I have a Golden Spatula!
By David Haerle
The Daily World
So now I’m the holder of the much-coveted Golden Spatula, which I won Thursday night at the United Way campaign kick-off event “Chopped Food Bank Edition” challenge, featuring myself and five other local “celebrity chefs.” I won’t go into a lot of details of the challenge and my competitors, as you can find those in the accompanying story by Daily World reporter Louis Krauss, but here’s how I pulled it off.
First off, I had a couple of advantages going in.
• The “mystery” box we had to cook from was made up of staples from the local food bank. Having been a completely single dad for a dozen years, there were times some years back that I relied on local food banks to help feed four growing kids. So this was nothing new to me. This event was near and dear to my heart as I’m an avid viewer of Food Network’s “Chopped” and other cooking-competition shows and also believe that local food banks are a vital part of this society’s safety net.
• Secondly, I’m a pretty good cook with a better-than-average palate. Having grown up in and around San Francisco, I cut my teeth on all the ethnic food that makes it one of the world’s great “foodie” cities. There’s very little cheap about living or visiting San Francisco, but if you know the right neighborhoods, you can eat amazing food amazingly cheap there. To borrow a term from celebrity chef Guy Fieri — the City by the Bay — is truly “flavor town.”
• Finally, I can multi-task. It’s a requirement of my job and a necessary tool as a single parent.
We were required to use at least eight of the 12 mystery box ingredients. I used nine. I’ll note those with asterisks in each recipe. We were also allowed to bring “common household” ingredients, which I’ll note. I was also allowed to raid my home garden, which I did liberally, but only ended up using one of those ingredients, some fresh raspberries. And, we could spend up to $5 at the grocery store. I spent $3 on a head of garlic and some organic fresh basil. We had 75 minutes to “cook a dinner for four to five people.”
Here are my recipes:
I started with a sauce in which to baste and cook my six chicken drumsticks.*
I used:
The can of diced tomatoes*
I diced 2 ounces of the dried chili mangoes.*
I diced and added half of my Craisins.*
I crushed and added half of my M&Ms*
I added about a tablespoon of brown sugar, salt, pepper and garlic salt to taste, and two tablespoons of sweet chili pepper sauce I brought from my refrigerator back home. I also drained the juice from the canned Bartlett pears.* I simmered that for about 15-20 minutes, then tossed it all in a food processor to get it to tomato sauce consistency.
I browned the chicken legs on the stove for 10 minutes in a saute pan, added the sauce and coated the meat well. Then I tossed the whole pan in a 400-degree oven to finish. I turned the chicken and basted it with the sauce approximately every 10 minutes.
I then moved on to my pasta.*
I cooked it to al dente, drained it and set it aside.
While that was cooking I made a pesto sauce with half of the canned turnip greens* as its base. To those I added about 12 leaves of fresh basil, six large gloves of garlic, some walnuts I had left over at home and some cheapo parmesan cheese flakes from my home refrigerator. I put that all in a food processor and slowly added extra virgin olive oil until I got the right consistency.
I put half a cube of butter in a saute pan, melted it, stirred in the pasta and threw in enough of the turnip green pesto to coat it all well.
Done.
I then moved on to a fresh spinach* salad.
I made a basic balsamic vinaigrette but added the rest of my pear juice, some diced Craisins, some finely chopped walnuts and some fresh raspberries. I whisked that well and let it sit for 10 minutes to blend those flavors.
I tore my spinach leaves by hand and then added half my pears sliced thin, the rest of my Craisins, a few more chopped walnuts and the last of my raspberries. I tossed all that and then added the vinaigrette, tossing again for a good coating. I thought I may have over-dressed the salad, but I was told otherwise by the judges and other people who tasted it.
Ironically, there was a ton of food at the event (It was catered by Los Gallos — the best taqueria on the Harbor, in my humble opinion.) and the other chefs created what looked like some fabulous dishes, but I ate hardly anything other than tastes of my own food. My competitive juices kicked and and I was so focused and full of adrenaline that I did not eat again until I woke up and had a bowl of cereal at about 1 a.m. Friday morning.
Figure that. Free, wonderful food all over the place and all I wanted to do was clean up and head to a local watering hole for a rum and coke.
So, voila, there it is. Now I have the Golden Spatula and bragging rights, and I’m ready to defend my title next year against all would-be challengers.
Come and get it!
