We all know that Dallas chefs are great at cheffing. So we thought it might be fun to give them a chance to show off their chef creativity and skills with a new challenge we'll be calling "The Box." Once a month or so, we'll invite a new lucky soul to attempt to conquer The Box. Their challenge will be to create something awesome out of whatever ingredients are in the box. It'll be like Chopped plus Punk'd, only less terrible. We'll feature everyone from fancy chefs to food truck owners. This month, it's Brian C. Luscher, chef/owner of The Grape. And it's a doozy.
The task for Luscher was simple: Make a fancy appetizer out of the ingredients in The Box. At least one item must be fried (FRY IT!!). If he chooses to opt out of one ingredient, that's fine. But if he doesn't use the ingredient, he has to eat it while I eat his appetizer creation.
Box contents:
Natural Light Spam (with bacon!) Easy Cheese Pickled quail eggs with jalapeños Cheetos Hot chocolate mix Baby food (apples & apricots) Vienna sausages
When I dropped off Luscher's The Box, before he saw the contents, he asked, "Should this be, like, refrigerated or anything?" Me: "Nope." Him: "Dammit."
Then we gave him three days to come up with something great. With all those choice ingredients at his disposal, this should be a breeze, right?
Three days later, Luscher had this badass creation to share. How friggin' beautiful is that Vienna Sausage Spam Cheetos Quail Egg Terrine? Ingredients: elevated. In fact, the dish was so legit-looking that when Luscher posted it on his Facebook page, he got these responses:
When I tweeted about it using the above picture, I got several responses like this one:
Freaking ridiculous is what that is, @jovid52. It tasted like Spam, but better (and hey, that was the hard part, right?) -- more Cheetos-y. The jalapenos covered a lot of tastes that I thought wouldn't work well together and that baby food sauce was somehow pretty nice. Luscher worked serious magic on this box of shit. It was good enough that if you put this in front of a poseur foodie and told them that it was a delicacy, they would believe you. And they would recommend the dish to friends. "Oh, man -- you gotta go to The Grape. Get that terrine he makes with the sausages from Vienna in it. So good."
Luscher describes his creation in the following videos:
First, the presentation of the dish:
Then, the breakdown of the terrine:
And finally, let's fry some shit and throw some middle fingers:
Yes, I ate the fried piece. The beer batter actually wasn't bad. Hear that, State Fair of Texas Big Tex Choice Awards competitors? Not. Bad.
Congratulations, Brian C. Luscher. You beat The Box.
The Box: 0. The Chefs: 1.
