My first Challenge: On Our Grills: 4 Ingredient Challenge

On Our Grills: 4 Ingredient Challenge:

The “On Our Grills:4 Ingredient Challenge”began in the Fall of 2010 with four BBQ friends who were looking for a way to challenge themselves with ingredients they might not normally cook with. 
And if they did cook with the ingredients it was never in the combination with them all.

It is not a contest, the meaning is to challenge each other and ourselves to come up with creative and unique ways to incorporate all the ingredients into one meal.
Larry Gaian is founder of the Challenge, and also founder of the great site www.thebbqgrail.com.
(also he invented the MOINK Ball, that man deserves a statue :-))

Each month Larry provides the Challenge members with 4 new basis ingredients for that month.
Then the brainstorming begins!!

For some weeks, my good BBQ Buddy Marc v.d. Wouw (Broadcastmarc) who was allready member introduced me to Larry.
One condition is too have an active food blog in english.
I allready had a foodblog in dutch and since recently I created this blog in english.

So here is my first Challenge!

The Challenge for the month october was to create something with pumpkin, appel, brown rice and chicken.

My mind was going crazy, what the hell am I gonna make with those ingredients!?
After a lot of brainstorming I ended up with a Suriname dish.











I used:
- 250gr brown rice, cooked
- a pumpkin, approx. 250gr
- 1/4 cup dried shrimps
- 4 chicken thighs
- 1 apple
- 1 tomato
- 1 onion
- 1 clove of garlic, minced
- 1 spoon soy sauce
- 1 spoon tomato puree
- chicken broth
- salt & pepper

I first soaked the dried shrimps in some hot water.

Carved in the chicken thighs and rubbed them with the soy sauce and seasoned them with some salt & pepper.
Then I grilled the chicken directly.

In the meantime I cut the pumpkin, the tomato, the apple and the onion in little pieces.
I put a pan on the grill and fried the minced garlic, the sliced onion and the sliced tomato in some olive oil.
Added the chicken broth after everything was fried well and then put in the shrimps, tomato puree and at last the pieces of pumpkin.
Seasoned it with some salt and pepper and let it stay on the fire untill the pumpkin went soft, stirring every now and then.

The chicken was great, the pumpkin mash was surprisingly tasty!!
Strangely enough the dried shrimp was the best ingredient and brought all the flavour to it.
Served it with the brown rice.

So that was my first Challenge!
I like the concept very much, you never know what ingredients to use, a sort of mystery cookbox :-)

Curious what the other Challenge members made?? Have a look:

The BBQ Grail
The BBQ Grail website was created in 2007, initially to document the author’s quest to find the perfect backyard BBQ experience. Since that time The BBQ Grail has become one of the more popular BBQ blogs on the internet and is listed on Alltop.com as one of the top BBQ blogs.

Grill Adventures by Broadcast Marc
Grill Adventures by broadcastmarc was started in March of 2010. According to the author, he started the BBQ thing when he was 30, before that they ate a lot outside and had fun, but when kids came into their life they started serious cooking. Most of it is really healthy. The grill has a special place in his heart because they love to do things outside. Everything he makes is an adventure, and sometimes they use the books. They try to grill as much as they can year round.

The Dutchess Cooks
I’m Hanneke Eerden, from The Netherlands, and I love to cook, bake and grill. Cooking and baking I’ve loved since I was a teenager (oh that was some time ago, hmm never mind!) and grilling has come into my life in the summer of 2009. It all changed when I bought a Weber OTS, and from that moment on a new passion in cooking, outdoor cooking, has started.

Better Recipes “The Daily Dish”
Kristina has been writing “The Daily Dish” for www.BetterRecipes.com for the past two years. The blog covers a wide variety of recipes, but firing up the grill truly lights up her passion for food! She was named “America’s Next Pork Personality” by Guy Fieri for one of her grilled pork dishes, won the outdoor grilling division of the National Beef Cook-Off, and her winning grilled lamb-burger took her all the way to the land Down Under with Meat and Livestock Australia. The “4-Ingredient Challenge” is a fun and exciting way to get creative on the grill!

Livefire
Livefire cooking is about taking ordinary cooking and adding the flavor of fire to it, whether in high heat grilling, low heat smoking or indirect heat for baking. It’s about taking the primitive element of fire and harnessing it to make great food.

No Excuses BBQ
Paul Haight started his blog in January,2009 as a way to record the author’s goal of cooking outdoors at least once a week throughout the year and showing the results to the world. Somewhere along the way things got out of control.

I wish all a happy and scary Halloween!!
Here is my pumpkin: