UM Iron Chef...sort of

Last week, a student named Bryce came to the office asking for two ETAs to serve as judges for the Dormitory Students’ Association (DSA) cooking competition. Susan and I ended up going, which worked out well considering Susan is the biggest food critic and I am the most experienced chef among the four of us heh. We were joined by two UM students, Ben and Ian, who could also have been considered “impartial” since they were from Mozambique and the teams were mostly cooking Chinese dishes from various regions =P

Putting up the banner for DSA "Dormitory Week"

Originally, the roster included an intimidating twelve teams (I really didn’t think I had the patience/stomach capacity to try twelve different things), but there were enough no-shows that the final roster was whittled down to eight or so. The judging criteria were taste, presentation, creativity, and nutrition, each out of a possible 25 points. As the students were preparing their entries, Susan and I walked around to chat a little…

Semi-ironically, the dorm was having fire safety training in the courtyard right next to us

Stir-frying on a hot plate hehe

Kneading dough o_O

Two teams hard at work

To be honest, the whole thing was rather disorganized. There didn’t seem to be any preset rules about what kind of food the students were supposed to cook, or any pre-arranged focus ingredient as there is in the real Iron Chef. We had everything from appetizers (e.g. chicken wings) to main entrees (e.g. noodles or spare ribs) to dessert (e.g. cake covered in whipped cream), so it was clearly a bumpy playing field. Some photos of the entries below:

Spare rib pieces with sweet 'n sour sauce plus pineapple chunks
(sauce way too sweet, plus overcooked broccoli = yuck)

This won my top ratings for creativity (counting effort) and nutrition: hand-made noodles (that's what the aforementioned dough was for) plus veggies and tomato/egg sauce

A crock pot-made broth with carrot and red dates

The cake smothered in whipped cream (it was supposed to be chocolate but it wasn't the least bit chocolaty...at least the strawberries added flavor)

It doesn't look like much, but this got top ranked for taste: spare rib stewed in an anise-flavored broth

At the end of the night, we handed in our score sheets – Bryce would tally them up and announce the winner at the end of the “UM Dormitory Week” on April 10, so we actually don’t know who won =P We made some suggestions for improving next year’s competition, e.g. informing all contestants that they have to prepare a certain type of dish (e.g. an appetizer) or feature a specific ingredient (e.g. eggs), as well as simplifying the scoring (just rank the best to worst for each category). Still, it was a pretty fun way to spend a Wednesday night, and now I have more ideas for things to cook (or avoid cooking!) on my own =D

Last of LNY

In case you didn't know, Lunar New Year is actually supposed to be a 15-day celebration, although obviously mostly people don't take things that far (we all have to work, right?) However, most of Macau kept decorations up, so it was still fun to walk around and see what was there.

As usual, the Venetian had one of the more impressive displays, although the mix of Italian and Chinese was a little strange. The columns at the main entrance were wrapped in red paper with extra detailing between, and decorations inside were all...extra large. They also had some poor guy walking around in an emperor outfit and ridiculously fake beard so tourists could take photos with him.

An example of the columns

Giant cherry blossom (plum blossom?) tree

3-D "fortune" (福) character in the middle of the casino floor

Bow yes/no?

This last photo isn't a decoration, exactly, but it caught my eye with its clever modification of the "tiger" character (虎)
For our apartment, I managed to pick up a mini-tangerine tree that someone else was throwing out. I remembered that Emily had wanted to buy one at the Tap Seac festival (toward the end of the entry), and I was still personally curious to find out if the fruits were edible or not. Unfortunately, after a couple days we realized the leaves were sporting quite an impressive layer of fuzziness, so we had to dispose of it as well. I did try one of the fruits, concluding that it was edible (at least it didn't make me sick) but rather sour.

The ill-fated shrub

Friday night, UM hosted a dinner at the Macau Tower: a 13-course meal for just 88 MOP (Ming managed to finagle it so we only had to pay the full-time staff price instead of the part-time staff price, which was considerably more). The menu included standards like fried rice and fresh steamed fish, but also some more unusual items.

"Barbecued whole suckling pig" (more like crispy-roasted)

Deep-fried shrimp mousse balls and taro rolls with almond (yum!)

Braised pig's tongue with sea moss and dried oyster (interesting texture...)

A "Chinese petit four" with red bean soup (and a GRB!)

More dessert: another "petit four" and fresh fruit

We ETAs and the Grinnell fellows ended LNY in proper fashion by celebrating the Lantern Festival (元 宵節) with a group gathering for GRBs (湯 圓) at our apartment. After looking up recipes, we decided it would be too much trouble to attempt making our own, but the grocery stores conveniently sell frozen packs =P

A freezer-ful of GRBs

I think we left them in a bit too long...still yummy!

Throw in a couple games of Apples to Apples, and it was both a fun and filling way to end the Lunar New Year vacation =)