Iron Chef Roper - Battle Oranges!

Yesterday was my mother-in-law's (Rhonda's) birthday. For the past year or so, she and my father-in-law (Kim) - mostly just Kim - have been talking about doing an Iron Chef style competition. Well, yesterday, if finally happened. For those of you not familiar with the show, Iron Chef America (or the original Iron Chef Japan) I highly recommend it - a show about fast paced cooking from the hip with a twist of secrecy, the secret ingredient (in our case, Oranges) which must be used and apparent in EVERY course presented.

Kim and Rhonda were the judges and the teams were randomly selected to be: Team 1, Chef Jacob (me) with sous-chefs Millie and Katie (sis-in-law) -- Team 2, Chef Brandon (Katie's hubby) with sous-chefs Abbie (sis-in-law) and Danica (friend of Abbie). The set up was as follows, each team drew for spots in the kitchen and single amenities, such as the BBQ grill and microwave, had to be shared. Each team had $100 and one hour and 30 min to plan four courses (drink, appetizer, main dish and dessert), go to the store and buy ingredients, prepare the food and plate it. For those of you who know the Ropers, competition can get heated at times so when the clock started... it was GO time!



Millie, Katie and I started planning frantically. It was snowing (quite a bit) yesterday, which made for slick conditions to get to the store and back - not to mention the running back and forth between the BBQ grill outside and the kitchen - more on that later. Millie and I went to the store for ingredients while Katie stayed to prep the kitchen. Several of our ingredients could not be found so we improvised. We sped back to the house to get cooking only to find Brandon's team had already returned and was well under way. Katie - not known for handling stressful situations very well, seemed a bit frazzled but had done an excellent job at getting everything ready for cooking. Katie was in charge of sauces, Millie took on dessert and drink, and I was to handle grilling and plating. The scene was frantic. Our team looked like we wouldn't make it as time ticked off the clock faster than normal. Katie messed up one of the sauces after it would have just been done, so she had to scrap it and start over. I broke an electric chopper that Millie needed to make her dishes so we had to find another method. The grill ran out of gas so I had to change the tank and get it hot again. Each time I ran out in the snow on grill duty I just about slipped on the floor running back into the kitchen.... it was pretty dangerous. Despite the mishaps, we finished plating in a dramatic fashion with Millie finishing pouring the drink at the last tic of the clock.



Our menu started off with an orange strawberry sunrise drink (smoothie). The appetizer was chipotle orange shrimp kabobs with a fresh spring mix salad with an orange vinaigrette dressing. The main dish was a top sirloin medallion with zesty orange sauce topped with grilled asparagus. Dessert was an orange cream tart.



Everything turned out great. Brandon's team had some yummy dishes as well, including what was probably my favorite out of everything made, a tomato and orange sauce with shrimp. Never considered putting tomato and orange together, but, WOW, it was really good!

Judges ate and scored the food.

And the winner was... Iron Chef Jacob!

I was excited to win but I have to say, I REALLY couldn't have won without my team. Millie and Katie did a great job at tackling a difficult menu and faced the unforeseen challenges like pros! It was a lot of fun and I think we all look forward to the next, Iron Chef Roper!!!

We just need to hire staff to do the clean up next time!