Deer Walking in the Woods
As seen on TV
Which Show?
Who made this dish?
In this challenge, the randomizer selected the following conditions that had to be met by each chef:
Protein: Venison Tenderloin
Produce: Corn
Equipment: French Press
Style: Earthy
Voiceover: "Our chef calls this Deer Walking in the Woods. The venison was seasoned with a spice rub crafted from mushroom powder made from pulverized shiitake, garam masala, and five spice. The trim became a stock that was fortified with more black garlic, dried porcini, sake, shiro dashi, white soy sauce, veal stock balanced with rice vinegar and more mushroom powder. This was then strained through the French press. In terms of corn elements, the husk was charred, the cob was charred, and both were used in that sauce. The corn in its most natural state was cooked with shiitake mushrooms, sesame oil, and butter."
Chef (Lee Anne Wong): "Really earthy, savory. I'm making an earthy poached venison tenderloin over corn puree with a corn mushroom salad." "With venison, there's almost no fat on it, so it's a meat that you don't want to cook past medium. I want to olive oil poach it, which will cook it evenly."
"I am going to saute some corn. Corn puree tends to be sweet, tends to be rich, tends to be buttery. It's a great sidekick to earthiness."
"I'm adding some dried porcinis, some black garlic, and sake. I'm gonna add some of this corn flavor to this sauce with the husk."
"First, I'm gonna add my corn puree, followed by a little pile of fried kataifi. I add my black garlic brushed venison loin. A medallion of that. I'm gonna finish it with my sauce."
"I know I hit corn multiple times. I hit the French press multiple times."
{Scott Conant}: "This is great cooking. The poach on the venison, look at that cook, it's absolutely perfect. The corn, I think, is my favorite component on this plate, but I think it needs depth. That earthy element could have been doubled down, and there could have been an accentuation and an extraction of flavors from the ingredients that are here on this plate."
{Kenny Orringer}: "Clearly Chef is super talented, but there's a lot of difficult cooking techniques happening in just 30 minutes. I love the corn shiitake. The texture of the broth is a little bit too light, but I love the flavor of the broth."
Marcus Samuelsson: "I was kind of hoping that the kataifi was the silk from the corn, because again, I wanted to see somebody maybe do something a little different with that. I really enjoyed that the venison was poached. The texture of this was soft. It was meaty. It kind of accentuated the real gaminess of the venison."
