Elgin superintendent creates winning recipes for all seasons
Dan Rich is the guy who survived the odious “Twizzlers challenge” during the semifinal round of this year’s Cook of the Week Challenge, turning the chewy strawberry confection into a port wine reduction, so when he saw the secret ingredients for last week’s grand finale he thought, “bring ’em on.”
Chicken, micro greens, apples and crystallized ginger?
“I was tickled; I cook this stuff all the time,” said Rich, who sautéed and bruleed his way to victory in the third annual Cook of the Year Challenge before a crowd of 400, including his rabbi.
“I felt confident going in, and once I saw the ingredients, ideas came to me almost immediately,” said Rich, Elgin’s superintendent of public works.
As for stress, he says: “I routinely cook for large family groups and that’s much more pressure.”
His “Gobblin’ Delight” platter was a three-part meal with a level of complexity that pushed the one-hour time limit to the final minutes: chicken breast stuffed with Israeli couscous and vegetables, drizzled with a mushroom-wine reduction; fruit compote updated with crystallized ginger, rosemary and a bruleed top; and creamed peas with sage.
With some steady help from his sous chef and lifelong friend, Ken Lloyd, Rich beat the timer just as he placed the final rosemary sprig on his plates.
A friendly fellow in a bib apron with “Mr. Dan” painted on the front, he certainly looked calm as he joked with Daily Herald Food Editor Deborah Pankey in the moments before the one-hour challenge began, lobbied her for plastic wrap at his station and playfully tossed some spilled flour into the air after fumbling his bin full of ingredients from the communal food pantry.
It doesn’t take long to discover that Dan has a big personality and a somewhat irreverent sense of humor.
He credits his earliest inspiration to Lloyd’s mother, who supervised Saturday night pizza-making parties with her children and their friends. But he started cooking in earnest at 18 when his father kicked him out of the house.
“I had a smart mouth,” he admits.
From broiled hot dogs to unlikely combinations like stir-fry with a side of blueberry muffins, Dan started playing with ingredients, learning from his “abysmal failures and tremendous successes.”
Today, Rich says he does most of the cooking for his wife and three kids because “my wife would rather scrub a toilet.” He keeps a “reasonably kosher” kitchen with no shellfish or pork but an abundance of produce.
“What grooves me about cooking are the seasons,” says Rich, who tends a 400-square-foot garden in his backyard and builds menus around what’s fresh this week. “That’s killer inspiration.”
Rich donated all his prizes, including a $1,000 Bosch dishwasher and a $400 knife set, to the Boys and Girls Club of Elgin, where he is a longtime volunteer.
A prolific Facebook commentator during the monthslong Cook of the Week Challenge, it’s no surprise that Rich is contemplating creating a cooking blog focused on recipes with seasonal ingredients.
We’re betting that none of them will call for Twizzlers.