Introduction: Goat Cheese and Spam Mousse on Millet Pita Chip With Black Cherry, Date and Balsamic Reduction Sauce.
This is my entry for The Greatest Exo-Cooks appetizer challenge. I ended up using 5 of the ingredients instead of 4. The ones I chose were: Spam, goat cheese, millet, dates and condensed cream of chicken soup.
I am a mad man and never measure anything, so this Instructable is light on measurements, I apologize for the inconvenience. :)
Step 1: Making the Pita Chips.
To make the pita chips I started with just the condensed soup and ground Millet. After kneading it into a dough ball with the consistency of a ball of play-dough, I found the taste to be... well, millet-y. I wanted to go for more of a Chicken in a Biscuit taste so I added some celery seeds and some chicken bouillon.
Once the taste was right, I cooked them with a bit of canola oil on the range top. After they looked like pita bread I cut them into pieces and baked them for around 9 minutes until they were extra crispy.
One thing to keep in mind though, millet is not usually a good substitute for wheat flour. It is gluten free and the missing gluten makes the bread very flaky and easy to break apart. I suggest using a 50/50 mix of wheat and millet if you are not going to take the last step of baking the pita bread into chips.
Let the chips cool down to room temp before topping with the other ingredients.
Step 2: Making the Date, Black Cherry and Balsamic Reduction Sauce.
Super easy process.
I put some balsamic vinegar, come chopped and dried dates and some black cherry juice into a medium sauce pan and reduced it down.
Once the dates started to break down I strained all the bits out with a small strainer (keep the solid bits for stuffing a pork tender loin).
Put the strained sauce back on heat and add a small amount of a water and corn starch slurry. Bring the sauce back up to a hard boil and look for the consistency in the video. It should coat the bottom of the pan.
I put this finished sauce in the fridge before transferring it to a squeeze bottle for presentation.
Step 3: Making the Spam and Goat Cheese Mousse.
For the mousse I put half of a Spam loaf, one mini goat cheese loaf and one seeded habanero into a food processor. I wanted everything to cream together in this step so I left the Spam and goat cheese out to raise to room temp. However once it was creamed I put it into the fridge to bring the temp back down.
The reason I wanted everything cold was the fat content of this mousse. Between the Spam and goat cheese I did not want the fat to separate into the heavy cream and mess with the consistency.
Once the reduction sauce and the creamed Spam and cheese was fridge temp, I whipped up some heavy cream and folded in the Spam/cheese mix.
Step 4: Presentation!
I found the fanciest plate in the house, put down some of the best looking pita chips, using a 1oz portioning scoop I dolloped a bit of the mousse on top, drizzled the reduction sauce and topped it with some fresh parsley and chives.
This turned out really well! If you make it let me know how it turned out!