Got to Do the Cooking by the Book
Cooking has been in my family for a long time. My father has cooked for me and my family for as long as I can remember and every time a guest joins us for dinner, they’re always blown away by his cooking, even though he’s never had professional training. His mother wrote cookbooks for years, wrote daily recipes in a newspaper, and experienced learning to cook all around the world. These are some pretty big pans to fill, with their skill to live up to. I’ve learned to make some pretty good scrambled eggs. On my most recent birthday, I had an Iron Chef-themed party, where lots of friends came over to form two teams of five each, pitted up against each other in three different courses, appetizer, main course, and dessert. We each gathered our ingredients, and the one-hour timer was set for the first team. My team and I waited for our chance at victory, hearing the angry cursing of our opposition.
We talked over our plans, confident that Gordon Ramsay wouldn’t fail us when we needed him most. The first problem was the new secret ingredient, pineapple. It would be easy enough to incorporate, we knew the opposition didn’t stand a chance. We had a simple plan. A caprese salad made with a balsamic vinegar and pineapple sauce for an appetizer and a main course of a BBQ slider would be easy enough to put on a slice of pineapple to add the sweetness. The dessert would be slightly more complex because of the cream napoleons, a small stacked dessert made with layers of puff pastry, and a creamy pudding between. To add the pineapple, we simply took chunks of pineapple and mixed them with the pudding.
After our planning was finished, we all enjoyed the frustrated shouting of the kitchen behind us. They had a lack of teamwork, and it showed when they finished their hour and served to our three judges. Their appetizer was mozzarella sticks with a pineapple salsa. The other team had made a simple food, but it really did seem well cooked. According to the judges, it was delicious but not very creative, and didn’t feature the pineapple ingredient prominently enough. Their main course looked very beige for a showy food, as their fettuccine with pineapple with chicken seemed dull, and it tasted exactly as anyone would expect, made with prepackaged pasta with sauce out of a bottle. It was fine, but it wasn’t anything special. Their dessert looked great at first, a toffee flavored english pudding cake with pineapple on top. However, on closer inspection, the cake was completely raw and was absolutely inedible for fear of safety. I even had some, and got food poisoning from my taste.
Following seeing their food, our team was very confident in our abilities. As our timer started, we all dashed to our spots, each with our own pre coordinated positions. When the time ticked down, we were confident ours would be the victor. Our time ran out with three meals gleaming in all their fueled glory. The caprese salad was up first, and turned out just as tasty as we would’ve hoped, but the judges were disappointed with our lack of pineapple. Next up, our BBQ sliders, turned Hawaiian with the secret ingredient. Though it was delicious and sweet however, it was too tall for anybody to take an easy bite. Last up, our dessert. Our Napoleon pastry was just what we had hoped in appearance, yet when tasting the judges saw that it hadn’t fluffed up nearly as much as they’re supposed to. Our surprise fruit smoothie turned out well, forgetting that it was supposed to be a mousse. We left the judges to decide who was the winner, and we walked in no longer sure of our victory. We saw every fault of our meal and saw the other team’s strengths. Even more tense than Iron Chef, we stood to hear the judges results. After a concerning amount of deliberation and a cry of elation from the victors and a groan of disappointment from the losers, our team snatched away victory from the opposition.
