Iron Chef Challenge: Battle Chicken Breast

The day after airsoft, Jen and I decided to challenge each other in a cooking competition with chicken breasts. As you know, I haven't had a lot of cooking posts lately and it's mainly because I've been practicing the recipe. I wanted to make a Thai inspired dish and I eventually settled on doing Thai Basil Chicken. It didn't seem like a very original idea and since we were going to be judged on that criteria, Justyn came up with the idea to do raviolis. Originally we boiled the ravioli in salted water but I upped the ante by frying them instead. Since the sauce I made, inspired by Top Chef Hosea, got so many rave reviews in the last Iron Chef competition, I decided to make it again. I'll post all the links to the recipes after the pics.

Yesterday we drove up to Jen & Stefano's house for the competition. We arrived early to help set up. Eventually people started arriving and we had one of the guests flip a coin to see who would cook first. Unfortunately, I was picked to go second so Jen got cracking on her dish. She and Stefano (we were allowed a sous chef), cooked a chicken breast roulade with mushrooms and broccolini. I ended up getting to taste her dish way later in the night and thought the flavors were fantastic. I'm going to ask Jen for the recipe so I can make this sometime. The chicken was juicy and the mushrooms which had a wine sauce (?), tasted so comforting and savory.

Kris took great pics of the plates.



Next up to cook was Justyn and I so into the kitchen we went to whip up our dish. I ended up making a chicken skin gremolata which had the skin deep fried and chopped into thin strips, Thai basil, green onion, cilantro and thinly sliced and seeded Thai red chilies. Justyn arranged the fried ravioli on top of the coconut orange ginger sauce and we topped that with the gremolata. We also put some blanched bok choy on the plate just to lighten the dish up a bit but I think it ended up not being necessary.



So onto the results. Karen, Kris & Prentice were our judges and I won! I'm super stoked :D Big thanks go out to the judges for giving me the win and to Jen and Stefano for hosting.

PS - We went to Ogisan for lunch before going to Jen & Stefano's house. It was mediocre at best but I took pictures of it to share. We also went to California Cafe for lunch with my family since it was my mom's birthday. It was pretty good but I'm too tired to type anymore so just enjoy the pics :)



Recipe Links
Thai Basil Chicken: http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/baschi.html
Coconut Orange Ginger Sauce (substitute heavy cream with coconut milk): http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/sesame-crusted-tuna-with-ginger-cream
Chili Sauce: http://steamykitchen.com/5068-hainanese-chicken-rice.html