When I put the monkey bread with Taiwanese prune reduction in the oven, the doubt set in. � Here I was, hosting an at-home Chopped dinner party, and things were culminating in a confection of horrors. The "monkey bread" needed a half-hour to cook, what with that gummy maze of crescent dough sliced with rivers of butter. I had 10 minutes left. � So totally Chopped. Food Network's popular contest show pits four chefs against one another, with baskets of mystery ingredients and a cruel clock. Chefs must transform the items, creating restaurant-quality meals from the pantry at Shawshank. � It is ridiculous. � It's the best show on television. � Why? A few reasons, which I'll get to. But the most powerful thing about Chopped is that it makes you cocky. It's when a chef on your TV has two minutes left, and he is trying to Cryovac a duck breast crusted in digestive biscuits, and you're screaming, "YOU HAVE TO RENDER THE FAT! WHERE DID YOU TRAIN, LE CORDON POO?" � It's thinking — no, it's knowing — that you can do it better. Certainly you would not be chopped. � I crouched down to the oven door and watched the dough start to sweat.
• • •
It started innocently enough.
I invited friends to watch the Chopped teen tournament. The show occasionally swaps professional chefs with firefighters/sassy grandmothers/postal workers with dreams of food blogging.
"Maybe we can add a cooking element," we wondered. Soon we had plotted a full-scale Chopped tournament, scheduled to take place in my home kitchen.
Chopped just wrapped its 21st season, and reruns are on constantly. On a premiere night this year, it pulled in 1.6 million viewers. It has spawned copycats. There's the sabotage-based Cutthroat Kitchen. There's Guy's Grocery Game with screamy, ubiquitous Guy Fieri. There's even Chopped in Canada.
But none compare to the original. Chopped is great storytelling, see. It has tension, because the contestants have something at stake ($10,000 and, more important, pride).
We enlisted four chefs, three judges and a host. Each judge would bring a four-ingredient course. I stocked the pantry.
Trash talk flew.
Don't try to hide your mistakes in truffle oil, emailed one judge. THERE IS NO CLOAK FOR FAILURE.
I've been working on my "you thought this would pass as a coulis" dead eyes, wrote another.
The night of the showdown, the judges sat at a table with healthy glasses of wine or beer (this was still a party). The contestants, also holding drinks, lined up in front of the judges and gave brief introductions.
"I'm Chef Aaron, and I own several food trucks …"
"Who doesn't own a food truck these days?" one judge snapped.
"I'm Chef Michelle, and I'm here to fight for all the people with mango allergies."
Finally, it was time.
Gulp (of wine).
Appetizer basket
Italian chicken sausage
Sweet potatoes
Poblano peppers
Smuckers Uncrustables
Since I don't live in a Food Network studio with four ovens, we cooked two-by-two for the first round. It worked fine. Two of us were sequestered in another room for 20 minutes, wine in hand.
I started to make a stuffed pepper until I heard one of the judges mutter, "I SURE HOPE NO ONE IS MAKING A STUFFED PEPPER." I went with a sweet potato and chicken sausage compote atop a triangle of toasted Uncrustable.
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Explore all your optionsChef Aaron repurposed the Uncrustable into a fry bread, leftover dough discovered in my fridge two weeks later. Chef Michelle made a daring panzanella, which Chopped fans will know means "salad with chunks of bread." She edged out Chef Hilary, who brought forth an adult Lunchable concept big on creativity, less big on eat-ability.
No matter. Once chopped, she gleefully grabbed a gallon of ice cream and retired to the couch. Losing has its perks.
Entree basket
Saag paneer
Rice Krispies
Fish sticks
Rainier cherries
The saag paneer came in weird plastic packets, tofu chunks looming like death in a gelatinous spinach base. The fish sticks were frozen and beige. I remembered a trusty Chopped technique, which is to hack everything together into a "fritter." I boiled the cherries in raspberry jam and mustard, and punched white bread with a measuring cup to make it look more bourgeois.
"What you judges have in front of you is an organic fish stick burger with a cherry-raspberry reduction. Please enjoy."
The judge took a gulp of beer, and a bite.
"This is … a lot … of … flavors … going … on …"
About that beer and wine. The judges, satiated only by meager bites of barely edible food, huddled and agreed who to eliminate. Then they announced the wrong name. Once we sorted out that they meant Michelle (crunchy pasta, top offense) and not Aaron (bland creamed corn, lesser offense), we were ready for the final round.
We paused to order pizza.
Dessert basket
Crescent roll dough
Chocolate chips
Amaretto liqueur
Taiwanese dried prunes
The kitchen had saag paneer smears and jam on the cabinets. Chef Aaron and I had 20 minutes to see it through to the bitter end. Even if no one else cared, we did.
He started a French pot de creme, which Chopped fans will know means "pudding." I decided to keep it "homespun" and "rustic" with monkey bread, which I thought I might be able to sell as comfort food. The reduction with the prunes and Amaretto tasted like gasoline, but I thought if I swirled the syrupy substance around the plate like a flower, there was a chance.
There was no chance. I handed over a plate of raw dough oozing with antilock brake fluid.
"I like the plate you chose," a judge said. "But this makes me want to vomit."
Chef Aaron's pot de creme was also topped with raw Pillsbury, but significantly less raw Pillsbury. He won.
We shook hands, and the loss felt less tangible and more esoteric (wine, etc.). We could do Chopped. Maybe not better than a tatted sous chef from San Francisco, but we could do it. Maybe every glittering television promise that Chopped held could be ours at home, if we believed. Or maybe the food poisoning was setting in.
We put the desserts back in the oven to finish cooking, because we were still hungry. Some time later we remembered them in a shock, running to the oven, sniffing, waving our hands.
They were both charred black. We ate them anyway.
Contact Stephanie Hayes at shayes@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8716. Follow @stephhayes.