Imagine 15 teams with 2 - 3 people on each team battling head to head all the time cooking their hearts out to win bragging rights. Now imagine all of these people using the same limited ingredients. That's what I participated in, and this is my story.
If you follow the Facebook or the twitter account, you already know the outcome. So please ladies and gentlemen, don't ruin it for the others :)
The secret ingredient is revealed, we have pork tenderloin to cook with. Now we didn't get an unlimited amount like you see in the show. No my friend, we got 2 little pieces and had to make do; we also had to think of a recipe right there on the spot. Luckily for my team and I, we had a battle plan.
LET THE BATTLE BEGIN!
Here's what our presentation plate looks like:
Here's what you'll need:
Wild long grain rice
2 lbs of pork tenderloin
(bottled) Teriyaki sauce
Sugar
Oranges
1 egg
Balsamic vinegar
3 Garlic cloves
Thyme
Salt and pepper
Lemon and lime
Oil
Ginger
These were what our
limitations were: 1 hour and only 1 burner to cook all this. How did we pull
off such a feat? Well continue reading to find out how!!
The time starts and we scatter to grab what we think we
might need for this. The first thing we do is start a pot of water to get it
boiling for the rice. The next thing we do is grab the pork and cut 1 of the
pieces in half, then marinade the other pieces. The marinade consists of Salt,
Pepper, Oil, the Juice of 1 Orange, Lime, and Lemon along with the zest of 1
Orange. We also added Thyme and a minced clove of Garlic. We let this sit in
this concoction while we prepare everything else.
The orange strip on the plate was the next thing we moved
to. After we added the rice and brought it to a boil again we removed it from
the heat and put it on a counter covered. (We weren't sure if this would work
but we were pressed for time and needed to get everything finished).
In another pan we heated diced oranges and the zests from
those oranges. We added roughly 4 Tbls of Sugar, a clove of Garlic, and some
Thyme. Our original plan was to cook this down until it was a thick sauce. We
look at the time and notice 30 minutes have already passed.. That wasn't going
to happen. We reach into the bag of equipment we brought with us for something
that we can use. We find a blender! The entire hot mixture went straight into
the blender and added vegetable oil to make 'an almost' sauce. We found it to
be a bit bitter at first so we continued to add sugar until it was perfected.
Once we were content with the taste we needed to cool this
immediately. So we found 2 bowls, each smaller than the other. We filled the bigger
bowl with ice and the smaller bowl with the sauce and stirred until the sauce
was ice cold.
Lady luck apparently smiled down on us that day because the
rice finished amazingly fast without having constant heat. We only had 15
minutes remaining and we hadn't even gotten to the main dishes yet. I grab the
cut piece of pork we had saved for the rice and cut it down into small cubes.
Then in a hurry I grabbed the rice and heated up 2 Tbls of oil, 1 inch of
ginger and 2 gloves of garlic in a large sauté pan. The pork went right into a
hot pan to quickly infuse the flavors together. Right after I was content with
how the pork was cooked, I threw in an egg and scrambled it up. The next thing
I added was roughly 2 cups of cooked rice and the juice of 1 orange and mixed
quickly to evenly spread the egg out. I went to grab the soy sauce on the table
and that's when tragedy struck. It wasn't on the table. I had my 1 sous chef
run around looking for it until we realized we weren't provided with soy sauce.
What was I going to do?? My sous chef quickly suggested bottle teriyaki sauce,
unsure how it would taste, I went along with it just to finish. 10 minutes
remaining and pork hadn't been cooked yet. I throw in about 3 Tlbs of the
bottled teriyaki sauce in and mix it all together and start plating.
In another pan, balsamic vinegar was added to a hot pan
along with sugar to counter act the bitterness. The remaining pork was then cut
into equal pieces. 5 minutes remaining. Once the pan was searing hot, the pork
was then added to the pan and cooked on both sides.
Meanwhile I was packing the rice into cups to give them that
nice appearance and trying my hardest to figure out how to do the orange strip
that you see above. 4 plates were waiting for the pork and 1 minute remained.
The pork (thankfully it was cut thin enough) was fully cooked and platted. With
seconds to spare, scallions were added for decoration.
The Judging
The judging was announced at a dinner ceremony (go figure
and not with our food) roughly half an hour later. There we are sitting at a
table. The 3rd place winners were announced - wasn't us. We look at each other
thinking 'okay maybe we got second'... 2nd place was announced - wasn't us.....
Again we look at each other with a little defeat in our eyes. Surely we
wouldn't win first place.
The place goes silent. You can actually hear a pin fall in a
room filled with people.
"The First Place Winner of Iron Chef
is......................"
US! We had won!! Cheers erupt from our table of friends and
high fives all around. We were ecstatic, elated, and most of all... WINNERS!
So my foodie friends, I share to you my winning recipe. If
this all could be done within 1 hour and using only 1 burner. Then yes my
friends... You can do this too!!!
