Finalist entered bake-off as a lark
WASHINGTON — Mike Briggs had never entered a cooking contest before, let alone the mother of them all. And until last year, he had never tasted mole poblano, the Mexican sauce known for its spicy-sweet complexity, let alone cooked it.
What a difference a year makes. This week Briggs hopes to defy the odds when he competes for the $1 million grand prize as a finalist in the Pillsbury Bake-Off — with his original recipe for Spicy Mole Pork Burritos.
All this from someone who describes himself as an inexperienced home cook. "I go through these phases where I hear about something, and then I'll go all out and learn about that process," says Briggs, 40, the director of information technology at George Washington University Law School. He spent a month writing a final recipe and has tested it more than 50 times. "I've been analytical about the whole thing," he says. "I was going to create a recipe that would be selected."
He's confident he can win. This despite that few men have even come close.
Briggs, of suburban Alexandria, Va., will be one of eight men and 92 women competing in the biennial event, the 43rd for Pillsbury, taking place today through Tuesday in Dallas.
Women have always outnumbered men at the finals. In 1998, 14 men competed, the highest number in the contest to date. The only male grand-prize winner was Kurt Wait, a single father from California who triumphed in 1996 with his Macadamia Fudge Torte.
While restaurant kitchens have long been dominated by men, the home kitchen is still a woman's world, although the balance continues to shift. According to a study last year by the NPD Group market research firm, men are preparing 18 percent of dinners at home, up from 14 percent in 2003. And culinary schools are reporting more men signing up for one-day and weekend classes.
For Briggs, cooking has always been primarily a way to put dinner on the table and save money by not eating in restaurants.
It was his wife, Leslie Lee, 39, a librarian at G.W. Law School, who talked him into entering the bake-off. In spring 2006, Lee watched the competition on the Food Network and said to her then-fiance: "What a neat idea. People from all over submitting recipes. Why don't you enter?"
"We did it as a lark," Lee says. "But when Mike takes to a task, he puts himself in 100 percent, and he's very intellectually curious."
More of a "good eater" than cook, he was ready for a new challenge. "It was as simple as, if she wants me to do something reasonable, I'll do it," Briggs says. "But now she has created a monster."
Bake-off entrants submit one or more original recipes in five categories, including a new one, Old El Paso Mexican Favorites. Each recipe must use at least two products made by companies marketed by contest sponsor General Mills from a list of possibilities.
To start his research, Briggs "browsed through" finalists' recipes for the past few competitions to get an idea of the kinds of dishes that were selected. He first considered entering a recipe for a pizza topped with bacon, onion and Gruyere cheese, something he had made before with some success. But the flour that he used as a qualifying ingredient "just wasn't cutting it."
Then came what the couple call their "Eureka moment." At a Tex-Mex restaurant in Austin, while sipping prickly pear margaritas, they took their first taste of mole. "It seemed unique and tasted good," says Briggs, and he remembered the Old El Paso category. "I thought Mexican was a smart way to go because it was a new category this year and might have a better chance of being selected." Then and there, it would be mole. He would submit one recipe and hope for the best.
The deadline for the 2008 competition was last April. He learned he was a finalist in September.
At this week's event, a winner will be chosen in each category, each receiving $5,000 and a General Electric range. A grand-prize winner will be selected from the final five, and in addition to the $1 million, the top winner takes home a double wall oven and chooses $7,000 worth of additional GE appliances.
On a recent morning in their kitchen, Briggs is highly organized and focused as he demonstrates his recipe. On the black granite countertop are three groupings of ingredients. As he chops an onion with a heavyweight chef's knife, all the cooking equipment he'll need for his Spicy Mole Pork Burritos is placed just so.
"Mise en place really helped me," he says, referring to the French term for having all necessary ingredients prepped and waiting before cooking begins. "That's my secret."
From his mole research, he knew there were basic spices that he had to use, such as cumin and chili powder. Peanuts and almonds are often used to make mole; he chose only almonds, for a lighter taste. For an extra hit of sweetness, apricot preserves went in, one of the suggested sponsor products. He used green chili peppers, enchilada sauce and tortillas — all from Old El Paso on the product list — but insists that including so many sponsor products is not part of his strategy.
A major decision was the choice of meat. For convenience and consumer appeal he would use ground meat. He tried ground turkey first, after reading that stewed turkey is used in Mexico's national dish, mole de guajolote, but he did not care for the texture. He tried beef: "too strong in flavor." He finally settled on pork because it was "unique."
He says he's not concerned his recipe might be too exotic. "When I think of the bake-off, I think of simple home cooking. But I didn't want to do that."
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