IDEATIONOur original ideas are documented below
Mushroom and cheese Agnolotti with broccoli and kimchi foam
taco mold?
veggie tacos? mini, zucchini as shell?
potato martinis w/ topping bar
grilled vegetable panini (panini “bread” made out of slabs of veggies)
spaghetti squash with tomato sauce, spinach pesto “sauce bar”
miniature baked potatoes with toppings
make your own wonton?
Freeze vegetable juice blend into pop bars.
Dye noodles with veggie juice into different colors, when serving
draw a funny face on the plate to interact with people.
Grilled veggie pockets, spinach, mushroom, red
pepper, goat cheese, scrambled eggs
Grilled veggie kabob, substitute meat with
kabob.
deep fried beet, potatoes, zucchini, carrot
bowls with:
sour cream
spicy mayonnaise
goat cheese sauce or foam?mini vegetable crepes? prepare fillings, make crepes on demand - spinach crepe
EXPERIMENTATION
We chose three items from our brainstorming session to try: Grilled vegetable paninis, spaghetti squash noodles, and a spin on the vegetable kebab made with Thanksgiving leftovers.
Grilled Vegetables
When grilling at 25o degree, it takes 60 seconds to
warm up the grill. With the grill surfaced lightly oiled, zucchini slice gets
done at 4 minute. Green pepper slices gets done by 7 minutes.
When the grill is at 400 degree, all veggie slices
gets done within 2-3 minutes (raw peppers, uncooked beans, raw zucchini)
Conclusion:
Vegetable slices will be grilled faster when put on the highest setting (400
degree). It does not matter that much whether the vegetables are precooked or
not, it still take 3 minutes for them to get the char
Set the grill at 350 degree, peppers and green beans
starts to get brown at 3 minutes. Zuchini gets done at 4 minute. Green beans
take more than 5 minutes to be totally cooked.
Boil water and heat up the veggie slices for 3-5
minutes. Then place on grill. The veggies get the browning within 3 minutes. Determined the cooking for each item would be too difficult to coordinate and the guest would have to wait too long for their food, so this idea was scrapped.
Spaghetti Squash "Noodles"
Split the squashes in half and scrape out seeds. Line an oven tray with aluminum foil. Season the spaghetti squash with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Place flesh side down and roast for 30 to 40 minutes until fully cooked. Remove from the oven and let rest until cool enough to handle. Top with a sauce. This idea would have required a ton of spaghetti squashes.
Thanksgiving Leftover Kebabs
After the experimenting above we decided to direct most of our attention towards the Thanksgiving leftover kebab idea. We met at my house on a Sunday to begin working.
Shengjie cooking the green beans. While the balsamic green bean recipe used was tasty, it was really juicy and we anticipated it would be quite messy on a kebab. Plus, we were afraid of overcooking the beans and having an unattractive grey bean on our kebab, so we decided to blanch them to retain the color and prevent them from being limp.
Randi in the lab experimenting with the kebab fixings on the George Foreman grill. Worked well, but ultimately decided there was no need to grill the vegetables.
The results while tasty, lacked visual appeal. We were advised to cut the elements of the kebab into uniform pieces and rearrange their order on the stick to go from turkey > marshmallow (not marshmallow > turkey as we originally had it). Both great suggestions!
FINAL RECIPES
The recipes for each individual component for the kebab + cranberry sauce condiment are as follows:
Cranberry Sauce
Ingredients:
a 12-ounce bag of fresh or frozen cranberries
1 cup sugar
1 strip orange or lemon zest
2 tablespoons water
Prep:
Empty a 12-ounce bag of fresh or frozen cranberries into a saucepan and transfer 1/2 cup to a small bowl. Add 1 cup sugar, 1 strip orange or lemon zest and 2 tablespoons water to the pan and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves and the cranberries are soft, about 10 minutes. Increase the heat to medium and cook until the cranberries burst, about 12 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and stir in the reserved cranberries. Add sugar, salt and pepper to taste and cool to room temperature before serving.Retrieved from http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/perfect-cranberry-sauce-recipe.html
Dressing/Stuffing
Ingredients:
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter plus more for baking dish
1 pound good-quality day-old white bread, cut with small square cookie cutter (about 10 cups)
2 1/2 cups chopped yellow onions
1 1/2 cups 1/4" slices celery
1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth, divided
2 large eggs
Prep:
Preheat oven to 250°F. Butter a 13x9x2" baking dish and set aside. Scatter bread in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake, stirring occasionally, until dried out, about 1 hour. Let cool; transfer to a very large bowl.
Meanwhile, melt 3/4 cup butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat; add onions and celery. Stir often until just beginning to brown, about 10 minutes. Carefully bowl with bread; stir in herbs, salt, and pepper. Drizzle in 1 1/4 cups broth and toss gently. Let cool.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Whisk 1 1/4 cups broth and eggs in a small bowl. Add to bread mixture; fold gently until thoroughly combined. Transfer to prepared dish, cover with foil, and bake until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center of dressing registers 160°F, about 40 minutes. DO AHEAD:Dressing can be made 1 day ahead. Uncover; let cool. Cover; chill.
Bake dressing, uncovered, until set and top is browned and crisp, 40-45 minutes longer (if chilled, add 10-15 minutes).Adapted from http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/-Simple-is-Best-Dressing-51124210
Brussel Sprouts
Ingredients:
1 pound Brussels sprouts, as uniform in size as possible
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Cut off the brown ends of the Brussels sprouts and pull off any yellow outer leaves. Mix them in a bowl with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Pour them on a sheet pan and roast for 35 to 40 minutes, until crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. Shake the pan from time to time to brown the sprouts evenly. Sprinkle with more kosher salt ( I like these salty like French fries), and serve immediately.
Adapted from http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/grilled-brussels-sprouts-recipe.html and
Candied Sweet Potatoes
4 pounds sweet potatoes
1 1/4 cups margarine
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
3 cups miniature marshmallows, divided
ground cinnamon to taste
ground nutmeg to taste
Prep:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.
Microwave potatoes for 4-6 minutes (depending on size) slightly underdone. When cool use small circular cookie cutter to cut shapes from flesh.
3. In a large saucepan over medium heat, combine margarine, brown sugar, 2 cups marshmallows, cinnamon and nutmeg. Cook, stirring occasionally, until marshmallows are melted.
4. Stir potatoes into marshmallow sauce. While stirring mash about half of the potatoes, and break the others into bite-sized chunks. Transfer to prepared dish.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and cover top evenly with remaining marshmallows. Return to oven and bake until marshmallows are golden brown.
Green Beans
Turkey
We bought turkey breast at Costco and cooked it according to the directions on the package. We then cut the turkey into 1/2 inch slabs. From there, we used a small rectangular cookie cutter to cut individual pieces from the slabs. Once the turkey was cut we placed it on the George Foreman grill until there were grill marks. If I could do it over again, I think I would omit this step as it dried the meat out severely.
Each marshmallow was toasted individually with a handheld torch in front of the guest.
