I have an on-camera interview on Tuesday, so we’ll see how it goes. Anyway, make these cookies so you can say you did before I went on TV and got big. Also because they’re rich and delicious and melt in your mouth.

But I have several other guy friends who happen to be great cooks, too. In the next few months, you’ll hear from some of them (and hopefully Michael as well). I expect you’ll be surprised just how adept 20-something year-old guys can be in the kitchen. And I hope you enjoy the new balance of voices on the site.

What is all that and why did I board a plane with it? Answers and an update after the jump.

It’s an immersion blender, a basting brush, a chef’s knife and sharpening steel, a mortar and pestle, a whisk, and an assortment of spices.

All of those things came with me to Buenos Aires. I will be spending the next three months in Argentina, and well, I couldn’t bear to part with those items, knowing I’d have to stock a kitchen here anyway.

He Cooks She Cooks started as a blog by two friends who made dinner together nearly every night of the week. After graduation, Michael moved back home to Chicago while I worked for the newspaper during the summer. Michael has found himself two jobs in Chicago, which is keeping him from cooking anything he finds blogworthy. He’ll post sporadically at best, and I more than anyone will miss having his voice here.

As for myself, I am happy to seize this opportunity to be abroad while I can, but I am adjusting to cooking for one in a new country. Slowly my kitchen is coming together. I’m learning to navigate the markets here, realizing a lot of the international flavors I enjoy will be harder to recreate without trips to special shops and spending more than usual. It should be fun to see what I come up with combining my background in food with the local ingredients here. I am trying to learn about Argentine food, beyond the amazing beef they are most known for.

This blog has always focused on our quest to learn about food, either from cooking it, reading about it, or interviewing professionals in the field. I always strive to provide recipes you won’t find everywhere else. The domain name might not be perfect anymore, but those goals remain the same.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a recipe.

If anyone’s wondering why Michael has been MIA from He Cooks, She Cooks lately, it’s because he’s roadtripping with a few friends from Chicago to LA. Hopefully he’ll have some food stories when he returns.

In the meantime, here is Michael’s final photo essay about Missouri farmers. The images have audio if you want to know a little more about the people supplying meat, eggs, vegetables and honey to homes and restaurants around mid-Missouri.

Brittany and I have now graduated college (in 4 years!), with our degrees from the oldest and most prestigious journalism school in the world (suck it Northwestern).  With that comes the end of what was, and a new beginning of the rest of our lives.

Brittany will be staying in Columbia at least the rest of the summer, with our friend Kat and various other people we know.  She’ll be working at The Missourian, our lab newspaper as a Teaching Assistant, which is right up her alley.  In her immense amount of free time, I imagine she will cook a ton of fun summer things.  Her cilantro and tomato plants are getting huge already.

I have already returned home to Chicago, living with my parents until I find a salaried job (for the moment, I’m gonna say I’m a freelancer!).  It’s practical, and mainly, free.  I will miss the farmers market, and all the people we met through this blog (big shout out to Mike Odette).  Deerfield’s saving grace is that we do have a Whole Foods down the street, in addition to a really nice kitchen in our house (convection oven, kitchen-aid stand mixer, counter space… all nice things).

More than anything I will miss the planning, seeing the excitement in Brit’s face as we develop our menu, plan for the week, or most consistently, as her and Kat start discussing options for dessert before we’ve even finished eating dinner.

In conclusion, the blog will not suffer, but it will probably feel a little different.  I have no doubt in mind we’ll call each other every day, but for better or worse, we’re kinda adults now, about 400 hundred miles apart.  We’ll visit, and you better believe there will posts on those epic adventures.  Of course, we’ll also let you know if either of us gets real jobs.  (I find out in a few days if I’ll be hired at a paper on the west coast).

We each have something to say about the university Iron Chef competition, but we broke it up into two posts: He Said and She Said.

It’s a day after Battle Rice, and I’m still bummed. I very sincerely feel that we deserved better scores than we received. Overall we came in third place (second in taste). We received no feedback from the judges beyond numbered scores, so it’s hard to tell what they didn’t like. My best guess is that the shrimp curry was too different and spicy for their tastebuds. We knew our menu was risky since the judges were administrators and students, not food experts. But we weren’t going to dumb down the flavors we knew the food should have.

We went with Indian-style dishes because we’re most comfortable with those ingredients and tastes. We wanted to give the judges something different, something that would hit every note on the palate.

The Menu

• Vegetable and Brown Basmati Fritter with Three Sauces: Curry-Lime Yogurt, Coconut-Mango Chutney and Chili-Garlic Tomato Paste
• Gulf Shrimp in Coconut-Tamarind Curry Sauce with Red Himalayan Rice Pilaf and Cucumber Raita

Rice Fritter

The inspiration for this dish came from Smitten Kitchen’s Indian-Spiced Vegetable Fritters. I swapped potatoes for brown basmati rice and made some other adjustments to get a perfect deep fried patty. I use her curry-lime yogurt idea, but upped the lime content a lot. Atop the yogurt was a coconut-mango chutney with fresh cilantro. I made two versions this weekend and it was so good I ate it with tortilla chips. In my excitement during the competition I used one mango, but doubled proportions of other ingredients. I also added wayyy too much salt. This was the first time I made anything so terrible. Luckily with a little more sugar, more coconut and some squeezes of lime, it was edible. Combined with the fritter and other sauces, it was actually good. The third sauce for the fritter was Michael’s idea: a chili paste made with dried cayenne peppers, ginger, garlic and onions, cooked and mixed with tomato paste. All three of these sweet, sour and spicy sauces worked together with the salty fritter. With every bite you tasted something new. People came up and told us it was the best dish of the night.

Shrimp Curry

We knew we wanted to do some sort of curry, and shrimp seemed the easiest to cook under time constraints. I’ve had a lot of curries, and I know how well coconut milk works with seafood. I thought of the Indian restaurant in New York, Tamarind, where I’ve had fantastic lobster masala and dishes including the sour fruit, tamarind. I knew tamarind and coconut would be killer with shrimp, so after a little googling, I found a recipe from Madhur Jaffrey who has won a James Beard Award so I took it on good faith. The curry was so different than people expect from curry. The tamarind is such a unique sour element that creates a balance with the sweet coconut. We made this sauce two days before the competition and it was just fine. Somehow it ended up a lot more spicy at Iron Chef. We scrambled at the end to tone it down with more coconut milk, tamarind and a little lime. It was still spicier than I wanted to give the judges, but it wasn’t overwhelmingly hot, especially with the rice and side of cool cucumber yogurt puree, raita.

In the end, I think it was our downfall, but I am very proud of what our team did. The dishes were bold and sophisticated. I think we had a strong grasp of how every ingredient worked with the others. The menu was creative and had clean presentation. Also, we managed our time perfectly. I don’t think any of us was stressed, and we worked together well.

I still hold that if Top Chef’s Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi were judging, we would have won easily. Instead the judges were two school administrators and two students, none with any special knowledge about food. I also would have liked to introduce my own food, rather than have the emcee read the description. I felt as though there was a big barrier between chefs and judges. We didn’t talk to them, and they didn’t talk to us. They whispered as they ate instead of giving us feedback.

Oh well, what can you do? I would still serve our dishes in a restaurant with no changes but for adding more mango to the chutney. I would even leave the spiciness of the curry. The flavor was perfect.

After last night’s Top Chef finale, I am so excited that today is the Campus Dining Iron Chef competition. Michael, my friend Gwen and I have been paired with a professional campus chef, Jeremy Elmore. Officials told us on Friday that today will be Battle Rice. They will have certain rices available to us, such as brown basmati and red Himalayan, and some standard ingredients. The others we will bring ourselves.

Five teams have one hour to do all prep and cooking for two dishes to be served to five judges. We’ve decided to do Indian food, which will be judged on taste, creativity and appearance.

This weekend, Michael and I tested out some sauces. On Tuesday night our whole team got together and cooked both dishes. We’ve decided to make some adjustments, but I think we’re ready to go. We have two sophisticated dishes full of flavor. The biggest issue will be time and the limited amount of space to work at. An 8-foot table, I think.

If you’re in Columbia, the competition is 4:30 in downstairs Bingham (the area between Schurz and Hatch residence halls). It should be aired on MUTV as well. But we’ll have a big update here after we win, so don’t worry.

We are proud to announce that He and She and our friend Gwen will compete against four other teams in the University of Missouri Iron Chef battle next week. The three of us are confident in our cooking skills, but we’ve never been in much of a pressure situation. It will be interesting to see how we adapt to having a time limit and working in a new kitchen.

About that kitchen…we’re not sure what to expect. This isn’t real Iron Chef or Top Chef, where you have access to incredible ingredients. It’s a university dining hall kitchen. I enjoyed the food during my time on campus, but I don’t know whether the kitchen will be as stocked as we’re used to.

We’re low on details now, but we know our team of three will be joined by one of the chefs from Missouri Campus Dining Services and be given a ’secret ingredient.’ Last year it was citrus. (Again, this is on the university budget in the middle of Missouri winter. Don’t get too excited.) Then we’ll have a limited time to prep and cook. It might only be one or two dishes, not sure yet.

We have a week to brainstorm ideas to have in reserve and get more details about the competition. (Like, can we bring our own knives or any spices?) We’ll be brushing up on technique and flavor combinations, and trying to get a little faster in our preparation. In the meantime, check out some photos from last year: Mizzou Iron Chef.

Any tips for cooking under time constraints?

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