contest VOTE! New Year New Food Throwdown

Who did the best challenging themselves with a new dish, and pulled it off... the best?


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Everything looks great, nothing posted that I wouldn't enjoy trying. For me it came down to stickman,the blue crabs and pot stickers. In the end seafood won for me, chili and crab hard to beat. And I love the color off those crab. Jhp and TB stuff looks great as always but I feel they didn't really push themselves considering the cooking skills they have with their entry's. Pretty sure I've seen jhp do mussels before and a cheesesteak by any other name is still a cheese steak. :) key bird always busting out good eats, and the Moroccan chicken minus the olives looked awesome. Congrats to all
 
If only there wasnt green peeper I woud have voted for the "hot tub" food. geeme almost had me, I love morrocan chicken,Sonya makes it a lot though. The tamales are what did it for me,one of my favs that I dont get often.Well done to all.
 
I was thinking the same thing as FreeportBurn, in that, while all of the dishes looked and sounded awesome.... and I'd dive in head first to any of them.... several of them didn't look to be pushing the envelope of something new for who made them.  KeybrdKid's tamales, zdecker's potstickers and even geeme's naan are better examples of trying something new. 
 
PotStickers get the vote!
 
Ashen said:
I was very impressed with keybrd first time tamale effort but I am a sucker for potstickers and zdecker nailed it. 
 
My vote came down to those same two as well Ashen, with keybrdkid getting the final nod.  Tamales are hard work, like perogies - best done in huge batches with plenty of hands to help out.  Great looking dish.
 
Chris wins for best pic as usual.  
 
Hey zdecker - will you buy the frozen bagged costco potstickers now that you've made em for yourself?
 
I've been wondering what each of us learned - really learned - by way of making these new dishes. If all it was, was "I now how to make 'x' dish", that's ok, but I'm particularly wondering if anything else was learned. For example, although I have a ton of spices that probably the average American doesn't normally have, there are some I use frequently but in small doses. These can tend to overpower the other flavors. Coriander is one on that list; however, this recipe had 2 Tablespoons of coriander, which was more than double the amounts for any of the other spices and I used this amount for a mere 4 chicken thighs. In spite of this, the totality of the spices and other flavors came together very nicely, with none particularly standing out on its own, including the coriander. So I'm re-formulating my "use in small quantities" mantra into a "use in small quantities unless also doing a 'y' kind of thing." Anyone else learn something new? Of course, I also learned a thing or two about using my food processor!  :lol:
 
geeme said:
I've been wondering what each of us learned - really learned
 
I learned TB never made a cheesesteak! Really, whudda thunk? After all these years and his love of melty cheese! :)
 
SmokenFire said:
 
My vote came down to those same two as well Ashen, with keybrdkid getting the final nod.  Tamales are hard work, like perogies - best done in huge batches with plenty of hands to help out.  Great looking dish.
 
Chris wins for best pic as usual.  
 
Hey zdecker - will you buy the frozen bagged costco potstickers now that you've made em for yourself?
 
I don't think so Smoken.  The homemade ones were awesome.  There is a little work involved in wrapping them all, but it's worth it in the end.  Speaking of work, I could only find SQUARE wrappers locally, and I wanted/needed CIRCLE to be more authentic.  I had to cut each square wrapper into a circle to be more authentic.
 
Hey man I thought you nailed the spirit of the challenge and also the dish. That's my favorite way. And those look fantastic. I love the pan seared flavor along with the almost chewy steamed top. Your ingredients and sauce are spot-on! Way to go!
 
in reply to geeme-
I haven't made anything with banana leaves, and I haven't made pot stickers.  I guess I always thought they were like egg rolls, which I'm not fond of.  But after seeing zdecker's pot stickers, now I want to make them!  And that's funny about the square wrappers.  Going the extra mile to make it authentic.  :clap:
 
Now, if someone in SoFlo wants to send up some 'nana leaves, I'll give that a go!  :lol:
 
39 votes in 24 hours y'all rock!

Still a day left and that's usually what we get in 2 days!

VOTE!!!!
 
Hey SL - I can only get 'naner leaves frozen at a local Asian store here. Supposedly they add extra flavor, but I can't honestly say I miss it when I don't bother with them for heavily-seasoned meals. But yeah, it would be interesting to do a side-by-side comparison to decide if they really make a diff or not, or at least a difference significant enough to make the effort to get them every time. I'll note I know it won't make a difference at all for some people - like people who can't tell a diff between 1/2% milk, 1%, or 2% or even whole milk. For me those little half percentages do make a diff, though. 
 
And I'm with you on the egg rolls - if they come with a meal I usually just give them to someone else. They're ok, but I'm not a huge fan at all. Potstickers, on the other hand, are a different animal, and I do like those when they're done well. Z's look and sound really tasty!
 
zdecker said:
 
I don't think so Smoken.  The homemade ones were awesome.  There is a little work involved in wrapping them all, but it's worth it in the end.  Speaking of work, I could only find SQUARE wrappers locally, and I wanted/needed CIRCLE to be more authentic.  I had to cut each square wrapper into a circle to be more authentic.
 
I have had both kinds.  I never bother to cut em into circles - too much work!  I like your attention to detail though.  Spect  
 
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