To wrap up the foods 12 class, we did Riverside’s take on Iron Chef. When I first got introduced to the Iron Chef assignment I began feeling very nervous because I don’t usually do well under pressure and I was nervous of having a panic attack in the middle of the Final Round. When we completed the Practice Round it helped me calm down and realize that it is not as stressful as I thought it was going to be. For the practice round, our secret ingredient was oranges and after many considerations, my team decided to make an orange cake with icing and caramelized oranges on top. On day 2 of our practice round when we were putting everything together, I quickly realized that our cake wasn’t going to turn out the way we expected and that making caramel was way harder than I ever expected. In the end, our plated orange cake turned out very beautiful but sadly before I could take a photo, my group devoured the cake. I guess it was very yummy.

For the final round, our secret ingredient was cinnamon. My group was probably the last to decide what we were going to do because there were two people who wanted to make cinnamon rolls but the other three (including me) thought that wasn’t very original. At the end, my group decided to make a deconstructed apple pie with whipped cream and honey glazed walnuts. I was happy with the decision of the food because we added the whipped cream and honey glazed walnuts for the garnishes of the apple pie. Preparing all the ingredients was very easy because our recipe was a good old-fashioned recipe with a twist. Looking back, I would probably lessen the number of apples I put into the baking dish because it ended up making the crust watery and the crust lost its crispiness. I think the time/ingredient restraints really affected our decisions because you can only do so much with the food that is in our pantry and fridge. Being limited to only one ingredient being bought brought a challenge for my group on deciding a recipe with which that would work. There was a substitution made from ice cream to whipped cream for garnish because we simply did not have ice cream and if we were getting apples as our ingredient then we couldn’t get the half and half needed for ice cream. Our group couldn’t present in time because our apples had not softened and even when we did present they were quite crunchy which is not supposed to be the case. Our time is limited really brought on a challenge because as a chef you wouldn’t want to serve the judges undercooked food.

My group worked very well together, and we all took on different tasks. All our decisions made were made as a group and we were really proud of how our recipe turned out. We all helped with the preparing, the making, the baking and the cleaning and plating of the dishes. Just like the practice round, I did not get the time to take a picture of our product or even taste it because, by the time I came to my unit from cleaning my hands, it was completely FINISHED. People from other units had come and surrounded our unit and all of them seemed to enjoy every bite of the food. I’m glad the dish turned out well.

I really enjoyed this activity and I would definitely do it again because it was very fun to think of concepts or ideas and apply it to our dishes. If I were to do this again I would make sure to choose my recipe quicker, so I can get to preparing or pre-making some elements of the dish on day 1.