Love Chopped? You'll Love Mystery Bag...

Introducing the Brooklyn Salt Mystery Bag; you pick the ingredients, and I figure out how the heck to combine and transform them to create a tasty dish.  Alan chose the ingredients for my first Mystery Bag which included tomatillos, pork, orecchiette and pickled jalapenos.

After thinking really hard, I came up with a pan seared pork with Tabasco butter orecchiette and a tomatillo and pickled jalapeno salsa. 

It was strange, but quite edible.  Mystery Bag will challenge me to use ingredients I'm unfamiliar with and to test the cooking techniques I've learned over the past year.  

Want to choose what's in my next Mystery Bag?

Submit your Mystery Bag ideas in the comment section below.  Include one of each:

1 protein (chicken, fish, pork, beef, beans, eggs, etc)

1 starch

1 vegetable, fruit, herb or aromatic

1 random ingredient (olives, pickles, brown sugar, hot sauce, etc)

Now, go easy on me.  I'm an amateur home cook.  Don't even think of giving me lamb head, caul fat or huitlacoche, 'cause I'll barf a little.  Choose ingredients that are available in most stores and markets.  I'll throw all your suggestions in a hat and randomly pick one.  I'll have twenty minutes to go buy the ingredients plus anything else I need to create my dish and one hour to cook (depending on ingredient cooking times). Then I'll share pictures of my final dish right here on Brooklyn Salt!

Our cat Gozer will make sure I use all the Mystery Bag ingredients and tell me when my time is "meow".