Iron Chef America (Part 1)

[Mnehrling]

Flay should have won that episode for those grits alone.

←

They looked far to busy to me. Maybe if they just had duck, but to have lobster, crawfish, and duck; what's the point of the grits in the dish? Just make a etouffee and be done with it.

Edited January 31, 2005 by Mnehrling (log)

[Daddy-A]

Ted Allen from Queer Eye is going to be one of the judges on tonight's episode.

And I am quite thankful he was. Proving that his last appearance wasn't a fluke, he was again quite eloquent about what he was eating, how the flavors worked, and what the texture was like.

Okay, but if we're going to bust Steingarten's chops for how he holds his fork, we have to say the same for Ted Allen. Was that some kind of queer-chic backwards fork technique he was using?

When I saw that Tsai was the challenger, I said to my wife "Flay will lose tonight." My reasoning? Tsai is a FN chef. Keep it all in the family, right? Seriously though I enjoyed last night's episode best of all the ICA's so far. Flay behaved more or less ... although he has to come up with new sauce combinations! Same thing every time! Tsai was very relaxed in front of the camera (stands to reason) and the food looked interesting and creative, not what I was expecting from "duck".

A.

[boulak]

Not to disparage or discredit any of the competitiors, but does anyone else notice the finger licking and spoon tasting (with the spoon going back into the food), and the lack of gloved hands on ready to eat food? I know the competition is about other things (marketing, mainly), but what a perfect forum for the country's top chefs to model sanitary and hygienic behavior for aspiring professionals. Sure, the demographic for the network is home cooks to a large degree, but they do eat out often if not frequently. Just a thought. I would not watch the show if I didn't enjoy it, I would enjoy it more it the competitors had the same standard for hygiene as they do for cooking. If you went to a restaurant and saw the cook lick his fingers and continue working, would you be grossed out? Even if it's Ming Tsai or Bobby Flay? Their hands are going from raw duck to spices to ready to eat food and into their mouths. Ick. I will stop before (it's probably too late) this turns into a Dennis Miller like RANT.

[jayt90]

Agreed, they could clean up the act, and probably will after the series settles in.

But this show was great entertainment, well paced and edited. Good commentary and telling judgements.

The judge in the middle was amazed at the tenderness of Tsai's braised duck legs, which were pressure cooked.

Isn't it amazing that Ming Tsai admitted to her that he had only been working with a pressure cooker for about a month?!

[gnatharobed]

Who was the female judge--- I missed the beginning. Did they introduce her?

[wkl]

Isn't it amazing that Ming Tsai admitted to her that he had only been working with a pressure cooker for about a month?!

←

[bpearis]

Isn't it amazing that Ming Tsai admitted to her that he had only been working with a pressure cooker for about a month?!

←

That actually made me wonder if he was tipped off about the duck ingredient some time ago.

←

I'm sure just being on Iron Chef would make you want to learn to use a pressure cooker -- it could be handy with all sorts of things, give the time constraints.

I also found it odd that almost none of Jeffrey's tasting comments made it into the final show, but he got more action in the middle of the show than usual.

And as to the use of the tasting spoons... they're just doing it like they'd do in their restaurants.

Edited January 31, 2005 by bpearis (log)

[ellencho]

That actually made me wonder if he was tipped off about the duck ingredient some time ago.

←

I believe that they know of two possible ingredients in beforehand and are allowed to request special items (like the pump that Ming used on his peking duck type dish)

[NulloModo]

Not to disparage or discredit any of the competitiors, but does anyone else notice the finger licking and spoon tasting (with the spoon going back into the food), and the lack of gloved hands on ready to eat food?  I know the competition is about other things (marketing, mainly), but what a perfect forum for the country's top chefs to model sanitary and hygienic behavior for aspiring professionals.  Sure, the demographic for the network is home cooks to a large degree, but they do eat out often if not frequently.  Just a thought.  I would not watch the show if I didn't enjoy it, I would enjoy it more it the competitors had the same standard for hygiene as they do for cooking.  If you went to a restaurant and saw the cook lick his fingers and continue working, would you be grossed out?  Even if it's Ming Tsai or Bobby Flay?  Their hands are going from raw duck to spices to ready to eat food and into their mouths.  Ick.  I will stop before (it's probably too late) this turns into a Dennis Miller like RANT.

←

I think if they wore latex gloves, constantly cleaned, and in general tried to stay neat, tidy, and sanitary it would take a lot of the fun atmosphere of the show away. Part of what makes ICA exciting to watch is how fast paced it is, how everything is flying everywhere all the time. Stopping to clean or wash hands just kills that momentum.

Personally, I wouldn't think twice if offered a chance to chow down on some of the food that they prepare during the show. I assume that a chef's spoon or hands have touched my food when I sit down at a restaurant, and most home cooks use bare hands and occasionally double-dip. In the end it isn't a big deal.

[Bux]

I just saw ICA for the first time last night and enjoyed it.  It was the episode with live catfish as the ingredient and the Mario Batali catfish wrestling was fun to watch.  He was up against a chef from Puerto Rico. 

I think the whole thing's a hoot and should be enjoyed as such, without too much thinking.  I mean, you can't read Dostoyevsky and Umberto Eco all the time!

I have always figured the chefs knew the ingredient ahead of time (on both the original and ICA) because they always show up with off the wall accompaniments for their dishes.  I just happened to have some caviar, some fresh fennel, and some Israeli cous cous in my car out back, eh? 

←

You can't read Dostoyevsky and Umberto Eco all the time, but after a reading of such authors, I don't know that I'd stick around for a jury discussing and rating their work unless the panelists had something to say. I'm not a big fan of rating restaurants by the numbers or stars and would love to read one erudite review by someone who knew something about food than see a collection of scores by a bunch of unknowns. It is the reason why it doesn't surprise me that Zagat Surveys are no more reliable than they are and far less interesting than they should be. Nothing would be more frusutrating perhaps, than a panel of one scholar and two inarticulate laymen. That's been the situation at times on the new Iron Chef where it's made all the more frustrating by editing and hiding the individual scores. If the scores were to have any meaning, wouldn't it be more meaningful, even as entertainment value to disclose the individual judges' scores. What would be the purpose of concealing the individual scores other than to cover the potential for the producers to play footloose with those scores to keep the matches as interesting as in the wide world or wrestling? The individual scores would have value to entertain and we'd all like to know how our favorite judge voted. Last night the challeger beat the Iron Chef, but the challenger is also an employee of the network.

I might have said Steingarten came off as an asshole.

To clarify:  I wasn't overly enamoured with the other judges either, and I felt the woman in the middle was especially ditzy.  However, while they made lots of unsubstantiated positive comments, Steingarten made lots of unsubstantiated negative comments.  I don't have a problem with the judges making comments either way, but I would love to hear much more in depth discussion of the food, how the flavors play on each other, how the textures are, etc, as opposed to just 'this is great' or 'this is icky'.  In the original IC show the comments made on the food, even getting run through the Canadian translation service, came across as much more in depth and intelligent. 

My biggest issue with Steingarten on the show was that he kept trying to railroad the other judges.  Several times during the judging clips he openly argued with them or chastised them for thinking something was good that he didn't, that just seems bullish to me.

←

I caught the catfish episode last night. I was surprised that the judges knew so little about food. I don't think of catfish as a particularly exotic ingredient. Yet Steingarten was the only person who said he'd had catfish before (once) - and his commentary about the basic ingredient was that it tasted "muddy". I thought the main reason Batali won is that in most of his dishes - he chopped up the catfish - mixed it with other ingredients - fried a lot of it - and basically managed to come up with dishes that didn't taste like catfish. Even the movie stars on IC seemed to know more about the main ingredients than these panelists did.

By the way - who is the woman sitting between Zagat and Steingarten (they gave her name on the Food TV website - but not her background)? Robyn

←

I just dont know if its correct to say that Steingarten isnt knowledgeable about food.. Infact, I know he has written things about catfish, down to how their taste buds form. And I believe his comment about the catfish being muddy was in reference to a carpacio dish. I think this gave me a very clear picture of how raw catfish might taste.

←

I agree that Steingarten make his comment in specific reference to one particular preparation and as such it was one of the more objective comments made. Steingarten can be personal, catty, petty, arrogant and just witty for his own amusement, but he is also a knowledgeable expert on the subject of food.

[Mnehrling]

Not to disparage or discredit any of the competitiors, but does anyone else notice the finger licking and spoon tasting (with the spoon going back into the food), and the lack of gloved hands on ready to eat food?  I know the competition is about other things (marketing, mainly), ...

←

They do this just to make 'foodies' cringe.

[Afterburner]

I just have difficulty accepting the notion that respected culinary professionals would agree to deliberately sully their reputations by participating in a cooking contest that they knew they were going to lose, just in order to satisfy the needs of the show's producers.

I am certainly willing to agree that there is a lot of stage puffery and creative editing taking place in many aspects of the show which is designed to make it more entertaining. The "secret" ingredient really isn't, as we all know, to cite one example. And the clock almost certainly stops (along with the filming) as soon as the chefs rush back to their stations with handfuls of the "secret" ingredient. But these things were true in the original Japanese Iron Chef series, and the contests there were not rigged to have producer-chosen pre-determined outcomes. So I don't believe the current show has them, either.

[Bux]

Can we stop debating whether the ingredients are a surprise. We know they know it will be one of two choices and it's obvious they will come prepared with a complete selection of dishes for both choices. Finding reasons to suggest the theme is not a surprise is a dead giveaway you're not reading the thread before posting.

I agree with those who felt Bobby Flay's dishes seemed a bit like a rerun. That might certainly hurt him with a judge who's been on a previous panel. Nevertheless, I've liked all the versions of eggs Benedict. I have a soft spot for breakfast of eggs and potatoes.

Shumai is a Chinese dish, but it's apparently one of those that's been adopted by the Japanese and it's as Japanese as pizza or French fries are American. While you'd expect a representative from the Asia Society to keep those straight, shumai is unlikely to appear on a Chinese restaurant menu except for those serving dim sum, while many Japanese restaurants feature shumai and gyoza as appetizers. The Chinese name for gyoza slips my mind, jaotze?

I thought it was a close contest in terms of food appeal. We can't really taste it, so appeal is all I have to go on. Tsai's margin of victory seemed a little higher than I expected, but as I just noted, for the winning challenger to come from the network ranks hardly proves the results aren't a product of the producer's script. In fact, it actually begins to lend credence to the idea that it's all show and no competition. The recent comment about the order the shows are being shown is interesting as well.

[Daddy-A]

When I saw that Tsai was the challenger, I said to my wife "Flay will lose tonight."  My reasoning?  Tsai is a FN chef.  Keep it all in the family, right?

Tsai's margin of victory seemed a little higher than I expected, but as I just noted, for the winning challenger to come from the network ranks hardly proves the results aren't a product of the producer's script. In fact, it actually begins to lend credence to the idea that it's all show and no competition. The recent comment about the order the shows are being shown is interesting as well.

Of course it's all show. The competition is the raison d'etre, but IC has always been about the "show" and "flash". It's like WWE for foodies. We all know the "secret" incredient isn't so much a secret (Tsai:Like wow! I'm so lucky I brought my compressor today!), and there is suspicion the outcomes are pre-determined (how boring would it be if the IC won all the battles? or vice versa?) ... and yet we still tune in to watch every week, and still discuss it over and over and over. That equates a successful show in my books.

I still say it's nowhere near as good as the original, but last night's was a far cry better than the others.

A.

[wilewil]

As to Ming Tsi being "an employee of the network" -

I don't think he is currently on any in production show, re-runs maybe. He does have a new show on PBS.

[Jake]

Not to disparage or discredit any of the competitiors, but does anyone else notice the finger licking and spoon tasting (with the spoon going back into the food), and the lack of gloved hands on ready to eat food?  I know the competition is about other things (marketing, mainly), ...

←

They do this just to make 'foodies' cringe.

←

You guys are all kidding, right? I mean latex gloves in the kitchen? I'm sure other chefs could weigh in here about the likelyhood of wearing gloves in the kitchen in real life, let alone a tv show....

[jogoode]

If you went to a restaurant and saw the cook lick his fingers and continue working, would you be grossed out?  Even if it's Ming Tsai or Bobby Flay?  Their hands are going from raw duck to spices to ready to eat food and into their mouths.  Ick.  I will stop before (it's probably too late) this turns into a Dennis Miller like RANT.

←

You'd be surprised how often cooks' bare fingers touch your food in restaurant kitchens -- no-star to three-star kitchens. Fingers are licked as well.

edit: Didn't see Jake's comment. Right on, Jake.

I agree that Steingarten make his comment in specific reference to one particular preparation and as such it was one of the more objective comments made. Steingarten can be personal, catty, petty, arrogant and just witty for his own amusement, but he is also a knowledgeable expert on the subject of food.

←

It deserves note that Steingarten is the only judge who when the camera zooms out doesn't have his hands folded in his lap. He's always eating! As for any lack of detail in his comments, his reputation precedes him; he doesn't have to explain why he likes or doesn't like a dish. If he says it's lacking, I trust that it's lacking. And I have no doubt if he were given the time he could go on for an hour about each dish. As for his cattiness, I haven't noticed it. But I'd welcome it if he would engage the other judges, who on the whole have been either unqualified or clueless. Senior editor at Zagat--What an amazing job of marketing that company has done.

[chefzadi]

As to Ming Tsi being "an employee of the network" -

I don't think he is currently on any in production show, re-runs maybe.  He does have a new show on PBS.

←

I haven't caught a single episode of the IC Food TV version. But I've always had fun watching the Japanese version. I've also watched a few episodes of Tsai's shows. When I watch another chef cooking I can't help notice his technical skills, often times more than what they are actually making.

Ming Tsai has very strong skills. I'm just translating how a French Chef would complement another. We say "he is strong." I just have to mention Emeril who is also strong as a chef. I haven't eaten at any of their restaurants. I'm just commenting on their cooking skills.

[Bux]

As to Ming Tsi being "an employee of the network" -

I don't think he is currently on any in production show, re-runs maybe.  He does have a new show on PBS.

←

Noted, thanks for the update.

[chefzadi]

Not to disparage or discredit any of the competitiors, but does anyone else notice the finger licking and spoon tasting (with the spoon going back into the food), and the lack of gloved hands on ready to eat food?  I know the competition is about other things (marketing, mainly), ...

←

They do this just to make 'foodies' cringe.

←

You guys are all kidding, right? I mean latex gloves in the kitchen? I'm sure other chefs could weigh in here about the likelyhood of wearing gloves in the kitchen in real life, let alone a tv show....

←

They edit out all the handwashing.

We're cooking not performing surgery. Of course in a commercial kitchen no one should be handling raw poultry without washing their hands before and after. Some

of the other stuff though, I can only say cooties help build your immune system.

[fiftydollars]

At the book signing I mentioned earlier, Alton Brown said that the secret ingredient is, in fact, revealed to the contestants in a large list given to them days before the show. However, the list is long and the contestants still have to prepare for a lot of possible ingredients. Brown said it would be impossible and even potentially disastrous not to give them any idea what the secret ingredient would be and that this is why they tip them off.

Nonetheless, this differs substantially from the original where Brown said the contestants received a much shorter list and pretty much knew exactly what the secret would be.

[chopjwu12]

trust me cooks lick fingers from no star to four star. The fact that sanitation is even discussed is rediculous. Im sure they wash there hands and all that good stuff. But latex gloves. People dont even realize how stupid gloves are. Do you realize that the only time gloves are good are for plating ready to eat food but... only on ething at a time. Each time you put something on the plate you would by haccp rules have to change your gloves. So if you dont do that just use your hands and keeo them clean.

I forgot about marios egg dish. Now its not to say flays food didn't taste good because im sure it did. Im just saying for an iron chef you better dam well know how to be more creative. And with that egg thing. I know most of these guys have been to arzak. Why dont they do teh arzak egg. Its so much easier and cleaner.

[robyn]

I just dont know if its correct to say that Steingarten isnt knowledgeable about food.. Infact,  I know he has written things about catfish,  down to how their taste buds form.  And I believe his comment about the catfish being muddy was in reference to a carpacio dish.  I think this gave me a very clear picture of how raw catfish might taste.

←

Actually - all non-farmed catfish taste muddy (which makes sense - since catfish are bottom-feeding scavengers that live in the mud). And - like I've said here in the past - it is very much an acquired taste (which most people never acquire - yours truly included). So perhaps the fault is not with the judges - but with the people who chose this as the "secret ingredient" (if they were going to use catfish - they should have used farm raised - it has a delicate flavor and can be used successfully in a ton of dishes - like any white fish with a delicate flavor).

Doesn't anyone know who the woman sitting between Zagat and Steingarten was (no answer to my previous question yet)? Robyn

[Afterburner]

Doesn't anyone know who the woman sitting between Zagat and Steingarten was (no answer to my previous question yet)?  Robyn

←

I don't remember her name, only that she was the publisher or editor of some restaurant industry trade magazine.

[stephenc]

On top of that he made such a big deal about it having 10 ingredients. Was that supposed to impress? Step into teh world of fine dining and see how many ingredients are in something. Just because theres alot of things in it doesn't mean it tasted good. If he made those same grits and just finished it with some nice duck confit and foie butter it woudl have been perfect.

←

Are you kidding me? You obviously have no clue about Southern cooking.

Foie gras and duck confit in Southern cooking? Give me a fucking break.