- Welcome to Mom versus Chef. (in unison)
- [Voiceover] A cooking competition where
a professional chef and a mom cook head to head
preparing the best dish possible
with one secret ingredient.
Our first competitor today is Sharzad Kiadeh.
- Hi, I'm Sharzad Kiadeh.
I'm a mom, my son is one and a half
and his name is Adrice.
I make YouTube videos, yay.
I have a blog and a YouTube channel
and I host a couple different shows online.
I've been experimenting in the kitchen
since as long as I can remember.
I'm not a professional,
I have no training whatsoever.
I feel like my mom taught me everything I know
and everything else I learned from like blogs
and watching other YouTube videos.
Cooking for a small child is obviously very different
than cooking for my husband, or my friends and family.
Winning Mom versus Chef would be
a dream come true.
Uh no, it would be awesome bragging rights
and I feel like it would make my mom like really proud.
I would give her all the credit.
- And competing against her is Chef Nyesha Arrington.
- My name is Chef Nyesha Arrington.
I have a restaurant called Leona in Venice, California.
We offer a cuisine that's called
progressive Californian cuisine.
Cooking is one of those things that found me.
I grew up with my grandmother
and would cook next to her
and at a very young age I was able to
understand what flavor was.
Going into this competition, you know,
I'm very excited.
I love love love kids.
I hang out with my eight year old nephew
all the time, and we cook together
and just winning Mom versus Chef
would mean a lot to him.
- Sharzad, Chef Nyesha,
today you're gonna be competing to see
who can make the tastiest dish possible
featuring one secret ingredient.
Let me introduce you to our panel of judges.
- Hello, my name is Trent, and I'm 10 years old.
And I like playing outside with my friends
and on my skateboard.
- Hello, my name is Nathan, I'm 10 years old.
And what I like to do for fun is play video games.
- And your last judge is me.
My name's Andrew.
I'm 25 years old.
And I like reading outside.
- And by the way,
he is my twin.
- And I'm not related to them.
So I think it's time we find out
what the secret ingredient is.
Chefs, whatever you cook today will have
to incorporate this ingredient.
It will not be easy.
Nathan, do you want to pull
the top off this thing?
- Yes I do.
Ohhh.
- Beets.
- Chefs, you're cooking with beets today.
- So like, Beats by Dre?
- This is more like beets by nature.
- [Sharzad] I've never cooked with them before.
And I feel like most kids hate beets.
- Chef Nyesha, what do you think about beets?
- I have cooked with beets in the past
and have served them.
- That smells like nature.
- They smell really bad.
- Guys, you're gonna have 30 minutes
to prepare your dishes.
Your time starts now.
- Ahhh!
- I think you can sneak a lot of veggies
in a lot of kids foods.
But beets?
Bahhh. (laughs)
I'm gonna try and do something
pizza related.
So I see that there are some pitas
and I'm thinking that will be a good crust.
Man down, man down.
I see that there are jars of pesto.
And cheese, of course.
Those three things are like
foolproof.
- I'm running through the pantry
I'm looking around I see
the sweet potatoes.
I see the beets.
I see yogurt.
Kids like hashbrowns.
I'm gonna make a beet soda
with a sweet potato and beet latke.
- I take all my ingredients
and then I just start putting pesto on the pita.
And then I'm getting like little slivers of beets
that I'm just trying to place all over the little pizza.
I don't want it too beet-y.
(laughs) Is that a word?
- [Nyesha] I start to form the mixture for my latke
which is shredded raw beets,
raw sweet potatoes, a little bit of egg for a binder.
And I start to form my patties
get those crisping.
I want the latke flavors to marry
and really be delicious.
- I'm going into this trying to like
kind of mask the flavor of the beets.
I dump a bunch of cheese on
then I pop them in the oven for
10-ish minutes, or so.
Now I'm just sort of
waiting and hoping that it turns out okay.
- So I'm grating my beets and I know
that I want to sort of squeeze all of the liquid out
and I know I can use the beet juice for the soda.
So I add a little bit of lemon juice,
a little bit of honey.
I'm going to pour soda water with the beet juice.
- Chefs, there's only 15 minutes left.
- You guys are half way there.
- Ahhh!
- Whoa.
- That's cool.
- [Trent] She looks like she's making like Kool-Aid, maybe.
- So I make the first beet cake and I kind of
take a piece off and taste it and it's delicious.
But I know I want more texture
so I say I'm gonna use the beet greens
and sort of crisp those up.
- So of course I'm standing next to Chef Nyesha
and she's doing some magical sweet potato
beet latke.
And truly, I've never thought beets looked appetizing
until she steps in.
And I was like, uh, I really want a bite.
- Let's go see what the chefs are doing.
- Okay, you guys check on Chef Nyesha
and I'll check on Chef Sharzad.
- How's it going?
- Pretty good.
- Actually what is that.
- This is a yogurt based sauce
with a little bit of olive oil.
It's basically going to
counterbalance with the beet latkes.
- That sounds delicious. - [Nyesha] Right.
- Thank you chef. (in unison)
- Thank you judges.
- Hello. - Hi Andrew.
- How's everything going?
- It's going good.
- This is one of the few times you've
ever cooked with beets, is that right?
- This is the first time ever
that I've cooked with beets.
- I tend to like when the
secret ingredient is showcased,
rather then let it be covered up.
- I feel like that was like a subtle jab.
- Oh no no no no no no.
I mean, we'll.
- I'm a mom, I'm tough.
- I don't know what it will turn out like.
Well good luck.
I can't wait to taste your dish.
- Thank you, thank you judge.
- Only five minutes left. (in unison)
- [Nyesha] You know I really feel I have a vision
when I go through and I'm picking my ingredients.
So I decided to grab the yogurt
and I know I want to fortify it with some flavor
and add some olive oil to it.
That's gonna go down on the plate
to sort of eat and round out the latke itself.
- Now it's time to grab my pizzas from the oven.
They don't look super fancy, they look very kid friendly.
I'm not nervous because our dishes
couldn't be more different.
Hers is like real deal fancy,
like mine is like kid friendly food.
- I'm very confident in my dish
because I feel that it offers beets in a new light
and I'm hoping they enjoy it.
- I decide to just sprinkle a teeny bit
of goat cheese on top of the pizza.
And that's it, I'm cutting these up.
I can't taste any beets.
Makes me happy.
It's delicious.
- [Boys] Five, four, three,
two, one.
- [Andrew] That's it.
Time's up.
Stop doing what you're doing.
- Sharzad, can you please bring out the dish.
- Yes.
- Thank you. - [Sharzad] There you go.
It's a pesto pizza.
I know you guys are 10 year old boys.
I'm gonna go out on a limb
and say that you probably like pizza.
- I love pizza.
- Right, okay.
So yay.
So it's just pita bread with pesto, mozzarella cheese,
and the beets are right on top of the pesto
under the cheese.
And then a tiny little bit of goat cheese on top of there.
So, dive in there kiddos,
let me know what you think.
- I can really taste the beets
which, they don't taste that bad.
- Okay, good.
- I'm not sure about the pesto and the beets
together though. - Okay.
- [Nathan] It's like a pizza mix
that nobody would ever come up with.
- The goat cheese is just
a little bit too much maybe.
Yeah, it's just not that good.
- I don't know.
It did taste very good
and I think you did a great job.
- Thank you for your honest feedback.
- Thank you Sharzad.
(laughs) - You're welcome.
- [Nathan] Thank you.
Chef, can you describe the dish for us?
- So, what I did was take the beet
and use it in all of its formats.
I sort of grated the beet raw
and mixed it with sweet potato
and cooked that together in a cake form.
On the top is a crispy beet topped chip.
And then to accompany that you have
a beet juice infused soda
that is sweetened with honey
and a touch of lemon juice.
Just to kind of balance out your entire beet experience.
- Do you guys like how it tastes?
- I actually don't really like this drink.
When you put in the beets it just
it just doesn't taste right.
- [Nathan] I think it tastes good.
- You definitely get the beet
but it's not full frontal dirt water beet.
- Right. - [Andrew] I think it's
like very refreshing.
- That tasted really good.
- What's that?
- That tasted really good.
- He said it tasted really good.
(laughing)
I don't know why we had to keep
that a secret.
(laughing)
- I don't really like it.
- I don't think I've ever had
the beet leaf before.
- Yeah. - [Andrew] It's actually
I don't know, it's cool.
- This one's gonna be a tough one.
(laughing)
Thank you chefs for everything.
- Give us a moment as we discuss the winner.
- [Sharzad] All right.
- Thank you.
- This is so weird, I've never really had
anybody like, judge my food before.
Yours looked amazing though,
I just want to put that on record.
Andrew was all about it.
- [Nyesha] RIght. (laughs)
- Like he nailed your food.
With mine, he was like.
- Oh he liked it.
- No I don't think he liked it.
- They were good.
- I'm really excited.
And you did a killer job.
- [Nyesha] You too.
- Let's hug it out.
Are we there yet?
- Definitely.
- Okay.
(laughing)
- So Sharzad made the pesto pizza with beet.
What did you guys think about that?
- I just liked everything about
the pizza.
And I liked how it was like something
that kids like.
- But the goat cheese it was just
too much goat cheese.
- I kind of wish she had done something
a little more with the beet.
- What I did like about the chefs food
is that it actually tasted really good.
I hated the drink.
- Her main dish, I did not really like.
I felt like I tasted too much beet.
- Yeah, I thought Chef Nyesha's dish
was really cool because it used
a lot of different parts of the beet.
- I think we all know who the winner is, right?
- Okay, yeah, let's bring them back in.
- Chef Nyesha, Sharzad.
Thank you for coming in today.
It was a great competition,
you both made some amazing dishes.
Unfortunately, we can only have one winner.
- Sharzad, your dish was really tasty.
- But Nyesha, we thought your dish was tastier.
- Wow. - [Andrew] Congratulations.
You're the winner of this episode.
- [Nyesha] Oh my goodness.
- [Andrew] Of Mom versus Chef.
- [Nyesha] Oh my goodness.
I am so excited I won.
I wish little Emmanuel was here next to me.
Honestly, I feel very honored to win this for him.
- [Sharzad] I'm not that upset.
Chef Nyesha's dish looked insane
it looked amazing.
But you know, there can only be one winner.
Sadly today was not my day.
- [Andrew] Thank you both for coming in
you both made some amazing dishes.
This has been Mom versus Chef.