Farmers’ Market Iron Chef: Battle in the Kitchen

With just 20 minutes remaining in Battle Apple I knew I was toast. I hadn’t made my apple vinaigrette, the batter for my apple fritters or heated my fry oil. Across fthe kitchen island stood my fellow food blogger and Foodbuzz Iron Chef challenger, Foodwoolf’s Brooke Burton, looking as relaxed as if she’d just come back from a beach vacation. And worst of all? The sweet-tangy smell of apples, caramelized sugar and cinnamon was making me hungry.

The competition seemed simple. Choose an ingredient at the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market to plan a 3-course meal around. Each blogger-chef would have two hours to prepare their food, which would be judged on taste, plating and originality by a panel of food savvy professionals. But less than 24 hours before we were to take up our knives, we suddenly found ourselves without a battlefield, for the second time.

Chef’s Kitchens, a cool commercial kitchen co-op located in West Los Angeles was originally going to be our Kitchen Stadium. That is until we found out we needed food handlers’ licenses and liability insurance. Our second Kitchen Stadium was to be a friends’ home, that is until the über-pregnant hostess realized that we’d be taking over her kitchen for the better part of a day. Suddenly scrambling for a location the day before the event, Brooke and I called every connection we had in the food world to try and track down a kitchen large enough for two people to cook in. Bon Appetit’s test kitchen? No chance. Sur La Table’s cooking class kitchen? Not with a day’s notice. A restaurant that doesn’t do lunch service on Saturday? Are you kidding! If it weren’t for the graciousness of Pizzeria Mozza server Pilar Arias the whole thing would have fallen apart.

The Secret Ingredient
Some of the farmers were still setting up their stalls when Brooke and I arrived at the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning. The sparkling blue sky shimmered like the nearby ocean, making the colors of the produce pop. Butternut squashes looked more peachy, herbs more green. But nothing looked more beautiful, or more quintessentially fall-like, than the varied shades of green and red and yellow apples from Cirone Farms. Mike Cirone dry farms approximately 30 acres of orchards in See Canyon, near San Louis Obispo, growing popular varieties like Red Delicious, Gala and Fuji, and heirloom apples like Spitzenberg, Muutsu, Red Stripe, Bellweather and Newton Pippon. Tasting through the apples, which ranged from super-tart and firm to sweet and softer, we knew we’d found our ingredient, our secret ingredient. Battle Apple was on.

The Heat of Battle
Years ago, when I still thought I was going to make my living as a poet, I wanted to publish a literary journal called Celoso with my friend Chris. Celoso is the Spanish word for “jealous” and we wanted publish poetry that made us jealous we hadn’t written it, poetry that would make us work harder. The spirit of Celoso is what makes Iron Chef such a joy to watch. It showcases talented chefs taking on their culinary idols, sometimes even their mentors, not necessarily to prove they’re better chefs, but to push themselves creatively.

Celoso carries over to my food writing and, ultimately, to my friendship and writing partnership with fellow blogger Foodwoolf (aka Brooke Burton). So it seemed appropriate to lock knives in an Iron Chef-style competition, not to see who was a better cook, but as a way to push us to cook better, to be more creative and to craft a better story.

Dicing, slicing and sautéing, we threw ourselves into Battle Apple like professionals. Pilar’s kitchen island was buried under an orchard’s worth of apples, peeled skins strewn about like fallen leaves, bowls crashing like bolts of thunder.

My menu:

Fennel Apple Salad with Apple Vinaigrette
Apple Risotto with Grilled Pork Tenderloin and Apple Salsa
Apple Fritters with Homemade Ricotta and Almond Honey

Time management and only having two burners (we were sharing the stove) were going to be my biggest challenges. My strategy was to immediately get the pork tenderloin into a brine, then to start the ricotta, which takes about 20 minutes to make. But I spent most of my first hour peeling and cutting apples. Once I started the risotto time started to slip away from me. While it was cooking I couldn’t do much else. With all that stirring, stirring, stirring I felt like a witch over her cauldron.

All the while, I was watching Brooke cook. As she peeled and pureed I started to wonder if my dishes were complex enough. Were the apples going to stand out as well in my dishes as they would in hers. Could grilled pork tenderloin really complete with the oily richness of seared duck breast. Then our chairman announced I had 20 minutes remaining and all concern over Brooke’s cooking vanished. I felt doomed. I dumped all of the ingredients for my fritter batter into a bowl and started whisking while reading the directions for the first time. Oops. I was supposed to whip the egg whites and fold them into the batter, which should have been resting for an hour; that would explain why it looked like playdough.

I tried to save the batter and quickly race to make my dressing, heat the oil and plate all my dishes, but I had to call for backup. In the end, I went over my time (I believe Brooke did too). Luckily Alton Brown was nowhere in sight.

My best dish was, hands down, the pork and risotto (recipe tomorrow). Using Muutso, Red Stripe, Newton Pippin and Spitzenberg apples, the dish had wonderfully varied textures and balance, plus a kiss of spice from the apple salsa. The risotto was creamy and delicious and the pork was cooked perfectly on the grill. I do believe one of our judges gave it a perfect 10, for taste. But the fritters cost me. They weren’t crisp or particularly flavorful.

So “Whose Cuisine Reigned Supreme?” Foodwoolf won Battle Apple by three points: 68-65.

Torrone

Cooking, for me, is generally a solitary task, a moment to meditate. Alone, peeling carrots or chopping fennel isn’t a mundane task, but standing Zazen meditation. It allows me a moment with my senses, captivated by the way an onion’s odor transforms in the pan with a little bit of olive oil, how it loosens its astringent veil to reveal a sweet, earthen core. Cooking alone is like solving a Sunday New York Times crossword or other puzzle—carefully strategizing when to start each component of a dish or meal so that everything finishes hot and perfectly cooked at the same time.

Cooking with friends and family is an entirely different animal. Full of laughter, bumping into one another, tasting and, occasionally, smoke alarms. It’s sharing a delightful secret with the people you’re cooking with.

Amid the happy chaos and anxiety of holiday travel, meeting my boyfriend’s extended family, trying to squeeze an excursion to New York City into our East Coast vacation and New Year’s I cooked with people. It started with trying to make Pistachio Torrone—a traditional Italian nougat–with my boyfriend, Neal, to bring to Boston. Maybe I should have stopped when finding the edible wafer paper for this sticky treat left me calling every Italian deli, bakery and restaurant supply in Los Angeles with no luck. But I didn’t stop and I finally found the wafer paper at Gloria’s Cake and Candy Supply on the West Side.

Neal and I took turns battling the hand mixer as the sugar and egg white concoction stiffened, scooping it out with our fingers and then laughing as we tried to get it off our fingers. That first batch of torrone tasted delicious but was so soft that it puddled on the counter, looking like Dali’s melting clocks with pistachios in a couple of hours. We blew the engine on my mixer making a second batch. Again, the flavor was there, though I cooked it longer this time so it came out darker and the flavor reflected that, but the texture, while firmer than the first batch, was still too soft and sticky. Not exactly the holiday treat I wanted to impress Neal’s folks, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Besides, while alone these endeavors would have been disappointing, with Neal they were as fun as they were frustrating. Nothing says love like cleaning up a messy kitchen.