to and it had a really nice feel as well as taste to it.

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

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Conclusion

We were a bit cranky starting off, but glad we gave it a whirl. On the plus side, we didn't get more cranky when it became obvious we weren't going to end up with a Pumpkin Bowl.

We certainly didn't get anything photo worthy (not that we probably would even if we made the best pumpkin bowl ever...) but we got something tasty that was new and fun and enjoyed by us and our friends (and even a small bowl of leftovers for lunch during the week).

We can follow a recipe, but it seems we we're not very good at the 'precision' parts required when dealing with a gourd type device.  Oh well.

Stay JOLLY!
D&S