Putting on the thinking cap

In case you're at a loss for dinner ideas, check out this article in today's NYT. Mark Bittman is a genius.

Today was team competition day, and Derrick and I were pretty much resigned to being a team of two when Meghan and Jim showed up, 30 minutes late. We had a large selection of protein to work with, and Chef assigned us regions, and we had to produce the dishes at specific times. We divided up the work: Derrick made the salad, I did the soup and dessert, Meghan handled the appetizer, and Jim had the entrée and sides. Derrick was done first, of course, so he spent the rest of the time tasting and being helpful to the rest of us. We talked about our menu as a team, getting a pretty clear idea of what each course would be, then set about working individually to put them together. Our only real panic came when it was entrée time: Jim had a roasted piece of pork, and cooked some vegetables. The four of us did some quick work to heat and season the vegetables, and make a sauce for the meat.

This is what we ended up with:We had to make a Japanese-influenced salad, so Derrick deep-fried some vegetable tempura and served that on greens with a soy-sake vinaigrette.

For a "Southeast Asian" take on soup, I made chicken noodle, using ginger and green onion in the stock, flavoring the soup with coconut milk, adding diced bok choy, carrots, and chicken, serving it all on a pile of udon noodles. Chef said she would have used lemongrass and kaffir lime leaf in the stock and rice noodles instead of udon, and she thought some little cubes of deep-fried tofu would have added some needed color.For the appetizer course, we were required to serve seafood three ways. Meghan made seared tuna with wasabi cream, grilled shrimp with cilantro chutney, and a salmon napolean, using red pepper cream. Chef really liked our use of sweet potatoes in the Indonesia-inspired entrée, but our meat was slightly overcooked and "the sauce could use some work." (Duh.)We finished off with a Thai coffee mousse served with cashew-peanut brittle. Minus one point because the serving was too large. "But it's share food," Alex said.There was other notable food: Andrea made a great cucumber gazpacho.Silvia's appetizer plate was the best plate of the day. She made three different complex sauces to accompany the halibut, ahi, and scallop.Andrew's meat was cooked properly, but his sauce broke.Sarah and Sam used the Blue People tea to make a frozen yogurt that was really delicious, but Chef wasn't impressed by the plating.Each group received an overall score in the 90s. Chef said she's a hard grader but Not. At the end of the day, she said her only major recommendation was that we work more aggressively with the flavors of our assigned region. Tomorrow and Friday, we'll have a chance to do just that.