The Good Rabbi's Blog

All teams had to draw assignment sheets, which indicated our designated proteins (the central ingredient), and country of influence for each course. Each team had to produce a salad, a soup, an appetizer (a specific one, which I'll get into in a moment), an entrée, and a dessert. All courses had to be part of the fusion trend, where they are presented in a western style, but utilise eastern ingredients and cooking methods.

For a salad, we were not given a protein per se (it's a salad, after all), but we were told to make the salad with a Japanese influence. After some digging for ingredients, we made a salad out of quinoa that was cooked in miso and water (thus infusing the miso flavour). We created a miso-green onion dressing, molded and plated the quinoa over some greens, and topped it with the dressing, and then some fried tofu. This may sound weird, but it was excellent, and earned us full points. Aaron was the one responsible for this, and I'll be sure to get his recipe.

For our soup, we were assigned a southeast Asian (which in this class meant any of Thailand, Vietnam, India, Burma, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia) influence, with no specific proteins. We elected to do a coconut cream of mushroom soup, creaming the soup with coconut milk instead of regular milk or cream. We also used a variety of mushrooms, including straw, cloud ear, and wood ear mushrooms, as these mushrooms are very prevalent in Asian cuisine (of course, it helps that I work at a mushroom store). I highly recommend this soup. Jesslyn did a wonderful job with it, and I personally downed a mini-bowl of it while working.

For our appetizer, we were told that we had to present a three-seafood platter that would contain three different types of seafood, each with a different texture, a different cooking method, and a different asian influence. This course was all Ian. My man from the north country busted out a platter with three different seafood-centric appetizers (tuna sushi rolls and sashimi, fried skewered shrimp wontons, and seared scallops wrapped in bacon), along with three different dipping sauces (a wasabi-ginger mayonnaise, a pineapple-soy sauce (providing an island fusion), and a chinkiang-citrus sauce (chinkiang vinegar is very similar to Balsamic vinegar in taste)).

Next up, came the entrée. I was responsible for the entrée, and I was told I had to use a meat, and it had to be an Indonesian influenced dish. Great. The one country I wasn't so solid on. In fact, Indonesia is not exactly known for its culinary prowess. I threw together a rempah (which is a raw Indonesian chili paste), and marinated some duck breast in it, while I tried to figure out exactly what the hell I was going to do. Ultimately, I grilled the duck breast, cooked the rempah (thereby making it into a Sambal, which is a cooked Indonesian chili paste), and made some Turmeric rice (which is technically Malaysian, but plain rice was boring). Using my ring molds, I molded the rice, sliced the duck breast and fanned it out on top of the rice tower. I arranged some asian cut vegetables in a decorative manner, and sauced the plate with the Sambal. Unfortunately, I had failed to realise that duck is more fibrous than chicken, so it takes longer to marinate, and the rempah didn't really give a lot of flavour to the meat itself.

For dessert, which was also my responsibility, I decided to make a ginger ice-cream. I made the English cream that is the base of all ice-creams, and I infused it with ginger. When I went nextdoor to the baking and pastry kitchen to freeze it, I discovered that one of the other teams had not cleaned the machine after using it, so that cost me some precious time doing that. Since the ice-cream did not have time to freeze after being churned (which results in your typical hard ice-cream), I had to change gears a bit. I grabbed a martini glass that I had placed in the freezer, rimmed it with sugar, piped my "ginger soft-serv" into the glass, and placed some candied ginger around the rim. Jesslyn helped me out by making me a mango sauce (warm) to go with it, and I plated it "tableside" for the chef. The ginger "mousse", topped with the mango sauce, and some fresh mint leaves for garnish (in addition to the sugared and gingered martini glass). Surprisingly enough, it came out perfectly, considering that I just made it right on time before the time buzzer went off.

All in all, our team came in second (we were one point behind another team). It was a lot of fun, and I got to see some very good minds at work! If you're interested in some faces to go with names, check out the pictures of my Asian cuisine class that I put in the photo gallery. I also have some stuff there from my individual Iron Chef competition, which I'll write details about soon.