Sunday, November 28, 2010

I am Iron Chef


Last Sunday was the season finale of “The Next Iron Chef”. Since competitive cooking is the Lady and my professional sport of choice, it has become common for us to DVR an episode, cook something a little more complicated than usual, then yell at the TV while we sit at the table and watch the show. Obviously, if you watched the show, you know that Chef Canora lost and that Chef Forgione won. I am very happy about this, as I actively disliked Canora. I would have preferred Chef Caswell to win, but we can't always get what we want.

While I was at work, I was considering dinner (as I often do) and a bit of inspiration struck. I wish that it translated well into reality, but we will come to that later. I remembered that we had a bunch of 85/15 ground buffalo in the fridge, and that buffalo burgers are ALWAYS a good choice. In the spirit of getting more creative with my food, I decided that sliders might be fun. Corn and edamame seemed like decent sides for this dish as well, so I mentally started prepping. Once I was home, I banished the Lady from the kitchen, poured a beer, and went to cooking.

I blended the buffalo with some paprika, cumin, basil, salt, and red pepper for flavour. I added oats and egg to it for texture and let the slider meat sit for about 30 minutes to meld. In the meantime, I heated up a new cooking implement: a Himalayan Salt Slab! It was a gift from the Lady a while ago, and I hadn't had a chance to use it yet, and it also seemed like a good way to “upscale” the meal to Iron Chef panache, so I set it over the range and let it heat at med/high.

For the corn, I decided that cooking niblets in a pan and sauteing them with ground mustard would be fun. I ground some grains of paradise on it as well to create some flavour depth and sprinkled it with some herbs de province.
I wanted to experiment with the edamame, so I decided to pan smoke it. It was a weird venture, including heating some olive oil to just under the smoke point and faux sautee/searing the soybeans with some sal du gaul and cracked black pepper. It smelled very acrid, and I worried about the flavour as it cooked, but I was already moving on to prepping the sliders to change course now.

I split the buffalo into one (1) ounce patties, and cooked them in pairs on the salt slab. It didn't transfer heat very well, so I don't feel a salt slab is well suited to searing meats. It would appear to me that a salt slab is more suited to very thin cuts of high HIGH quality beef or fish that cooks at lower temperatures. Kobe or hamachi maybe? Mmmm....

As the patties cooked (slowly, and rather unpredictably) I prepped the rest of the sliders. I carmelized some shallots, toasted some whole wheat buns, brought out some sliced pepper jack, and sun dried tomatoes. I spread a bit of deli mustard/mayo blend on the buns, then layered the jack, onion, and sun dried tomato on top, capping the slider with the buffalo instead of layering from meat up. It wasn't terribly creative, but it sat well.

I served the whole thing on a large cooking platter, and admittedly, it was very late 80's fusion plating, but that's making a comeback, I just need a shinier platter.

For dessert, I went simple: Honey drizzled clementine orange segments, arranged on a plate around a pair of Frango candy, dusted with nutmeg and ground ginger.

I am sorry to say that the sliders were a failure though. The buffalo was either too soggy or dry, and because of the unpredictable nature of the salt slab, getting a nice medium finish was impossible. That said, this was the first time I have used it, so there is a fudge factor there. The onions were perfect, and the jack was a great pairing with the buffalo. The oats made much less impact than I expected, not being noticeable one way or the other.
The Lady had difficulty with the tomato since I didn't slice them and instead just layered a whole solid piece on the sandwich. She couldn't bite through it completely so often got the whole tomato in one bite. The mustard/mayo blend also overwhelmed EVERYTHING. Just the mayo, or a spicy mayo would have worked out, but the deli style mustard made everything quiet in comparison. The sliders were good, but not gourmet as intended. I give them a D overall.

The corn on the other hand, was oustanding! Sauteing niblets is going to catch on quick in my kitchen. The ground mustard added a very nice profile to the sweetness of the corn, and the herbs de province give the finishing flavour a wonderful natural aroma and taste. Very well rounded. Unfortunately, niblets don't lend themselves to terribly creative plating arrangements without some other work and I was impatient, so a clear bowl really showed off the brilliant yellow they picked up from the mustard. Certainly at least a B+ recipe. With the right presentation, this could easily be A material.

The edamame was somewhere in the middle. They picked up a great smokiness from the pepper and hot oil, but they were a bit bitter, and salt only served to make them very “dry” tasting. I achieved the goal to get them more smokey, but I don't think that works with the protein makeup in soy. I'm sure Alton Brown would be able to tell me why. Solid C.

Dinner Sunday was nice. I had high hopes for it, and things fell decidedly short, but that happens.

Well, I have help up the Lady's posts from this past week enough. I will let her get on with things now.

Until next time!
~Wookiee

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