I used to play a game with fellow home cooks and chefs way back in the MySpace days (but we called it Virtual Iron Chef… I feel like it’s more like Chopped, but I guess the name doesn’t matter).
Anyway, the way it works is you are presented with a list of ingredients. You create a tasting menu using those ingredients. Each ingredient must be used at least once, and each course must contain at least one of the ingredients. Menus can consist of 3 to 6 courses. The first 5 people who post their menus get to compete (or if you don’t get that many you just give it a reasonable amount of time before people can vote, like maybe a day).
People vote by upvoting the menu they like the best. Then after a reasonable amount of time (say another day) the winner is selected. The winner then gets to select a list of ingredients (the winner cannot compete during this round) and the game continues.
Would anyone want to play? Here is an example:
- Lamb
- Trout
- Ketchup
- Rice
- Tarragon
- Egg
- Blueberries
- Caramel
- Spinach
Amuse: Onsen quail egg. Togarashi. Hollondaise.
Appetizer: Yuzu cured trout. Tarragon and sesame oil. Crispy shallot.
Main: Spicy lamb lap chang. Sichuan dusted lamb chop. Ketchup fried rice. Fried spinach.
Dessert: Custard ice cream. Blueberry sorbet. Soy sauce caramel. Tarragon crumble.
Great! I’d say a day is fair for menus (or when we get 5 menus, whichever comes first) and another day for voting. I’ll pin the post until someone wins.
I wasn’t clear, my bad. I meant time to cook the dishes. Like chopped gives them an hour or something. This can greatly impact the recipes and techniques chosen. Not needed though! Just curious.
Ah, OK! I don’t know that there’s really a way we could work that in, unless someone looked at each dish and decided if something could be made in a certain amount of time or not.