The cuisines were Italian, Indian, Chinese, Jamaican, Latin, Middle Eastern, Greek and Russian. The idea was to do a take on the cuisine (yes, I know. Most of these are too varied to be under one name. It's not my idea.) but knock the judges socks off. I think they used that very phrase.
I don't know enough about Jamaican cuisine to even start doing a respectful take on it. I don't cook much Greek or Latin. My Chinese cookery is basically highly inauthentic stirfries and my Indian is equally inauthentic curries. I can get the flavor profiles right for Chinese, but curry is a tad one note for the complexity that any Indian food should have.
This leaves Italian, Russian and Middle Eastern.
If I were to do an Italian dish that took off from standard dishes - I'm thinking chicken (or veal) cutlet, with herbed and garlicked bread crumbs and friend, a rustic pumpkin sauce (roughly puree'd with onions and garlic and a touch of nutmeg) on top, and a tangle of pasta with parsley and lemon on the side, and parsley on top of the sauce.
If I were to do Middle Eastern: I'd grill lamb chops, sliced sweet potatoes, turnips, onions and zucchini with a rub of pepper, cumin, cloves and a touch of cinnamon, and serve them on a bed of couscous with soaked raisins and toasted almonds, drizzled with a reduced sauce of lamb stock (made from grilled bones) and red wine, also flavored with a touch of cinnamon, cloves and cumin, and sprinkled with chopped pistachios. On the side would be an Israeli salad of diced tomatoes and cucumbers in a lemon-olive oil dressing, but I'd use cilantro instead of parsley.
As for Russian :) -
Vegetarian cabbage borsht (cabbage, onions, potatoes, a bit of beet juice) left a bit chunky (it's the end of winter, this is the food left to cook and you want something to chew) with a dollop of sour cream topped with caviar (from poverty to luxury.) On the side, pickled beets and red onions (winter - food put by) topped with a quartered hard boiled egg (it's spring and the hens are laying.)
