- Hi, my name's Anaiah and I'm seven years old
and today I'm gonna have two chefs compete
to make my dream dish.
(growls)
(dramatic music)
- Hi there, I'm Hannah.
- And I'm Matthew.
- Nice to meet you.
So we have a question for you,
if you were a monster what would you eat?
- Spaghetti, meatballs.
But the meatballs is gonna be eyeballs.
- [Both] Eyeball.
- Meatballs.
- I don't know what I can do for that.
- If the meatballs are eyeballs,
what's the spaghetti?
- Guess.
- Worms.
- No.
- Look, I am a mother, I don't have time for guessing games.
You just gotta tell me what you want
and I will serve it up.
- What would it be, what would the noodles be.
- It's something green.
- Grass?
- Yes.
- Okay.
- The sauce is gonna be pink sauce.
I called it, pinky, pinky pink sauce.
- Pink, I could do some sort of penne a la vodka
but I'm not gonna serve alcohol to a kid.
Can you draw this for us now?
- [Hannah] Oh is that the bowl?
- [Anaiah] There's gonna be grass where it needs to be.
- The green looks great on the picture
but I don't think that actually applies to good food.
- [Matthew] Have you ever tried grass in real life before?
- No.
- I've eaten grass.
(record scratches)
I used to eat grass and sand when I was a kid.
Would you have been my friend if you saw me
eating grass and sand?
- Mmm, yeah.
- Yeah.
- Oh, that's so sweet. - thank you.
- She's the cutest frickin kid I've ever seen.
- Now what color eyes are they?
- [Matthew] Yeah.
- Pink.
- Pink eyes. - Pink eyes.
- I choose to draw eyeballs because monsters eat eyeballs.
- [Hannah] Is pink your favorite color?
- [Anaiah] Yes.
- I can tell, you've got pink, pink, pink, pink.
(laughs)
So does the sauce go on top of the eyeballs?
- It's a surprise.
- [Both] A surprise.
- There's just so many games with this kid.
- Close your eyes.
- Okay I will.
- Please let it not be like another eyeball
inside of an eyeball.
- Okay all done.
- So this is beautiful,
do you think that Hannah and I can make this for you?
- Mmhmm.
Good luck.
- Okay, thank you.
- I'm gonna need it.
(playful music)
So here's my plan, I know Matthew is gonna go savory
so I'm gonna make a green ice cream spaghetti
with red cake pop truffles coated in pink candy melts
with some decoration on top to make them look like eyeballs
and then for her pink sauce I'm just gonna do
a very simple strawberry syrup.
(exhales)
- Okay, so here is my plan.
I'm gonna make a ring of classic spaghetti
with marinara sauce and then I'm going
to make eyeball meatballs with cheese in the center
and olives for the pupils and then I'm gonna put some herbs
as the grass, I'll have some Parmesan cheese
and some sort of pink Alfredo sauce
in the center for contrast.
(upbeat music)
- I'm starting with a fresh box of cake.
(laughs)
Right off the bat I'm a little bit of a mess
and I'm a little bit nervous.
So I'm following these instructions,
doing a great job.
Perfectly done boxed cake mix.
- Starting with some olive oil and some butter in my pot
to cook my onions and garlic.
- He's like chef-y, I'm mommy.
See I hate adding food coloring to stuff,
like that's my kind of anti mom stance.
I'm gonna get these into the oven
and start on the ice cream.
- Hannah mentioned ice cream, I was floored,
there's no way I would have chosen to do that.
Hannah is ambitious.
Right now I'm just kind of sauteing the onions
until they get caramelized and soft and then I'm gonna add
in tomato paste to do a technique called pincage,
that's when I add some nuance to the marinara sauce.
- I'm listening to Matthew give a step by step
of his recipe and it's like all these long words
I don't understand.
He's like Martha Stewart.
Well my sauce is a nuanced strawberry compote water mix.
A little water, I don't know how much,
so I'm just gonna add as needed.
- Okay, so I'm gonna start mixing my meatballs
to make the eyeball meatballs.
So I have three pounds of ground beef here
and I'm gonna add different spices
and some bread crumbs and some egg.
I'm gonna add ricotta that's like my secret ingredient.
- So I'm gonna try something truly evil.
Instead of using green food coloring,
I'm gonna see if I can color the ice cream with kale.
- Adding kale to ice cream is an A plus mom move
but I'm not sure if Anaiah will like it
- Yeah, maybe this is the next big parenting trend.
Hashtag kale ice cream.
Hashtag tricking my kids.
- So now I'm gonna add a little bit of these sauteed onions
for the eyeballs here are tiny little mozzarella balls
that I'm gonna put into the meatballs,
so off to the oven I go.
And while those bake I'm gonna start boiling my pasta
and this pasta's gonna cook for about 10 minutes or so
and I'm gonna add herbs and my tomato paste
into my tomato sauce to my onion,
I made marinara sauce and meatballs
literally thousands of times in my life,
but I don't know if it'll taste like the spaghetti
she's used to.
- So another trick I saw on the internet,
you take an empty can and you poke holes in it
with a hammer and nails and then you put your ice cream in
and you can push it through and it makes spaghetti.
It looked very easy on the video.
Oh, okay, looks good.
- So now I'm gonna add the herbs and the pureed tomatoes
to make a sauce, so I'm adding a little bit of chili flakes,
not too much and then some parsley, dried basil,
some more salt, two bay leafs and this will just simmer.
- So usually with cake pops you mix a tub of frosting
but I think I'm gonna get some cream cheese out
of the fridge too and be like a mixture
of cream cheese and frosting.
Okay, so this is nice and mixed in,
and then I have these pink candy melts
to coat the outside.
Your meatballs smell incredible.
- Thank you.
I have some extra, do you want to try it?
- Yeah, I gotta see what I'm up against.
Oh, they're okay.
(laughs)
- The olives are gonna kind of be just like the pupils
of the eye, it couldn't have come out better.
- [Interviewer] What kind of foods don't you like?
- I don't like olives and I don't like them to put olives
into my food.
- I'm just doing some various sized cake pops.
So the candy melt that I used to dip these cake pops
is just not working for me, it's not smooth,
it's lumpy, it's too thick.
I am struggling so hard to get some round
meatball shaped cake pops.
- I'm making a roux right now,
a roux is roughly about equal parts fat and flour.
So I just took raw beets and pureed it.
Let's start with that amount
and I can add more as I go.
But oh!
Right?
That's cool.
- So I'm piping the pupils on the cake pops
and it's going well, I'm getting like the outline
of the iris and then the pupil
and then I step back and look at it holistically,
and it did not turn out the way I thought.
They look like boobs.
- [Matthew] Oh.
(dramatic music)
- I can't breath.
Honest opinion Matthew?
More boob or less boob.
- I mean I haven't seen too many boobs in my life.
So I'm going to chop some herbs, chives, parsley
and basil to put the grass on top.
I'm going to put some sauce in the pan, pasta,
and some cheese.
- Wow.
- Woop.
Gonna make a little bit of a well in the center.
- Okay, so for decorating this second round of cake pops,
I just coated it in white chocolate
that I mixed a bunch of coconut oil into.
They stayed nice and round,
they're not all lumpy.
And then I had these little pink rock candies
and I'm gonna make them like the iris of the eye.
So it's a pink eye, it's just not a boob.
This makes me feel happy.
Look at that.
So second round of eyeballs are looking amazing.
Everything I learned from my mistakes is now turning
into a success.
- So now I'm putting on the eyeball meatballs,
I'm going to pour this beet Alfredo into the well
of my little eyeball grass nest
and then I'll put a little bit
of Parmesan cheese over the top.
I'm done.
I know I cooked the best food I could today.
I just hope it's something that Anaiah will love.
- So this is my hole can.
So let's see?
Oh god I'm not strong enough, okay.
Well it's definitely working.
It's just very hard to do.
- So I see Hannah, she's like, hacking away at this can
and I'm like there has to be a better way.
I gotta help her out.
I say you were struggling with the can thing,
if you use this, I think you can squeeze
the ice cream out better.
- And I won't have to struggle with my jar in the can.
Oh.
- Yay.
- This is amazing.
Thank you so, oh my gosh.
So let's see how this ricer works.
Oh sh, (shouts)
look at that.
Oh my god I'm gonna start crying.
I can't believe how well that works.
Seriously it was like night and day,
it was so easy and so amazing.
Ta-da.
- It was a journey, we finally got done,
and I think we did a good job.
- Good job.
(smacks)
(dramatic music)
- At this point I've just gone through
an entire emotional roller coaster.
I took her drawing that was very literal
and I made a ver abstract interpretation.
All I know is that I did not put cake pop boobs
on this plate.
- So I'm feeling great about my dish.
I have the perfect spaghetti.
The marinara sauce is (kisses) ah.
The meatballs, they turned out perfectly.
I think Anaiah is gonna be impressed
with how it looks like her dish
but how it still reminds her of home.
- Bring on the monster spaghetti.
(roars)
Spaghetti.
Boy that looks like something that a monster would eat.
- Yes, that's what I was going for.
Little piece of a olive.
(chews)
(gags)
Mmmm, mmm, it tastes good.
It tastes like my mom and my grandma's spaghetti.
- She said it reminds her of how her mom
and her grandmother made it.
I can't do better than that.
- Hmm, good.
Tastes like yogurt.
Oh I think I know what this is.
It's cheese.
(chomps)
My favorite part is the spaghetti.
My second favorite part is the pink sauce.
When I drawed my drawing, that's how I 'spected.
(whoops)
Hey what's this pink stuff.
It's hard and so's this black stuffs a little hard,
now I'm gonna try the spaghetti.
This is ice cream.
Tastes like vanilla ice cream.
- She immediately said vanilla,
so didn't notice the kale.
Eyeballs.
Tastes like vanilla cupcake.
I want to find out what the pink stuff is.
The pink stuff is crunchy, it's candy.
My first favorite part is the candy
and my second favorite part is the stuff for the cupcake
and my third favorite part is the black frosting.
- So she tasted everything, seems like she liked all of it.
So going into this deciding round.
I think either one is fair game.
(playful music)
- Hey Anaiah.
- Hello.
- So Anaiah, I heard you say you liked both dishes a lot.
Which one,
- 'cause I like dinner and desert.
- It is kind of like you had your dinner
and then you had your desert.
So which one was your favorite.
- The spaghetti.
- Spaghetti.
- Yeah.
- It was me.
- I mean, I'm not surprised.
He deserved it.
- I'm glad you liked it.
- Yay.
- But we're glad you enjoyed both.
Oh my god.
- Look Matthew here's your prize.
- Oh my god Anaiah.
Wow.
Hannah and her ice cream.
I tried it, it was delicious.
She did a great job but end of the day
I'm really glad that I came out on top.
If you want to win you have to keep your eyes on the prize.
Or I mean, I guess, a bowl full of eyes on the prize.
(jazzy music)
(clicks)