The Connoisseurs Chopped Challenge
Most people don’t know this, but there is an extensive prehistory to the Connoisseur’s culinary battles. These transpired in dark ages before the website was up, and we could argue endlessly as to who won which battle. While some great things came from them, you also saw a lot of failed dishes such as greasy fried quesadillas, “instant” paella, and other mundane and lazy entries. Still early on you could see a spark of passion, a flicker which has grown into a guiding light over the last few years. Now the battles are so close, so heated, that they require large panels of judges and sophisticated scoring. Historically speaking this challenge was our 11th cookoff, and our tenth with all four current Connoisseurs.
To test our mettle we decided on something we had never done before, with a “Chopped” inspired challenge. Each Connoisseur chose a meat, starch, vegetable (or fruit), and spice and after remixing them and assigning them at random, each Connoisseur was tasked with putting them to good use, in one or more dishes. A day in advance each Connoisseur received an email with ingredient assignments, as follows:
Connoisseur Jon: Canadian Bacon, Okra, Baguette, and Cinnamon.
Connoisseur Tom: Lamb, Celeriac, Black Wild Rice, and Fresh Basil.
Connoisseur Javier: Silkie Fowl, Spaghetti Squash, Polenta, and Mace.
Connoisseur Michael: Bacon, Cucumber, Purple Sweet Potato, and Pink Peppercorns.
Upon meeting we traveled as a group to Super 88 and Stop and Shop, each challenger holding himself personally responsible for the ingredients he threw into the mix. A stranger to Super 88, Connoisseur Michael seemed entranced with this pan-Asian market, a sideshow of live sea creatures and pickled oddities.
After shopping Jon got a head start with an ambitious trio of offerings, something out of an imaginary sidewalk café somewhere between New Orleans and Paris.
First was an okra lassi, blending okra with cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg. He also prepared an okra bruchetta with a relish of raw corn, cinnamon, okra, red onion and spices.
It was garnished with a perfectly crisp twist of Canadian bacon atop the toasted baguete slice.
Last, but probably most important, was the Okra au gratin soup, with okra, cinnamon,
diced Canadian bacon, fresh corn and croutons in a chicken stock
and topped with a lid of toasty melted cheese from baking each bowl individually in the oven.
Concurrently Michael started to mix his sweet and savory ingredients into a complexly garnished haute cuisine dessert available at some nonexistent New York night spot.
The centerpiece of his dish was a decadent flourless chocolate cake,
crusted in the assigned pink peppercorns.
The other assigned ingredients figured in as other sweet garnishes, such as a spicy cucumber freeze pop,
a twist of smoky candied bacon and
a syrupy and tangy purple sweet potato puree made with crème fraiche.
After some space was cleared up, Javier chopped, peeled ,and boiled up a medicinal aromatic soup from some mythical menu printed only in Chinese.
After removing the head
and feet
he separated the chicken into its parts and dropped it into a large pot of boiling water.
In went the figs, red dates, cooking wine, ginger, Thai basil, citrus zest, chives, mace and other ingredients.
In the end this soup was served with five spice and mace polenta dumplings atop
a tangle of
spaghetti squash noodles.
After watching the battle unfold for a while Tom decided to jump in and prepare his own entree, a generous and nurturing daily special from an idealized gastro pub.
Pairing a well-seasoned crown rack of lamb with
a garlicky celeriac and basil pure covered most his bases,
and the finishing touch was a wild black rice salad containing fresh fruits, mushrooms, and nuts.
After serving every dish to the present judges we started up a vote tally. Michael and Jon displayed extreme originality with their complex dishes, while Tom and Javier relied more on a single plate to wow the judges.
With Jon his soup was nearly flawless, but a few where turned off by the lassi which seemed more out of a juice bar than a fine dining establishment.
Michael’s cake was simply flawless, but the assigned ingredients seemed orbit the star of his dish at a distance.
Tom was able to present a perfect rack of lamb, but the rice hovered in a neither region between salad and side, needing to be tarter or less fruity.
Lastly Javier’s soup packed a delicate flavor, but despite removing the chicken from the bone before serving it still had a few booby traps in the form of fig pits and other hazards to the tooth.
Taking the bonus categories of Theme, Plating, and Creativity were Javier for Theme, a 3-way tie of Tom, Jon, and Michael for Plating, and Michael for Creativity.
In the end Javier took first place with 22 points,
with Tom
and Jon tied in a close second with 20 points apiece,
and Michael barely tailing behind in fourth with 16 points. This was probably one of our closest battles to date, but at least now we have the proper tools to judge our battles once the dust settles. If this trend continues I can safely predict our first ever tie in the future, probably settled by a dish washing “instant death” challenge.
- Connoisseur Javier