iron chef....church style.

work holiday functions have the potential to be duds.
but not at our church!
so chris's whole department held an iron chef cooking competition at his boss's house.
we're divided into teams and randomly assigned a dish.
chris and i got the appetizer.
oh and the secret ingredient....peppers.
and you can't just use a dash of pepper in something. it has to be prominent in the dish.

i'm not gonna lie....i spent waaaaay too much time researching recipes.
but i'm super excited with what we ended up making.
i'm a hummus lover.
so i decided i would make a hummus trio served in bell peppers as the bowls!
i made a roasted red pepper hummus, a chipotle pepper hummus and a jalapeno hummus.
holla.

the ingredients.

jalapeno hummus.

roasted red pepper hummus

chipotle hummus

the spread

don't worry...i'll share the recipes.
the red pepper hummus was a bit sweet and mild. however, the chipotle and jalapeno had some kick.
i recommend serving the spicier ones with cucumbers or fresh sliced bell peppers. that way you have a balance of cool and sweet with the spicy.
i made some seasoned toasted pita triangles to serve with mine, along with bell pepper and cucumbers.
yum!

this was my first time ever making hummus.
i love hummus, but i've always been scared to make my own.
so easy!
it took me about an hour and a half to make the 3 batches...not too shabby.
and i'm happy to say that my team won first place and the hummus was a hit!

there was soooo much yummy food! amazing that there were that many dishes all full of peppers!
and...our team won! woot woot! here's the lovely winning dishes on my team.

ok, of course hummus as appetizer.

then some flipping awesome chicken stuffed peppers for the entree.

a roasted pepper and corn rice for the side.

and chile spiced dark chocolate truffles. oh my goodness!

so you want the recipe? well i can say that i didn't come up with these on my own.
here are the links!

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus - this one only calls for 1/2 a cup of red peppers, but i used a whole jar, which was more like 1 cup.

Jalapeno Hummus - this one calls for curry powder, but i left that out and it tasted just fine!

Chipotle Hummus - this particular recipe makes a huge batch and i only needed enough to fill a bell pepper, so i modified the portions a bit.

the great thing about hummus is that you can modify the recipes however you want. there's no right or wrong! you could practically add anything to it.
i want to make one with black beans, chickpeas and chipotle peppers. yuuum.
the only ingredient that is really pricey is the tahini. it's around $9 for a jar. but, i made 3 large batches of hummus and still have about a half of a jar left, so a little goes a long way.