For each installment of the Reader’s regular Key Ingredient column, a local chef chooses an ingredient and challenges a fellow chef to create a dish with it. (The ingredient doesn’t have to be difficult to procure or unusual or gross, but that’s the direction most chefs go, testing their colleagues with everything from marshmallow creme to ant eggs.) Our annual Key Ingredient Cook-Off usually follows a similar format, except that we’re the ones who decide what ingredients the chefs have to cook with—until this year’s event, which was held May 18 at the Ivy Room at Tree Studios. Instead, we asked each chef to prepare something inspired by his or her culinary mentor and to tell us a little bit about that person. Most chose a chef they worked under when starting their careers, but not everyone: Blackbird’s Ryan Pfeiffer credits his first instructor at culinary school, while Kimski’s Won Kim said his cooking is most influenced by his mother.   v