I competed today in the semi-finals of the Master Chef NYU competition and to my surprise I did well enough to make it to the finals! As my previous post indicates I made pierogi and borscht, plus a little pastry type dessert. It just so happened that of the three judges, each one of them had a special place in their hearts for both pierogi and borscht, so that worked out pretty well for me. Their comments were very nice, with really no criticisms. I would have made one criticism of my pierogi's though --- I felt that the skin was a little too sticky (which was probably because I cooked them in water I had used to boil potatoes). Otherwise I was very happy with the day. In fact, two of the judges asks to bring home portions of both of my dishes, so I felt really good about that.
That said, I will need to compete again in three weeks in the finals. The challenge is to create a full three course meal, again in only 1 hour of cooking time, but with 30 minutes (instead of 20 minutes) of prep time. My preliminary thoughts are to make an Indian feast! We are afforded one special ingredient, not on the list, and we are allowed to bring in one tool from home. I don't think I'll bring in any time because I don't want to unkosher it by using it along side their tools. For the special tool, maybe I'll use paneer, or if they don't have basmanti rice (they say white rice) I may ask for that. I will also need to look into the types of lentils I can get from them. A menu I've made before which works well is a dal and rice stew, malia kofta type indian patties with a sweet vegi sauce, and cabbage curry. I'm not too crazy about trying to make any sort of bread, though possibly I could find a flat bread which doesn't take that much time to make... probably not though. As far as dessert goes, I could try to make a rice pudding with cardamom and coconut milk.
The competition for the finals looks pretty good. The other team is of two people who both came with their own chef-type uniforms on, and who were both talking about their cooking experience, which seems rather extensive. They made some really good looking meat dish this round. Anyway, I look forward to competing again in three weeks, and for anyone interested, on April 13th there will be a showing of the competition show at the Kimmel center. Win or lose it will still be fun to go and watch.
2 comments:
sweet! now you certainly are food network bound!
congrats, Ivan! you could also take a look at a carrot halva for a potential dessert item. it's not as common in indian restaurants here in the states but is at least sometimes available and quite delicious (also not that hard to cook, though actually looking at some of the recipes online, many of them say it takes quite a while to cook down the milk till almost all the liquid is gone...)
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