Welcome to the second installment of Buffalo Rising's Chef's Challenge, wherein some of the top chefs in Buffalo square off in a competition of wit, skill, and versatility!
Regular readers will recognize the structure of Chef's Challenge from our first contest, which featured chayote as the mystery ingredient.
For those of you new to YUM! or unfamiliar with the first installment of the contest, here's a quick rundown.
Local chefs agree to receive a surprise ingredient and are given 24 hours to develop an original recipe showcasing the product. I then return, often with a fellow taster, to sample (and occasionally devour) the offering, shoot some photos and speak with the chef about their background, food philosophy and the restaurant as a whole. Dishes are then rated from Honorable Mention through Winner, each place being announced in a piece dedicated solely to the featured establishment.
The “mystery ingredient” that I selected for our second installment of the BR Chef's Challenge series is plain yogurt from White Cow Dairy of East Otto, NY.
Though I considered using foods with stronger flavor profiles and/or the crazy “wow” factor, I selected yogurt because of its tremendous versatility. It has been used in cooking since the Bronze Age and can be found in the cuisine of countries from all over the globe. A small sample of those countries include France, Greece, India, Egypt, and Bulgaria.
For those of you familiar with yogurt, White Cow surpasses all others in quality, including Fage, the Greek yogurt offered by most specialty stores. That is, at least, the opinion of the buyers from New York's venerable Murray's Cheese.
White Cow Dairy is a tremendously small, family operated dairy with less than 20 head of cattle. The herd is treated to minerals and spring water in addition to being given a fresh paddock of grass every twelve hours. These steps ensure that their milk is not only delicious, but packed with nutrients. In the process of making yogurt, heat must always be used (it allows the yogurt culture to “take over” the good bacteria naturally found in raw milk). But in the case of White Cow, it is brought to a temperature hovering around the bare minimum, thus preserving the superior flavor of raw milk.
The restaurants that particpated in BR's second Chef's Challenge include (in alphabetical order) Bacchus, Nektar, O'Connell's (formerly O'Connell's Hourglass), Prime 490 and Toro. Beginning this Friday, you can tune into BR every Tuesday and Friday for the BR Chef's Challenge: White Cow Yogurt countdown to the winner.