Posted by The Oregonian, OR on June 08, 2010 at 11:03:12:
Top Portland chefs square off in first-ever Vegan Iron Chef competition
By Grant Butler, The Oregonian
June 07, 2010,
Grant Butler/The Oregonian
Qausu AsaaseYaa blends Caribbean and West African flavors to wow the judges, winning Portland's inaugural Vegan Iron Chef competition.There are so many cooking and bartending competitions in Portland these days that it's hard sometimes to tell them apart, but Sunday night's Vegan Iron Chef was anything but ordinary. The first-time event, presented by Try Vegan PDX, pitted three of the city's top cooking talents to see who could come up with the most-inventive plant-based dishes.
While the competitors prepped their cooking stations, cookbook author and chef Isa Chandra Moskowitz entertained the sold-out crowd with food and pop culture trivia questions, handing out vegan candy bars, cookbooks, t-shirts and suspect faux mayonnaise to audience members with correct answers (bonus points to the person with the frighteningly deep knowledge of the 1980s sit-com "Alf").
Then she unveiled the evening's theme ingredient: chocolate.
And from there, the action heated things up -- quite literally, as cook-tops and ovens turned the event space of the Ecotrust building into its own little cauldron. Each of the chefs gleaned hunks of dark chocolate, cocoa powder, chocolate nibs, even chocolate-flavored hemp milk, then went to work creating three dishes reflecting their distinctively different cooking styles. As the chefs cooked, Moskowitz floated between the cooking stations, offering Alton Brown-like commentary for the in-house audience and people watching a video stream on the internet.
Adams' dishes reflected his Mediterranean approach, including cocoa gnocchi entree with shiitake mushrooms and a nifty chiffonade of collard greens, and a caramelized banana tart that drew rapturous praise from the judges. Hannah's dishes showed a more-eclectic style, with soyrizo lettuce wraps with candied plantains, raw zucchini noodles and mole sauce pulled from the global fusion playbook.
But it was AsaaseYaa's blend of West African and Caribbean flavors that ended up carrying the night. For an appetizer, she produced fried plantains with a chocolate-coconut dipping sauce, which was followed by a ground-nut and cocoa soup that's a traditional dish in Ghana. For dessert, she offered peanut toffee with chocolate-cashew cream.
– Grant Butler
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