Every week, your challenge is to create an eye-opening dish within our capricious themes and parameters. Blog your submission on Open Salon under your real name by Monday 10 a.m. EST -- with photos and your story behind the dish -- and we'll republish the winners on Salon on Tuesday. (It takes only 30 seconds to start a blog.) And yes, mashed potato sculpture counts as a dish. Emphatically.
THIS WEEK'S WINNER!
Lucy Mercer! For a chocolate-mint grasshopper cake, fresh with the promise of springtime mint. (Method included.)
AND HOW ABOUT A HAND FOR OUR CATEGORY WINNERS?
In the Green Salsa category:
We have two entries for tomatillo salsa and, wonderfully, two totally different stories and experiences of them. Linda Shiue regales us with a tale of how she willingly walked into a timeshare sales pitch for the promise of the salsa verde-stewed tortilla chips called chilaquiles ... and a history lesson of an Irish battalion fighting for Mexico in the Mexican American War, called the Batalón de San Patricio. (Recipes for chilaquiles and tomatillo salsa verde included.)
And Jenna Charlton tells us how she came across the magic of tomatillos while trying, finally, her hand at farming -- with her baby in tow. (Recipe for tomatillo salsa verde included.)
In the Turkish Delight category:
Kipouros, for a super-cool green garlic-yogurt-chickpea soup with mint oil, the kind of dish that pulls off the trick of being refreshing and satisfying at the same time. (Recipe for Şiveydiz included.)
In the Parenting With Chlorophyll category:
Mamie Chen, for a lesson in success and failure told in green-curry-infused hard-boiled eggs (really!), based on a classic Chinese snack, tea-eggs. There's also a fascinating lesson on how to extract super-green chlorophyll from green foods. (Recipe for green curry deviled eggs included.)
In the Steak and Sauce category:
Walter Blevins, for a post on chimichurri, the explosive garlic-herb Argentine sauce for grilled beef. (Recipes for chimichurri and Santa Maria-style tri-tip steak included.)
In the Lunchbox category:
Lisa Kuebler, for the cutest four-leaf-clover-shaped cheese sandwich you or her kids ever did see. I want to give that sandwich a hug!
And in the Putting the Fun Back in Fasting category:
Trixie Dorais, for fun tips and guidelines for ... a green-vegetable soup fast. I admit that my first reaction was of stunned disbelief, but this kind of convinced me: "Four days is the magic number. On day one, I am confident and excited. By day two, reality has reared its ugly head, but I am halfway done! By day three, I question the value of my existence, but tomorrow it will be over. By day four, I question the value of the universe, but I’ve succeeded. Hooray for me and my petty victories!" I mean, how do we best appreciate what we enjoy unless we deny ourselves from time to time? (Guidelines for green soup included.)
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AND NOW, FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE:
It seems like forever since the Super Bowl, right before Mardi Gras, officially made New Orleans the partyingest place on Earth. But in anticipation of that night, we ran a Kitchen Challenge calling for your best game-time snacks. And, shockingly, only one person came through with a method for chicken wings. (Thanks, Lisa Kuebler!) Only one! For the most sleazily lovable of all foods!
And the demand for wings continues. After weeks of receiving reader e-mails wondering what happened to all the wings we were hoping to see, let's give this another shot:
This week, the challenge is to rock your best wings: Are they fried, grilled, baked, roasted? Will you go fancy and confit them? Get controversial and boil them? We're ready, be they tarted up with sauces or sticky with glazes or rubbed dry with spices. And in the spirit of exoticism, extra points for wings from non-chicken birds!
Be sure to tag your posts: SKC wings
Scoring and winning
Scores will be very scientific, given for appealing photos, interesting stories behind your submissions, creativity, execution and resisting the pun "wingin' it" in your post.
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