I know the idea of me shopping blindfolded sounds exciting/entertaining to watch, but in order to avoid harming myself and others, I was not actually blindfolded when I went shopping in Trader Joe's. I might as well have been though, because the ingredients I shopped for were chosen completely randomly.
Thanks to my computer savvy boo, my shopping list was randomly generated from the Fearless Flyer on the Trader Joe's website. The code my boo designed generated random items from each section of the store (dairy, produce, wine and beer) so that I would have all the necessities for a complete meal.
I decided to do this little experiment because my shopping lists have been a little stale lately. I go into the store and pick out the same ingredients to make the same things and that gets boring rather quickly. Now, instead of carefully designing my shopping list, I'm throwing caution to the wind and shopping for my ingredients completely randomly.
The Ingredients
The computer selected an interesting array of ingredients for me. I ended up getting: gluten-free chicken nuggets, kefir, organic baby spinach, roasted cauliflower and cheese mezzelune, blue corn tortilla chips, string cheese, coconut oil, organic sprouted wheat bread, and Pontificis VRM wine.
As you can tell, I had mixed feelings about some of the ingredients. I had to Google a couple of them to find out what they were. I thought the cauliflower mezzelune was going to be some sort of frozen au gratin situation, but turns out it's a type of ravioli. I also thought the wine was a typo in the code and had to Google it to find out what it looked like.
The Cooking
My first task was tackling the gluten-free nugs. I threw them in the oven to defrost them and when they were done, I let them cool down so I could coat them in the blue corn tortilla chips.
I don't have a food processor or anything, so I had to crush up the chips with a cook's best tools, my hands. I dipped the nugs in a mixture of egg and a little bit of kefir so the chips had something to stick to.
The nugs turned out surprisingly well. The chips added an interesting color and texture to this classic chicken nugget. After this experiment, I will definitely coat my chicken in chips from now on.
After my nuggets were all situated, I cooked the cauliflower and cheese mezzelune. They only took 3 minutes to cook, so it was definitely the most painless part of the process.
No pasta dish is complete without a sauce, so I decided to make a white wine cream sauce situation. I started by sautéing some garlic and crushed red pepper (pantry ingredients) in a mixture of coconut and olive oil. After the garlic was toasty, I added in the wine and let it cook down for a few minutes.
After the wine cooked down, I splashed in some of the kefir to make the sauce a little creamy. Turns out when the sauce got hit with the kefir it did not like it. It immediately started to separate, so I cut off the heat and added some more kefir in hopes it would fix the current situation.
To try and salvage the kefir situation, I added in some of the string cheese to make the sauce a little thicker. I also added in the spinach for some color. To give the sauce a little somethin' somethin', I added some lemon zest at the end for a fresh kick.
The sauce ended up coming together pretty nicely minus a few chunks of string cheese floating around. It may not have been the prettiest sauce I've ever made, but it had a great flavor. It was creamy, spicy, and the freshness of the lemon brought it all together at the end.
This toast has me saying "bone apple tea." I almost forgot about the bread, so I threw it in the oven at the last minute with a little bit of cheese on top. String cheese is surprisingly hard to break down efficiently, so that's why there's not a lot on there.
The Final Product
Overall, I ended up having a solid meal. The chicken was crispy and the perfect complement to the creamy filling of the pasta. The toast was perfect for mopping up any leftover sauce.
Final Thoughts
This experiment definitely went better than expected. My years of watching Chopped finally paid off because I was able to make something delicious out of completely random ingredients. I would definitely do this again so that I can continue to try new ingredients. The Fearless Flyer comes out with a new edition every month, so who knows? Maybe I will be back at it again next month.