Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Second Annual Cook-Off

                                          (That's me holding the menu for the cook-off)

I want to write this blog to say how amazing our friends Heidi and Seth are at cooking.  Before meeting Seth, Ben told me that he was the best cook among his college friends. When I first met Seth, he cooked dinner for us and it was a fantastic dinner. I had the best steak I've ever had;  I felt like I would need to have a lot of tips and skills to make it as good. Then when I met Heidi, Ben also said she is a very very good cook.

I was very happy and excited to be invited to be one of the judges at Seth and Heidi's Second Annual Greenmarket Cook-Off. At the beginning I thought it would not be that serious, but when we came to Heidi's place, the table was set very fancy. Especially when we just sat down, Heidi handed us menus and instructed us about their "five fork" grading system. It felt very serious.  Our role, being the judges, was to score the taste, the decoration, the originality and how true to the greenmarket each dish was.  Seth and Heidi had to go to the farmer's market in Union Square in the morning to buy all the ingredients for their dishes and they were not supposed to use ingredients from other places (well except salt, pepper and cooking oil).

Here were the appetizers:

          (Heidi's first course: Pear and autumn vegetable soup with pear "chips" and purple micro radish)
Side note: Heidi First course also included Stecca Loaves, which were the BEST fresh bread ever.

                                    
                                            (Autumnal stecca loaf with roasted garlic)
Here was Seth's appetizer:
                                    
 ( Poached pear with baby lettuce, goat cheese, toasted pumpkin seeds and pear-reisling vinaigrette)

My judgement: It was a very good combination of poached pear and goat cheese and the toasted pumpkin seeds really made it perfect. I loved the pumpkin seeds and I asked Seth how to cook them. In fact, I cooked them at home the week after, but it was burnt and could not compare to Seth's. Obviously, Seth is a much better cook than me!

Here were the main courses:

      ( Seth's Main course: Maple seared scallops, autumn squash two ways and bacon crumble)
You can see how beautiful the dish was decorated, and it tasted fantastic!

 (Heidi's main course: Ricotta squash gnocchi with duck bacon roasted brussels sprouts and apples in honey-apple vinaigrette)
Can you believe that Heidi made gnocchi by herself? It was amazing!

You might think that our judges had a hard job of eating everything in two courses, but everything was sooooooooooooooo GOOD that all of us finished everything, except the dessert because they served a lot:

(We were having dessert. Seth's dessert:  pretzel-crusted sweet potato pie with butter pecan ice cream. Heidi's dessert: Roasted autumn fruit gingerbread truffle with apple-spiced custard and caramel sauce)
(NOTE: I could not finish my desserts, but they were so good, so I wrapped my leftover and took it home.)

After we finished eating, I felt that it was such a tough decision because I needed to judge whose dishes were better while all of the dishes were very very good. Finally, we had a result for the winner of the Second Annual Greenmarket Cook-off:

             (I think you can guess who was the winner from our blurry picture!)                                       

SETH WAS THE WINNER!!! Congratulations again Seth! I think both Heidi and Seth were amazing at their dinners. As everyone told me that Heidi won the First Annual Greenmarket Cook-off, so I thought it was fare for Seth being the winner this time! I will never forget that it was one of my best eating nights!

Thank you again Heidi and Seth for giving us such an honor to be ones of the judges!

4 comments:

  1. YuM! Looks like a fantastic dinner! Now I'm hungry again...

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  2. That looks absolutely incredible. So do you still believe that Ben is the best cook among his friends?!

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  3. I can attest that my cooking skills don't even come close to comparing to Seth and Heidi's!

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  4. That all looks so good. I got about halfway and then I started feeling sooo hungry!

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