#EdenCooks - Iron Chef Eden (March-April)

So I've been doing some research on juniper berries (in a sidenote, be prepared to see an article on them on the clubs blog in the near future) and I've come up with two ideas that I really like. The first is to combine them with shallots and vermouth to cook a salmon in. I still am playing around with the best way to do this. The second is to use them with lemon and gin and some fresh herbs to marinate some halibut steaks.

In any case I can't use my juniper berries this week. My sister's home from college and has threatened to pitch a fit if I try to cook anything that she won't eat. And she's including juniper berries on the list of banned items. (She is probably the definition of the opposite of culinary adventurousness.)

I am really excited to see all these new dishes with some tips on making them. I would have a hard time finding nopales here, but depending on how your recipes come out, I might need to try.

I am a complete novice in Swedish cuisine, so I look forward to learning! The buns sound like the'd be delicious and I know what the next food I'm looking up during my lunch period will be! less

The saffron buns sound really interesting. I assume, then, that the buns will be yellow.

Rose hip soup is something I'd have never considered. I use rose hips in tea occasionally, but I've never thought of them used in a savory dish. I'm really interested in how that turns out. A bit sour, I'd suspect.

I've never cooked herring, but eaten lots of it pickled. It is pretty oily, I believe. Atlantic salmon (which I imagine is what you'll have access to) is pretty bland for my tastes, so you may need to spice or herb it up. One of my favorite things to do is to get as many different fresh herbs as possible (especially dill), chop them up, and mix them with sea salt, crushed garlic, and pepper before coating the top of the salmon fillet with the mixture. I score the salmon every inch about a half-inch deep before adding the herbs. This makes sure the herbs get into the fish as well as sticking on top. It's very tasty and elegant. I'm not suggesting you do this necessarily, just mentioning a way I do it that would complement the Swedish dishes (I'm part Norwegian, so I understand the Scandinavian style).

Good luck. I'd love to sample all of them. less

I hadn't made up my mind whether to use the fruits or the pads yet, I reckoned I'd take whichever looks fresher tomorrow (or perhaps both).

When I cooked with purple yam, I made it into a halwa-like dessert under the tutelage of a Malaysian friend. It wasn't dry, but only because we intentionally made a paste of them.

Neat! I actually made Santa Lucia buns for my birthday (Santa Lucia's day, if you're checking the Catholic saints calendar, which I did for curiosity rather than devotion) many years ago. They came out too dry- so "keep things moist!" can be the theme of our Iron Chef. I'm excited to hear about the rose hip soup and the herring / salmon, too. My favorite salmon preparation is more Alaskan than Swedish, so I'll be curious to see what you come up with.

And our juniper berries? less

So I've been doing some research on juniper berries (in a sidenote, be prepared to see an article on them on the clubs blog in the near future) and I've come up with two ideas that I really like. The first is to combine them with shallots and vermouth to cook a salmon in. I still am playing around with the best way to do this. The second is to use them with lemon and gin and some fresh herbs to marinate some halibut steaks.

In any case I can't use my juniper berries this week. My sister's home from college and has threatened to pitch a fit if I try to cook anything that she won't eat. And she's including juniper berries on the list of banned items. (She is probably the definition of the opposite of culinary adventurousness.)

I am really excited to see all these new dishes with some tips on making them. I would have a hard time finding nopales here, but depending on how your recipes come out, I might need to try.

I am a complete novice in Swedish cuisine, so I look forward to learning! The buns sound like the'd be delicious and I know what the next food I'm looking up during my lunch period will be! less

Oddly enough, the buns from what I saw were not much different than nicely browned rolls. I could be totally wrong and they do end up being quite yellow. I have had to do alot of research on them (and more to do) so that I can make them properly and be able to explain why I made them for the holidays.

From what I know of Saffron it does turn things a golden yellow color so that may be what I am seeing in the picures I came across and misrepresenting it.

I love the ideas for the fish. Yea, I will end up using Salmon since it is more commonly found in stores around here if I screw something up. I actually have a container of pickled herring in the fridge but I have only tried it a few times.

Rose hips are going to be something really new to me, but I thought maybe it would go well with either the buns or another hearty bread that I can make for those cold nights. That is if everyone enjoys it. less

The great "nopales vs fruit" debate was settled before I arrived- only nopales were in stock.

I'm not actually familiar with the rules of a real Iron Chef competition- is it one shot at one dish per ingredient, or are the chefs given a few dinners to work out the natures of their ingredients and come up with something stunning? Since I wasn't sure, I went with a very basic preparation of my prickly pear paddles, with the idea that it would be edible no matter what, and once I had a feel for their texture and flavor I could season and prepare them accordingly. And, really, if my first entry is my final entry, I'm not at all embarrassed with what I'm submitting to the judges.

I decided to make tacos camarones y nopales. Stripping the spines from the paddles was easier than I expected it to be- the eyes were raised, so I scored a line on the far side of each eye, and stripped my knife down the surface3. From there, because I was leery of their drippy stickiness, I put them in a hot pan of butter to sautee by themselves until the stickiness reduced itself. From my experience with okra, I was afraid I had messed up when the sap started pouring, but unlike weeping okra, it reduced to a pleasant consistancy 2.

I added (to three paddles4) one chopped onion and one chopped jalepeno (I was cooking for an audience, or there would have been more heat). Now that I have a handle on the flavor, I would have felt just fine adding some garlic and cayenne at this point. I also thawed some precooked shrimp (again, just so that the prickly pear would be my only variable. I would definitely change this in future iterations, though the color was nice) and pan fried it along with the onion and nopales. I heated up the tortillas in the still-buttery pan, and garnished with cilantro and lime.



These tasted really great for a first stab at a new ingredient. The texture of the prickly pear was really lovely, contrary to expectation when I'd first tasted it raw. The reduced sap made a good sauce which helped the onion and chili flavor cling to the shrimp, interestingly enough, and the prickly pear rounded the dish out, feeling somehow like a carbohydrate. Fresh lime and cilantro can't fail as a Mexican garnish, and they brightened the flavor up. My diners were well pleased (though I never really know if I can trust them- my boyfriend was raised in a family where "this is the best **** I've ever tasted" is a synonym for "thanks for cooking," and my other roommate doesn't want to poison the free food well by giving me criticism. Sigh.).

If I were making this same dish again, I'd add garlic and cayenne, and swap out the shrimp for a firm white fish, or maybe chicken. I would secretly like to add peanuts for crunch, unorthodox though it may be, and if I were making this for vegetarians I'd use peanuts instead of meat, and add a bit of fresh chopped tomato for color.

If I were allowed to make a completely new dish, I would make a chili sauce (rehydrate and blend dried roasted California chilis + seasonings), fry up some jalepenos, onions, and nopales, and serve them in layers with fried marinated chicken, over rice or tortillas, depending on how I felt.

All in all, a pretty successful venture into cactus cooking. Thanks for encouraging me, folks! less

If growing saffron crocuses works out well for you, I'd be very interested in trying my hand at a crop. How expensive are the bulbs?

@Alys, I'm sure you'll enjoy spending time with your sister even if you can't spend that time cooking

And @Danelle, looking forward to hearing about the Swedish preparations for salmon. less

OH MY GOSH! Vac, your food looks absolutely delicious and beautifully presented! Really Iron Chef level stuff!

I, on the other hand, don't really cook. Not that I don't want to, just that I always seem to lack something: time, money, people to eat the food, etc. So I never really learned. I can only do very, very basic cooking. But maybe one day...

This is an AWESOME thread that I can't believe I missed!!! less

Those dates look unbelievable- I think you need to reevaluate yourself if you call plating a weakness.

I was grocery shopping again two days ago and found some prickly-pear fruits. I want to try a few different uses for them this weekend, so in preparation I just made a weak simple syrup (weak enough that I can add vinegar to part, more sugar to another part, or simply reduce another part for a while ). The color seemed worth sharing, and I'll likely post one meat, one dessert, and one drink after I've made them.

Til then, here's the syrup album, and here's the intermediate product:
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Those dates look unbelievable- I think you need to reevaluate yourself if you call plating a weakness.

I was grocery shopping again two days ago and found some prickly-pear fruits. I want to try a few different uses for them this weekend, so in preparation I just made a weak simple syrup (weak enough that I can add vinegar to part, more sugar to another part, or simply reduce another part for a while ). The color seemed worth sharing, and I'll likely post one meat, one dessert, and one drink after I've made them.

Til then, here's the syrup album, and here's the intermediate product:
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I used my juniper berries tonight! And it turned out pretty awesome, so I'll have to make it again. I made a roasted salmon, encrusted with crushed juniper berries and black peppercorns as well as some shallots. I fried up a few shallots, sliced fine, for a garnish; and made a vermouth and butter reduction in the pan that the salmon had cooked in. This is a shortened timeline of the cooking, done in photos:












*Also, I've posted an article to the Eden Cooks Blog here about juniper berries. less

I used about half my jar of prickly pear syrup today- most of it went into a gastrique served with beef tenderloin strips accompanied by rice with cilantro and lime. I also sweetened some syrup to incorporate into margaritas, but this was only a partial success.

The gastrique in the larger pan took on an orange tint with the addition of vinegar, while the prickly pear syrup in the smaller pan kept the deep pink color :

I didn't originally add gastrique to my boyfriend's plate, as he had curled his nose a bit at the smell of raw vinegar. He did insist on trying it, though, and was completely surprised at how sweet it tasted, giving himself second helpings and even eating it over the rice. This was probably the tastiest gastrique I've ever prepared... in the past I've done straight sugar or sugarwater with a flavored vinegar, but I will be using flavor-infused syrups from here on out.


The margaritas were not a complete success- I reduced the syrup too completely, and when I added it to the lime juice, tequila, and Grand Marnier, it solidified into something like clear taffy. I couldn't heat it to reincorporate it while retaining the alcohol, so we drank our slightly-pinked margaritas and ate the taffy from the bottom of the "shaker" with forks- both were tasty, if not very well plated.



As far as the taste of the fruit -it's a little hard to describe. Given their bright pinkness, I had expected a very strong flavor, but it's actually a little dull when you cut into them. They taste ... sweet, and sort of floral, but very mild. Cooking them into a syrup clarified the taste, and it's still mild but not dull anymore. Adding a bit of lime juice (or, I suppose, any acid- that gastrique was the best possible thing I could have done) completely balances it and brings it full-force into a flavor... I'm sorry that there's not a direct comparison I can make. I did notice today though that the prickly pear fruits at my store were being unloaded from a Melissa's box, so if your store stocks from Melissa's you might be able to make a request. Some stores will let you make special orders by the case, and if you do that, you can easily cook them all down and can the juice/syrup (according to my research). less

Tonight I made a meal with the second of my Iron Chef ingredients: dates. I stuffed them with gorgonzola dolce and crushed hazelnuts and wrapped most of them in bacon. I paired the dates with some of my ten-head garlic bread and some grilled venison chops with a fig-red wine reduction.



The dates are pretty self-explanatory, but it should be noted that slicing them length-wise to pit them worked much better than going in through the end.



For the garlic bread, I roasted ten heads (that's heads, not cloves) of garlic for 45 minutes at 475 degrees F. After they cooled, I took them out of their husks and spread them on some sourdough bread that I had cut length-wise and buttered. Finally, I cracked sea salt over the top of it. I ordinarily also add some fresh, crushed garlic to the top of the bread, but my garlic was pretty hot and harsh this time, so I omitted it.

I tenderized the venison chops and then marinated them in some Malbec for about thee hours. I chose that particular wine because it has some cherry and berry flavors to it that I thought would match well with the venison. I then grilled them to medium rare on the grill. I also made a fig-red wine reduction out of fig jam that we made from the figs in our back yard and and some red table wine.

All in all, the dinner was a good success. I liked the dates with the bacon a lot, but the ones lacking bacon were a bit too sweet for my tastes. The garlic bread was good, as usual. I grilled the venison perfectly, which is not the usual for me (but then, I'm usually running back and forth from the grill to the kitchen to work on other things, but I didn't have to do that this time). The fig-red wine reduction was really good, but I think next time I'll go with a cherry-based reduction, as I've always liked cherry matched with venison. less

I know that a month between meetings is a long time for some of us, so I'm starting up a challenge à la Iron Chef.

This being our first Iron Chef Eden I am going to let you choose your secret ingredient, all I ask is that it be something that you don't usually use.

During the month, we will all report back here with the ingredient we've chosen, how we intend to use it, and any recipes and pictures of the completed dish if you want to share. less