While taking the day off from the kitchen Sunday night, I hear someone jump out of their chair and in a very excited voice tell me I need to enter this. This what? Well, that response ended my day off in the kitchen….not such a bad thing for Deb I must admit.

Well, to back up a little, you all are pretty familiar with the fact that I have now rented space as a test kitchen for putting together my first cookbook. Well, I have finally moved all my equipment to the test kitchen, which as it turns out is not so good. When presented with the challenge of creating a dish in 24 hours or less, with 3 ingredients chosen by Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard and RedEye Chicago (Virtual Kitchen Stadium 2), my challenge was what the heck was I going to use to create what I was tasting in my mouth!

So, as I sent the hubby out to scavenge for groceries, I took off to my neighbors, Bill and Lisa, to scavenge for the utensils. Fortunately for me, Bill and I have similar cooking styles and have grown up on similar cuisines, so it was a pretty safe bet I would find what I needed from them, down to my favorite Chef knife. Thanks guys, you saved me.

So, back to the ingredients, today’s challenge had to use apple, basil, and olive. Hmmmm….. So immediately of course I’m thinking pork, but then I’ve been seeing figs in the markets lately and what a better way of incorporating figs but with pork. Ok, now we have the basil aspect…no need to talk about pork and apple, that’s like peanut butter and jelly! Oh yea, and don’t forget, OLIVE! Well, it took me about 15 minutes of saying no, don’t like that and then for fun I just put all my figs, apples, olives in a bowl and threw a few raisins in for fun, oh my goodness….it tasted pretty damn good! But we still have the basil thing hanging over my head. Well, we gotta keep the fruit from turning so we need some acid and then voila….it hit me. Orange juice and basil are incredible together so, yes I made a vinaigrette to go on the fig and apple salad.

For my protein, I made medallions from a pork tenderloin, seared in a hot skillet with little olive oil, removed them from the skillet sprinkled with salt and pepper and place them on a warm platter in the oven while I made a phenomenally easy Madeira wine sauce using a little chicken broth and sour cream. Add a little tri-colored orzo for some starch and you’ve got my entry into the contest.

Utensils down and hands up in fewer than 30 minutes and check out for yourself what the outcome was. I didn’t win, but wound up with a great new recipe for my repertoire. Thanks RedEye Chicago and Stephanie Izard for the opportunity, see y’all next week!

Click here to see my official entry with recipes.