IT is the culinary equivalent of Mission: Impossible. You have four kilos of cod and a couple of lobsters. You have seven kilos of pork, in a haunch and some foie gras and bits and bobs of the animal.
Using these ingredients, you have five hours to cook a dazzling duet of dishes for judges who are among the leading critics and restaurateurs in the world.
You have to do it all in front of a fiercely partisan crowd, in Lyon, all baying for the local boys to bring home the bacon.
It is his mission, and Terry McCoy of The Red Bank Restaurant, in Skerries, Co Dublin, has accepted it. He flies out tomorrow to do battle. And he's ready for it.
"We have sent some very good people in the past", says Mr McCoy. "John Howard, Kevin Thornton, Neil McFadden. They did the competition in the French fashion, but this year I am saying `Je suis Un Celt', and I'm going to give them the belt of a Celt".
Terry McCoy's cooking has long been a looking glass to the excellent suppliers who surround him in north Co Dublin, and his trip to Lyon will be no exception. His fish dish is Cod Lambay Island, which will use good spuds and scallions to make champ, place the champ into Paris brown mushrooms, roll the mushrooms in very thin slices of cod, tie the pieces of fish with thin laces of fish skin, and then steam the pieces and arrange them on a serving plate, head at one end and tail at the other, to appear like the bones of the fish.
His garnishes are a shellfish "Green Island", a mousse of spinach and fish with a disc of cooked lobster on the top, a winter vegetable rosti of carrots and parsnips, and clever pearls of potato cooked with carageen moss and laid in an oyster shell. His shellfish sauce uses Jameson whiskey, a nod to the traditional drink of the country, and to one of his sponsors.
The pork dish is Spicy Roulade of Pork Leg "Redbank", with a Guinness sauce, another nod to Irish drink and to Mr McCoy's second sponsor.
Staying local, McCoy will use the seasonings used by Mark Kierans, a fine pork butcher from Drogheda, to flavour the blood puddings which will lie inside some blanched York cabbage, which will in turn be enfolded inside the pork.
Rolled up, wrapped in pig caul, the dish is wrapped in foil and baked at a low temperature to keep the meat moist.
The garnishes are a colcannon potato cake, a Cashel Blue cheese filo parcel, and a poached crab apple stuffed with foie gas and kidney on a disc of pork skin which has been cooked and then sauted until crispy.
"I just hope to interpret the culinary ethos of my country, and to do it in the modern style", says Terry McCoy. Win, lose or draw, it is the fact that Mr McCoy is over there with some of the proud regional flavours from Ireland that counts, and the fact that he has been able to find sponsors - An Bord Bia is also helping out - should ensure that there will be an Irish entrant to wave the flag every year.
After Neil McFadden's heroic venture in the competition lasts year, it is likely that there will be many in Lyon trembling at the prospect of the Belt from the Celt.