I Cooked Against My Girlfriend

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Nick DiGiovanni 12 min 4 speakers 5 chapters transcribed

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What cooking challenge is presented in this episode?

Nick DiGiovanni 0:00

Today will be my most difficult cooking challenge yet. I'll be competing against my girlfriend, Isabelle. We'll have three rounds consisting of an appetizer, entree, and dessert. But there's just one thing. Isabelle, how often do you cook?

How does the cooking competition between Nick and Isabelle begin?

Nick DiGiovanni 0:11

Never. Never. So I'm giving Isabelle a huge advantage in each round to level the playing field. If I lose, I'll take her on a one-week luxury vacation to any destination of her choosing. But if I win, I don't think I'll have a girlfriend for much longer.

Isabelle 0:23

Let's cook.

Nick DiGiovanni 0:23

Round one will be an appetizer round, and I will be blindfolded. I'll be making what I call a blindfolded Bloomin' Onion. And it's certainly not gonna be easy, but I'm gonna give it my best shot.

Isabelle 0:31

Today, I'm gonna be making a poke bowl. So I've made poke bowls before, but never with a full salmon here. I don't really know how to approach this. Look at him. So cute.

Nick DiGiovanni 0:43

For the Bloomin' Onion, I'm gonna chop off the head of the onion. And the idea is we want the onion to look like this. So I'm gonna chop down all of the sides of this onion, being very, very careful with my fingers as I do it. And when I feel like I've gone all the way through, I'll open the onion up and hope that it holds together.

What dish does Nick prepare for the appetizer round?

Nick DiGiovanni 0:56

The key now for me is gonna be to make the batter for my Bloomin' Onion. We need this to be extremely flavorful, especially because the judge I'm trying to impress today is none other than my cameraman, Manny. Manny has been locked in a soundproof room and has no idea who has cooked each dish.

Isabelle 1:09

I feel like I'm doing this, you know, semi-correctly. And our first piece. Got some scales in there, we'll fix that later. Now, I'm gonna try to get the skin off here. Okay, this is a bit harder than I anticipated.

How does Isabelle approach her poke bowl dish?

Isabelle 1:20

I feel like they make it look so easy when they do it.

Nick DiGiovanni 1:23

I'm so incredibly grateful that I can't see what the salmon looks like, because I think I'd have a heart attack. To season up my Bloomin' Onion batter here, I don't know exactly what I've got in my hands, but I'll do my best to just sprinkle in an even amount of all of them. I'm thinking we're probably well-seasoned enough, so I'm gonna go ahead and whisk it all up and set this aside. The last step of my Bloomin' Onion is making the wet batter. I gotta do this by just pure feel. Come on. Come on. Nice. Then I'll follow this with two eggs. After a nice quick whisk, our wet batter is complete.

Isabelle 1:54

So I'm going to start here with the cucumbers. Oh, that was a good throw.

Nick DiGiovanni 2:00

What the is going on?

Isabelle 2:01

Now we're going to slice up our mango, and then we're going to cut into little cubes. Looking good. Now I'm going to cut the avocado. Honestly, not.

Nick DiGiovanni 2:12

Our very last step is to dredge this Bloomin' Onion. So first, I'll coat the whole thing in flour and really try to work into every nook and cranny on my onion. Once I've done my first dredge, I'll toss it into the wet batter and move it around as much as possible to fully coat the whole onion. So far, I'm feeling really good about this round. To finish, back once more in my dry batter where I really need to open up every single petal here. I'll shake off all that excess flour and my Bloomin' Onion is ready to cook. For safety, since I'll be using hot oil, I'm gonna keep my blindfold off the rest of this round. So let's get back to cooking. To finish this up, my bloomin' onion is gonna go straight into the frying oil.

Nick DiGiovanni 2:43

And now I have to give it the love and care that it deserves.

Isabelle 2:45

Okay, now we have all of our ingredients, so it's time to plate. So first we're gonna put the rice into our bowl.

Nick DiGiovanni 2:51

A hundred bucks she doesn't season the rice. Guaranteed. Not even salt.

Isabelle 2:54

And I'm going to flatten it out. And then, of course, got to use some Osmo. Throw some of this on here.

Nick DiGiovanni 2:58

Not even so.

Isabelle 3:00

Then I'll add on the rest of my ingredients and top it off with some special sauce and sesame seeds. And we're done.

Nick DiGiovanni 3:06

My Bloomin' Onion is complete. I'll place it down on the center of my plate. Then I'll press in on that section in the middle. And in goes our sauce. Done.

Isabelle 3:13

Do you think it looks good?

Nick DiGiovanni 3:14

I actually think it looks really good.

Isabelle 3:15

Are you feeling a little nervous now?