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Twin chef face-off

During a friendly challenge match in the kitchen, these identical twins cook up very different creations

Picture this: Identical twin chefs, each with an identical box of ingredients. Six burners, one stove and two of the most complex cuisines in the world. Mix in a competitive sibling relationship that's been brewing for 26 years, and you've got the makings for a culinary smackdown of impressive -- or at least entertaining -- proportions.

The contestants? Raymond and David Anderson, 29, identical twins and chefs at two Portland restaurants that are raising the bar for ethnic cuisine. Ray is the sous-chef at Nuestra Cocina, dubbed by The Oregonian's Grant Butler as "a restaurant that makes Mexican food a new experience for people who have eaten tacos all their lives." David is chef de cuisine at David Machado's newest outpost, Vindalho, which is putting out some of the most original Indian food in the city.

And they're not just any identical twins, but "mirror twins," who share the same DNA yet can have physical differences. David is left-handed, quiet and smaller. Ray has always been a little bigger, more gregarious and right-handed.

The location for this face-off was on David's home turf, the small open kitchen at Vindalho. Each box of 16 ingredients (see box) was deviously designed by Machado to be adaptable to both cuisines yet challenging. The chefs would have one hour to produce two dishes using 10 of those ingredients. Machado was present as timekeeper and goad, and Ray's boss and owner of Nuestra Cocina, Ben Gonzales, was there to provide commentary on the results. The point of the cook-off wasn't really to anoint one twin as the victor, but rather to challenge each to improvise within tight constraints and still be true to his cuisine.

Ready to go?

60 minutes On Machado's signal both twins grabbed their boxes and the knives started flying. David began cutting up his chicken, put a pot of water on a burner and cranked up the heat. Ray whacked the garlic and sweet potato into large pieces, then threw one onion in a pot of water with some skins from the garlic.

David, who, as the more bookish twin, learned the intricacies of Indian cuisine by exhaustively researching the topic, started complaining first.

"I'm a little concerned," he said. "We're missing some very integral Indian ingredients -- ginger, turmeric . . . ."

"Well, I didn't get achiote, so you're all right." Ray responded.

"We don't need to cry about what we don't have," David said.

Ray, whose weapon of choice was always one-upmanship, asked if he could do three dishes instead of the two required. Machado recommended sticking with two to avoid not finishing on time.

David and Ray were born in Ketchikan, Alaska. Ray said, "I remember, growing up, my brother and I had kind of opposite tastes," Ray said. "He had a thing for mac 'n' cheese. I'd rather go for PBJ or something like that." But they both remember a carrot cake that their grandfather made for one of their birthdays. "It was from scratch, and that was, like, one of those food moments in your life. A real cake!" David remembered.

Working in restaurants from the time they were 14, they moved from a local pizza joint to a fishing lodge built on a barge where guests arrived by floatplane. "We just loved the atmosphere of the kitchen," David said. "There are rights, there are wrongs. This is overcooked, this is undercooked. There are simple things that are easy to identify and easy to do well if you care and pay attention. That just drove us."

After getting their GEDs, David went back to work and Ray entered Western Culinary Institute. "I visited him here and was just blown away by Portland in general and all the stuff that was going on," David recalled.

15 minutes in:

It's getting intense Ray reached over and gave David's spices a shake so they wouldn't burn before turning back to rub oil and spices on his chicken breasts.

"What's this?" David asked, glimpsing Ray's hand moving away from the stove. Ray denied touching them. "He wouldn't have let 'em burn, anyway," David said.

"Oh, I wouldn't?" Ray retorted.

"The fraternal bond is clear here," observed Machado.

A fortuitous convergence brought the brothers together with Machado in 2003 when he brought David on to be the chef de cuisine at his new Mediterranean restaurant, Lauro Kitchen. Then Machado, aware of Ray's interest in Latin cuisine, introduced him to Ben Gonzales, who was looking for a sous-chef for Nuestra Cocina. Both were marriages of personalities and talents, David bringing rigor to researching the cuisines of India's diverse regions when Machado decided to open an Indian restaurant.

"For my mulligatawny, I must have picked out eight or 10 mulligatawny recipes and tried them all," David said. He then combined the elements of those recipes that reminded him of the dishes he'd had on a research trip through India. "When I'm done with that process I understand mulligatawny," he said.

Ray, typically, took a much more intuitive approach while working with Ben to develop the Nuestra Cocina menu.

"Every day, this is what I want to eat, this is what I want to cook," he said. "Sometimes I think we just capture our love for what we're doing and it goes right through our hands and into what we're making."

David pulled his spices off the burner and began squaring off the sides of the yam and cubing it, throwing it and the boned chicken thighs into a pan with some of the warm spices.

Machado turned to Ray. "Did you hear him?" Machado asked. "I said to David, 'Looks like Ray's making a roasted yam soup,' and he said, 'He's taking the easy way out.' I think he's trying to get inside your head, Ray."

"Not even listening," Ray shot back.

20 minutes

to go: Closing in The tension from 20 minutes earlier erupted into full-blown but good-natured sniping. Despite Ray's laid-back demeanor, the delight he takes in teasing his brother was evident. As he poured yam stock into a pitcher, he aimed a barb and let it fly.

"Uh-oh," he said, looking pointedly at David's cashews roasting on the stove. "Looking a little dark, Dave. Or did you mean to do that?"

Pulling the pan off the stove, his brother responded, "It's good. Crispy is good."

"Eight minutes," Machado warned.

"Easy money. Easy money," Ray said.

"Got no problem, Jefe," said David.

Time's up:

The reveal Bringing their dishes to the table, where their bosses were waiting to taste the results, each brother described what he'd prepared.

David went first. "Salad of poached chicken breasts with chayote, mango, red onion, mint, cilantro and a little cumin."

"That's actually pretty close to what I did with my filling for the chayote," Ray commented.

"It's good," Gonzales said. "It has that sweetness and a little tartness from the mango and the citrus."

"But it's delicate. It's a nice presentation of a poached chicken breast," Machado said, scooping up more of the salad. And the second dish? "It's kind of a pre-Colonial chicken curry, southern Indian style," David said.

Then it was Ray's turn. "Salpicon and chicken breast and sopa de camote," he announced. (Camote is Spanish for sweet potato)

"That word 'salpicon' has different meanings," explained Gonzales. "I've seen it mostly in Mexico City to describe basically a meat salad" that can be made with beef or chicken and tossed.

"And again," Ray said, reminding the group of the similarities between the two cuisines, as well as the dishes he and his brother had prepared, "I used the leg and thigh meat like Dave did when he poached his chicken, trying to get the most flavor because you can cook it on the bone and keep it nice and moist."

The yam soup drew raves, with Ray explaining he simply roasted the yam in the oven with garlic and onion until everything was soft, then "pulled the skin off, pureed it, added the spices and made my own chicken stock to thin it out." He also added roasted cashews as a garnish.

"It is spicy, but it's also nice and smoky," Machado said, tasting it and smiling.

"I like the sweetness of the camote and then also the sweetness of the cashews," Gonzales said.

"What about the typical flavors of Mexican cuisine?" Machado asked.

"In the soup, yes," Gonzales answered. "Especially using the chile and the camote.

David observed, "Summing up: Met the challenge?"

"More than met the challenge," Machado agreed, laughing.

David, getting in the last word, said of his brother's soup, "He took the easy way out."

Kathleen Bauer is a Portland food writer and graphic designer. Read her blog at http://goodstuffnw.blogspot.com.