PAPER CHEF #49 - Love These Ingredients!

I can count on one hand the times I have actually WON something. So, you can imagine how excited I was last month to win PAPER CHEF (one of the longest running food challenges online) with my Rosemary Tuna Sliders & Pickled Red Cabbage. Also, I've discovered so many great Food Blogs because of Paper Chef;

Lucullian Delights - the ultimate in Italian flair and beautiful food and a devoted hostess
Prospect: The Pantry - so creative with ingredients
Spikey Mikey - a guy with great photos AND food ideas
Paulchen's - great sense of humor and unique foods
Culinary Annotations - global and gorgeous

If you haven't participated in Paper Chef, try it this month. It's like a segment of Iron Chef, or a Top Chef Challenge, or a Chef's Mystery Box game. You're given 3 ingredients, plus a theme to turn into a dish within a week. How you do it, and what you add to make it work is up to your own muse, imagination, creativity and audacity. There are no losers, really, because in the end you have a recipe that you developed and a boost in your kitchen-confidence. I hope you'll play along. My love and background in Improvisation feels right at home with this kind of fun.

For Paper Chef #49 - the WINNER of the last Paper Chef (that would be ME; just wanted to type it one more time) gets to randomly pick 3 ingredients, plus choose a theme for the next Paper Chef and pick the NEXT WINNER (that could be YOU.) Since there is nothing more "random" than a 14-year-old boy, I let my son pick 3 numbers, then count down the list to see what ingredient matched them. For the 4th ingredient, I'll be adding a theme. Here they are:

PRAWNS
FENNEL
SWEET PEPPERS
and PASSION

The theme of PASSION can be the fruit, a color, a drive, a Valentine or a story; whatever it may mean to you.

I'm pretty excited about the ingredients, as they are so workable and I hope it means that a ton of folks will be able to COOK-IT-UP!!

If it's your first time doing Paper Chef or just need a reminder; be sure to check out the easy-to-follow rules, regulations and more details when you click here. I can't wait to see all the entries.

Submit your entry by next Tuesday, Feb.9, 2010 to: paperchef@gmailcom.
Tell your friends on Twitter and FB and turn this into an International Kitchen-Party!