Ling

I know your taste in food...just go with your gut instinct.

So now's your turn to vote for your Iron Chef. Please give each chef an overall score out of 10 (for presentation and originality), considering all 3 plates in your score. We'll keep the voting open until tomorrow midnight (PST), and then we'll tell you which chef reigned supreme. Iron Chef #1 Peach gastrique, avocado cream, Stilton biscuit Pork ribs braised in peach lambic beer, pickled peach chutney, gorgonzola polenta Curry caramel peach tartlets with mint ice-cream Iron Chef #2 Summer sweet corn soup with peach "foie gras" Pulled pork sandwich with Peach BBQ Sauce (pureed peaches, crushed tomatoes, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, and peach preserves) and zucchini, red pepper, and peach slaw on grilled potato rolls Deconstructed Bellini (prosecco snow on peach puree) Happy voting!

We began our day with a trip to the market; here are some pictures: We bought a tomato to have with lunch. We got a flat of these for our Iron Chef battle We bought some meat here... Sur la Table: We had a sandwich at Le Panier, and a peach and brie brioche from Belle's Buns. The brioche was excellent! Lunch pics: The brioche was excellent! (OK I had to say it again because I really did think it was superb.) Here's a peach I poached and peeled. Isn't it gorgeous? I was eating peaches, ice-cream and pork all afternoon. I ate more food in the last 8 hours than some people eat in 2 days, I bet.

The scores are so close...we keep re-adding the scores and our math must be really bad, because one minute Henry wins, and the next, I win.

How do you all know? The dishes are mixed up! We're tryin' to be SNEAKY here!!!!!!!

Here's a little preview of the Iron Chef menu. We each did a First, Second, and Dessert course, but we're posting them in a mixed-up order to ensure fairness in judging. Have a look! First course Peaches in Peach Gastrique, Avocado Cream, Stilton biscuits Summer Sweet corn soup with Ginger Peach “Foie Gras” • Second course Pickled Peach Chutney on Pork ribs braised in Peach Lambic, Crispy gorgonzola Polenta Roast Pork sandwich with Peach BBQ sauce and Peach slaw • Dessert Deconstructed Bellini Curry caramel Peach tart with Fresh Mint Ice-cream

^Henry says: "Four of our six dishes tonight are vegetarian, bee-yotch!"

I just like the look...I think it's more modern.

We're cooking right now. The kitchen is sooooooo hot! We got a flat of "Oh my God!" peaches. They are ridiculously sweet and juicy.

Others feel free to chime in. Neither Henry or I are the Pocky experts.

Funny you should ask--it was Henry's first time seeing the "Men's" Pocky, so he asked, "Where's the WOMEN'S Pocky?" And I said, "Everything else you see in the aisle is Women's Pocky!"

Red Velvet cake

^The camera battery is charging right now, so I'll post the Red Velvet pic when we get back from the market. We just spent the last 20 minutes or so writing up our menus for tonight. We told each other what we're planning to make, so there aren't any secrets or anything. The plan is to get back home from grocery shopping around noon (PST), and then Henry has to do some work and Abra is going to drop off some chocolate for me an EGer sent her from the other side of the world. Then we'll start cooking in the early evening, and the judges are set to arrive at 7pm (PST).

The main event: For the edamame puree, I sauteed onions in the beef fat from the ribs and I think that really made it extra delicious. The pastry made with the duck fat had an interesting, dissolving texture. It was not flaky...it just melted away on your tongue. Really good! The drizzle is parsley oil. (And perhaps I should explain that a pea floater in Australia is a meat pie in the center of a plate of mushy peas...so we took our liberties with this dish by changing it to pea soup.) The ribs were sooooooo good. I urge you all to try this sometime! The only change I made was to add a chopped onion to the braising liquid. Sorry about the pic quality...I am a little too tired to Photoshop them to make them brighter and sharper right now. I'll upload the picture of the Red Velvet cake tomorrow. (BTW--the recipe I used is Jaymes's recipe, but with 1 cup + 12 tbsp oil, which is in between the amount of oil I found in similar recipes online and the recipe Jaymes's posted in Recipe Gullet, because the Red Velvet I made according to that recipe was a little oily. I do not use the cream cheese recipe, but used 2 eight oz. packs of cream cheese, 1/2 cup icing sugar, and 8 oz butter. I also reduced the sugar in the cake. The most significant changed was I wrapped the hot cakes with saran wrap to "steam" them a bit, which is a method I learned from a Scott Wooley chocolate cake recipe. I thought this Red Velvet cake was absolutely delicious...and probably the most fattening thing on earth you can eat!! ) edit: corrected amount of oil used in cake

Our dinner party is ending, as Atta and Michelle have newborn girl (Mayson!) who needs to get to bed. Dinner was a great success, if I do so say so myself. (BTW, Pontormo, the duck fat was used for the pastry, not for the Red Velvet cake, which contains oil.) Dinner didn't take that long to cook, as our menu was pretty simple. One thing we had to change was the tomato confit, because Henry let them burn. (This does not bode well for the Iron Chef!) We just used sliced grape tomatoes instead. Rootbeer sauce for the ribs...we followed the directions posted by Chef Jeff of Aurora Bistro in Vancouver. He posted the method and loose proportions (1 part root beer, 1 part stock, thyme, garlic, 1/8 part pureed tomatoes) in the Vancouver forum awhile back. I must say these ribs were INCREDIBLE! I wanted to add mirepoix and red wine like I do for all my braises, but decided to make the recipe as written, and was really glad I did! We did reduce the sauce before serving with an extra bottle of Thomas Kemper root beer and extra stock so the root beer flavour came through more. lamb filling, wattleseed duckfat pastry shelling peas for the soup...this was the most boring job ever!

^I got the wattleseed from Abra! I remember hearing about wattleseed on a Bourdain "Cook's Tour" episode, the one where he's in Australia. The package says it has chocolate, hazelnut, and chicory flavours...it is black, and the grains are really small. It has a nutty aroma, not unlike sesame...so that's where I got the idea to use it in the pastry dough for the lamb pies. BTW--one of the guests has a mild allergy to dairy, so we won't have any butter or cream in any of our dishes (except for the cream cheese frosting for the cake, which he can eat a small amount or scrape off.) So we're going to be using beef fat and duck fat in all of our cooking tonight, which means.... DUCK FAT PASTRY! (I am freezing it and then coarsely grating it into the flour. )

Careful, I think my head is getting WAY too big. I better win tomorrow, because Henry's friends (whom we've cooked for numerous times) are already cheering for "TEAM LORNA" and want to get T-shirts printed. I don't know if they'll have enough time to get the T-shirts printed, but we'll include a picture of that if it happens. They will be part of the live audience tomorrow. We are (obviously) on a much stricter budget than the producers of Iron Chef, so we're allowing ourselves $50 to feed 5 guests judges 3 courses each.

That's a great idea. We'll post the dishes under "Iron Chef #1" and "Iron Chef #2". So right now, we're eating some junk we bought...green tea mousse Pocky (I picked that--it's my favourite flavour!) and leftover graham crackers from last night's cheesecake. The cookies are these hazelnut and chocolate cookies the lady at Le Panier gave me as a freebie. (And the bag contains the leftover hazelnuts from yesterday's chocolate tart...I will use them up later this week.) Before we start cooking, we took a short 5 minute walk to Macrina Bakery so I could get some more coffee. (I usually drink 2 big cups a day. ) Macrina is one of the better-known bakeries in Seattle, and I think most of their breads are pretty good. I've had a few of their pastries and think they're a step up from average, and Henry has had many more of their pastries over the years (at parties, etc.) and shares the same opinion. Henry loves the potato bread there. We also got a brioche roll from Macrina (90 cents) to compare it with the Le Panier brioche (2 bucks each, for about the same size) we're using for tonight's foie gras appetizer. Here are some pictures! They are really popular for breakfast/brunch! The beans they use are from a local roaster--Cafe Vita. In Seattle, I probably get most of my coffee from Macrina because it's not bad and it's so close to Henry's place. We probably won't get the brioche roll again though...it's more bun than brioche. (We tasted the brioche from Le Panier right before we went out to Macrina--you can see part of it in the Pocky picture--and it is much better, although we're comparing brioche to "brioche bun", which may not be the same.) We're going to start braising the ribs soon, and then Henry has to do some work and I'll bake the cake and kill some time by running to the gym. We're probably going to really start cooking around 5:30pm, and the guests are set to arrive at 7-ish. (And to answer the question about Peets vs. Starbucks, here is a link that explains their relationship--scroll down to read Bob's response. Peets and Starbucks I don't drink Starbucks coffee, except for an iced Americano when I'm desperate for a jolt of caffeine. My regular morning/afternoon drink is a 3 shot Americano, so when I say I'm getting coffee somewhere this week, you can assume it's a 3 shot Americano with some sugar and a bit of cream. Henry doesn't drink coffee, but I owe him a game of Scrabble when he drives me to Zoka, which is in my humble opinion, the best coffee I've found thus far in Seattle, thanks to mamster's recommendation.)

No, we are doing all the cooking--no help from anyone, professional or otherwise. BTW, we were kicking around the idea that when we upload our Iron Chef dishes onto our blog, the viewers (you) should be able to vote on a winner (based on presentation) as well. So how can we make this easy--should we just take the first 20 poster's votes (just post "1 vote for Ling" or "1 vote for hhlodesign) and the majority winner gets a bonus x number of points?

Well, like I said in the store, they have different levels of quality. The Wagyu I get in Vancouver is $100/lb., and the marbling is much more prominent. Two chicken skewers, ginger mackerel (this was OK) and an egg roll. I got a large Americano from Peet's when we went to pick up some stuff from Larry's (which recently went bankrupt and will be called something like "Metropolitan Market" in September). FYI: don't take pictures of Peet's coffee stands or the people working behind the counter will yell at you too.

That's so interesting, Michelle! What are some of your favourite Chinese dishes? Henry and I cook different things when it comes to Chinese. My dad is from Canton and my mom is from Shanghai, so those are the two cuisines I grew up with. Henry grew up eating a lot of Hunan and Szechuan dishes, so that's what he makes.

Boquerones?!! How am I going to make a boquerones dessert?!! Boquerones ice-cream, anyone?

YES...you are right, Pontormo. Thanks for setting the record straight.

tamiam: Yes, unfortunately I have to exercise. I'm pretty sure my metabolism has slowed down as I've put on some weight in the last year. Shaya: Eden was the one who brought the chorizo and fig dish, but from what I could tell, there were caramelized onions and balsamic vinegar reduced into the sauce. It was delicious with the fig juices and of course, the rich chorizo.

One of my fondest childhood food memories was eating my mom's cream horns (puff pastry she made from scratch, then rolled, baked, and filled with slightly sweetened whipped cream.) My mom baked quite often when I was younger, but when my two other siblings came along, she was too busy balancing her career and feeding our family three meals a day to bother much with baking. So I started baking when I was about 11 or so, using her dog-eared, stained copy of The Five Roses cookbook. My first cake was the mocha chiffon cake that I've since adapted as a coffee chiffon cake, b/c my parents didn't buy much chocolate when I was a kid. So after the baking bug bit, my goal as a kid was to make a new cake (or cookie, or pie) each weekend from the cookbook. I went through a period where I became really discouraged as a child because my aunt gave me a fancy cookie cookbook from Australia and I didn't realize that the measurements were different from N. American ones. I also had some pretty remarkable failures--in particular, I remember one of the first cakes I made at 11 was for my little brother's birthday. I always wanted to "experiment", so I made two banana cakes, stacked them, and filled and frosted them with a "banana" icing (which I believe was just mashed banana mixed with a 7-minute boiled frosting...I know! ) Of course, the banana in the icing started turning brown before we were finished with dinner, so I coloured it with yellow food colouring. The result was an unappetizing, mottled yellow-brown, lumpy cake. I haven't been to culinary school and I haven't had any experience in professional kitchens, except for the odd stage.