Gahd, I am so lazy... (The Next Iron Chef, Episode 3)

I'm so sorry for not updating recently. In fact, I skipped watching The Next Iron Chef's current episode on Sunday, instead wasting time playing my video games. But I'm back and we're here for a low-down on what happened last Sunday on the Food Network.

As I said before, go to Foodnetwork.com and check the video feeds if you don't want spoilers, as I am not going to cover my post in spoiler text.

• INNOVATION
  

While there was only one theme in this test, it was a two-part test. It also broke the mold a bit.

(From Dictionary.com)

in⋅no⋅va⋅tion

–noun

1.	something new or different introduced

2.	the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.

Today's test was called "innovation", but I would like to call it "fusion" after the fusion cuisine Morimoto is so fond of using.

Fusion cuisine is a term for a type of cuisine that is altered to infuse or transform it into another type of cuisine. Taking an example from the episode, Alton Brown introduces the major part of the test while the chefs are chowing down on "Korean tacos" from a taco truck - tacos made with Korean ingredients. (I bet Debbie Lee is looking at that and sobbing into her hands right now. Okay, that's the only jab I'm ever making about that Korean contestant from the last season of The Next Food Network Star. I respect her and it's no fair people make fun of her constant use of the phrase "Because I'm Korean" to make an excuse for why she used certain items.)

But you can't fuse any cuisines if you don't know what you're fusing, so the minor pre-test test was to go to one of four LA Asian restaurants, taste a dish that was presented to them by the cooks there, reconstruct it using only the experience of the taste, and present it to the chefs. The eight chefs were paired up and competed in a little cookoff thing, with the winner getting an advantage in the major test - a flat five-minute bonus to their cooking time then.

Mullen won the last challenge, so he got to decide who went where. Obviously, this sort of advantage means that if you don't win, your chances of success are sliced in half because the winner is your rival and will do everything in his power to sabotages your chances.

The cuisines were Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, and the obvious one, Chinese. But this was no take-out trip, this was serious business. The dishes were - and I know I'll get lots of comments saying "NO! YOU DIDN'T PAY ATTENTION! X_x", but I am typing this after waking up from a two-hour nap after an all-nighter, so I am not all there. <_>

• KOREAN: DolSot Bibimap - a mixed rice dish that is served in a stone pot; Mullen chose this last and paired with Appleman
• VIETNAMESE: Beef Pho - a beef noodle soup which includes lentils and bean sprouts; Crenn and Garces were sent there
• THAI: A green curry dish with fish meatballs; Freitag and Mehta were sent there
• Finally, CHINESE: Pork and vegetable steamed dumplings, and Trevino and Farmerie were sent there
  

I'm sorry, that's not good enough. Give me a second... (checks the official site and redoes it) There. Much better.

Anyways, the winners of this part were the girls Trevino and Appleman - so Mullen's advantage was nuked. However, he won the major challenge...

...which was to do an AmericAsian fusion dish, taking what the dish they had learned and using the knowledge to make a classic USA dish with those ingredients. The entries were many and varied, but the ones I remember well were Mullen's Korean Reuben with faux-kimchi(spicy pickled cabbage) to replace the traditional sauerkraut and short rib cuts to replace the pastrami, and Mehta's take on McDonald's drive-thru fare(even moreso when he tried to use the ice cream machine and it didn't perform AGAIN; that dreaded ice cream machine curse is here too!) using Thai ingredients. His failed green-tea ice cream was turned into a milkshake.

To be honest, I was not fond of the packaging stuff in plastic tupperware. Mehta knew he was going to be fighting to be an Iron Chef, and he competed in Kitchen Stadium against one, so he knows that 5 points are for presentation. As Alton Brown said "What were you thinking?!?!"

Still, he 'survived to cook another day.'

Brad Farmerie, whose surname sounds like some hayseed hick, did not. I wish I could feel sad for him... but to be honest, I didn't see him at all. He was just hovering in the background like a vapid ghost while his rivals were busting things out left and right. I agree with Alton - chefs, like everyone else, have rotten days once in a while, but Chef Farmerie had a rotten MONTH.

Mehta too - I know he's not a quitter, but if I were him, I'd stop messing with that (bleep)ed-up ice cream maker, or at least demand that they repair the freaking thing so it FREEZES PROPERLY. Unless, of course, that was the plan all along... I smell rival sabotage.

Phew, this was a long post! But I wanted to show you that I'm alive and will keep blogging on this. From the Wiki, I see there are five episodes left, and one challenge each, so these five challenges(and I am guessing the last will be another Kitchen Stadium showdown like last time) will be super-hard and throw nasty fireballs at our remaining seven chefs.

One final note: I am secretly rooting for Crenn. She is seriously in danger of getting chopped next. Alton himself said she needs to shape up or ship out. I want to see another Iron Chef French like Sakai, and Crenn's got the chops to fill Sakai's shoes. But she is not gonna do it if she keeps having so many problems and remaining on 'death row.' Please, Crenn, make Sakai proud.

My thoughts on "The Next Iron Chef", episode 2

Well, I watched the second episode of the Next Iron Chef Season 2 - and the following Iron Chef America which had one of my favorite foodstuffs as the theme ingrediemtn, berries! ^_^ - and here's what I thought about it.

First off, I'm going to just state that if you want to avoid spoilers, you should go watch the highlight videos on Food Network's official site(www.foodnetwork.com) because they are bite-sized version of the full episodes that aired each Sunday at 9:00 PM CST(CST is where I live, but add an hour if you live in the East Coast and, well, subtract hours if you're west of us); I am going to be spoiling major stuff here, so you've been warned!

Now, onto the episode and its tests...

1. SIMPLICITY
   

The Chairman videos showed him at an airport, which was pretty intriguing. They are REALLY stepping up the Chairman briefings this time around. In the last one, all you saw was Marc - yes, that's the Chairman's real name, and "chairman" is just another role he plays; Kaga was the original Chairman and he was an actor too! Sorry to shatter your lovely little fantasy there, but it has to be done(and I wish I had Fine Living TV so I could record the original Iron Chef episodes! - on a blank background. This time he's actually DOING things. (And he's bald again, huh?)

The reason he was at an airport was because he was unloading some cargo... which we see under a red cloth; various cooking vessels from around the world. I had never even HEARD of some of these things, though I did see the tangerie in ICA battles before.

The task - take one of these odd pots and create a family-style meal which would be peer-judged. The pot could be used for a traditional meal served in that pot, or something out of the box. Appleman, who won the major test of the last episode, got to pick and he choose the tangerie. The others were forced to scramble for theirs in a free-for-all, and as expected, some of the chefs' choices were stolen in a rugby-style brawl, which meant they were forced to change their strategies. I loved how Mehta went for the bamboo steamer and Frietag just yanked it from him like an alligator rips a fish from another. ^_^

The motto here was "simplicity", but as Julie Powell said in her book, simplicity is not ease. I'd shirk at making some of the stuff that was made, using those pots. A couple of the chefs went traditional, but most went creative. In the judging, poor Mullen got 'thrown under the bus' as my patron saint said because he was too cautious, too bland. Mehta won the contest, despite Frietag's theivery.

(I will not repeat the recipes made unless I need to, because it is a hassle to keep track of all of them.)

• INTERPRETATION
  

After another airport briefing by the Chairman, the major test(minor tests are the first test, major ones are the second because they result in an elimination) was as follows: Alton had three popular European cuisines - French, Italian, and Greek. He gave an "order" for a dish in those cuisines. Mehta, the winner, got to choose one of the three and went with Greek. He was given an order of spanikopata(?), a spinach-cheese quiche-like pie.

The others were assigned various dishes which I can't be bothered to spell. The next part of the task was to take these dishes and not do them the traditional way, you had to be put a "twist" on them. Sadly, I saw that half of the chefs decided "Oh, twist... that means tear apart!" and we got a few deconstructed dishes. (Deconstruction: Taking apart a dish and serving it as the cooked ingredients and not the whole of the dish. Usually done to highlight the flavors of a dish and a failure if done incorrectly.)

Needless to say, Alton was correct with Smith's idea of her take of bouillebase. Bouillebase is a horrifying difficult dish to create, and taking it apart can never be an option as the flavors of that fish stew come from the melding of each ingredient's flavors to each other. While I am sad that we had to axe a female chef in the first two rounds, Smith should have taken a few seconds to think of another option - like replacing an ingredient with another like Trevino's domas(stuffed and braised grape leaves, he replaced the traditional rice with couscous) or adding a new ingredient(like Appleman being saddled with rautetouille, a vegan stew, and adding meat to it); I mourn Holly Smith's elimination a bit, because we need more female Iron Chefs, but she should have known better.

At least she was nice about it and brushed it off. "Oh, I guess I should have tried something else. C'est la vie." I cannot say the same for Greenspan. Okay, so your fun's over and you want to dance. Just don't dance in my house, buddy, we bounce sore losers.

Ahem, sorry about that. Anyways, Crenn and Frietag were excellent and I really really hope one of them wins, or at least makes it to the finals. I will not be happy if Mehta wins, because we don't need another shiny-top Iron Chef, Symon is enough.

Join us next time, when we get more globe-trotting from the comforts of home and another chef is axed. ^_^

"And so it begins", my thoughts on the 1st episode of The Next Iron Chef

Since the Chairman went insane and decided to do this Iron Chef recruitment contest AGAIN - I've ranted in the last post, so comment there if you want to blast me with angry comments about how I'm being insulting to the Chairman, who I admire but think needs to rethink his priorities if he's doing something like this on a regular basis - I decided to give my thoughts on each "episode", which I'm guessing will last 2 hours, because the first did. Something tells me that FN was paid big bucks by the advertisers to make it so long so they could gets tons of cheap advertising time.

Anyways, I won't go into the bios of the contestants, except to say that most of them(or all, I haven't checked the list of ICA episodes lately) had competed in Kitchen Stadium like Mehta and Frietag. I've given up supporting anyone, but I am praying that one of the three women(three instead of two like the first competition - both got eliminated within the first two rounds) wins so we have another woman Iron Chef; not that I am betraying Cat Cora, who I still think is VERY SEXY as the first female Iron Chef, but Iron Chef is a bit male-oriented in the Iron Chefs, if you get my drift. <_< We need a bit more estrogen in the lineup to prove that women can do as well as the big boys - Sadly, Cat Cora is the worst Iron Chef on record, having almost as many losses as wins. Sorry, Cat ,that just had to be said. I'm sure you can improve, but I'd like to see another woman join you and kick some serious challenger @$$ in Kitchen Stadum.

There was a lot more pomp & circumstance in this season, with the Chairman himself meeting the chefs and giving a grandiose speech. Well, since he's also a full-time actor and martial artist I wouldn't be surprised he has drama training. ^_^

Alton Brown came in and briefed the group, then we have the first two-part test. The tests are different then the last season, but then again, I suspect they're trying to follow the same format they do with "The Next Food Network Star" to negate any advantage that chefs who had competed in Food Network stuff before, or watched the last season, had. Of course, all tests will probably be timed due to the fact that, heck, the winner has to go through timed cookoffs as an Iron Chef, so it makes sense.

• MEMORY

The first part was simple - each of the chefs had to take the ingredient that was given to them and their "link to the culinary world" and create a dish that told a story about themselves in 45 minutes. 45 minutes is shorter than the usual Kitchen Stadium hour, but this is only one dish.

After the time limit was hit and everyone finished their dishes, the judging was done similar to the third test of the last season - each dish was tasted by the others, commented on, and after the tasting all the chefs had to pick one of the other dishes that they liked the best. Jose Garces passed this test with flying colors, getting the vote from five of his rivals.

• FEARLESSNESS
  

You ever watched "Chopped?" Ted Allen has three chefs go through three rounds of making a three-course meal with mystery ingredients, usually a combination of weird things paired with normal stuff that would not normally work if you were in your comfort zone.

Well, this is sort of like that. Also, there was a similar test in the last season - the premise; you were given a food item that normal chefs would never, in a kizajillion aeons, use because it would be considered unusuable and, well, GRRRRRROSS! The appetizing list went from merely spoiled stuff like stinky tofu(which the poor sap who got it later said smelt like soiled baby diapers) to stuff that make you lose your lunch if you had to deal with it, like unfertilized eggs that were removed from the chicken, COMPLETE WITH THE FALLOPIAN TUBES THEY WERE GOING THROUGH AT THE TIME! EEEEEWWW!!! I'd retch at the thought of it.

And yes, the chefs had to utilize it in a dish. What's more, chef Garces, who won the last test, was given the opportunity to swap the ingredients of two chefs, so he tactically swapped the stinky tofu that chef Crenn had with sea cucumbers that chef Seamus had, effectively forcing Crenn to make things up on the fly. This caused her to be one of the two who was in "death row" at the elimination.

I was not surprised that one of the selection committee for this season was the "Judge Dredd" of Kitchen Stadium, Jeffery Steingarden. He scares even the Iron Chefs with his heavy-handed and bluntly honest to insanity criticisms. Every time I see his Santa Claus face, I sigh and think "Not HIM again." I have nothing against anyone, not even him, but he is very honest to a point and tends to get into a fight with other judges with his thoughts.

Well, the Chairman probably was wise to do this - if you are trying to be serious about this sort of thing, you really need a stone-cold, unbribeable judge like "Judge Jeffery Dredd" on your committee; he won't take any excuses for poor food.

I don't know if it was Steingarden who put the score that caused chef Greenspan to get axed, but I feel a bit of pity for him.

Greenspan: "If I get chopped because of GRASSHOPPERS, I'm never gonna live it down."

*whack*

Greenspan: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! YOU HAVEN'T HEARD THE LAST OF ME, YOU (censored)S!!!!"

*sigh* Talk about a sore loser. Seriously, it's your own fault, Eric. You just used the cricket cousins as garnish and roasted away the flavor of the insect meat, you didn't make them the star like the others did. At least Crenn, who could have been chopped instead, was smart enough to make them front and center and give their flavor a chance to show. Yeah, I'm being a hypcrite because I'd shiver if I had to eat grasshoppers(or cicadas, which are creepier), but I'm open-minded and you are not. Thnxbaibbq, chef Greenie.

And I'm glad Eric's gone. No offense, but if he won I'd seriously get disilluisioned - I don't need to see another guy with a scruff of hair masquerading as a beard. (Symon has one, but it's more of a goatee.)

I am not going to watch the teasers for the next episode because I want to be surprised.

Bon appetit, everyone.

Are you serious, Chairman? (Minor rant)

Well, this is a painful embarrassment. I had big dreams for this foodie blog, but got nothing to show for it. I promise to find some decent recipes, but for now, yuo'll just have to deal with this:

The Next Iron Chef, Season 2.

Yep, for some reason they decided that they are gonna serialize this competition like they do the Next Food Network Star.

Now, I have no delusions this was an insane move publicity wise. The more a show can promote itself by spin-offs, the better. Heck, if they decided to do an Iron Chef America Cartoon on Saturday Mornings, I'd follow it to the ends of time and abadon the Pokemon anime! Well, maybe not...

But I have to state that this idea was an insane move in all other aspects! How be it insane? Let me count the ways:

1. SIX Iron Chefs is overkill. The original had only one new Iron Chef added in its five-season runthrough, Masahiko Kobe(the Japanese version of Mario Batali, aka Italian chef), and I feel that four Iron Chefs is plenty. I thought Mario was being replaced when they did the first one last year(according to rumors, Batali and the FN had a falling out - guess that I was the victim of believing everything I read, huh?), but that was not the case and Alton introduced FIVE in the Iron Chef lineup. Okay, that's fine, I bet Michael Symon will give us something interesting that Cora and Batali cannot - he's a Mediterranian chef. But now they're doing it AGAIN. While I'd love to see Crenn win and be the American counterpart to Hiroyuki Sakai(French culinary POV), I think that we're getting to the point where our Gourmet Academy ends up having an Iron Chef ARMY. If they do this again next year, I am seriously going to send angry e-mail to Food Network. (Or maybe not, I'm lazy.)
2. We've barely gotten Symon's teeth cut! He's only had, what, two seasons and 12 battles before we started recruiting AGAIN? Please, Chairman, I am not trying to be harsh here, but at the least, make this like the Olympics and do it once every four years so each new guy gets some decent experience!
3. I bet a lot of the losers are going to get their own shows next year and this will burst the already huge lineup we have; some old classics are gonna get dumped, and that boils my blood - while I love the Iron Chef series, Food Network's starting to fall into the trap of other networks, pulling the 'teeth' that made them popular and inserting 'crowns' that are soft, weak, and risky in success. If I did this with my Sims 2 legacies, I'd end up losing them. Guys, please think before you make people compete in culinary season-long series or you will end up having to pay off the losers and we'll suffer for it. <_>

In conclusion, I hope that some people at Food Network read this and realize that they are begging to have problems by serializing this new competition. We don't need an Iron Chef Army, and if you are going to recruit, Chairman, at least do it when one of the Iron Chefs has to retire due to age or other reasons and must be replaced(like Nakamura had to be replaced in the old series) so we keep it balanced at a low number.