Iron Chef Results - Citrus, Asparagus, Strawberry winners!

The date was set, the contestants were lined up and the three challenging ingredients were selected.  The Iron Chef dinner party was on!

If you haven't already watched an episode of Iron Chef (in English or Japanese) the premise is pretty simple - the guest chefs compete to create the best menu using three ingredients in each course.  The judges taste, review and select a winner.  For our at-home dinner party version, we assigned courses to the guests, told them what the three ingredients were, and although we were prepared to put the kitchen at every one's disposal when they arrived, all the dishes arrived potluck.

We started with six contestants.

Three days before the party, one withdrew due to illness.

The morning of, we lost another, contestant.  The ranks were already closing, the tension mounting as the remaining contestants began to see their odds of coming out on top increase.

During the day, the dessert preparations were under way.  Have you ever tried to concoct a dessert with asparagus?  Even the Internet was no help here...turning up only balsamic glazes in the "sweet" category.  We were on our own and the clock was ticking.

We began to experiment.

Asparagus Sugar.  This had to be one of the weirdest flavors I've ever tasted.  How to describe the pungent, strange, not-sweet-not-vegetable smell of this mix?

Caramel with bits of asparagus - good, but mostly because you can't actually taste the asparagus.  Bad part?  Cleaning up the pan.  (you have to add lots of water and boil the caramel off - good to know!)

Candied asparagus tips.  These were surprisingly good.  Pulled out just when the sugar hit a thick enough stage to coat the tips and harden, they were oddly sweet and savory.  We used a salted caramel, which helped join the flavors.

After going through a tasting station, including some strawberries that were sprinkled with asparagus sugar and a few others soaked in lemoncello and asparagus sugar, we settled on our dessert entry:

A cornmeal crust, a lemon-mascarpone base topped with strawberries marinated in lemoncello and asparagus sugar.  We garnished each slice with a candied asparagus tip just before serving, but they softened after being made and were "sticky and weird" in the words of our judge.  However, the rest of the dessert was delightful.  (This probably cost us the winning spot, but such is the cost of experimentation!)

The other contestants arrived, wine was served on the porch and our judge, the wise, youngest participant, was selected.

Other dishes included:

A platter of puff-pastry shells with a bright lemon-cream sauce enrobing tender pieces of asparagus and chicken, topped with diced strawberries.  Incredibly tasty.

A simple side of blanched asparagus, julienned strawberries and lemon zest, a perfectly simple combination of the three ingredients.

Salt and lime brined chicken breasts, grille, topped with a white wine and strawberry sauce seasoned with thyme and asparagus, and

An asparagus break with lime-cream and strawberries.  The asparagus bread tasted strangely of peanut butter - some strange kitchen chemistry was at work in this last dish.

Our judge dutifully tasted everything and...

After carefully weighing the dishes (and his hosts feelings, his mother's feelings and those of the other contestants) declared "it was all good so I can't choose a winner!!"

In the face of such diplomacy, we had only one choice.  We agreed!  It was a delicious dinner and as the contestants packed up their platters and wandered off into the spring-scented night, we were already imagining the next trio of secret ingredients.

Cardamom - Rosemary - Chipolte Roast Chicken

This was either going to be great, or a total waste of a chicken.

I love a simple salt and pepper roasted chicken, but it's been grey and rainy out lately and I felt the need to spice things up a little bit.  There wasn't going to be a tango class on a Wednesday, and no friends were lined up at the door, so we spiced up the chicken instead.

With it's powerful, musky-sweet-exotic flavor, a little Cardamom goes a long way.  It's found in chai tea, Christmas cookies, Scandinavian dishes and middle-eastern cooking and I've always liked the savory-sweet combinations it stands up to, so we decided to try a few out on the chicken.

We rubbed equal amounts (about a 1/4 teaspoon) of cardamom and chipolte powder on the chicken, followed by salt and pepper.  Then we stuck a stalk of rosemary in the chicken's cavity (about 4 inches long) and stuck it in the oven.

After about an hour, it had reached 160* and smelled fantastic.  (4 lb chicken)

It's not often we get to serve up a yellow main course, is it?  Complemented by my Grandmother's knife and fork serving set - bakelite still has it's place at our table!  I'm curious now about what other typically sweet spices could be combined with savory or spicy to make interesting combinations or other ways to use cardamom.  Anyone have any ideas or recipes to share?

Monkey Gets the Beets

My daughter was insistent on peeling the beets.  A little too insistent...and that's when I realized she didn't have a burning desire to spend quality time with her mother in the kitchen - she wanted to use her monkey peeler!

Oh yes, this is one of those "just for kids!" items you see tucked onto the ends of the aisles in kitchen stores, where they keep all those cute impulse buys.  Egg separator?  Pot holder that looks like a cow?  Kid tools?  That's where you'll find them!

The thing about this peeler though, is that it works.  It's easier for her to hold than the usual ones, and she loves it, even after the Ouch! episode.  She peeled those beets in no time, holding them close against her shirt.  One of those "maybe you'd better get your apron (because I want this to be fun, not an occasion for me to fret over the cost of replacing your beet-gold wardrobe!!)"  Smile.

We roasted them in the oven with the chicken, taking about 20 minutes for 3 large beets in 1/2 inch chunks.

I believe I'm overcoming my aversion to beets, and enjoying the fact that everyone else seems to gobble them up.  The sweet, simple beets were a delicious counterpoint to the spicy chicken (coming soon!) that we ate alongside it.

Roasted Golden Beets

3 yellow beets, tops removed, peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch chunks
Toss with 2-4 TB olive oil, season lightly with kosher salt.
Line a baking dish with tinfoil for an easier clean-up and spread the beets on the foil.
Roast at 400* F for about 20 minutes until they begin to turn golden brown.

Stir once midway through the cooking.

The tender, mild flavor is a nice accompaniment to spicy foods, and they can stand in for a starchy side dish.

Cauliflower Bake

We served up a pretty white dinner the other  night - chicken, onions and cauliflower.  Not the prettiest dinner, but it was mighty tasty.  We used a poulet rouge chicken - they're locally grown and although I was a skeptic at first, it was one of the tastiest chickens we've ever had.  The onions were roasted with the chicken so they had picked up a great caramelized flavor.  The cauliflower, however, was the main star of this particular evening's dinner. 

For a long time, I was a failure at making a white sauce.  For whatever reason, it seemed like an unattainable pinnacle of cooking.  The first break-through was making soufflee.  Following the recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking made it easy.  So when I saw a cauliflower in white sauce recipe on a cooking show, I figured we were ready to tackle this dish.

Equal parts flour and butter are the key, along with having your milk ready to go.  I heat the milk (1 cup) in the microwave, simple and quick.  Then it's ready to be stirred into the butter and flour (2 TB each) after they've cooked for a couple of minutes.  It thickened right up, see?

It cooked for a couple of minutes, then we turned off the heat, stirred in some grated swiss cheese, pepper, salt, nutmet and red pepper flakes, and poured it over our cauliflower.

The cauliflower had been microwaved ahead of time until it was mostly cooked.  Sauce and store-bought breadcrumbs topped the florets and we put it in the over for about 20 minutes, along with the chicken, to bubble up and brown.

As you can see, there were no leftovers on this one!

Curried Butternut Squash with Cous Cous

We're continuing to experiment with curried dishes around here - this one was a moderate success. 

(warning, what follows is a tangent!)  Has anyone else noticed that the grocery stores seem to have suddenly given up on butternut squash in the natural state?  It seems that all of a sudden, everyone's decided it's just too much work to peel one of those curvy cucurbita maxima (winter squash) so now you have to buy pre-peeled and pre-chunked squash in a plastic tub.  We are going to have to look harder!  For one thing, they're sometimes not as fresh, and for another, I hate throwing out one of those plastic containers when I could be composting the peel.  At least one store around here is selling the chunks from a bin, like they do for salad, so you're only left with the plastic bag to contend with.  But really, what was so terrible about the squash?  Of course, I'm all for convenient food, so the pre-chopped stuff is on my good list for weeknight dinners,  but I do resent not having the choice.  There are a few nights when I'd welcome the opportunity to chop open one of those luscious squashes and scoop the seeds out of it's fresh, sunshine-orange center.

Well, now that we're done with that rant, back to our curry.  We chopped our pre-chopped squash down to size and brought it to a simmer in chicken broth (veggie broth would work just as well).  After about 20 minutes, it was getting tender, and I added about 2 TB of red curry paste.  The squash cooked a little longer, and there was still a lot of stock in the pot.  I didn't have a starchy side, so, wanted to absorb the liquid, we added 1/4 cup cous cous and let it sit in the pot, lid on, heat off, for 5 minutes.

The resulting side was tasty, but a little too thick and gloppy for my taste.  Everyone ate it up, the kids loved the flavors, but next time, I think I will make the couscous on the side and serve the squash and liquid over it.

The flavors went really well together though, and I'm intrigued by some other possibilities - like a more traditional curry with roasted squash.  Now, if only I could find a whole squash!

Coconut Chicken Strips with Orange-Endive Salad

I have a terrible tendency to mess with recipes - it's a meddlesome quality that sometimes results in a good twist and sometimes....I learn why the recipe said to do such-and-such. 

With this chicken dish, we learned that there is such a thing as taking it too easy on the oil!  Lucky for us, the results were edible, just not golden.  You'll see what I mean in the photo below.

We started with some buttermilk - soaked the chicken strips (about 1 lb of chicken breasts, cut into thin strips) for about 30 minutes, then dredged them in a mix of 1 cup panko, 1 cup shredded coconut (unsweetened!) and 1 tsp of chili powder.

Now, we've already made some modifications to the original recipe I was inspired by, but here's where I went wrong: I didn't use enough oil in the pan.  The recipe said 3 TB of oil.  I thought I could get by with a large non-stick pan and some canola oil spray.   As the chicken strips cooked, the outer edges of the coconut got very cooked, nearly burning, but the panko crumbs didn't brown at all.  In an effort to lighten the dish, we ended up with some visually unappealing chicken.  When we used a little oil, they looked great.

For the next batch, I used 3 TB of oil in the pan and amazingly enough, they browned.  There are times when I get too impatient and try to cut corners.  Then there are times when I learn the hard way why certain formulas appear over and over in our cookbooks.  Putting some oil in the pan seems like a pretty basic one, hum?

At any rate, we served the chicken strips with some carrots (microwaved and seasoned with a little salt and pepper) and an orange-endive salad.  The endive was just chopped, raw, and tossed with lettuce and segments of a blood orange.  The dressing was a store-bought vinagrette and the contrast between the slightly sweet chicken and the tangy, citrus of the salad was excellent.

The kids love dredging and coating things for the stove top, and I love an experiment, so it was a successful dinner all in all.

Chicken and Avacado Salad

The wonderful thing about living with seasons is that even though the summer is ending and the tomatos won't be nearly as good for months now, there are stews, briskets and other things to look forward to.  So here's a last hurrah, an easy summer dinner, and a great excuse to grill a few more chicken breasts.

Chicken and Avacado Salad

The only essentials here are the chicken breast and the avacado.  Our grocery store marks the ripe avacados with a sticker, but if you may need to plan just far enough ahead to buy an avacado. 

If you're going to grill some chicken anyway, buy a few extra pieces and some avacado.  A dayr two later, take out that grilled chicken breast, slice it over a salad (you don't even need to heat it!) and slice the avacado.  Add whatever salad mixings you have on hand (celery, carrots, pine nuts, rasins or dried cranberries or cherries, sunflower seeds, hardboiled egg, cucumbers etc.) and dress with a basic vinagrette. 

Voila - the easiest summer dinner ever.

Tip: to prepare the avacado, slice around it lengthwise and twist the two halves apart.  Take your big knive and wack the blade into the pit - not too hard, not too soft.  It'll stick.  Twist the knife gently and the pit will pop out, stuck to the blade.  Pull the pit off -use a towel to grab it - they're slippery!  With the avacado halves sill in the skin, make slices with the tip of your knife but don't cut through the skin.  Then take a big spoon and scoop out the slices.  Pretty.  Easy.  Neat.  Squirt a little lemon juice or vinegar over the avacado to keep it from turning brown.

Chicken Noodle Soup

The weather suddenly got a little cooler here, and it feels like almost-fall.  We had one of those difficult-to-schedule-dinner evenings last night.  Our family class was at 7:00 p.m., leaving a window beteween 5:30 and 6:30 to cook, digest and change for class.  Soup seemed like a good choice.  Not too heavy, and easy to make.

Roast chicken and chicken noodle soup is one of our standard two-day menus, and it worked out well this week.

We roasted the chicken on Wednesday night, when we didn't have any place to go, and all the homework, reading, chores were done by the time the chicken was done.  After I pulled the leftover meat off the bones, I tossed the bones in a pot, covered with water, and let it simmer until I went to bed.

  

On Thursday, making the soup was a snap.  Here's all the cooking it required:

Remember that little bag of frozen onions?  There they are - pre-chopped and thrown in the pot.  We peeled and chopped some carrots and celery, tossed them with some olive oil for a few minutes while water boiled for noodles.

Good kid-chef tasks:  peeling carrots, washing and chopping celery, cutting the chicken pieces up with kitchen scissors and stirring.

I added the broth and the left-over chicken, and by the time the noodles boiled, the soup was warm. 

Mix and serve.

If I'm lucky, there's a little bit left over for my lunch the next day:

Leftover Lentils

Sometimes leftovers are my favorite.  The cook(s) get a night off, and this time around, we discovered a great new combination.  Some leftover garlic chicken with rice, combined with the lentils from last night made for a delicious, quick dinner.

I hold my ground: the microwave counts as cooking too!