Three talented local chefs cubed, julienned, mashed, boiled, roasted, pickled and fried sweet potatoes, assembled three exceptional dishes and shared them with judges and market visitors at the fourth-annual Chef Challenge last Saturday morning.
Two-time defending champion Billy Cotter (
Toast) returned to defend his locally-welded, hand-crafted trophy, but 2011 runner-up Andy Magowan (
Geer Street Garden) and newcomer Christy Quirk (
Bull Street Gourmet and Market) both had other ideas.
Emcee and local radio personality
Frank Stasio revealed the secret ingredient at 8:30 and let them loose in the market to buy their ingredients and get to work.
Billy and his assistant got to work cubing and julienning sweet potatoes while a pot of pickling spices came to a boil. Andy, once again flying solo, threw cubes of sweet potatoes in a pan while he (jokingly) informed the judges that an envelope of cash awaited each of us under our chairs. This was a strategic shift from the one-dollar bribes he offered one year ago. Christy and her assistant lightly fried strips of sweet potatoes in oil. All three chefs shared a grill, where a slew of peppers roasted away.
The noise levels rose as the deadline approached. Excited to use a workspace larger than his restaurant's kitchen, Billy fired up his pasta roller, mixer and blender before assembling small, stuffed pasta and a brown butter sauce. Andy began shouting complaints about the noise coming from Billy's fancy machines as he rolled his pasta and mixed his ravioli fillings by hand and simmered a pork and butter sauce. Christy remained quiet and composed, keeping her workspace noticeably cleaner than her opponents and topping her completed dishes with foil.
As we neared the final minutes Billy and Andy shared a huge pot of boiling water to cook their pasta while Christy answered questions from the audience.
Christy's plate hit the judges table first. She prepared a Spanish-style tort with eggs and sweet potatoes (sort of like an omelette) with a spicy sweet potato and pepper sauce and and a salad of kale, red pepper and sweet potato tortilla strips.
Next, Andy presented ravioli filled with sweet potato, kale, ricotta and ginger with a sauce of caramelized onion, vinegar, butter and guanciale and a salad that featured both sweet potatoes and sweet potato greens.
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| Source: Kelly Alexander |
Finally, Billy presented a smaller stuffed pasta filled with sweet potato and ricotta cheese with a brown butter sauce, chive oil and pine nuts. His plate also featured slender sweet potato fries and cubes of pickeled sweet potato.
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| Source: Kelly Alexander |
As usual, eating the delicious food was hard work, but declaring a winner was even more challenging. Lex Alexander, Kelly Alexander and I agreed that we'd order any of the meals and hope they appear on the chef's menus this fall. Christy's spicy sauce was fantastic, Andy's generous dose of vinegar really made the sweet potatoes pop, and the complexity of Billy's flavors despite using just a handful of ingredients opened my eyes to what sweet potatoes are capable of.
After much deliberation we crowned Billy Cotter champion (again). All three plates had big flavors and utilized the secret ingredient in creative ways, but we couldn't deny that, once we had all three plates in front of us, we returned to Billy's plate to polish off whatever was left.
Thanks to Erin Kaufman, Durham Farmer's Market for allowing me to take part in the event. I encourage everyone to come out to support the market, it's farmers and great events like this one, which seem to happen nearly every week.
