I have begun to see why Owen is always so busy! It takes a lot of time and energy just to host one installment of The Paper Chef competitions - more than you'd think, to be honest. I have been dreaming about it all weekend, that is how bad it's gotten around here. I have also been checking in my junk email bin for wayward entries that get siphoned off into it for some reason. I'm not sure why, but many entries were silently waiting for me in that folder yesterday and Sunday...I think I have to fix my junk mail filters.

But. On with The Paper Chef! Whose cuisine will reign supreme this month? We'll have to wait to find that out, but not to find out who is competing in this round. Who has the guts? Who has the glory? Who has the gall to combine eggplant, chocolate, stale bread and pomegranate into one dish?!? Read on...if you dare.

First to delve into our strange mix of ingredients was Barbara of winos and foodies - who presents us with chilli and chocolate chicken on fried eggplant with a Pomegranate and chocolate sauce and fried bread crumbs. A mouthful in words and I assume in taste! She told me in her email that the chicken had a sort of hot/sweet taste, balanced by the sweet/sour taste of the dressing. Sounds great to me!

Next to brave the slightly odd list of ingredients list was Samer of samer/thoughts who brings us eggplant for dessert: a quasi-bread pudding with eggplant and a pomegranate chocolate sauce, which looks quite delicious. I don't see if we use zucchini in desserts with chocolate why we can't use eggplant?? Samer shows us we can!

Next up, raspberry sour of the sour patch, who incidentally is allergic to eggplant (an allergy I hadn't realized was possible until now!) and was granted substitution rights with zucchini. Raspberry sour manages to wow us with a choose-your-own-adventure paper chef salad! See? Chocolate on salad is not such a terrible thing!

Lyn at lex cuinaria turns the tables on us with a formidable concoction of bitter chocolate eggplant parmigiana with blue swimmer crab. It both looks and sounds fabulous! Lyn says "the sweet, salty and bitter flavours in the eggplant dish really come out at you in with such an unusual combination and the texture of the crispy skinned eggplant and the velvety sauce is amazing!".

Sasha of pabulum indeed rises to the challenge with her gorgeous truffles that not only have eggplant in them, but are also garnished with sweet eggplant chips. She even thinks she would make these again...something not many competitors are willing to do!

Caryn of delicious! delicious! chaps our lips with her Roasted Red Pepper and Eggplant Dip in which she uses not one, not two but three different kinds of peppers (as well as all the paper chef ingredients, of course).

Fatemeh of gastronome makes our mouths water with her cocoa-pomegranate roast chicken with eggplant stuffing, which turned out, in her own words "surprisingly well". And I know pomegranate is difficult to find...but someone had to turn up the burners on Paper Chef, and who better to do that than me?!?

Even though he didn't think he would be able to make it in time, Owen managed to put together his chilli-chocolate eggplant with a pomegranate-onion sauce. His wife assures him that the sauce "adds a lot of depth and brings out the eggplant flavor", with which I would have to agree - chocolate is good! Let's hear it for Owen's first attempt at competing for his own coveted Paper Chef title!

And last but certainly not least - Daffy of kitchen crazy made bread pudding topped with caramelized eggplant and pomegranate AND sauteed eggplant and mushrooms with pomegranate red wine sauce, served in a chocolate bread bowl. For someone who had a paper to write this weekend and didn't get much sleep, she sure got a lot of amazing cooking done!

And that is it for Paper Chef, March 2005 edition - unless of course I have missed anyone, in which case, please let me know as soon as possible so I can forward your entry along to Sam for judging.