Parties You Will Never Get Into

Back in January, master chef Robert Irvine and the crew of Dinner: Impossible occupied the kitchens of Yahoo! headquarters to launch a very unique celebration. Chef Irvine handed aprons to Search Senior Vice President Tuoc Luong and Vice President of Marketing Raj Gossain so they could help him in a daunting task: cook up the 15 top search queried dishes, with each dish using a randomly assigned ingredient that also appears on the top search queries. If that wasn’t tough enough, the food had to satisfy 450 very hungry Yahoo! employees.

The Food Network’s hit reality show Dinner: Impossible features Chef Robert Irvine taking on some very unusual culinary challenges. On every show, the chef is confronted with a very difficult assignment, such as preparing an authentic 18th century colonial meal, or setting up a luxury banquet on a isolated New England island.

Irvine and his team must whip up a multi-course meal with limited resources and no advance planning, and of course, with the clock ticking. The chef usually recruits additional sous chefs to not only help prepare and cook, but shop for the often hard-to-find ingredients.

When Chef Robert Irvine arrived on the Yahoo! campus, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang was at hand to issue the search engine results/cook off challenge. The drafting of Tuoc Luong and Raj Gossain to help in the kitchen only added to the challenge; the two Yahoo! executives are more at home with algorithms and hi-tech marketing than slicing, dicing, and deep-frying.

The show was aired in April. Tuoc Long described the frantically made banquet on his blog: “…we can tell you two things – it wasn’t easy and we had a great time, which is exactly how we’d characterize the last five years at Yahoo! Search.”

The recipes included Pumpkin Lasagna, Salmon Cupcakes, Tuna Burger, Apple Sushi, Barbeque Carrots, Blackberry Aqua’s Fresca, Chicken Fried Rice, Egg Casserole, Eggplant Salad, Lamb Salsa, Lemon Egg Drop Soup, Peanut Butter Chili, Pineapple Cookies, and Potato Pizza.

The Flickr photos of the Yahoo! Fifth Birthday-Dinner Impossible Celebration.

The Food Network’s profile of the Dinner Impossible Yahoo! episode, with the recipes.