A New Frontier: The Daring Kitchen

In September, The Washington Post published an article about online kitchen and cooking clubs, including the Daring Kitchen. I enjoy trying new things, and thought the Daring Kitchen sounded like fun. How could I make it more fun? Enlist someone to join with me, of course! I told my sister-in-law about it, and she is so wonderful she agreed to join with me.

The Daring Kitchen has a monthly cooking challenge that is "hosted" by one of its members. Each month, the challenge is posted, and members then create the recipes in the challenge. At the end of the month-long cooking period, they publish results. I can absolutely admit that the mechanics of the Daring Kitchen were a little confusing at first. When I finally was able to access the site's forum on the challenges, I was still confused about what I had to do when! However, the first challenge was to make Pho, a lovely Vietnamese soup with noodles, vegetables and protein. I love Pho in the chillier months of the year, and was excited to try it!

ONe Friday evening, I went to the store to stock up on a few essentials I needed to make the Pho. I used the quick recipe for Vietnamese Chicken Pho, but being me it still took me a while, as I fussed with the condiments longer than necessary and spent a while chopping vegetables just so. The only alteration I made from the recipe online was to both toast the spices and char the onion and ginger. In order to do the latter, I simply put the onion, halved, and the ginger root, with the skin still on, about 3-4" under the broiler and let them go until I could see some char appearing on the onion.

When it was done we had steamy, fragrant bowls of lovely soup, and tons of leftovers. I ate Pho leftovers, and the flavors in the broth always deepened a little more. I even had lovely photos (my mother can vouch for this!) of my soup, but they've since disappeared. I SHOULD have posted about this wonderful success back in October but missed the date because I was travelling. Why post now? Well, today is the day for the next challenge results to be posted - this is context. Any time I post about the Daring Kitchen, you'll be seeing a new adventure in the kitchen!