JK…

There has been a fun quarantine challenge going on via Instagram. Food Network has been tagging and posting the #ChoppedChallenge where someone picks you 4 mandatory basket ingredients and you have 24 hours to prepare and post your meal. SO FUN! Here was ours!

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Pictured on the left was my husband’s dish he created. I was so impressed! The basket ingredients I had for him were coconut flakes, raw almond butter, ginger, and long grain brown rice. What a masterpiece he made!! His dish was so simple as well. My husband cooked the rice as the package said and made an almond butter, coconut fried rice. As the brown rice cooked, he sauteed carrots, bok choy, cabbage, and peas in some olive oil and a little salt. He removed the veggies from the pan and then added some more oil, sauteed minced ginger and fried up the rice a bit. He then added all veggies in. In a separate bowl, he mixed almond butter, more minced ginger, sesame oil, and little water to make a thin sauce. He tossed some with the fried rice and topped with toasted coconut flakes. We spooned some more sauce over a plates with some crushed red pepper. I WISH you could smell the dish he made, it was amazing to look at, smell, and eat! He definitely would have made it to the next round of “Chopped!”
However, he totally sucked at cleaning up his mess as he went along cooking, I won’t knock him for it though since his meal was so good. I also learned through this quarantine challenge that he can actually cook…Who knew?!

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My dish created was a salmon meal. My husband chose my mandatory ingredients and they were…salmon, mango, tequila, and hippeas. My first idea was WTF do I make? My second idea was salmon cakes but I ended up making a simple crusted salmon filet because I was not in a mayonnaise mood. I cannot believe how good this dish turned out either!

I used a food processor to make my crust and pulsed together the hippeas snacks, pistachios, and a clove of garlic. I baked my salmon filets in the oven until they were ALMOST cooked through. On the stovetop I melted a tablespoon of butter and added the hippeas crust to get buttered up and delicious. I put the crust on top of the salmon and then broiled it to perfection. OMG, a new favorite “breadcrumb” for us.

While I broiled the salmon for a couple minutes, I simply made a dressing with the tequila and mango to use up my other mandatory ingredients. I added the mango, tequila, spicy brown mustard, honey, and filtered water into my blender and made a dressing that tasted so fresh and zingy! I tossed the tequila mango dressing with some greens and served it with my crusted salmon filets, simply perfect.

My husband and I made quite the quarantine challenge team. We had so much fun doing this and tagged a bunch of our friends to participate as well. This was a great idea to get our mind off of things. Make some creative dishes people! Enjoy yourselves in the kitchen!