Phase 2 of Paper Chef 25 – the first three ingredients have been chosen…

The final ingredient list after all nominations was: Chile peppers, zucchini (courgettes), crawfish (crayfish), scallions (spring onions), cocoa nibs, italian prune plums, saffron, blueberries, olives, chicken, peaches, rosemary, five spice (the chinese blend of five spices), ‘skin’ (presumably of anything), basil, smoked swordfish, cod roe, aubergine (eggplant), lard, sardines, caraway seeds, lemon cucumbers and cardamom.

A pretty wild and wacky list I thought. The next stage is to pick three of these completely at random – and for that I turn to my trusty TRUE random number generator, random.org, which uses atmospheric noise to generate random numbers, which, if true, is far better than the fake random numbers that computers generate. Anyway, they have lots of tools, including the ‘sequence’ tool that picks random numbers from a list without duplicates – which is what I want. Our numbers this time were 16, 18 and 1 which translates into:

• smoked swordfish – which I am choosing to interpret as any smoked fish for those with difficulty or issues using swordfish and as anything smoked for those who can’t even manage fish.
• eggplant (or aubergine) – again, you may substitute, but who would want to?
• chile peppers – I’m tempted to break the official rules and ban substitution on this one, but what the heck – if you are allergic or have dietary issues, pick something that you classify as hot or spicy.

Remember – these are the first three ingredients of four – this gives you a chance to get a jump on grocery shopping and planning before the fourth ingredient and theme are announced on Friday. Then you cook and write about it before next Wednesday, September 12th.

Also, we carry the non-used ingredients over to next month, so they get another chance at fame and posterity next time…