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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