April 21, 2013: Much better! Some unfinished business!

Up and about and back at it!

What a difference a day makes.  Well, a day and five slices of pork belly slathered with gochujang chili paste.  What I had first taken to be food poisoning or the flu turned out to be something else entirely – what both Rob and Ivon suspect was a simple pork fat deficiency.

Anyway, I’m feeling much better, but an incident like the one I just experienced does cause you to stop and take stock of things – consider your mortality and prioritize.  As a result, I’ve decided to do something I should have done long ago.

Tell someone I love them?  Apologize to someone I’ve offended?  Sell my worldly possessions and travel the world?

No, silly.  Finally get around to trying out those eight recipes from that “I Make the Best Whatever” contest!

As some of you may recall, I asked you to provide recipes back in late 2010 and, following careful consideration, narrowed down the field to an Elite Eight.  But, before I could test the recipes, I was blindsided by work commitments, a sick dog, and a hilarious road trip to Toronto.

Well, I have a window of opportunity before I get the green light on that project I’ve been waiting on OR about a month to fine tune some pitches before heading down to L.A., so let’s get cookin’.  Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be trying my hand at -

dasNdanger’s Puerco Pibil

Jeff W’s White Chocolate Cheesecake

Mark’s great Great Grandma’s Kifli

DP’s Cobbler

Alexander of Houston’s Pork Tenderloin

Sparrow_hawk’s Chicken Breast with Brown Butter and Fried Sage Leaves

And Shiny’s Sancocho and Tim Lade’s Chocolate and Peanut Butter Bread Pudding.

I have the recipes for the sancocho, the cobbler, the kifli, the white chocolate cheesecake, the chicken breast with brown butter and sage leaves, and the puerco pibil.  I’m missing two: the pork tenderloin and the peanut butter bread pudding.

So, let’s kick things off on Tuesday.  I’ll post one of the recipes on this blog and we’ll all have the week to make it. The following Tuesday, we’ll discuss our successes (and potential failures) and move on to the next recipe.

Come on!  Who’s with me?!