Iron Chef San Jose (Winter 2008): Chocolate

Dessert Edition! I knew this would be a tough one for me, personally, given my limited baking experience. But it was fun regardless! More newbies (specifically, Frenchman) - so I knew the competition would be fierce.

Congrats to the winners! It's been a great year. Like I said tonight, we've had diversity in the champions so I'm proud to say that everyone has "made" it this year! Thanks for everyone's effort this year - you've definitely made some good meals for me. :)

The dishes:
Mark/Liz: Gimme Smore Cupcakes
Pachi: White Christmas Brulee
Tracy: Chocoman
Fan: Grand Teton
Pascal: French Decadence
Alix/Seila: 3-Layer Meltaways
Lulu: Lava Flow
Patrick: Improv and Desperation
Winter 2008 Overall Winner: Lulu Chou
Best Taste: Lulu
Most Original: Tracy
Best Presentation: Lulu

Iron Chef San Jose (Fall 2008): Pork

Battle Pork. The chefs once again stepped it up. We're actually getting pretty good at this cooking thing, I think! I was thinking to myself while tasting - everything is really good. And it was difficult to identify one clear winner. The points are relective of this, as the top 5 are all within 5 or so points of each other.

The dishes:

Fan Zhang: Gator Bait

Tracy Lin: Porsh

Alex Kuperman: Happy Piggy Curry

Jing Zhang: Circle of Pork

Emily Wu: Chinese Style Pork

Ming Kuo: Miss Piggy

Edrick Wong: Pork Swords

Pachi Chen-Wong: Pulled Pork Sandwich

LuLu Chou: Pork2Pork

Mark Lee: Mini Pork Daggers

Liz Nguyen: What the Con Heo Tart

Seila Kheang: Grilled Pork

Alix Koyama: Pork Tarts

Again, improvements are being made by several chefs. Keep up the good work!

Fall 2008 Overall Winner: Liz Nguyen
Best Taste: Edrick Wong
Most Original: Fan Zhang and Tracy Lin
Best Plating: Tracy Lin and Pachi Chen-Wong

Iron Chef San Jose (Summer 2008): Peach

Season 2! You guys rock. Everything was delicious!

Seriously fierce competition this time. And talk about a buffet. It was a feast.

Shockingly, the "newbies" KILLED the "old-timers"! I was seriously humbled by the skillz that I observed this time. Even from the old-timers. Some seriously crushed me!

Dishes:

Fan Zhang: Monkey Love

Alex Kuperman: Decadent Baked Stuffed Peach Halves

Emily Wu: Peach Shrimp Satay

Ming Kuo: Peach Cobbler

Edrick Wong: Peach-adilla

Pachi Chen-Wong: P^3 = Pachi's Pork & Peach

Lu Lu Chou: Peach & Sponge Pudding

Howard Yuan: Cheesy Peachy Crisps

Yeelo Ng: Peachy Loins

Mark Lee; Maui Wowie Beef

Liz Nguyen: Baby Peach Tart

Seila Kheang/Alix: Peach Pizza

Summer ICSJ Overall Winner

Yeelo Ng

Summer ICSJ Best of Class:

Best Taste: Liz Nguyen and Yeelo (again)

Most Original: Howard Yuan

Best Presentation: Yeelo (again)

I also graphed our progression since the last contest (yes, I'm still a nerd at heart) and I noticed that cumulative point averages in summer were generally lower than in spring. No worries, though, means are expected to go down with larger sample sizes anyway (ok, I'll stop the geekiness now). However, two contestants: 1. Fan, 2. Alex, had overall averages go UP from Spring to Summer. Great job! When I graph the RANKING trends, too, there are obvious PROGRESSIONS from a certain chef (ie: Fan).

Don't be discouraged, chefs. We will step up our game next season! Hope you all had as much fun as I did! Keep up the good cooking!

BTW, I welcome recommendations for next season's secret ingredient... i'll figure out this voting thing eventually. (or seila writes a html script for me)

Much love from your ICSJ hostess, aka PEACH :)

Iron Chef San Jose (Spring 2008): Eggs

I decided to host an Iron Chef type of competition, and do it once a quarter for kicks! (plus we just launched these seasonal Leader Boards at work on the bikes so the philosophy behind it, which includes allowing people to improve over time and get cumulative results, appealed to me). It was a lot of fun and I can't wait for the Summer follow up! I told them they can't let me win next time...!

Here were the rules and details: The Spring '08 ingredient was Egg

What is Iron Chef San Jose?--> An excuse for fellow fans of food to get together and eat!Seriously, though, it is supposed to be a cooking competition similar to the real "Iron Chef" as seen on Food Network--> I'm thinking of doing this once a season

Why Should I Join? Two words: Fame and Glory(I'm thinking about getting winner names on a special apron and/or trophies)

Rules:
1. Each person brings a dish they have cooked using the "secret" ingredient.
2. If you choose not to bring a dish, please bring a dessert or appetizer of your choosing.
3. Each dish will be labeled (with the name of the dish) upon arrival - you can choose to reveal your name or not, but u eventually will have to at the end
4. Everyone tastes each dish
5. At the end of the tasting, everyone votes
6. Total possible score per dish will be 20. Max 10 for Taste, Max 5 for Originality, Max 5 for Presentation.

7. Pachi will tally the votes for each dish
8. The person who scores the most points overall is the winner for the season, although best of each category will also be revealed
9. In the case of a tie, a cookoff will proceed on a following date
10. Winner will be tallied on a per season basis, although at the end of each year cumulative winners will be announced.
11. Please bring enough in your dish to serve the total number of people coming to the cookoff.

Spring 2008 ICSJ Secret Ingredient: Egg
Here are pictures of the dishes!
Miami Sunrise (crossiant, egg, canadian bacon) : Ed
Imperial Fly Ly (Fan)
Sunflower (Tomato+egg): Tracy
Apple (egg) pie: Ellie
Russian Potato salad (Alex)
Unagi+fish cake Don (Pachi)
I got Crabs (crab+egg) : Ming/Emily

Smooth egg over Shrimp (Jing)

Winners:
Best Plating, Most Original (Tracy)
Best Overall (Pachi)
Best Taste (Ellie)