Iron Chef Challenge

So, the Instigator threw down the gauntlet, or rather I cheekily rose to receive it. In days past I was accomplished in the kitchen, but beyond my usual standards I haven't been called upon to deliver and frankly without any boys to charm and what with that nagging poverty I haven't turned much out of my kitchen.

So, this was the challenge.

Eggs, crab legs, portobello mushrooms and flank steak paired with Portuguese white wine, heifeweitzen, pink champagne and red wine.

The menu:

apps were thrown off because the crab legs were still frozen.

1. 30 min. Crostini with sweet sausage marinara, poached egg, white wine.

2. 25 min. Picked crab with truffle oil on endive spears, with fresh vegetable slaw. Pink champagne.

3. 25 min. portobello, yellow squash and fennel fricasee - beer.

4. 28 min. Pan fried flank steak with fig reduction and broiled new potatoe and leek chips. Red wine.

5. 16 min. seared nectarines with cinnamon and mint over vanilla ice cream.

Basically I stood over my stove for five hours, and it was totally worth it. I executed a fine meal, that I pullled out of my ass with five minutes notice and it felt really, really good. (A huge part of the challenge is not knowing what you are going to have to contend with.)

I would happliy do it again.

The best thing about remembering, or the best thing about doing is the ease that takes over, acid to acid, salt to creamy, finessing a sauce, the satisfaction of your own good knife work, ghosts on your shoulders, kitchens past, cut on the grain, cut against muscle, get out of my head, go on, get out, I still pick parsley exactly as you demanded.

But this, this fleeting glory belongs to me and my palette, I did it, and I wasn't sure that I could, but I did. And holy fuckballs, I done brung it home.