[Sca-cooks] Cooking Contests was Iron Chef

[Sharon Gordon]

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On the Iron Chef Competition

The two chefs in the contest find out a week before a list of 5 secret ingredients they could be dealing with.  They can then request other ingredients and cooking equipment be provided to cover all of those 5. The wierd thing is that the secret ingredient must be a part of every dish.

In the SCA, there tend to be three variations on the theme.

1) A team is told the secret ingredient the night before and a cost limit is put on what the team can add.  Then they can meet and plan what to get and what to make.  Personally I think they do best with some experienced team members, well indexed books, and an excellent selection of cooking and serving equipment.  Often the team is judged on the presentation as well as the periodness, creativity, taste, documentation, and team work.  Occasionally in addition to beautiful handmade tablecloths, and gorgeous pottery, teams will even provide music for the judges to dine by.  For this one the team is usually required to use a certain amount of the secret ingredient, though it may or may not have to be in ALL the dishes.

This is pretty fun as is.  I don't think the limits placed on the real Iron Chefs would work too well in the SCA since the Iron Chefs have the benefit of years of professional training and full time experience.  I think an opportunity to plan and consult books and notes even things up and results in a better challenge.

To me it would even be fun if the team knew a month or two in advance what they would have to work with though this would be a major variation on the Iron Chef theme.  It's my experience though that a lot of people enjoy really being able to maximize what they can do within set limits.

Some teams will even build an oven on site up to a week in advance to use for the competition.

2) The team is provided with all their allotment of food and given 3-24 hours or so  to plan and cook their feast.  This tends to go well if the team is experienced in working together, and has a lot of knowledge, and can make decisions quickly.  This is the sort of competition that was talked about a few months ago on the list.

3) Siege contest.  Each participant is given what you might call pantry odds and ends like 1 cup of flour, 2 eggs, an orange, 1/2 cup of honey, 1 whole chicken breast, 1T salt, 2 carrots--perhaps small amounts like this of 15-20 things.  They then are to try to fool two visiting royalty into believing that the castle has plenty of food, and here is this feast as an example.   Sometimes in this case the participants are allowed to bring small amounts of herbs and spices.  In the case of one group that does regular siege contests, they can bring 2 tablespoons of dried spices/herbs and 1/4 cup fresh herbs/spices.  You can bring as many different kinds as you want as you could bring 1/8 teaspoon of 16 dried spices for instance.   This tends to be judged similarly to the others with the addition of valuing complete and multi use of all your foods--like using skin and bones for soup stock, and doing things to get a much variety and apparent volume of food as possible.

Sometimes the cooks have ovens/stoves and refrigeration provided in any of the 3 types, but usually they need to provide their own.

4) In nonSCA challenges I have seen some other variations:
A) Chef has a known pantry and is allowed to buy X dollars worth of food to add.  Chef on a Shoestring is an example of this sort.  Often the Chef is requested to make a meal that is an example of their specialty.
B) Chef has X amount of money and no pantry.  Here the focus is often using clever frugality to produce as much food as possible.  Toronto and Ottawa Canada have a week each year where they challenge people from all walks of life to live on the grocery budget of people on social assistance.  Few of the challengers succeed in making it all the way through the week on their money.
C) Chef gets to use the contents of a person's grocery cart and whatever is in their house.
4) Chef can use anything on the grocery store salad-food bar and one item from the grocery shelves, with the object being to make a dinner that doesn't look like it came from the grocery store salad/soup bar.

I like to collect examples of Cooking Contests.  If you know of any, I'd like to hear about the theme, requirements, how the organizers chose what they did for the participants, and items provided to the participants.  Reports from participants or observers would be appreciated too.

Sharon
gordonse at one.net
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