My friend Adam threw an inventive birthday party for his girlfriend Meredith this weekend: he held an Iron Chef competition. We split up into groups and had about four hours to research recipes, go shopping, and put together a minimum of three dishes--all of which had to use a mystery ingredient as their common thread. The mystery ingredient turned out to be squash.
Adam was dressed for the occasion:
To say that cooking competitions aren’t my comfort zone is like saying that Joan Rivers has had a little work done to her face. I can follow a recipe--if it’s a simple, basic recipe that involves two ingredients, cereal and milk--but I don’t have creative instinct that’s required for this sort of thing. My primary creative contribution was to suggest that we take our bag full of squash, go to the pub, order some pitchers, and put the squash in it. We may not win the competition, but we’d have more fun than the other teams.
If you’re curious about what my comfort zone actually is, I think it would be sleep. I’d like to see an Iron Sleep competition sometime. There would be no rules. Why would you need rules? Everyone would be asleep.
Fortunately, I had one amazing chef and two highly competent ones on my team, so I let them carry me. I said to one of my co-chefs, Elizabeth, that I needed help slicing up the pumpkin because “I’ve never carved up a pumpkin unless I was trying to give it a face and stick a candle in it.”
She said, “Hahaha! Greg, you are funny.”
I said, ”I’m completely serious. How the hell do you chop up a pumpkin?”
And so on. In the course of the afternoon, I did a lot of chopping. If I was a cowboy, I would have been Chopalong Cassidy. If I had been a composer, I would have been Chopin. If I had been a building, I would have been a Chopping Mall. What I’m saying is, I did some chopping.
The end result was an amazing squash curry:
By the way, I chopped the green beans in that curry. The length of the green beans is extremely important for the delicate balance of complex flavors to be found in said curry. The wrong quotient of green beans can completely destroy a meal. For example, if you put too many--or, in fact, any--in a bowl of cereal, you ruin the bowl of cereal. Yes. I know stuff. Suck on it, Williams and/or Sonoma.
We also made a pasta type thing, and bunch of delicious pumpkin muffins, bread pudding style, that you could dip into caramel and stuff your face with:
We won the competition and each received a silver statue and an Iron Chef apron. And as the winners were announced, I realized that I felt absolutely no guilt. It’s good to receive prizes and accolades for being in the right place at the right time, letting others do the hard part. Think of all the great people throughout history who have done the same thing:
Dan Quayle!
Harriet Miers!
Andrew Ridgley!
Art Garfunkel!
Bert!
I’m proud to be one of their number.
You do weird things for birthdays.
How DO you chop a pumpkin?
What an excellent idea for a party! How does one do that in one kitchen, though? Were you in Kitchen Stadium?
If you were a band, would you have been the Smashing Pumpkins?
you probably unified your team members by keeping them laughing; if so, you definitely earned your share of the reward.
I’m so proud of you, Greg.
what jenn says. really. how?
Kitchen Stadium was Adam and Meredith’s house. We had volunteers to host groups in their own kitchens, and people were prevented from starting based on how far or close their respective kitchens were to home base.
You essentially have to peel the pumpkin with your knife and then take out all the orange intensines and seeds and then slice it up. At least, that’s how I did it.
That’s awesome...I may steal that idea.
You guys should totally apply to be on Iron Chef America. As a group. And battle Morimoto because he’s bad-ass.
You were a very important team member, you kept me from freaking out and you let me boss you around. You don’t realize how important these trait are until you hear stories about other teams.... people who couldn’t even chop. Can you imagine? You were our Sous Chef or Geese Chef, whatever.
Really, our award was for our how well we worked together (mostly b/c we let Akemi make the decisions) & our punctuality. You completely left that part out of your post, your role as time keeper was very important.
Go kitchen timers!
There were people who couldn’t chop? Really? That’s just sad. That degree of culinary ignorance shouldn’t be tolerated by society.
Now if you’ll pardon me, I think my TV dinner is done microwaving.
oh how convenient that you left out the part about the time keeper role, greg.
WHAT a fantastic idea for a party. i am totally stealing that too. you know, someday, when i actually have more than 2 burners in my kitchen.
and i don’t think you should sell yourself short on the pumpkin chopping business. i chopped up a butternut squash this weekend, and nearly lost a thumb. on the hand holding the knife. it’s not as easy to do as one might think.
This is an awesome idea! Did all the teams cook in one location, or did they cook separately and then bring their dishes back to a central location, or something totally different?
And the secret ingredient is: S Q U A S H ! !
How fun. that is alot of squash dishes, though.
For those interested in organizing a similar event, you don’t actually need a big kitchen yourself! The way we did it was to have everyone meet at our apartment for the revealing of the secret ingredient. The 5 teams (each of 4 or 5 people) then departed to the apartment of someone on their team that had volunteered their kitchen. They had 3 hours to plan, shop (suggested limit $60 not including any staples, spices etc that the host kitchen might have had or the special ingredient which I provided in large quantity), cooking and then get back to my apartment to present their dishes. Teams whose host kitchen was further away were given extra time for travel.
Some extra things we did to make the event go with a bang: I rented some extra tables so each team had a place to present their food at our apartment. I also rented some colored tablecloths to match the team colors we’d assigned. Finally, I rented some catering heatlamps so that food wouldn’t get cold during judging (or if some teams arrived later than others, as happened in this case).
Each team nominated someone from their group to join me on the judging panel and we rated on taste (out of 10), presentation (out of 5) and creativity/use of the secret ingredient (out of 5). I then applied penalties based on whether the team got to kitchen stadium (my apartment) on time or late.
Since Greg’s team was the only team to make it back to my apartment within the time limit, his role as timekeeping proved fundamental to their success.
Dude, no wonder you won, you had Mick Fleetwood.
bert? as in bert and ernie?
Yo, step off my man Bert, Ese.
Some women find the sight of a man chopping to be VERY sexy. Loading the dishwasher is a close second.
Anne Glamore
OMG what a fabulous idea for a party! And the Chairman Kaga outfit (complete with pepper! where’s the action shot of him taking a manly bite??) is just the icing on the cake. I want to come hang out with your friends.
I want Adam to be MY boyfriend!
I’m sure my husband won’t mind.
I only lend him out for special occasions.
I certainly am a lucky girl.
and Mir, where are you located? we are always looking for friends. you can’t have too many ya know.
man, me and my friends always end up brawling before passing out in the middle of the street. you guys have amazing self-control.
y’know, we were a pretty kickass team. definitely kickasser than the other ones, although their food was damn good. thank god we were all anal about time.
What a GREAT idea. that sounds like a blast. And the green beans are SO important. Good thing you were on that.
O.K. so it may spell similarly but Chopin (said correctly, of course) doesn’t follow the alliteration.
Call me a stickler and spoilsport, but....wait, was it supposed to be like “chopping” but with a French accent? Ah, the limitations of blog conversation and story telling.