Not even the prospect of cooking with rattlesnake was enough to goad Seattle chef Kaleena Bliss into taking a gamble on a more familiar ingredient in the “Casino Royale” cooking tournament on Food Network’s “Chopped.”
In the premiere episode that aired in early January, contestants had the option to roll the dice: An even number gave them a more useful ingredient; an odd number might be something worse.
“At least they gave [the rattlesnake] to us in a can and we didn’t have to fabricate it,” said Bliss, executive chef at Conversation in Seattle’s Thompson Hotel, in an interview after her first episode of “Chopped” aired.
Of the three dishes Bliss prepared in that episode, her orecchiette pasta, featuring smoked rattlesnake and purple spinach pesto with a pickle-flavored potato-chip breadcrumb, proved her most successful creation.
“The judges didn’t actually have anything bad to say about it and I felt