It’s the final week of the Steemit Iron Chef contest and @progressivechef, words cannot express the skills, knowledge, sense of adventure and all-round fun I have gained from this wonderful experience that you created for all us Steemian foodies. It’s been an emotional ride and I’m honoured to say that I was able to be a part of SIC, having even had the pleasure of cropping up in the top 7 at times and I cannot be more thankful for this. I’d also like to thank @rootingrobert for introducing me to SIC and also to you @progressivechef and for making my last few months in my kitchen in China exciting again!

As it is the finale and 17th week of the infamous Steemit Iron Chef contest, I thought I‘d pull out all the stops and include every one of the 16 fruits and vegetables of the last 16 weeks. It’s not been easy, but I just about managed without going insane so that’s a good result!

Since I’m incorporating all 16 themes, I thought sizing down on the dishes was my only way to get through this so I made everything into a bite-sized canape, much more digestible!

These little canapes are to consist of the following…
Chestnut, sage and onion stuffing with a cranberry and orange chutney pancake; Red pepper panna cotta and chilli jelly; Pear, apple and lime sherbet; Aubergine caviar in courgette skin; Cardamom and nutmeg-infused pumpkin and cauliflower mille feuille with fennel bread; Bloody Mary gel sphere; Salt and vinegar sweet potato chips; Korean style pickled carrots and fungi; Blini topped with caviar, beetroot mustard and eggs; Coffee banoffee and avocado ice lolly

Chestnut, sage and onion stuffing with a cranberry and orange chutney pancake

This is what I made as an accompaniment to Christmas dinner so please bear in mind that this portion size feeds 4-6! I just stuffed small amounts into Vietnamese rice sheets and gobbled them up for Boxing day lunch, yum!

In a saucepan, sweat 1 large diced onion and remove from the heat. Stir in 150g coarse breadcrumbs, 80g chopped cooked chestnuts, salt and pepper. Once cooled, mix in 1 egg to create a sticky dough. Place in a greased loaf tin and bake at 170C for 35 minutes.

To make the cranberry and orange chutney, I juiced 2 large oranges and poured over 200g cranberries, along with 50g sugar and a pinch of nutmeg and cinnamon. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 15-20 minutes and then leave to cool. If you prefer the consistency more smooth, the chutney can be blitzed in a food processor to achieve the desired texture.

If you refer to onion week you will see how I prepared the rice sheets. Once ready, line them up with a layer of stuffing, followed by a layer of the orange chutney and roll tightly- job’s a good ‘un!

Red pepper panna cotta and chilli jelly

Remove the skin from 150g roasted red peppers and place in a blender with garlic salt and 80ml milk. Once pureed, heat the paste with ½ tsp agar powder for 2-3 minutes and set aside to cool before placing into the refrigerator to set.

In the mean time, prepare the chilli jelly by adding tabasco sauce to water (the ratio of tabasco to water will be in accordance to how spicy you like it) and heating in a saucepan with ½ - 1 tsp agar powder. Once cooled to room temperature, it can be poured on top of the pepper panna cotta and left to set in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

Pear, apple and lime sherbet

A sherbet is a zesty, almost fizzy sorbet-type frozen treat, ideal as a palette cleanser, especially between so many canapes! The refreshing apple and pear give this traditional sherbet a wonderfully fruity twist!

I added the juice of 1 apple and 1 pear to the zest and juice of 4 limes and heated with 200g sugar. When the sugar has dissolved, leave the sugared juice mix to cool before freezing. With an electric whisk, mix the sherbet every hour for the first 6 hours after which it should be creamy, pale and tantalizingly zingy!

Aubergine caviar in courgette skin

In an oven set at 220C, place 3 garlic cloves and a whole aubergine sliced in half in a baking tray coated lightly in oil and bake for 25 minutes. Meanwhile, lightly pan fry a julienned courgette and make each one into a little roll, leaving a reasonably sized hole in the middle.

When the aubergine is cooked, tear apart the insides and mash them with a fork along with the roasted garlic and some salt. Stuff in to the ready rolled courgette skin and serve.

Cardamom and nutmeg-infused pumpkin and cauliflower mille feuille with caraway seed bread

Steam cubes of 1 small cauliflower and 1 small pumpkin. When soft, mash each vegetable separately with a fork and to the cauliflower add cardamom and salt and to the pumpkin, nutmeg and sugar. I'm a real fan of sweet-salty combos so I thought, why not try it with these veggies! Assemble these as layers in shot glasses.

For the bread, mix 1 7g sachet of fast-action yeast with 450g wholemeal bread flour, 2 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp olive oil. Pour in 300ml water and mix into a smooth dough. Knead the dough for 7-10 minutes and leave to prove for 1 hour. When doubled in size, add 75g caraway seeds, knead again as before and leave to prove for another hour. Place the dough as a round onto a flat baking tray and bake for 30 minutes at 220C, after which the bread should sound hollow when tapped on the base.
Leave to cool and then slice in any way or form to serve with the mille feuille.

Bloody Mary gel sphere

One of my favourite cocktails so why should it taste any different as a gel?! Plus, it’s much easier to go down- a more convenient way to drink I’d say!

So for this wonderful little alcoholic beverage that ca be eaten rather than drunk, heat 150ml tomato juice, 50 ml vodka, 1 tsp lemon juice, a dash of tabasco and a pinch of celery salt with 1 tsp agar powder. Once the agar has dissolved, strain the mix into micro moulds (or shot glasses as I did!) and allow to set in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Salt and vinegar sweet potato chips

It’s a simple pleasure, but one of the foods I’m guilty of missing from England is a good old hearty portion of chips smothered in lashings of salt and vinegar served in a paper cone - oh what a nostalgic moment I had tucking into this canape!

Easy peasy recipe- just slice a large sweet potato into wedges or chunky strips and roast in some rapeseed oil at 220C for 25 minutes. Once out of the oven, I stuck a few chips into a pre-made paper cone and drenched my portion in vinegar and a generous helping of salt, scrummy!

Korean-style pickled carrot and fungi

Food in China is a major fascination- I really think that as least half of the Chinese population consists of hardcore foodies! Cuisine here varies so much from one province to another- something I did not expect until actually moving to China. At the moment, Korean food is quite in trend and there are Korean pop-up restaurants cropping up everywhere. What I love about them are the free pickled vegetables you get each time you visit to fill an eagerly anticipating belly. So simple and yet so effective.

To make this appetiser, dice a carrot and any variants of mushrooms and place in a bowl. Into these vegetables, thoroughly stir in a paste made with garlic, ginger, dried chilli flakes, salt and fish sauce and leave, allowing the flavours to infuse. If you have time, you can allow the pickles to ferment to make a traditional kimchi, but I did it the quick and lazy way- hey, it still tastes good!

Blini topped with caviar, beetroot mustard and eggs

Blinis are so cute! Little baby pancakes which I just make using a bog-standard pancake recipe, although there are much more fancy variants.

For my simple blini batter, I whisked together 130g plain flour, 1tsp baking powder, 30g sugar, 145ml milk and 2 eggs. When a smooth, lump-free batter results, pan fry in a smidgen of oil, a few teaspoons worth at a time. When the tops start to bubble, flip over to the other side and allow to cook until both sides are golden brown.

For the beetroot mustard, mix 300g yellow and black mustard seeds and 3 tbsp mustard powder with 250ml water and 250ml white pale ale and leave overnight. Following the overnight soak, blend in a food processor with 175ml white vinegar, 1 tbsp salt, 5 tbsp honey, 1 tbsp mace and 100g cooked beetroot. The mustard should be stored in sterilised jars in the fridge.

When cooled the blini can be topped with egg mayonnaise, caviar and the beetroot mustard.

Coffee banoffee and avocado ice lolly

To a blender, blitz the flesh of 1 avocado, 1 banana and an espresso shot and place into moulds of some sort in preparation for freezing. Once the mix has been frozen for a minimum of 4 hours, it can be coated in dried flower petals for added texture and aesthetics.

Now that each canape has been successfuly created (and by success I mean I'm still standing!), start arranging onto a long plate and serve- voilà :-)