Although I had been rooting for Battle Citrus, this year the theme was cheese. And not the entire universe of dairy deliciousness: just cheddar, brie, blue, and parmesan. My little brain was stuck on the every day things like cheddar macaroni and cheese, baked brie, and fettucine alfredo. So I enlisted the help of two creative geniuses.
The first creative genius had no problem coming up with an excellent suggestion: a riff on chiles rellenos. The idea was to get some good fresh chiles and stuff them with blue cheese and crab meat. Maybe dip them in a light batter and deep-fry them, or maybe just bake them. That seemed well within the realm of possibilities because the brother who cooks had given me a chile cooking rack when I moved to Texas.
The second creative genius took a more scientific approach to the problem. When I asked the question during a visit to his house, he immediately handed me two books from his kitchen shelf – The Flavor Bible and an illustrated ingredients book – and suggested that I look up cheese in both books. The Flavor Bible is a curiously thick book, which basically just lists complementary ingredients for almost every ingredient you can think of. For example, in the Blue Cheese entry, the book listed almonds, apples, beef, bread, celery, roasted chestnuts, cream cheese, dill, figs, garlic, hazelnuts, honey, Dijon mustard, pasta, pears, port, potatoes, kosher salt, sour cream, steak, white wine vinegar, walnuts, and watercress. (The list for Cheddar Cheese was even longer!) The object of the list was to inspire ideas for creative cooking. The illustrated ingredients book was just that – a book of photographs of various ingredients, with a recipe here or there. But I found the cheese recipes to be very inspiring: there was cheese soufflé, cheese straws, and borek. All good back-up ideas if the chile relleno idea didn't work out.
Crab and Blue Cheese Chile Rellenos
That evening grilled mini sweet peppers were served with dinner, which got me thinking about using those instead of jalapenos. When I got home, I saw that my supermarket sold those exact same peppers, so they would be easily obtainable. For the filling, I figured I would need something to bind the crab meat and blue cheese because it would probably be overpowering if I just stuffed the peppers with blue cheese. I thought cream cheese would do the trick because, according to the Flavor Bible, blue cheese and cream cheese are complementary flavors.
Since I had time before the Iron Chef party, I decided to do a recipe trial with one bag of mini sweet peppers. I looked in the family cookbook for my recipes for Crab Rangoon filling and the Hot Crab Meat Appetizer to get an idea of the ratio between cream cheese and crab meat. The first recipe used six ounces of crab meat to four ounces of cream cheese; the second recipe used seven and a half ounces of crab meat to eight ounces of cream cheese. Since blue cheese is supposed to be the “star” of the dish, I decided to opt for approximately a 1:1 ratio between the crab meat and the cream cheese. However, the canned crab meat is only sold in six-ounce cans in my supermarket, so I went with one can (slightly under the desired ratio) rather than two (slightly over the desired ratio). Once I got the crab meat and cream cheese mixed together, I just kept adding blue cheese until the taste of the cheese came through in the mixture. It turns out that I added the entire half-pound package! I cut the tops off five peppers and put a few spoonfuls of the mixture in each pepper. Then I baked them at 375F for 15 minutes – the time and temperature recommended in the Hot Crab Meat Appetizer recipe. The peppers were still slightly crisp, but the filling had melted nicely. The overall combination was excellent, although the taste of the crab meat was overwhelmed by the taste of the blue cheese. Since blue cheese was supposed to be the star of the dish, that was okay.
Since I had a lot of peppers and filling left, I decided to do another trial of five peppers the next day. This time, I decapitated the peppers and baked them without the filling for 15 minutes at 375F. After they came out of the oven, I stuffed the peppers with the filling. This required a different technique than before because the peppers were softer; I had to push the filling into the pepper with my fingers rather than the spoon. It was both messy and time consuming. I baked the stuffed peppers for 10 minutes at 375F, to melt the filling and further soften the peppers. When I took the tray out of the oven, I discovered that the filling had oozed out of the peppers because I had filled each straight up to the top. Fortunately, I had lined the baking tin with aluminum foil, so the mess was easy to clean up. Aside from that minor problem, the timing was perfect. The peppers were nice and soft, and the filling was fully melted.
The Verdict
So I had my game plan set for the Iron Chef Party! Unfortunately, I never got to implement it. I was unexpectedly out of town for the weekend of the party. But I’ve been reassured that I will most likely be invited to next year’s party – as long as I am in town for it!
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