"Iron Chef" - The Great Race - Week 1

Like last years event - this years "Iron Chef" type competition has a theme - and the theme is "The Great Race". The movie, "The Great Race" is based (loosely) on an actual race conducted in 1908 that really passed through Cleveland Ohio in February 1908 - and it is only fitting that the 4th and final competition is going to be held approximately the same day the competitors passed through Cleveland 100 years previously. A piece of trivia - the actual racers went down Euclid Ave. - approximately two miles from where we are having the competition.

The first week's contest was designed to reflect the fact the that first major stop shown in the movie was at Borracho - a "typical" Western town during that era - and the main ingredient everyone was required to use was 2lbs of ground meat.

As usual, our extremely gracious hosts supplied the ingredients for about 6 different meals - and our five teams then decided which one they wanted to make. Our teams ended up choosing Spaghetti. One of the choices was hamburgers - and had we chose that - we probably would have been done early. (and our hamburgers would have been quite boring)
The team that chose hamburgers combined chili sauce with them - and topped them with bacon - we were told they were quite tasty - but neither my wife or I would try them due to the ingredients being used. I did give them one vote during the voting phase just to be fair.

These cooking completions are always a lot fun - the kitchen gets quite crowded with four groups of people in each others way - and once the smoke settles -everyone places a sample of their dish on the dining room table - and then the nights main judge tries them all.

Afterwards - everyone grabs a plate and gets some of the food (ideally- some from each team) (see above) and after eating - votes on which dish they thought was best.

Since we ended up with five teams - we had five dishes - so each person was given 5 poker chips.
For each dish, there was a jar that you would put as many poker chips
in as you wanted.

So - if you thought all meals were equally good - you would give 1 vote (poker chip) to each jar.

I personally tried the our spaghetti even though our sauce contained a lot more ingredients than I normally prefer - such as some peppert etc and I tried meat loaf (actually quite tasty!) and finally, I made the mistake of trying the chili.

Our spaghetti actually came in 3rd place - and the hamburgers won - so no accounting for taste...

The chili was the hottest I had ever tasted - and I only had a small portion - I much prefer a blander chili like my family makes - w/out the hot chili peppers.
I was told the chili was actually "mild" - but I had to have some ice cream when we got home two hours later - to finally get the taste out of my mouth before going to bed.

Luckily - it did not upset my stomach like I was concerned it might - as I said - it was HOT! to me at least.

The competition starts shaping up around 7pm, and the eating/judging is usually about 1-2 hours after that.

We really don't care how well we do in the competitions (which is a good thing!) we go since we don't see the hosts very much - and meet new friends there (one is a fellow biker) and we always have a good time.