Paper Chef #36 - I Won!

Well, this is very exciting! Mike, of Spikey Mikeys has declared me the winner of the February Paper Chef competition. There weren't a lot of entries this month, but the ingredients were pretty tricky, and I have to admit that my dish (pepper crusted London broil with chili-vanilla balsamic cream and chili-avocado barley pilaf) was pretty tasty and just what I needed after all the heaving eating in December. Anyway, thanks Mike! I'm looking forward to judging next month's competition and coming up with a fun/challenging secret ingredient.

Chili-Vanilla Balsamic Creme

Everyone seems interested in the creme, so here's a "recipe" (I'm a cook-by-tasting person, so it's not going to be exact). I used about 1/4 cup of creme fraiche, and about 1/4 tsp each of crushed green and pink peppercorns. I did not have a vanilla pod handy, so I added some Madagascar vanilla extract, and some (like 3/4 tsp. maybe?) balsamic vinegar. Added salt, then more vanilla, tasting until it was not too sweet. The vanilla surprisingly offset the sweetness of the balsamic - probably because I used extract. I just kept adjusting the flavors salt, balsamic, and vanilla until I had something I liked. Then I added some spice by adding a bit of the chopped guajillo pepper I had soaked in the barley tea used for cooking the barley.

Barley tea is a Korean beverage - it comes in "tea" bags. I buy packages of them at the 99 Ranch Market. I'm kind of a barley tea addict!

Paper Chef 36

For this month's Paper Chef, my entry is pepper crusted London broil with chili-vanilla balsamic cream and chili-avocado barley pilaf. I thought this month's ingredients were really challenging. The randomizer selected barley, dried chili, and vanilla, and this month's judge, Spikey Mikey, was kind and gave us beef as the fourth ingredient. I've been really busy so I thought I'd do something simple with some leftover rare London broil that I made Monday evening. When I made it, I sort of had Paper Chef in mind, and coated it in a dry crushed pepper mix before searing in a grill pan. I love chilled rare beef, so I just sliced it thinly and plated it with a cool chili-vanilla-balsamic sauce with some creme fraiche as the base. Surprisingly, it took quite a bit of vanilla extract to balance the flavors. On the side I added a barley pilaf made by soaking dried guajillo peppers in barley tea to rehydrate them, and then cooking the barley in the liquid. I find barley pretty bland, so I added quite a bit of chopped chili and some pink and green peppercorns, plus a bit of shallot, avocado, and lemon juice, and sprinkled it with additional chopped chili from the barley tea. It was really tasty - the cream had some sweetness to balance the acidity of the pilaf and since the chilis were not hot the peppercorns added just the right amount of bite and a bit of crunch. It was yummy!