The continuation of my participation in the online cooking contest “Iron Chef” and “Chopped” mashup.
This was my entry for Round 2: entrees. Rules for this round were as follows:
Anise
Chili
Coffee
Flour
Lamb
Onion Soup Mix (DOES NOT COUNT AS SALT)
Pine Nut
Salt (must be a prominent ingredient- enough for it to be in the course’s title)
Watermelon
Use at least five. The contest ends at 11:59 PM on August 3rd, meaning you have exactly one week. Make up to two courses, both of which have five.
Feel free to push the limits of each ingredient’s definition. Flour isn’t just wheat, and you can of course use it to make doughs or batters, for instance. Use any type of anise or onion soup mix, or any part of the watermelon. If you find a way of making watermelon flour, that counts for both!
Include at least one local specialty ingredient. It can be a thing grown in your back yard, a regional cheese, local beer, Tim Tams, whatever. Doesn’t need to be organic or a small production, just local. If you can get it and somebody else somewhere in the world cannot, or if your community was involved in the growing/raising/fermenting of it, it’s local.
Identify the ingredients you chose and the local ingredient in your entry, and post a link back to it in this thread.
Chairman’s prize will be awarded to the best execution of “____ riding a watermelon raft.”
So at first, there was a lot of joking that “chili” meant canned chili. I was unsure of whether they were serious, but by the time they clarified I had already thought of a thing to do with canned chili, so I used it anyway. I also included chili peppers.
Basket Ingredients Chosen: Chili (including dried, fresh, and canned), star anise, coffee, flour, watermelon, salt, onion soup mix, lamb, pine nut. AKA all of them
Local ingredients: Home garden grown Thai bird chilies and mint, home roasted coffee.
Watermelon is used in both courses, almost in its entirety, only the skin is discarded.
Primo: Chili “cheong fun”
ginger-soy lamb mince, Sichuan salt pickled watermelon rind, sweet soy-black vinegar sauce
Sichuan Salt Pickled Watermelon rind
Watermelon rind, peeled and cut into thin strips
Sichuan peppercorns
Star Anise
Thai bird chilies (Local ingredient, grown in my backyard)
Dried chilies
Cinnamon stick
Himalayan Pink Salt
Vodka
Sugar
Ginger
Peel the watermelon rind.
Cut into matchsticks.
Cook watermelon rind slices until tender in heavily salted water. Drain and cool with cold water. 
To some water add salt and sugar, heat and stir until dissolved. Add to drained, cooled watermelon in a sealable container along with the aromatics. 
Place a weight on top of the rind or place plastic wrap on the surface so that the rind is completely submerged in the brine. Store in a cool dark place for at least a day, longer is better.
Mince and top with chili oil.
Ground Lamb
ground lamb
dark soy
minced ginger
white pepper
cornstarch
Add all ingredients to a bowl.
Mix to combine. Fry in a pan with a bit of oil.
Noodle sheets
vegetarian chili
rice flour
tapioca flour
Strain chili, pick out tomato pieces, discard. Rinse remaining sauce off of beans thoroughly.
Puree beans in a blender with rice flour, tapioca starch, and enough water to reach the correct consistency. 
Set aside for an hour. Grease a metal cake pan. Pour batter into cake pan and float in a wok of boiling water. Cover and steam for a few minutes. 
Remove pan and place in a water bath until cool enough to handle (few seconds).
Sauce
light soy
black vinegar
toasted sesame oil
sauce strained from vegetarian chili
Sichuan peppercorns, ground
sugar
Whisk all ingredients together, use sauce from chili sparingly.
Assembly
Place cooked lamb on noodle sheet. 
carefully roll up the sheet. Top with pickled watermelon rind and sauce, garnish with scallions and cilantro.
Secondo: Pan Roasted Lamb chops.
Watermelon, star anise, and mint gastrique. Pine nut and onion soup brittle. Coffee flour.
Pine nut onion soup brittle
Ingredients:
Pine nuts
Onion soup mix
Sugar
Water
Cinnamon
Cayenne Pepper
Sift onion soup mix to remove onion solids
Toast pine nuts in a dry skillet until golden. Toss in a bowl with onion soup mix powder, some ground cinnamon, and a dash of cayenne pepper.
Add sugar, onion soup mix powder and water to a pot on medium heat and stir to dissolve. Bring to a boil, cover and boil for 5 minutes. Remove cover and boil until a thermometer reads 300 F (Hard crack). Add seasoned toasted pine nuts and stir, then quickly turn out onto buttered silpat lined sheet pan. Use a spatula to smooth out brittle. 
Allow to cool then break into pieces.
Watermelon gastrique
watermelon flesh
star anise
mint (local ingrediet, from backyard garden)
sugar
red wine vinegar
Puree watermelon
Strain watermelon puree
Filter strained watermelon puree
In saucepan, bring watermelon juice, vinegar, and star anise to a boil. 
Reduce until desired flavor is reached. Balance tartness with sugar to taste. Allow to cool and add chopped mint.
Lamb chops
Cut shallow hash marks into fat cap of lamb roast. Season with salt. In a dry stainless steel skillet, render fat side down on medium high heat until browned. Place skillet in a 400 F oven and cook until medium. Let rest. 
Cut into individual chops.
Coffee flour
Made from another local ingredient. I buy my coffee green and unroasted. I roast once or twice a week for myself. This week’s coffee is a Papua New Guinea Waghi Peaberry, roasted to a full city roast. The flour is made by grinding the coffee beans in a mortar and pestle until fine.
Assembly
Place some gastrique on the plate. Rest lamb chops on top. Dust with a few pinches of coffee flour. Garnish with a few pieces of brittle.
Tasting thoughts
The flavor of canned chili is very pervasive, though I think I managed to tame it slightly. The noodle rolls definitely had a tinge of can chili flavor, but the pungency of the pickle and the sauce really restrained it and the cumin in the strained chili sauce really worked well with the sichuan peppercorn. The pickle was awesome, but sichuan pickled vegetables usually are. This is actually not that much of a stretch for the palette, rice noodle rolls are a very established thing and making noodles from beans isn’t anything new.
The lamb was awesome. I wish I’d have made the gastrique a bit thicker. Also, watermelon has a very interesting flavor when cooked. I think AIIAZNSK8ER noticed this too, and I agree, kind of squash-like, not what I was expecting, but interesting. Watermelon and star anise play nicely together, as does the mint and lamb (duh). The coffee was very surprising with the watermelon. I’m not sure if I liked it or just thought it was interesting. It wasn’t offensive anyway, didn’t taste bad. The brittle was the most surprising thing. It was actually pretty good. Sweet and savory and very potent, however it worked quite well. My fiancee hates onions and she liked this brittle. Overall, cinnamon, coffee, and lamb are the big flavors, cut with the watermelon gastrique’s fruitiness and acidity and the aromatics of the mint and anise.
