Paper Chef 46: Markus' entry

This months Paper Chef was a real challenge, as Jenny has already pointed out. The ingredients just wont combine nicely! You start off with the given pairing of beetroot and goat cheese, and go further and further away until you actually find something that go with peanut butter, but by the time you get there it just doesn't go all that well with beetroot anymore... Try as we may, neither of us liked the others far out ideas (any idea where peanut butter and goat cheese seems to enjoy each other's company can be considered far out, however slim the chances of the get-along), and thus the idea of a “cook-off” was born!

My thought drifted towards some Thai-fusion-thingy (as Jamie Oliver succinctly phrased it on TV once), and a kind of Satay-y thing would incorporate the peanut butter in a natural way. For Satay sauce we tend to get Chicken skewers here in Sweden (I have no idea how Thai that actually is, but not too far off I think), so beetroot skewers would be the obvious way to incorporate the beetroot. This leaves the goat cheese and the pasta. The pasta was lamely incorporated as the staple food for the dish, but the goat cheese proved more difficult. There's no whey (pun intended) that would fit! Unless the whole French presupposition that goat cheese equals Chèvre was abandoned in favor of whey cheese! In Norway they make an excellent “Brunost” (brown cheese), which is a whey cheese made of primarily goat milk (at least the one I used). They taste quite strongly and a bit sweet, making them potentially agreeable to the company of peanut butter.

As the Brunost Satay started cooking and going stiff, I needed to add some liquid, and foolishly added lemon juice to cut it. As I myself (if less stressed) could have figured out, the dairy started curdling instead, making this the stiffest “sauce” in History (that's right, history with a capital H). Made it taste good though, but would probably have been better with lime, added after it had cooled down. Anyhow, that's how I made it, so that's how I'll report it!

The making of the rest was rather uneventful (turns out deep frying beetroot doesn't change it that much), and the final dish turned out to be (drum roll please...)

~~~
Deep fried Beetroot Skewers
with Brunost Satay
on a bed of Pasta
~~~

Recipes towards the end of the post. The verdict was mixed, but on the whole I'm pleased with the outcome, I kept it minimalistic, not adding very much to the four challenge ingredients, and actually making something edible (only regret cheating with the goat cheese...) Oh, and it wasn't very photogenic either, so only one picture this time (hopefully the Satay doesn't look too much like it's future self in it).



Deep fried Beetroot Skewers
1 Beetroot
Oil to deep fry in

Boil the beetroot for 45 minutes, peel and cut into thumb sized pieces. Heat the oil and deep fry the beetroot pieces for about 4 minutes. Skewer (can I use that as a verb? Please?) them.

Brunost Satay
½ Onion
2 tbsp Peanut Butter
60 g Brunost (Norwegian Whey Goat Cheese)
½ Lemon (juice from)
pinch of Chili Powder
pinch of Ground Cardamom
Butter to fry in

Finley chop the onion and fry it. Add the spices and let it get some color before adding the peanut butter and cheese. Stir vigorously to combine, then add the lemon juice.

Please don't make me write out the recipe for boiling pasta...