Today we went back to the kitchen, this time to prepare an entire meal. I was very excited to get in there and see how Team A works together and see if we can prepare something worth eating. Josh and I decided we would do the flanksteak, since we have both done grillwork in the past and know what we are doing. We brought our grill and decided to light it an hour ahead of when we would actually put the steaks on so that it could get good and hot. The first thing we did, though, was make our rub. I have never made a rub for my steaks before, so this was a new thing for me. The recipe was simple and easy to follow, so we got it done without a problem. After we got it done and were letting the steaks marinate, we had some time to kill, so we went around and helped other teams with their dishes. I ended up chopping up endless eggplants that Caroline and William had cooked.
Finally, it was time to go light the grill. This is where we ran into our first problem of the day. The charcoal we had was not match light and we didn't have any lighter fluid. Typically, this wouldn't be a huge issue because we did have a lighter and newspaper, so we were confident we could get it lit anyway. The big issue was the wind. No matter how we tried to shield the grill, the wind was overpowering us. Dr. Sloan left to go get us a charcoal chimney, and (of course) while he was gone, we finally got it lit. The charcoal chimney did help immensely when our charcoal cooled off. We grilled the steaks two at a time and the only problem we ran into was that the rub was burning. We should have just put some of that on our charcoal and we wouldn't have had a problem!
As soon as the steaks were finished, we went inside and everyone else was finishing up too. It was time to eat! The meal consisted of our steaks, a chicken mole, a salad with chocolate dressing, baked beans, eggplant, and coca-cola cake. I thought our steaks were a little bit dry, but other people seemed to enjoy them or at least faked it well. They probably would have been better had they had longer to marinate. The mole was absolutely incredible. Its taste was really undescribable and I guess that is how it was supposed to be, but it really was good. I didn't really care for the salad. I'm sort of picky about what salad dressings I eat and I typically stick to one or two that I'm comfortable with. The baked beans were actually the best ones I've ever eaten. My mom makes some really good baked beans but I honestly liked these even better and that is a rare thing. The eggplant I could have done without. The cocoa nibs were just overpowering to me. I was able to pick around them a little bit and that made it better. I've had coke cake before and I really enjoyed that. Overall, I was really impressed with the job everyone did. We worked very well together and turned out a product that everyone enjoyed. No one went home hungry.
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