By David Rogers. February 21, 2012. BLOWING ROCK -- Tuesday night at Blowing Rock's Fire on the Rock competition dining preliminary was no place for foo-foo food. "Battle Beef" was the name of the game, and culinary critics of all descriptions were looking around for their Stetsons.  Glidewell's Guy Thomas crossed kitchen knives with The Table at Crestwood's Matt Barlowe in Battle #5, with Thomas emerging from the OK Corral triumphant -- even if wishing he could have done ice cream! Photos by Amanda Lugenbell

Both chefs confided later that their pre-competition nightmares had "rabbit" and "goat" proteins as the secret ingredients. In his victory interview, Thomas confessed to being happy with the beef, saying, "Beef is one of my favorite proteins to work with."

Where recent preliminary Fire on the Rock events featured more exotic food products as featured ingredients, including guinea fowl, sweet potatoes, cinnamon, and lavender, this one featured a staple of many American diets: beef. If anyone might have asked "Where's the beef?" early in the evening, by the end of Battle #5 they protested, "Please, I have beef coming out of my ears!"

In post-dinner intereviews, four out of five diners admitted that they probably had not been fair to the later courses. "I was just so full," explained one young Blowing Rock woman. "I really couldn't eat another bite," she said, in front of her nodding friends.

"Battle Beef", which was the fifth preliminary contest in the 2012 edition of this increasingly popular event, was not as simple as throwing a filet mignon on the barbie to everyone's rare to well-done specifications. Instead it featured two cuts of meat that are not very well-known in fine dining kitchens, top sirloin and shoulder blade.  They challenged the chefs to know how to carve out and prepare the best parts of those cuts, and what to leave behind.  

The courses:

• FIRST COURSE (Barlowe): Coulatte & Flat Iron Tar Tar, with Golden Beet Chip, Lemon, and Roasted Garlic Aioli.  Overall, the dish captured 55.6% of possible points. The dish was greeted with mixed reactions by the diner judges around us, which were reflected in the score.  Those that relished raw meat dishes lavished high praise on this first course for the meat's tenderness and flavor. Predictably, those who don't generally have an appetite for "tar tar" were non-plussed, and that probably accounted for the lower scores. A fun part of the dish was deciding whether it should be eaten with fingers, like hors d'oeuvres (oops, the cracker folded when I picked it up!).
• SECOND COURSE (Thomas): Alderwood Roast Top Sirloin & Panko Crusted Flat Iron Cutlet, featuring Shrimp Scampi with Shrimp Jus and Cranberry Pecan Polenta. The reaction to each of the beef components was very different among most of the diners. Several observed that the top sirloin was a bit tough.  The flat iron cutlet was pretty good, they said, and saved the dish.  It was awarded the second most number of points, scoring 64.8% of all possible points.
• THIRD COURSE (Barlowe): Sirloin and Blade Steak Beef Bourguignon, with Roasted Carrots, Mushrooms, and Red Wine Jus. While the beef components of the dish received faint praise as "good," the carrots were said to be outstanding. This was the 4th highest ranking dish of the evening @ 59.2%.
• FOURTH COURSE (Thomas): Wood Grilled Prime Top Sirloin & Flat Iron Steak, with Bearnaise, Dried Cherry Cabernet Sauce, Buttered Asparagus Tips, Oyster Mushroom Risotto.  Capturing 71.9% of the possible points, this was the highest scoring dish of the evening. Both of the meat cuts were tender and flavorful, and the asparagus tips were an added contrast in flavors.
• FIFTH COURSE (Barlow): Grilled Marinated Flat Iron & Pepper Crusted Sirloin, with Thyme Roasted Finglerlings and a Lingonberry Almond Compote. Perhaps diners were starting to suffer "beef fatigue" by the time this course was served, perhaps it just struck a few wrong chords, but this garnered only 60.2% of the possible points that could be awarded, the 3rd highest dish, even while it received many accolades from several diners.  They told Blowing Rock News that the "bite" of the pepper was an eye-opening, pleasant surprise and one of the first truly enterprising efforts of the evening.  Two of the diners interviewed stated that they wished the protein components could be judged separately, because while they like the pepper-crusted sirloin, the flat iron steak did not "wow" them.
• SIXTH COURSE (Thomas): Braised Top Sirloin & Blade Roast, with Rutabaga & Potato Puree, Bacon, Onion, Sugar Snaps & Carrots.  By the time this dish was served, several diners were already looking to turn themselves in to law enforcement authorities.  "We are guilty," one young woman confessed, "of felony beef gluttony and there are no churches big enough in which to confess all of our beef-eating sins."  But we found another diner visiting from Winston-Salem who said, "I was so stuffed from the previous course that at first I only a feeble attempt to taste #6, just to say that I had done it and fulfilled my judging obligation.  But my heart really wasn't into it.  Then, a funny thing happened.  The rutabaga and potato puree caught my eye and I broke into this big smile after sampling it.  The first snap of the bacon woke me up. Then I got into the beef components and suddenly I realized that I was REALLY enjoying this dish. It may have only gotten 59.1% of the overall possible vote, but it got 100% of my possible points."

In an interview with Blowing Rock News afterwards, Thomas admitted that the biggest challenge in Battle #5 of Fire on the Rock was figuring out what to do with two beef proteins. "To have two beef proteins was a little bit of a surprise," the winning Glidewell's chef said. My number one thought? I couldn't think of any dessert to make with beef...I'm good at ice cream. If I could have smoked beef brisket and shaved it, and treated it like bacon, I could have done it (made ice cream, with the shavings as a topping). I tried everything I knew, but I couldn't make it taste good...Pork is easy to carmelize, beef not so much because the flavor is so intense."

In reflecting on the evening's challenges, Thomas noted that the cuts of meat provided to the chefs were outstanding. "These were phenomenal pieces of meat. The top sirloin was absolutely prime, aged perfectly. But when you have to use them for three courses, you get some redundancy and have to search yourself to try and make each one different and special.  The risk of redundancy, that is the biggest challenge."

Thomas congratulated Crippen and his event organizers for introducing "the truck", freshly supplied each night of the competition by co-sponsor Southern Foods with all of the ingredients necessary for the chefs to compete. "This is fairer (than everyone being allowed to bring a bag of tricks), and there is an excellent bounty of food products on the truck."

Barlowe shared with Blowing Rock News that while he has participated on other chef teams in Fire on the Rock, "Nothing quite prepares you for taking on the role of 'the guy' leading the team. This was my first time (leading), so it was a new experience.  We will get better.

"Coming up with ideas that could be done in the time frame (of the competition)," Barlowe continued, was the most challenging aspect of the contest. "We came up with a lot of great ideas that would work in a regular kitchen, but wouldn't work in this format, so we had to reject them. Also, plating that many servings (69 on this night) is a challenge because you want to make sure everything is right for each serving, whether plating the first or the last."

One of the evening's special guests Tuesday night was the Chief Executive Officer of Southern Foods, Mac Sulliivan, visiting Blowing Rock from Greensboro. "This all beef (battle) was fun," Sullivan observed to Blowing Rock News, "and what made it fun -- and the public may not realize this -- is that from the food service side there were cuts of beef used tonight that you don't normally see.  Take the (shoulder) blade steak, for instance.  If the chef is skilled, he knows how to fabricate that cut and pull a flat iron steak out of it.  Most restaurant patrons have heard of a flat iron steak, but not a blade steak. So tonight really tested the skill of the chef.  They had to know how to cut it properly and pull out that flat iron.

"Then when you move down to the rear of the animal and have a cut that comes from near the hip, you have a steak that normally would not be that tender," Sullivan continued.  "But you had a couple of things in play here. Number one, it was Certified Angus Beef. Number two, it had been aged properly (40 days) and three, it had great marbling. These factors combined to bring great flavor and tenderness to the steak.

"So tonight's competition," the Southern Foods executive offered, "really highlighted what can be done with different cuts of meat if they are the proper quality, if they are aged properly, and if they are treated properly -- and they don't necessarily have to be the prime cuts, like tenderloins, ribeyes, or strips." 

Sullivan had high praise for what Crippen has created for compeition dining in Blowing Rock, and is excited about the Southern Foods partnership that is helping to take the concept to other parts of the state. "For us, it is marketing. This is part of our branding, because the event series speaks to independent restaurants that are chef-driven. These chefs are our customers.  Our association with this event says to those chefs, look at what we are doing and how we are elevating what is going on in the independent restaurants in North Carolina, and how we are elevating the many products that are grown and created in North Carolina.  We do it better than anybody else."

Wednesday night is yet another special "battle", featuring Valle Crucis' 1861 Farmhouse executive chef Randall Isaac vs. Gina Paolucci of Paulucci's (Boone).  Tuesday, Feb. 28th pits Vidalia's Sam Ratchford against Cafe Portofino's Matt Martin, while Wednesday, Feb. 29th, leaps into the final preliminary battle featuring Jackalope's (Beech Mountain) Matt Franklin taking on Storie Street Grille's Andrew Long.

BATTLE #5 SCORING

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