Beer pairings:

We host an annual “anti-Maine Brewers Festival” dinner where we cook with beer and/or pair food with beer – it’s lots of fun to work out the combinations.  One quick and easy dish is mussels steamed in beer – this works well with wit beers, and you of course can drink the same beer with the dish.  My other favourite pairings are cheese (young gouda with a Belgian tripel!) and fried salty stuff – Jen’s fritters looked amazing.

Tailgating:

Know your audience.

Know your event.

I want something hot (it’s cold out).  I want something hearty (so i don’t have to buy crap food inside the stadium or leave my seat during the game) and flavourful.  I want something i can eat one-handed (because i probably have a beverage in the other).  Now – if you are competing on Top Chef – please give me something different!!

I loved this quickfire challenge – a great test of fundamentals – and tough.  We do occasional blind taste tests for sport (cabin fever, it’s a looong winter here) and i find i use my eyes to “taste” more than i would have thought.

The elimination challenge was a fun opportunity to show off your chops.  What’s with people not seasoning their food?   My thoughts on the elements:

Earth:  sauteed mushrooms, roasted root veggies, truffles – for an earthy salad – and i think a side of the suggested butternut squash soup would be ace – a soup and salad starter.

Air:  mousse – foam – whipped cream? a souffle! 

Water:  how about poached fish for better flavour, rather than yet more sous vide cooking?  Sushi – using seafood and seaweed.  You could sculp a seascape – a seaweed salad, a clam shell holding a seafood morsel, couscous “sand”…..

Fire:  something grilled; something spicy; something devilish – i thought these cheftestants nailed it, and i think they ended up with a better dish after arguing the details.

What would you cook?

My takeaway lesson from the Quickfire is — spend 5 minutes planning what you are going to do rather than just having at it haphazardly.

For the elimination – i was impressed that Spike and Manuel didn’t throw each other under the bus.  At the same time – a chef is a leader – and i didn’t see Manuel bringing much to the table tonight.  Have a plan, have the guts to make it good, execute.  Ok?

We are committed to eating locally and seasonally to the extent our budget allows. It’s simple in summer and a challenge in winter, although the winter market (coordinated by Thirty Acre Farm and Freedom Farm) have made it much easier. When i read about the Belfast Co-ops “eat local challenge” for March, i decided to make an “all Maine” meal; when i scored Sumner Farm eggs at the Portland farmer’s market on Wednesday, i decided to make a souflé (another one of the TC challenge dishes).

An impulse trip to Harbor Fish turned dinner from an all-Maine souflé to a Mostly Maine March Feast. Here we go!

Taste: Damariscotta River Oysters with Allagash Belgian-style Stout. Just fresh, ungarnished oysters served with a glass of stout. We don’t know any beers made with all-Maine ingredients, so decided to serve beer brewed locally.

Starter: Maine crab cakes with red pepper and almond coulis and mixed greens, served with Allagash Triple. The crab cakes were Maine crab, and the (attempted) mayo was made with a Sumner Farm egg, but the only other Maine element in the dish was the cheese on the salad (Ballstown 1791 from Townhouse Farm).  The mayo wasn’t great and the crab cakes sort of disintegrated (but still tasted good).  Will be trying those again.

The challenge is on!  Because this also happened to be the current test recipe i needed to prepare for Cook’s Illustrated home-testing series, i decided to tackle the scampi first.  The technique involved flavouring the oil first, quickly cooking the shrimp, then building the sauce before combining the pasta, sauce and shrimp.  The recipe (which i can’t reprint here) called for rigatoni, but it would also be great on linguini (i’m addicted to spinach linguini and love it with garlicky sauces).

 Yes – those are Maine shrimp – taking every advantage to eat them before their season ends! 

I’m still stunned – utter disbelief - that cooks of this caliber would serve food – in a competition none the less – without tasting it.  Nothing leaves my kitchen until i’ve tasted it and done my best to make it perfect.  I’m not always successful, of course……..and on that note, back to “Cooking Colicchio” tomorrow – salt-roasted salmon – yummy!

We were sure that deep dish pizza would quickly come in to play on series 4 of Top Chef since it was being filmed in Chicago so it was no surprise that the first Quickfire Challenge was to put ones own twist on the classic pie. If it were me, i’d top my pizza with a tangy tomato sauce, sweet italian sausage, blanched broccorabi, and fontina cheese. 

I thought the elimination challenge was brilliant – testing fundamental cooking skills in head to head competition.  Since i’ve never made at least half of the eight items on the menu, i announced my intentions to work my way down the list. Now we have a household competition underway. Stay tuned!