More new stuff... Chopped, new pan, chili and cornbread

Saw chopped last night - the ingredients were...
Appetizer - bran cereal, lump crab, red grapefruit & dried shiitake mushrooms
Entree - grape jelly, ground beef, tahini, cannelloni beans
Dessert - Brioche, cantaloupe, avocado, pecans

My ideas were:
App - use lump crab, mayo, bran cereal crumbs, shallot for a lump crab cake and serve with a micro green salad with a red grapefruit vinaigrette and supremes of the grapefruit. Simmer dried mush in water to plump them up, make a quick roux and add simmering liquid from mush to make a sauce and dice mushrooms and add to sauce. Plate sauce first with an artful puddle and streak of the sauce arcing along one side of the plate, add the crab cake in the center and plate micro green salad either on top or along side (I would make a mini cake and some extra salad so that I could test if it would be better on top of the crab cake or along side.)

Entree - make a minestrone of sorts. Brown pureed mirepoix, add beef and brown, add tomato paste and brown, add grape jelly and cook for a couple minutes keeping a close eye on it so the sugars don't burn. Add some beef stock and a can of diced tomatoes and most of the cannelloni beans. Make some bruschetta using reserved cannelloni, chickpeas and tahini with parsley and lemon. Serve soup in bowl on top of plate - plate holds a few pcs of bruschetta around the bowl.

Dessert - A quick trifle. Cube the brioche and sprinkle with some kind of fruit juice - preferably a combo of orange and raspberry. Dice cantaloupe. Puree avocado and mix with heavy cream and whip. Toast pecans. Layer soaked brioche, diced cantaloupe, avocado whipped cream in individual dishes, then chop half the pecans & layer those in. Repeat brioche, cantaloupe and avocado whip layers once more and finish tops with 5 pecans in star pattern.

So now for my new pan. My old 12" deep saute pan died. It was a slow but annoying death for the pan. Partially to blame is probably the fact that I think I found the entire set of pans on clearance (about 12 pcs) for something silly like 35 bucks. But to say the saute put up with at least every other day cooking or every third day cooking for almost three years, it's not that bad. So I went out and spent 40 bucks on a "Green Pan" to replace the cheap, warped, wrecked one that I used to have. It's green because the factories don't produce harmful gasses and neither do the pans if they are heated while empty. They're also oven safe to 800 degrees! Dishwasher safe though they recommend hand washing. So I had to play with it today, you know. Twice.

Browned about 3 lbs of beef for some chilli (what's a better meal after the snow and rain and sleet we had today?) and then when the meat, onion, garlic, seasoning mix and flour combo was transferred to the stock pan with the diced tomatoes and tomato paste, I simply wiped the pan with a piece of paper towel, mixed up a batch of cornbread and poured my batter right into the pan and shoved it in a 400 degree oven. 10-11 minutes later I had a WONDERFUL looking cornbread. The trick would be to see if it came out of the pan easily as I hadn't added any additional fat after wiping out the chilli-beef mixture. I used the testing toothpick to quickly poke around the edges and then just inverted the pan over my cutting board. Plop! It all came out in one glorious, steamy round of delicious cornbread! This is now my new favorite pan in the world and any other pans I need to replace will be replaced with green pans. (Did I mention that this pan browns fairly well even though it's a new kind of non-stick coating? Hence the ability to make the cornbread as I did.) Overall, the pan rocks and anyone looking for them should go to http://www.green-pan.com/ to check them out. (I bought mine at Target and they also had a couple saucepans for sale on an individual basis and two different sized box sets.)

Well - that's probably enough excitement for one blog post. I'll see how many times I can use the new pan tomorrow and maybe blog some more!!!