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. ^_^