Fans Iron Chef, Week 2

[Park Kraken]

Okay, since I was late in getting my creation up this particular weekend (this morning is the first free time I've gotten all weekend to do any cooking), Nyal will pick the secret ingredient for this week's competition.

[Nya Halcyon]

Ohhh... okay.

And the secret ingredient is:

Bread!

Wether you make it yourself, whether it comes in the form of bread croutons or whether it's simply a slice of toast - doesn't matter. As long as it's a proper part of the dish and not just served as a side.

Again - this will run until Midnight (PST) on SUNDAY, like the last one.

[Wyl Staedtler]

Oh excellent! This is going to be fun. :D

[Sanis Prent]

Daaaamn youuuuuu!!!

That's baking, not cooking! There is a difference! :shakefist


;)

It's okay BUT totally unfamiliar ground for me. Fortunately I have a silicone bread pan I've been dying to try out.

Wow. I'm intimidated by this. And very excited.

[Miranda Tarkin]

If Bobby Flay can make a wedding cake, Charley can try and bake bread :D

[Ilias]

Yes, dahlin' ...but Bobby Flay is a trained chef.

Charley is just something on this side of decently talented. With food.

And this is something I would love to participate in myself, but I barely have time to make food, let alone the fact that I'm rarely home for dinner these days since I usually work through dinner. :\ It's a shame, because I love to cook.

[Nya Halcyon]

Well... it's not necessarily baking. There are things you can do with store-bought bread - sometimes it's just an ingredient in something. Of course you can decide to bake some...

Actually - when I thought of it, I had one thing in mind. But now that I've had a day to mull it over, there about 15 different things I could do and I CANNOT decide.

I might make two things and, depending on what tastes better, post only one.


And yeah - I actually like this whole scheme because it gives me the incentive to do some proper cooking, not just throwing something into the microwave or making instant soup, which is what I do on weekdays when my daughter's in school all day anyway...

[Sanis Prent]

Oh I know that I can do store-bought, but that's mega lame for most things that you can DIY.

I've been thinking about indian naan for a while before all of this, the only problem is that it's pretty tough to make that a main actor in a dish when its essentially an edible utensil in most things.

[Darven]

Hmmm.... I think I saw something once that had Naan bread as the base for something... not unlike Pizza. Just Indian-style.

[Sanis Prent]

Heads up on deck. You guys have two more days to get this done.

[Katchen]

I have to stick my nose in here even though I'm visiting. :p

I will make Jalapeno Cheese Bread. :D

[Wyl Staedtler]

Augh, I'm out on this one guys. It's going to be a pack-fruit-to-eat-on-the-way sort of weekend and I just won't have time to do anything.

Good luck to the rest of you though! :)

[Sanis Prent]

I have to stick my nose in here even though I'm visiting. :p

I will make Jalapeno Cheese Bread. :D

YAY!!!!!


Augh, I'm out on this one guys. It's going to be a pack-fruit-to-eat-on-the-way sort of weekend and I just won't have time to do anything.

Good luck to the rest of you though! :)

Aww, we understand. Save your energy for next week. Plus I don't think anybody can compete with the monster I'm going to attempt this weekend. I'll either make this dish and it will be the greatest thing, or I will fail and fail hard. You already know since I sort of spilled the beans, don't tell anyone ;)

[Park Kraken]

I'll go ahead and post the ingredient and preparation list up for my entry, although the photos won't be up until tomorrow probably as I have to work tonight.

Kraken's Banana Bread Pudding

Ingredient List:
10 Slices Wheat Bread, de-crusted and torn into little pieces.
1/4 Cup Butter, melted.
1-2 1-week old Bananas, peeled and cut up into little pieces.
1 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
5 Eggs
3/4 Cup White Sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
dash of salt
3 cups hot milk
+ either a dash of ground nutmeg, or ground cinnamon, or brown sugar

Preparation:

Preheat oven 375*

For me it took about two minutes to get the milk hot in the microwave, but first you combine the bread cubes, melted butter, bananas, and cinnamon into a large bowl, stirring until well mixed, before putting it into a 13x13 sized baking pan (or equivalent).

Then, recycling said bowl, beat eggs, before adding in vanilla, sugar, and dash of salt, and keep stirring until you can't see any sugar. Add in the hot milk about 1 cup at a time, whisking away until you have a fine light yellow batter. Pour the batter over the bread mixture, sprinkle the nutmeg/cinnamon/sugar on top, and let stand for about a minute.

Then place into oven, and bake for about 30 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean, and viola! Kraken's banana bread pudding is ready to eat.

[Quenn Yeartel]

I baked the crap out of a new bread recipe I tried today and can only report partial success. There's something really odd with it - the recipe called for almost 2 hours baking time, which I followed - only to find that it still wasn't done. After 3 hours alltogether one loaf was done, and the other two I'm not sure about. I'll find out in the morning when I cut them....

Fortunately they weren't for this cooking "contest". I'll have my contribution up Sunday night.

Update: Yeah.... that didn't work out so well. Gonna have to experiment with that for a bit. I baked some of my regular soda bread. Came out fine.

[Nya Halcyon]

Okay - here goes:

Bread Dumplings with Ostrich Steak in a Carrot-Tarragon sauce

Originally I meant to make something crazy like baking herbed roastbeef inside a bread loaf, but I'm not too keen on yeast bread and there was something iffy about the recipe, so I changed my mind about halfway through the week. Spent a couple of days looking at various things, but there really is only one thing down here in Southern Germany that literally begs to be made: bread dumplings. So I went for that, and rifled through my deep freezer for something to accompany it - and found two packages of ostrich steak that I got cheap a few weeks ago and hadn't found any use for since. For the sauce I chose to try out something I found in a Vegetarian recipe book, and ended up baking the meat in the sauce.

http://www.nyahalcyon.net/misc/Emu/emu1.jpg


Ingredients:

For the Dumplings: (this makes about 10 dumplings which is more than needed but there's no point making less and they can be used for other things)
8 French bread rolls
1 medium-sized onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp butter
1 handful of chopped fresh parsley
750ml milk (can be a bit more)
3 eggs
salt, pepper, nutmeg

For the Ostrich Steak & Sauce:
500g Ostrich Steak (mine was in small pieces which was just fine)
500g fresh Carrots, washed, peeled and sliced
2 medium Apples, washed, cored, halved and sliced
1 handful fresh Tarragon
1 medium onion, diced
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp lime juice
250ml cream
100ml vegetable stock
2 tsp dijon mustard
salt, pepper, ground ginger

Preparation:

Preparing the dumplings:

http://www.nyahalcyon.net/misc/Emu/emu2.jpg

My kitchen assistant Nya helped chop the bread rolls into thin slices, after which we put it all into a big bowl with the chopped parsley. I melted the butter in a small pan and then browned the onions in it for a few minutes, after which I added the onions to the bread mix. Then I added the milk, taking care not to pour in all at once but try and get all bread soaked by stirring well - adding too much milk can result in the dumplings getting too soggy. Usually you'd let them sit for a bit so the milk can be absorbed fully, waiting for at least an hour. After this, you can squeeze out the milk and then add the eggs, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Mix this well.
Get a large pot and fill with water. Add some salt and bring to boil. Meanwhile, form round balls with the bread mix (if it's too sticky, roll them in breadcrumbs which will give them a smoother texture and keep them together - the mix should not fall apart or stick to your fingers while forming). When the water is boiling, submerge the dumplings slowly into the water and let them simmer on medium heat until they rise to the top. Take them out, let them drain and set aside.

The actual cooking can be done later, while the rest of the food is being cooked. In my case, I made them before everything else, but I could have boiled them in the time I was waiting for the meat to finish baking. If you prepare them in advance - drop them back into hot water for a few minutes or stick them into the microwave for a minute when you want to serve the food.

Preparing the Ostrich Steak & Sauce:

http://www.nyahalcyon.net/misc/Emu/emu3.jpg

Preheat oven to 390°F

In a small pot let the carrots boil for 2 minutes before draining them and setting them aside.
Pour the honey and lime juice over the halved & sliced (but not peeled!) apples and mix well.
In a frying pan, melt the butter. Rinse the Ostrich steak, pat dry and season with salt and pepper before searing them in the butter for a minute on each side. Remove them from the pan and set aside.
In the meat juice and butter, fry the diced onion until golden brown.
Pour the opnions into a baking dish, spreading them out well. Add layers of carrots and the apple mix.
In a bowl, mix the vegetable stock with the mustard and cream, then add salt, pepper, ground ginger (I like ginger, so I used 1/2 tsp of it) and the finely chopped tarragon. Whisk until smooth.
Pour this over the carrot-apple mix, then arrange the meat on top.
Place in oven and bake at 390°F for 30 minutes.

Serve with Dumplings and Parsley. (Alternatively you can cut the cumplings in slices and fry them on both sides in a little butter until golden brown - also yummy)

Results:

http://www.nyahalcyon.net/misc/Emu/emu4.jpg

http://www.nyahalcyon.net/misc/Emu/emu5.jpg

[Travis North]

I now have hunger pangs.... Looks real good.

[Wyl Staedtler]

Bravo :clap

Definitely going to be yoinking that carrot-tarragon sauce. Mmmm.

[Zem Vymes]

Holy crap. I thought I was going to win this week, but now I'm screwed lol.

Once again, absolutely amazing :D

[Liam Jinn]

Holy crap. I thought I was going to win this week, but now I'm screwed lol.

Once again, absolutely amazing :D

Who won last week?

[Zem Vymes]

I don't know. I think we all had good entries. Nya's plating is seemingly always gorgeous. I had what I considered to be a good arrangement, until now :cry

[Ryan Pode]

Oh man. I guess I'll post my lame-o pizza after being shown up by that.

A little backstory first, last summer I had moved out into an apartment and on my own for the first time. It was July and my roommates weren't going to move in until late August. I was down there taking summer school classes (two), but doing nothing else, so I had a lot of free time. Needless to say, with a newfound freedom also meant I had to cook for myself. Basically I learned to cook last summer, and during my many experimentations, I produced this. I've come to call it "Ball-Park Pizza" because it incorporates many food items found at a baseball park.

The Dough:

1 1/2 cup water
4 cup all-purpose flour
1 package active dry yeast
1 1/2 tsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp water
Coarse salt

1. Preheat Oven to 425.
2. Microwave the water for about a minute.
3. Combine the water, yeast, sugar, salt, and 2 cups of flour in a large bowl for about three to four minutes.
4. Add the other two cups of flour and knead for about three more minutes. Add more flour (no more than 1/2 cup) to the dough if it remains too sticky.
5. Form a ball with the dough.

6. Using the dough, form a pizza crust. Basically, using your fingers gently pull it apart, rotate it, pull it apart some more. Eventually, it should get to be 10-12 inches, depending how thick you want the crust (or how big your pan is).
7. Once you've got the shape of your crust, gently fold the edges to give it some depth in the middle.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v310/veryangryjew/GEDC0468.jpg

8. Crack the egg and beat it until it is yellow goo.
9. Now, on one side of the crust generously apply the beat egg to cover the crust.
10. Pour a decent amount of the coarse salt to the crust, to complete the pretzel crust.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v310/veryangryjew/GEDC0469.jpg

You can do one of two things, if you have a pizza stone, I'd recommend this, if you are using a pan you can do either or. For the stone, using a pizza shaped pan, spray it with cooking spray, then have the bottom of the crust (salt covered side) face up, cook it in the over for about 4-6 minutes, so that it's slightly brown, this will make it easier to remove later (egg likes to stick). For the pan only, you can do that or just apply a ton of cooking spray.

The toppings:

2 Hebrew National All-Beef Franks
1 Bottle Ketchup
1 Bottle Mustard
2 Cups Cheese

1. Dice up the hotdog into little pepperoni like bits.
2. Apply ketchup and mustard in a spiral motion on the crust (non-salted side, obviously). Apply as much sauce as you'd like and at what ratio. I tend to have more ketchup than mustard, since mustard has a stronger taste.
3. Using a spoon, spread out the sauce topping until its all mixed together and covers the entire crust.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v310/veryangryjew/GEDC0471.jpg

4. Apply the cheese, as much as you want. I personally use a "mexican fiesta" blend, but I'm sure other cheeses work fine.
5. Distribute the hotdog like you would space out pepperoni.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v310/veryangryjew/GEDC0475.jpg

6. Cook for about 11-13 minutes and it should be done.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v310/veryangryjew/GEDC0476.jpg


And enjoy.

[Banner Laverick]

^Little kids would probably love that, and you could change it up with sausage and onions etc. too. Cool pizza Podey :)

[Sanis Prent]

I like that. It's very unorthodox. :) Definitely onions next time :) well done.

[Wyl Staedtler]

Very cool! I'll have to try this for the boys' lunches! :D

[Sanis Prent]

Alright kiddies, here's this week's go:

seared tuna steak in a phyllo bowl with mashed potatoes and a truffle cream sauce

Whew, that's a mouthful!

Ok, lets do this a bit at a time. There are four components to this dish, so lets deal with them separately.

Tuna

You need:
Tuna steaks (thick = good, albacore = best)
Soy sauce
Wasabi paste
Ginger paste
Honey
White Vinegar
Scallions/green onions WHATEVA, finely chopped
Cracked peppercorns, the coarser the better
Mustard seeds
Oil for pan frying (I used ghee, you can do this with canola oil easily)
BOOZE (I use vodka but you can use softer stuff like wine)

Okay, pretty straightforward. Without further ado here are <strike>the freshly plucked hearts of my hated enemies</strike> some tuna steaks!

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p156/LoungieMu/rawtuna.jpg

Okay thats nice, but a little boring. We need to make them interesting.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p156/LoungieMu/marinade.jpg

I used a good half bottle of soy to marinade four steaks. On top of that, about a teaspoon of wasabi paste, a tablespoon of ginger, two tablespoons of honey, and two teaspoons of vinegar. This is a guess because I almost never measure. If you must, that's what I guess went in there!

Anyway, let the slain foes of the inky deep sleep in the fridge for a few hours, preferably in a ziploc bag or something they can get all squishy and sloshy in. If you can let it sit overnight, that's good. I only let it sit for about five hours, which is fine.

Now is a good time to make the other ingredients, but lets assume you've already done that.

Heat about 2-3 tablespoons of oil or ghee or whatever in a pan, at about medium-high. Let it get good and warm (test with the handle of a wooden spoon in the oil. If you see bubbles come up when it touches the oil, its ready.

Take your tuna steak and smear a good crust of peppercorns on it. Le Poisson Le Poisson hee hee hee haw haw haw.

Add about a teaspoon of mustard seeds to the oil and INCOMING, GET DOWN! Those mustard seeds are going to explode on you like you're the first wave of allied troops at Normandy. Get your splatter guard up, make sure your genitals are behind protective clothing, and say the cook's prayer as you gently stick the tuna steak in the pan with a handful of chopped scallions, and turn the heat down to medium.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p156/LoungieMu/tunacook.jpg

FWWWSHHHHHHHH!!!!

Let it go for about a minute tops, and flip it over for another minute. You'll take it off the pan at that point and transfer it to your dish (we'll talk about that later). Now you should be left with a pan full of greasy residue and some well-cooked leavings of fish, peppercorn, scallion, and mustard seed. Throw them away, right? WRONG.

Take a shot of your booze, then give a shot to your frying pan, pouring it gently around the surface. It's going to sizzle like a mad demon, but you'll soon notice that it breaks up that stuff on your pan. This is called deglazing, and its used to give your dishes a last flourish. You want to spoon that goodness up, and sprinkle it on top or to the side of your tuna. Trust me, it's good.

Okay, that's the tuna. But what about this dish? We ain't got nothin to put this tuna on? How about a bowl? An edible bowl!

Here's what you'll need for the Phyllo bowl

Phyllo dough, half a pack, thawed
About a stick of butter
Baby spinach
Some round bottomed, oven-safe bowls
Basting brush

This doesn't have to be pretty, so don't finesse it. First, spread a very thin layer of butter on the inside of the bowl. Very thin. This is just to keep the bowl from sticking. Next, you want to take a sheet of Phyllo, fold it in half lengthwise, and press it into your bowl. Any overlap you can just bend and tuck so that it sort of looks like a flower bloom, or a quaint attempt at a bowl that some retard made! Take a basting brush and spread some of the butter along the top of the dough, making sure to get it to adhere to itself and to the side of the bowl somewhat. Don't worry about buttering the bottom of the bowl, gravity will get that for you. You can dab once or twice if it still looks dry, but don't bother much.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p156/LoungieMu/phyllo1.jpg

Do this with about four or five sheets of phyllo per bowl. I actually put too many sheets in my first time, but if you stick to that amount, you should be perfectly fine. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees, and pop your bowls in for about 15-20 minutes, or until the bowls are golden brown and firm to the touch. Should come out a bit like this:

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p156/LoungieMu/phyllo2.jpg

Now we have something to put our tuna in! But first, toss in a few baby spinach leaves into each. Slap the tuna into the bowls, and the hot oil from the tuna will give the spinach a nice wilting, which will complement your fish. I do this for color, but also because I'm a spinach savant and I put it in every damn dish I make. Deal with it.

Halfway done now! Whew! Feels like almost victory. Lets get to work on Mashed Potatoes

You'll want:
Four potatoes (boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew. Er...n/m just mash em)
Olive oil
Very fine Kosher Salt
Thyme
Rosemary

I feel like a dork for looking on the internet for how to make mashed potatoes from scratch. I've never done it. I don't really like them usually, and whenever I muster up the appetite for them, I make them from the box mix. So no time to learn like the present!

Gawrsh dernit I gave Petey a shiner in the barracks and Sarge got me peelin taters! I'm gonna miss my weekend pass to see them island girls, shucks.

Christin berated me for not keeping skins on. If you like that, be my guest. I will obey her next time.

Put your taters in a big pot and fill with cold water until the water level covers the taters completely. Then toss in about two teaspoons of salt, and set it to boil. You're going to boil these until you can take a knife and poke it into the spuds without that crunchy resistance of raw potato. Should take about 15 minutes give or take, but don't quote me.

Once done, switch the burner to low heat and dump out all the water in the pot in your sink. Promptly return the pot to the burner, and take a potato masher to the spuds. I would suggest the kitchen instrument called a potato masher and not the german grenade, although I imagine the latter would be quicker.

Your spuds should be pretty stiff and hard to mash. Add a few tablespoons of olive oil and you'll get a more uniform, fluffy bunch of potatoes. While you're doing this, put in your thyme and rosemary. I used fresh rosemary from my herb garden, and chopped up that sticky icky green and put it in the pot. Instantly smelled like heaven.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p156/LoungieMu/spudsdone.jpg

That's all she wrote with the taters, but you need something for those spuds. Something to elevate this dish above merely some mashed spuds. Something...

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p156/LoungieMu/truffle1.jpg

Oh snap!

Time to make Truffle Cream Sauce

You'll want:
Half pint of heavy cream
Half teaspoon fine ground kosher salt
Two pinches of pepper
1 teaspoon enriched white flour
One Black Summer Truffle, finely grated

Summer black truffles, from Avignon, France. If you've never had them before, you'll want to take my word for it and be sitting down when you eat them. They're hard to find and expensive ($21 for the jar above which is less than one ounce), but absolutely worth the trouble for that special dish.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p156/LoungieMu/truffle2.jpg

It's tiny as hell, as you can see. This is one of the four in my jar, and it's a little bigger than a large olive. If you're doing the math, we're putting a little over $5 worth of mushroom into this meal, so lets not make it go to waste. Get a fine food grater, and with very short strokes, take great care to grate the truffle into a small dish. Be incredibly painstaking about not wasting a bit of it. Think like a junkie and pretend this is rock, because you are going to want to get every last bit of it into your food. It's that good.

While you collect this delicious treasure, put a half pint of heavy cream onto low heat, add your salt, pepper, and sift the flour in.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p156/LoungieMu/truffleadd.jpg

Add your truffle shavings, and turn to medium high briefly, until you see bubbles form, and then come back down to low heat, stirring briskly all the way. It'll start to thicken up, and it's ready to serve when it does:


Now, like Voltron, Captain Planet, etc lets combine all of this wonderful stuff to make an incredible and unstoppable force! Put the tuna steak and trimmings into the phyllo dish, and slap some mashed spuds on a plate with a dollop of cream sauce. Add some garnish if thats your bag (I gots parsley!) and you're ready for chow.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p156/LoungieMu/final03.jpg

Bon Ape Tit uh wait hang on.

How was it?

Incredibly good, and one of the best things I've ever made. The potatoes had a ton of flavor, but nothing overpowering and they were full of richness. The tuna marinade and flavor was about damn near perfect.

Changes I'd make, I'd use less phyllo for my bowls, as they came out rather thick. I can get away with far less now that I know. This was a blind experiment. Further, I left the tuna on just a bit too long, and it wasn't as juicy as I'd like. Next time I'll make sure to have a red center, the way tuna should be!

[Wyl Staedtler]

That looks so yummy Charley! The experiment paid off! Very inventive use of phyllo - and nice plating! ;)

[Quenn Yeartel]

Ohhh... very nice! And interesting - I've never seen tuna being prepared (mine over here always comes in cans because the tuna steak is horrifically expensive....) and the phyllo bowl is something I gotta try. I wish you could send food over so I could taste that truffle sauce!!!

Odd idea about pizza... but interesting. Never seen anyone put mustard on it. That I shall try too.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Does phyllo count as ...bread??? O_o

[Batdude]

It does, yes.

[Dasquian Belargic]

They all look great, but Charley's looks oh so delicioso.

[Anita Stern]

The only time i've seen mustard on a pizza is at the same time I've seen pickles on a pizza. And it was a cheeseburger pizza. I like it, but my mother thinks yellow mustard is gross, and thought the idea of pickles on a pizza was not appealing as well. It came from a little pizza place here in town called "The Joint".

Oh well, can't please everyone, every time.