Food for Thought

Last summer I participated in the "Idaho Falls-cook off" as a judge. I sat in a room with a bunch of local celebrities and ate different varieties of tail-gate foods. We had wings, dips, and even a salad. Sadly, the salad was the best part. The food I was able to taste was "average" at best. I don't know if I was just being too hard on it, but the highest score that I gave on any dish was a 6. This was to the eventual winner, the salad......which is not "tailgate" food. It was during this experience that I realized that I could out-cook all of these goons. None of my recipes involve mixing Tabasco sauce with store bought BBQ sauce to make my wings. Shortly after this, I decided that this year I would enter the contest rather than judge. The contest was last weekend.

They were much more organized than last year and I entered the "burger" division. 10 entrants total were making burgers that day, some were older moms, others were older dads, and the vast majority were young college kids. 3 of these college student were actually culinary art majors. I was actually the first to present my burger. After I was done presenting, I had 3 hours before they were going to announce the winners. So I packed up my station and grill and was going to go home and come back. As I was about to leave I realized that they had not returned my plates (I used our real plates). I was not about to head home without them. So I went to the room where they were going to be dropped off for pickup (they didn't want us in the judges room). Other burger contestants that had presented after me had already picked up their plates, but mine still had not arrived. I ended up having to wait until 4 to pick up all of my plates. After the judging was over I went into the judges room and picked up my plates asking "why did you hold onto my plates when I was the first to present?" They responded by explaining that they wanted to take my burger home with them. I was pretty excited that they wanted to take my burger home with them out of the 10 that they tried.

As you can obviously see where I am heading with this........I won. I didn't win anything special, just $75 which only covered the cost of the beef I had ordered from San Francisco. Overall it was great to win. I love to cook and I feel good to know that judges got something great to eat that day. The 2nd and 3rd place winners were two of the culinary students. My winning burger was the "Wagyu Steak Burger". It was on a ciabatta burn, with a pineapple chipotle sauce, sauteed onion and mushrooms in a Asian cream sauce, a wagyu patty topped with 5 cheeses and a avocado mayo to finish it off. Wagyu is the american version of Kobe beef from Japan. It has a robust flavor and is naturally tender. I am already planning on next year............lobster?........or........chicken sausage? You will just have to see.