Family Best Time >> Food

What are we doing tonight ? Evening…cooking contest with friends!

Whether you manage to scorch spaghetti bolo' in a frying pan or make cakes with your eyes closed "too easy", you will love (almost as much as chocolate) the idea of ​​an evening that you are given. offers for this weekend, namely the Culinary Contest Between Friends evening (also works with your family, your neighbors, your goldfish,...). We explain everything to you:

Ingredients

1/ A group of friends, cousins, neighbours, nice people with whom you can have a good laugh. We therefore avoid inviting the heavy colleague, the aunt who cries like a madeleine for nothing or the teenager who groans as he breathes. We want to eat POSITIVE WAVES (and good food, optionally. Well… if we manage to make something edible).

2/ A place to cook. It doesn't matter how big and well equipped it is. On the contrary, it could even spice things up and make it even funnier! The key is to nevertheless have more than 3 dead branches and a flint to heat the dishes. “No but hello, you live in 2015 and you make prehistoric fires! Hello. »

3/ Three jars. Or big bowls Or other things in which you can put lots of secret bits of paper and pick some.

4/ Well… paper, hey. And pens. Which work.

5/ A good playlist. Oh yeah, because it's better to have fun with music! There are two schools there. Those who choose songs on which we can rave because we know them by heart (“You will forget me” by Larusso, “Ce rêve bleu” by Aladdin,…) and those who do things from the inside out, by listening ONLY to music about food for the occaz, such as "La femme chocolat" by Olivia Ruiz, "Du Ketchup Pour Mon Hamburger" by William Sheller, "Fruit salad" by Bourvil, "Le cake d' Amour" from Peau D'Âne (the film) and again "Banana Split" from Lio.

6/ A trophy which will be awarded to the best Chef Entre Amis or to the best team. It could be a cookbook or some silly thing you bought while you were shopping, like a HUGE Kinder egg (like the ones we give to kids at Easter), a Barbie Kitchen, a chef's hat, a cooking class (because it's not because we won that we are good, especially if the others are really bad)…

The course of the evening

1/ Coffee brainstorming. Preferably on the terrace in the sun. After having sent invitations worthy of the name to our loved ones, An Almost Perfect Dinner style (on a parchment, in a bottle, customized with petals according to the theme – if you choose one), we give them an appointment in a café ( friends, not invites. That wouldn't make sense). Everyone will have to bring back a recipe book, bought, borrowed, stolen from their mother, it doesn't matter. There, between two coffees/Coca/sangria, we select AT LEAST 3 starter recipes, 3 main courses and 3 desserts. No need to worry about the harmony of the dishes ... since it is CHANCE that will decide then, Tchitcha! Only advice? Avoid making dishes that require too many ingredients because you will have to buy ALL of them

Alternative :instead of choosing "dishes", you can choose ingredients, like "eggs", "bread", "whiting", "strawberries",...

2/ Greedy chance. After shopping together, laughing at the prospect of the evening and doing a cart race if you feel like it, go to the chosen kitchen. There, if you are numerous, you can divide yourselves into teams, with names and battle cries that you invent (example:the Marmoset team, whose exasperating cries are oh so disturbing). If you're competing in one-to-ones, you can also, of course, choose your super cook's super name and shout ("Ouistitiii!"). Then, on slips of paper, you write the name of all the recipes. In one container, you put all the starters, in the other all the dishes and finally the names of the desserts in the last one. A representative of each team or a neutral person (like Me Frédéric Nadjar from La Nouvelle Star…or another friend. Simpler) then draws in turn either 1 starter, 1 main course and 1 dessert. In the end, we should only have ONE complete menu. The one you're all going to have to make.

Alternative -Continued :if you have chosen ingredients rather than dishes, you put your papers in a container then take out 2 for the starter, 2 for the main course and 2 for the dessert. Even more if you're capable.

> To read:"I'm the next great pastry chef:A little contest between friends:28 challenges to become the great pastry chef" by Tiphaine Campet, with lots of examples of challenges.

3/ The race is on. Once the 3 dishes (1 starter, 1 main course and 1 dessert) have been chosen, you start a timer and you get started. Yaaaa! All the rules are allowed and even low blows, there is no camera or public vote who cares (who will have the microwave first???). When the time written on the recipe ends, we stop the clock and raise our hands, like on TV or in movies with bank robberies. There, we put the dish aside (i.e. the starter, to start with). Then we do the same for the dish. Then for dessert.

4/ Evaluation. There, two options to decide between the dishes one by one:EITHER we have recourse to an external referee, like another friend (who cooks really TOO badly so that we take the risk of making him compete) or Me Frédéric Nadjar, OR the participants debate, even if it means acting in bad faith. And once the winner is designated, we give him the gift, on a crazy tune, like the music of the Champions League, we cry, we kiss, we thank the world of Cinema for having believed in us. And above all:we FOOD! And quick:it's going to be cold.

Bon courage appétit!