Party Popcorn!

This is also from Iron Chef: Popcorn for New Year's, and also from Nigella Express (Nigella Lawon).

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 cup (unpopped) popcorn

4 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons ground paprika

4 teaspoons table salt

4 teaspoons sugar

1. Put the oil into the biggest pan you with a lid over high heat, add the popcorn, and quickly put on the lid.

2. Let the popcorn pop, shaking the pan every now and then to keep the kernels moving. You will hear it, but don't be tempted to look, unless you want to get shot at, and once it has stopped popping - a couple of minutes or so - take it off the heat.

3. Melt the butter with the spices, in another pan, salt, and sugar, then pour it over the popcorn and put everything into a large paper shopping bag. Fold the top over to hold in the popcorn.

4. Shake, shake, and shake the bag again to mix the popcorn and get it thoroughly coated in the spicy butter.

5. Arrange in several party bowls.

Makes 12 cups.

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Sweet Corn Chowder with Toasted Tortillas

This is the soup from our famed Iron Chef: Popcorn for New Year's edition. The recipe is from Nigella Express (Nigella Lawson). I'll type the recipe as it reads in the book (I'd hate for you to miss things like "...serve immediately to very grateful people") and then comment on our modifications below.

Ingredients:

6 cups frozen sweet corn, defrosted

3 scallions, each one trimmed and halved

1 clove garlic, peeled

1/4 cup semolina

6 cups hot vegetable stock made from concentrate or bouillon cubes

15 cups lightly salted tortilla chips

2 cups grated cheese

2 long red chiles, deseeded and finely chopped, optional

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.

2. Drain the corn and put into a food processor with the scallions, garlic, and semolina. Blitz to a speckled primrose mush; unless you have a big food processor you may have to do this in two batches.

3. Tip this mixture into a large saucepan; add the hot vegetable stock, and bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and let the chowder simmer, partially covered, for 10 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, spread the tortilla chips out on an aluminum foil-lined baking sheet and sprinkle over the cheese. Warm in the hot oven for 5-10 minutes or until cheese melts over the chips.

5. Ladle the soup into bowls and put a small mound of cheese-molten chips into the middle of each bowl. Sprinkle over some of the red chile, if you feel like it, and serve immediately to very grateful people.

Our modifications:

We couldn't find red chiles, so we bought serranos and also roasted some red bell peppers. We pureed the red peppers and added them to the processed corn. KZ wrangled the serranos, and we added them chopped to the mix. I think the serranos added a nice kick!

Using the tortilla chips was actually important with the addition of popcorn to the top of the soup, as we figured the tortilla chips would offer a nice buffer to keep the popcorn from turning to mush so quickly. Plus, it was the perfect opportunity to use the delicious red and green tortilla chips.

The popcorn topping the soup is "Party Popcorn" which will be my next blog entry.

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Popcorn O'Rama

Sometime this fall, Columbia Law School held an iron chef competition. Since I have no friends at Columbia (at least none with demonstrated cooking ability), I decided this would not be a viable competition for me, though it did seem like a lot of fun. Then in a late night phone conversation, Hannah and I decided this would be a fun New Years "weekend" activity. So, on January 1, the throw down took place.

The logistics of the process were as follows: There were four of us competing. We decided to make a four course meal with an amuse-bouche for each team (so six courses in all). Each person put a secret ingredient into a hat and we chose. The chosen ingredient (as the title of this post suggests) was popcorn (my pick). I was scorned for this selection at every step of the way, but I maintain that it provided a good amount of challenge and some tasty results. After we had an ingredient we selected teams and courses and the game began.

I'll leave it to everyone to post their individual recipes, and I think Hannah took some pictures of the whole thing that are pretty amusing. In the process of preparing the recipes, two patterns emerged: (1) grind up the popcorn and use it as a substitute for bread crumbs/flour or (2) season the popcorn and add it to things you already like.

While we never engaged in any official scoring, Hannah unilaterally declared that she and Elizabeth won because, while Christine and I won for taste (no bias here - this was her declaration), we lost badly on plating (because she claims we copied her). While I readily concede that we did serve little shot glasses of Corona with our amuse-bouche (copying their shot glass of milk), there were no further instances of copying in the plating department. Since taste is worth 10 points and plating only 5, I submit it must be a wash at best (the other scoring category is originality, an area where I think we pretty much tied). Regardless of score, it was a pretty fun time, even though I think most of us are not too anxious to see any more popcorn for quite some time.

Here's the menu:

• Amuse-Bouche I: Green apple with white chocolate peanut butter and "perfect popcorn" with a shot of milk. (I don't mean those quotes to be sarcastic, I'm just repeating the descriptive used when served. Elizabeth popped lots and lots (and lots) of popcorn, and did a very good job with that task).
• Amuse-Bouche II: Popcorn-Beer battered Zucchini sticks.
• Appetizer: Popcorn Parmesan encrusted vegetable slices with a popcorn, parmesan, tomato dipping sauce.
• Soup: Corn Chowder with roasted red peppers and ceranno chilies served with spicy popcorn and sharp cheddar cheese topping.
• Main Course: Acorn and Butternut Moroccan Squash sprinkled with oven seared chickpeas and cinnamon popcorn.
• Dessert: Chocolate toffee with pecans and salted popcorn, and 8 layer bars (the 8th layer being salted popcorn).

Lessons Learned (if we ever decide to do this again):

1. No full sized courses. Everything should be amuse-bouche sized.
2. Set a time limit and try to stick to it, or be prepared to eat dinner at 10:30 pm after having cooked for 4 hours.
3. Don't disparage the chosen ingredient!!
4. If we're going to score at all, have a plan for blind scoring.
   

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