Stanford Business

MAY 2006


Ginger Soup, Prawns and Tofu for the Soul


The winners–Team Papaya (from left) Brooke Blumenstein, Jullien Gordon, Ben Savage, Tanya Melillo, Lior Shiff, and Cynthia Loh.
Photos by Stuart Brinin

The ginger chicken enhanced a bed of colorful buckwheat noodles. The curried eggplant poked out of a succulent bath of coconut curry, and the stir-fried ginger beef was complemented by rice cooked with a touch of tequila. But the judges agreed it was the prawns that were perfectly cooked, each one moist and tangy in its ginger-garlic sauce.

In two hours of sautéing and chopping, three teams competing in the first Iron Chef competition at the Business School produced three menus with dishes ranging from a cold ginger and tofu appetizer to pumpkin-ginger muffins, accompanied by raspberry-and-ginger martinis. It should not be news that the secret ingredient for the night was ginger.

The contest, held Jan. 24 at the Schwab Residential Center, disproved two widely held myths about MBA students: They do eat things other than pizza and Top Ramen, and the stoves in the kitchens at Schwab work, rather well in fact.


Sean Harrington and
Afsoun Yasdian, Iron
Chef contest organizers.

A team of first-year MBA students taking part in the Leadership Development Platform, an academic program offered through the School’s Center for Leadership Development and Research, designed the competition to have fun together, said Tiy Goddard, one of the organizers. “It was a way to be creative in a compressed period of time. We wanted a sense of urgency, but not too urgent,” she said.

The rules were straightforward: Use the secret ingredient in each dish, cook at least two dishes, and have dinner on the table in two hours.

Dean Robert Joss stopped by too briefly to be an official judge but announced his preference for the ginger layer cake. When the official votes were counted, Team Papaya, creators of the eggplant curry, won by a chopstick.