Dinner and The Movies

My friend Calvin invited me to participate in an “Iron Chef” style themed-menu cook-off with him over the weekend. He was a little sparse on the details except to say that there would be about 20 guests at a dinner party for one of his clients. The theme was “food and the movies” and the idea was for each of us to present a menu where each dish reflected the theme of a certain movie. I whipped up a menu and sent it over to him, certain he would send it back with budgetary restrictions, but he didn’t. He said it looked good, and that cost wasn’t really a concern with this party. The host would pay whatever was necessary to get a top-notch dinner.

I’d put in a lot of hours at work for the week and asked Calvin to pick up most of the menu food for the evening. He’d said we’d have a couple of guys to help us prep things, and I assumed we’d be working out of the clubhouse kitchen since the host lived in a country club community. Some stuff I had to pick up myself on Friday because I wanted to cook and roast it overnight. I got all the ingredients, but then life and wife intervened and I didn’t get anything done on Friday night.

I got up around 4 am Saturday and began cooking my meats and smoking sugar plums for a sauce. That and a few other things kept me busy until it was time to go to the Spartan Race in Conyers. I pulled all the meats and let them chill while I went and ran the race. The race took longer than I planned and I had to rush back home, hop in the shower, scub off the mud and blood, get dressed and pack all the food. I high-tailed it over to the address Calvin gave me and found out we were not cooking at a clubhouse, but at someone’s home. I arrived a half hour late, but got right to work. The help Calvin suggested was coming never came and I had to do everything by myself. I worked on a tiny space on the counter top and Calvin and I had to share stovetop space. I finished up the components of my four dishes just as the guests were sitting down.

Calvin and I took turns taking out our dishes and explaining the plates and their connections to the movies. Calvin did a clam linguini inspired by “The Little Mermaid”, a grits and short-rib dish via “My Cousin Vinny”, a shrimp trio on cedar plank hommage to “Forrest Gump”, and a Royale with Cheese burger with vanilla shake ala “Pulp Fiction”.

My dishes were: “From Russia With Love” which had a potato hash tower wrapped with smoked salmon and topped with salmon roe, frisee salad, vodka cream sauce and borscht vinaigrette; “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” with a saffron-poached tiger shrimp crouching over a tamarind-glazed slice of bbq’d eel on a bed of green tea tapioca pearls, honey braised carrots, smoked plum sauce and lime chili pickle; “One Upon A Time In Mexico” with chipolte roasted pork tamale, adobo salsa, “riced” jicama and stewed tomatillo; and “Spaghetti Western” with BBQ chuck roast, BBQ marinara, calico baked beans, fresh fettuccini noodles and piavi cheese.

The guests scored us on presentation, taste, and tie-in to the movie. Calvin ended up winning but I didn’t care, it was his party and his guests and it was all in fun anyway. I got reimbursed for my expenses and a nice little wad of cash for helping him out. We cooked and plated and ran food and cleaned and packed up and it was 1am before I left their house and headed home. I had to unpack and unload it was after 2am by the time I was able to go to bed.

Everyone had a great time and we got lots of compliments and handshakes and back-pats on the food and the originality of our concepts. It certainly was fun to do and I always learn something while doing these kinds of gigs(ie, you can never be too organized!). Hopefully we will get to do something fun like this in the future.

Protein Power

In keeping with my goal to go higher in protein during at least one meal, I prepared one of my personal favorites: Steak Tartare. I’ve been off red meat almost completely for several months, but I decided this was a good way to kick off a powerful protein diet. I made a small salad of tomatoes and cucumbers with a lemon vinaigrette to start with. Then I finely chopped some garlic, parsley and red onions, mashed a little bit of anchovy I found in the very back of the fridge, bowled up some roasted tomatoes and Worchestershire sauce, sauteed some mushrooms, and daubed a little whole grain dijon mustard on a plate. From the store I bought some top round sirloin, very lean. I seasoned around 6 ounces with a little sea salt and stuck it in the freezer for about 10 minutes. I diced the very cold and firm meat into cubes and ran it through my meat grinder on a medium grind setting (I know the purists want to finely chop the meat by hand, but I went the grinding route, sue me). I formed the ground meat into a thick patty and pressed a well in the center. Into the well I laid an organic egg yolk. It made for a very pretty plate, I thought. After the salad I sprinkled the various condiments onto the patty and the yolk and used my fork to fold over the raw ground meat until everything was well combined. It tasted awesome, and pretty gourmet for workout fuel.

Not something I’d do very often. I still want to make red meat a rarity in my diet. But nothing wrong in being a little decadent in the pursuit of health and fitness.