Losing the Iron Chef Competition Gracefully at BlogHer Food

I flew in to San Francisco yesterday for BlogHer Food. The conference begins today and has been increased to two days of sessions on food photography, urban farming food styling, and telling food stories. I was here last October for the same conference and was so inspired by not only the information I took away, but also the passionate community of food bloggers.

The fun began last night with an Iron Chef type of competition sponsored by Underwriters Laboratories Labs, a non-profit organization that rates appliances around the globe on safety. Chef Lisa Schroeder, author of the cookbook, Mother’s Best, and owner of renowned Portland restaurants, Mother’s Bistro & Bar and Mama Mia Trattoria. We were judged on three criteria: taste, creativity, and, of course, safety.

Anne Marie Nichols Showing Off her Cooking Scars

My teammates were Marla Meredith from Family Fresh Cooking, Anne Marie Nichols from This Mama Cooks, Lori Lange from Recipe Girl, Amanda Simpson from What We're Eating, and Jenny Flake from Picky Palate. A dream team to be sure that we promptly called the Bad Ass Cooks.

Amanda from What We're Eating is a Plating Genius

Each team had to prepare one appetizer or side dish with fennel, one main course with halibut, and one Baked Alaska for dessert. After a quick presentation on kitchen safety filled with valuable tips like "With handles in, we all win!" we got to work, picking ingredients, brainstorming on dishes, and putting our creativity together. Our team got lucky with the long straw and had the honor of selecting their ingredients first which scored us some sweet dates, crumbled blue cheese, and a big bowl of fresh corn. Cooking can be such a solitary pursuit, each of us toiling away in our kitchens as the sun sets. Working together with other food bloggers from concept to plating was an amazing experience.

Recipe Girl and Picky Palate Plating our Baked Alaska

Our cooking space was trendy but small. It reminded me of my first apartment in New York. We jostled for a corner of a cutting board or one of the four anemic burners, definitely not your ideal safe cooking environment. We whipped up a chopped salad of fennel, dates, red peppers, corn, and blue cheese, seared halibut on a bed of roasted corn and avocado, and a chocolate Baked Alaska with caramelized pineapple and raspberries. We chopped, seared, seasoned and tasted as a team, and had a blast.

So when the news came in that we were the second-runner up, a much nicer euphemism than the big losing team, the disappointment wasn't too bitter. After all, it's hard to beat Baked Alaska S'mores (whipped up by Maggy Keet's team after a mishap in the freezer). The nice thing about cooking competitions is that after accepting defeat, even the losers get to eat!