Category:Iron Chef SA 020:Minimalism

No, this doesn’t mean tiny food. That one can be for another day.

We all like to cook, and we probably all like to occasionally cook impressive, involved meals that require shopping trips to three different stores and take hours and hours to put together. But sometimes you want to be able to throw something together that is fantastically tasty but very simple. Many chefs are proponents of simple food (Mario Batali brings it up all the time), and simple certainly doesn’t mean boring. With fewer ingredients, the ones you use come more sharply into focus so they need to be treated with skill, and creativity is needed to really make a simple dish something special. ICSA: Budget Battle was a fun change from theme ingredients and I think it’s time for another.

SO: for this round of ICSA, our challenge is not to base dishes around one ingredient, but to limit the number of ingredients we use!

IRON CHEF SOMETHING AWFUL: MINIMALISM

Rules: 12 ingredient limit (with some exceptions). The goal is to make the best set of dishes you can while staying within the limit.

Some ingredients are very common, so they will be “freebies” that don’t count towards the ingredient total:
-water/stock
-salt/pepper
-cooking oils of all kinds
-flour

We’re going to do this by “type” or ingredient, not number. So if you use two lemons in a recipe, it counts as one thing, not two. To keep things simple, the same ingredient also only counts once if used in multiple dishes. (So lemon sorbet and lemonade = one use of lemons.) Be reasonable though - don't make lemonade with lemon asparagus,lemon chicken and lemon mashed potatoes followed by lemon sorbet.

Garnishes count.

Three course minimum (includes beverages, breads, salads, sides, mains, and so on).

Entries should be in usual ISCA format, but please number your ingredients as you list them, as so:
Dish one:
Flour
Water
Butter
Sage (1)

Dish two:
Lemons (2)
Water
Sugar

Fabulous Prizes:
1st: $30 e-gift card from http://www.zingermans.com
2: $10 e-gift card from http://www.zingermans.com