Only His Cuisine Reigned Supreme!

Meet our Gretna Dinner Club Iron Chef 2012…. Eric!

We came, we saw, we cooked our hearts out… but only one could prevail. Our friend Eric nearly swept the vote for our first ever Iron Chef Gretna competition with his “Cinnamon Dusted Bacon, Honey Crisp Apple and Gouda Pizza”. It was amazingly delicious and, among many other fantastic dishes we sampled, best highlighted our secret ingredient for the night’s festivity – cinnamon! 

Most of our Dinner Clubs are arranged so that we know well in advance what we, and others, are preparing; however this one was different. We did know what portion of the meal we were to prepare. For example, I was assigned the soup. What we didn’t know was what our highlight ingredient was to be; at least until a couple of days before. Once we knew it was cinnamon the planning began! 

Everyone hustled to research a recipe for their course. We planned, we shopped, we prepared, and here’s what we ended up dining on for the night: 

Appetizer –  Cinnamon dusted bacon, honey crisp apple and gouda pizza

Soup –  Cinnamon, ginger and chicken soup with cinnamon-garlic crouton

Salad –  Arugula, apple and grape salad with cinnamon dressing

Entrée –  Cinnamon roasted pork tenderloin with honey, soy and garlic

Side –  Smashed, roasted root vegetables with cinnamon cheese

Dessert –  Apple turnovers with rich cinnamon-caramel sauce and black walnut cinnamon ice cream 

Eric's winning dish! Cinnamon-dusted Bacon, Honeycrisp
Apple and Gouda Pizza!

It may sound like too much of one thing, but I just can’t say enough how well everyone did incorporating the ingredient without overpowering or exhausting the palate. In the savory dishes, such as my soup, cinnamon was more of an aroma than the focus of your taste buds. Dessert, of course, was deliciously “cinnamon-ey” and the homemade black walnut ice cream was definitely a crowd pleaser. 

I loved the interesting application of cinnamon in the salad dressing that included more common dressing elements like mayonnaise and lemon juice. This was a great example of incorporating the spice in a detectable, but not overwhelming way. Cinnamon can be an excellent part of so many savory recipes; it’s not just for sweets. Watch later this week for more on cinnamon and its uses. 

Everyone did a fantastic job, but the use of cinnamon dusted over the warm, melty deliciousness of gouda cheese and perfectly crisped bacon was absolutely inspired. After you sunk your teeth in, you could detect the delicately sweet flavor of apple that paired so beautifully with the cinnamon and cheese. Heavenly! And nearly every vote after dinner reflected my sentiments. So congratulations Iron Chef Eric on your victory! If we meet again in battle…. Beware! 

I don’t know for sure what recipe Chef Eric used, other than he mentioned that he began with a recipe, but added the cinnamon on his own and took liberties with his preparation. Here’s a link to one bacon, apple and gouda pizza to get you started… hint – add your own magic – dust the finished and still-warm pizza with a little cinnamon!

http://www.mylifeasamrs.com/2011/11/apple-bacon-and-gouda-pizza.html

Apple Dumpling with Black Walnut
Cinnamon Ice Cream

And The Secret Ingredient Is…… “Cinnamon”!!!

You’ve got it! Our next Dinner Club features a serious, albeit friendly competition amongst fun-loving home chefs. Iron Chef Gretna has arrived! 

Although I’m sure we won’t be invited to host our own Food Network spinoff as a result, we will have a fantastic and uproariously good time together. How do I know this? Years of experience, my fellow foodies… Our group has graduated beyond the basics with our Dinner Club events. We are now in our sixth year together and are steadily exploring new ways to enjoy cooking and eating together. 

Yes, when you first begin a group such as ours, you cling to basic types of cuisines and keep the themes cultural for the most part. Although I still THOROUGHLY enjoy exploring the foods of different cultures – we have one coming up in February that should be amazing – I do love exploring other stimuli for the Dinner Club experience.

We’ve got a running list of ideas that we work from and add to every year to form our six meetings a season. Among those ideas are offbeat themes such as this “Iron Chef” takeoff. We’ve had Dinner Clubs that focus on historical time periods (such as our roaring 20’s dinner), major events in history (our “last night on the Titanic meal), and other ones developed from pop-culture trends (such as our Mad Men dinner last year). 

Iron Chef is a foodie-culture phenomenon as well as an opportunity for us to “compete” against one another for top honors (Ok, there actually are none other than a pat on the back and a congratulatory handshake)! We simply thought this would be a new and interesting take on our monthly meetings throughout the fall and winter months here in Nebraska. 

For this particular Dinner Club we’ve obviously had to break from our typical planning format. We’ve still assigned a particular portion of the meal to each of our six couples; however, we did not discover the “secret ingredient” until this week when the host house drew from a list of ten possible ones. We now have two days to decide what we will be making for our course and how we will best represent the said ingredient: Cinnamon. 

You can refer to our menu book page below for our format for this unusual meeting. I, of course, will keep you informed next week of what was produced and who reigned supreme in the Gretna Dinner Club Iron Chef competition… Let the cooking begin!

Revisiting our “Best Dish” from the Chinese New Year Dinner!

I like to highlight what I believe was our “best dish” from each Dinner Club gathering. This doesn’t mean that practically everything we cook isn’t satisfying. Everyone is our group does a great job of considering the care and preparation of presenting their own best effort each time (which will be the main focus of our next, unusual Dinner Club theme – more on that later this week). However, there’s always one thing that can be elevated to the top of the list. 

Sometimes this thing is a new and unexpected flavor combination that really makes our meal memorable, as it was with our Chinese New Year dinner recently. No, duck is certainly not a new thing to Chinese cuisine, but this representation of it was. It featured some ingredients that, although, are not typically frequent in Chinese cooking, complimented the other flavors on the plate beautifully. 

We could have gone with something more typically Chinese, such as Peking duck (which I happen to love), but this was one of those opportunities to “mix it up” a little and have something new; something that blended excellently with our meal and really was beautiful on the plate. Plus, it’s our group. We can combine in any way we want to! 

So, congrats to the gentleman in our group who selected and prepared our “Hazelnut Crusted Duck Breast with Sundried Cherry Sauce”. He did a really great job. It was the highlight of an amazing meal from top to bottom. I’ve included a link below to where he found the recipe on the internet. 

Do some searching of your own for a new and unexpected flavor combination or prepare this one. This entrée could be the centerpiece of so many different culturally-focused meals; simply highlight it with the beginning, sides and end you desire! 

Here’s that link:  http://www.mapleleaffarms.com/28?recipe=38&reccat=1

Watch later this week for posting of our next menu… This one will be fun and unforgettable! Thanks for reading!