The Chefs: Thomas Rice and Kurt Guzowski (Tete Charcuterie)The Challenger:Ryan McCaskey (Acadia)The Ingredient: Monkfish liver

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Monkfish are about three feet long and can grow to five feet in some cases, monstrous both in size and appearance (just do a Google image search and check out that gaping mouth full of teeth). Because they’re large, so are their livers: like the fish, they vary in size, but can easily weigh a pound or more. Rice thinks that monkfish livers get compared to foie gras because they’re similar in appearance, but said that the former just doesn’t measure up. “It doesn’t have that sweetness that foie gras sometimes has, the real richness, the mouth-coatingness. It doesn’t cook anywhere near how foie gras cooks. It doesn’t transform itself.”

And then there were the worms. As Rice pointed out, parasitic worms are very common in fish, especially ones that live near the bottom of the ocean; the fact that the monkfish livers he got were infested with roundworms wasn’t at all unusual. But it did mean he and Guzowski had to pick them out with tweezers. They also had to peel off the outer membrane and pack the liver in salt to flush the blood out. After the salt cure, they vacuum-sealed the liver with mirin, sake, and white soy and cooked it sous vide for three hours at 64 degrees Celsius. “That definitely helped the flavor, made it more palatable,” Rice said. “But you still know it’s monkfish liver.”

Joseph Rose of Lockwood, working with smen, a salted, fermented butter. “I think it’s a very underutilized ingredient,” Rice said. “When it’s done right, it has this amazing rounded, pungent kind of blue cheese richness.”

Place the uni in a blender and puree, then strain and reserve uni puree on ice. Take 25 g of the heavy cream and bring to a boil, dissolve the bloomed gelatin. Place the rest of the heavy cream and the heavy cream-gelatin mixture in a bowl over ice and proceed to whip the cream to soft peaks. Fold the whipped cream into the uni puree, season with salt. Transfer to a plastic piping bag and reserve in the refrigerator.

Japanese cucumber: Char Japanese cucumber over a robata grill. Cut to size & reserve.

Place all ingredients in a blender, on high for 2 minutes. Strain through a chinois and reserve.