This was Sunday night, not tonight, but I thought you might find it interesting. It was my eldest son's birthday, and he decided that for his birthday he wanted an Iron Chef competition. He'd pick the secret ingredients, we'd all cook for him, and he'd judge and choose the winners.
We had two teams of three, and each team made an appetizer, main course, and dessert. The secret ingredients he picked were:
appetizers - onions
main course - mushrooms
dessert - oranges
Well! We had a chaotic but fun time with six people rushing around in my not-too-big kitchen, and here's what we made:
Appetizers, Team A: French onion soup and beer-battered onion rings with dipping sauce. (The bread in the soup was cut in circles and arranged like a Hidden Mickey; the onion rings were also arranged like Mickey's.)
Appetizers, Team B: "Bloomin' Onion" (battered, deep-fried onion that opens up like a flower, with three different dipping sauces served in onion bowls and onion-potato pancakes (latkes).
Main Course, Team A: Chicken breasts stuffed with mushrooms and pesto sauce, steamed broccoli, pesto-stuffed mushroom caps, sauteed mixed mushrooms, garlic mashed potatoes and carrots, and mango salsa. This was presented on the plate with some Star Wars action figures so that the potatoes and carrots were the ground, with mushroom cap craters, a bridge of chicken breast slices with a fence of mushroom stems, the broccoli like little bushes standing up in the potatoes and carrots, and the salsa like lava coming out of the little craters.
Main Course, Team B: Crescent rolls stuffed with mushrooms and gravy and a stir-fried mushroom and vegetable dish with a choice of sauces and egg noodles. Presented on a platter that was a plate over a bowl (hard to describe, but it looked like a mushroom).
Desserts, Team A: orange shortbread cookies dipped in white chocolate and sprinkled with orange crystalline sugar and orange vanilla smoothies.
Desserts, Team B: ice cream with grand marnier and orange zest stirred in, shaped into balls and served in half-orange shells; plus chocolate-orange fondue with fruit dippers; plus crepes filled with orange segments and sauce and drizzled with chocolate sauce.
Team B won but not by much. And we all had a lot to eat. And we're already making plans to do it again!
Teresa