I’m NoshGirl, and when it comes to contests (and desserts) I don’t mess around…

Hellooooo readers!  Checking in from warm (ok, make that hot), sunny Singapore!  Posting will be a little lighter this week, but I just HAD to check in because I’ve got some exciting stuff going on!  As some of you know, late last year I had participated in and WON first place in the Marx Food Mushroom Recipe Challenge.  In addition to shipments of yummilicious fresh wild mushrooms, I’m now a participant competing against 28 other food bloggers in the Marx Foods Ridiculously Delicious Challenge! (dum dum DUM!)

So what is so RIDICULOUSLY delicious about this challenge?

Well, the grand prize for one thing.  This is a multi-step contest, but the big winner gets THREE of the items below.

The Goodie List

Kobe Beef Sliders OR Kobe Beef Burgers	Whole Quail OR Semi-Boneless Quail
Wild Boar St. Louis Spare Ribs	Pink Salmon Fillets
Kangaroo Burgers OR Ground Kangaroo Meat	Wild Mushroom Sampler (contents may change)
Live Oyster Sampler	Ultimate Chile Head Sampler
10lb Specialty Burger Sampler	Mega Pantry Sampler
Pekin Duck Breasts	Fresh Blood Oranges
5lbs Frozen Wild Huckleberries	20lb Heirloom Potato Sampler
1lb Fresh Daruma Wasabi	Specialty Sausage Sampler
14lb Dried Bean Sampler	1lb Bourbon Vanilla Beans
Superior Spanish Saffron Threads	2 Live Geoducks
Edible Flower Assortment & Microflower Blend

Now here’s the difficult part – for my first entry, I need to choose my favorite three.  Major toughie  – I love food so much (that wasn’t TOO obvious, was it? Ha!) and they all sound delish (why hello there, fresh oysters…have you met the Kobe beef sliders?).  But if I HAD to make a choice (ugh, it’s like picking my 3 favorite types of cheese – just can’t be done) this is how I would make my picks:

1. Pekin Duck Breasts

Yep, that’s Pekin, not Peking.  As I’ve mentioned multiple times, fats are my weakness – duck and pork fats in particular.  I haven’t worked with duck before, so I would LOVE to have Pekin ducks to experiment with.  I’ve always been intrigued by the process of rendering duck fat (really, must I go on after that),  so I would pan roast the duck, pairing it with an orange and rosemary glaze to complement the rich, fatty duck meat.  I’d use the remaining rendered duck fat to make duck fat fries, finished off with some truffle oil and truffle salt that I recently received from Marx Food.  Ready to pull up a chair yet?

2.  2 Live Geoducks

 

I swear I’m not just choosing things named “duck.”  I first heard of the geoduck in, of all places, a fiction novel 12 years ago (yes, in addition to being a major foodie, I’m a major book nerd!).  Fun fact – did you know the name of this mysterious bivalve is pronounced “gooey-duck”?  Despite looking a little cray-cray (come on, you know what I mean), geoducks are known for their savory flavor, crunch texture and predominance in Asian cuisine.  If I were lucky enough to have two live geoducks at my disposal, I’d season them Hawaiian poke style with sea-salt, soy sauce, sesame oil, chili peppers and seaweed.  The geoduck is hearty enough to hold its own in terms of flavor, why mess with an over-fussy preparation?

3. Specialty Sausage Sampler

I admit it was supremely difficult to choose my last pick – I had narrowed it down to a list of oh….8 items or so.  But the Game Meat Sausage Sampler finally won out due to sheer variety – and what yummy variety it is!  Does Duck Sausage with Foie Gras & Sauterne Wine intrigue you?  Do Pheasant Cognac sausage or Wild Boar with Roasted Garlic & Marsala tickle your fancy?  These are just three of the twelve varieties included in the sampler. Excuse me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard.

There are SO many possibilities with this sampler, but I know at the very least that the Wild Boar Sausage with Cranberries & Shiraz would go into my Thanksgiving stuffing, I’d pair the Buffalo Sausage with Chipotle Chilies with a homemade beer cheddar soup, and the lamb merguez sausage would go perfectly with a Moroccan bastilla.  OMG I’m so excited and the sampler isn’t even in my hot little hands yet!

There you have it, kiddos, my top 3 pics of a super-scrumptious list.  I hope I win the grand prize, I’d LOVE to play around with and prepare these three delicacies! 

Now tell me, which three items would you choose?