The Rusty Chef cooking competition, run by the good folks down at Culinary Communion, is an annual amateur cooking competion that benefits Farestart. Two local home cooks, who have never been paid to cook professionally and have never been to cooking school, are pitted against one another in an "Iron Chef" style competition. They each have 90 minutes to cook a three-course meal using the ingredients in a mystery basket. But wait! It's a little more complicated than that... Once the ingredients are revealed, the competitors have fifteen minutes to write a menu which includes an appetizer, a soup or salad, and a main course, plus write out a list of instructions for their assistants (each competitor is allowed to have an assistant, equally amateur and inexperienced). Out of the twenty items in the baskets, each competitor may choose to toss out one ingredient, but must use all the rest in one or more of the dishes. Once the menus are written, the timer starts, and the mayhem ensues!

The judges for the event were: Johnathan Sundstrom, executive chef of Lark; Chris Plemmons, from FareStart; Brenda Miner, Rusty Chef winner in 2003; Hsiao-Ching Chou, food writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer; and Sharon Lane, food editor for the Seattle Times. With these culinary luminaries tasting our creations, it would be an understatement to say the pressure was definitely on.

Mike chose his co-worker Jeff Allen as his assistant (Chris couldn't compete, because she worked as a pastry cook). The event was held at the Bradlee Distributors Wolf and sub-Zero Show Kitchen in the Interbay area on August 1, 2004, and we were glad to see a pretty decent turnout for the buffet dinner and wine-tasting which preceded the main event. While watching the chaos in the two kitchens, guests could also bid on items in the silent auction, including selections of wines, gift certificates for massages and spa treatments, and even a seat at the judges' table to listen in on the deliberations and taste what the two teams created (that person's vote wouldn't count, of course). The mystery basket was revealed, and it contained: 1 cup pistachios in the shell 1 pint container of black mission figs 1 cup miso paste 2 lb heirloom tomatoes 1 cup golden raisins 1 lb ground veal 2 ears sweet corn 1 whole unagi fillet (that's eel for you country folk) 1 box of Kellogg's corn flakes 1 block of Jarlsberg swiss cheese 1/2 pound of penne pasta 6 eggs 1 qt of plain yoghurt 1/2 pound of Belgian endive 1 cup of dry millet 1 lb of skate wings 1 lb of yucca root 1 cassaba melon 1 cup of fancy small grapes 2 lb of collard greens. . What the HELL do you do with millet??? Stuff's like birdseed... . . The cooking began, and to Mike's surprise, they even finished on time. Mike decided to make nut-crusted veal patties served with a fruit compote, a warm endive and wilted greens salad with fried yucca chips, and what he decided to call a "New World Fish Stew," mainly because it was new and it had fish in it. If you couldn't already guess, he decided to discard the millet, because, really, what do you do with millet? (Actually, it's a very healthy grain that cooks pretty quickly and looks like it would turn out kind of like a toothy couscous... but he still didn't think he had a use for it that night.)

When all was said and done, Mike and Jeff squeaked ahead by a margin of two points to win the competition. The prize included a series of classes at Culinary Communion, a BEAUTIFUL 7" Ryusen Santoku chef's knife from Epicurean Edge, and the chance to return in 2005 as a judge! The night was a blast, they raised a lot of money for a worthy cause between the ticket sales and the silent auction, and consumed a great deal of alcohol in a short period of time. Who could ask for anything more?

Updated: August 2, 2004
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