Iron Chef

I've heard of this show, "Iron Chef" on the Food Network for a while now. My track coach used to love that show - Iron Chef and Emeril. Well, the fact that he loved Emeril made me skeptical of Iron Chef. I tried to watch it once while I was in high school and it was crazy, so I never watched another episode. I have no idea what made me decide to start watching it a couple of weeks ago. Maybe there just wasn't anything else on and I was desperate not to clean the house, but maybe I have just become mature enough to understand the nuances of the show. (HaHa). In any case, Andy and I have become Iron Chef watchers. We're not crazy, just intrigued. It's amazing that this weird show could be such a hit. In fact, it's such a hit that they made a special American mini-series called (surprise surprise) "Iron Chef America" which pits the original Japanese chefs against some American "Iron Chefs."

In case you're not familiar with the show, let me explain the Japanese version:
Apparently Canadians' voices are dubbed over the original Japanese voices, which, clearly makes it even more hillarious. The show's premise is to glorify these chefs as cooking warriors who prepare original dishes in an hour. The twist is that they have to incorporate a secret "theme" ingredient that they don't know about until it is unveiled right before they start cooking. Being a Japanese program, they sometimes have some interesting ingredients, including a lot of odd little sea creatures like octopus. I almost forgot about the yellow bell pepper - apparently "the chairman" (the founder of the show and the M.C.) has a great fondness for yellow bell peppers. To kick off each show, he holds one in his hand, above his head, and then starts the show and takes a big bite out of the pepper. Every time. It's a little strange, to be honest with you, but once you get used to the show, it starts to seem normal.

They also have a commentator and a "correspondent" who runs around on the floor telling the commentator exactly what's going on. He'll break in as the commentator says, "It looks like Iron Chef Sakai is making some sort of cream sauce." Then the correspondent will say "[name of commentator] san, Chef Sakai is indeed making a cream sauce, which includes today's theme ingredient of pickled trout"

In the end, 4 "celebrity" judges, which include Japanese tv stars and chefs, decide whether the challenger or the Iron Chef is victorious. They take about 10 minutes to taste the food and describe everything that they taste, and then we go to commercial. When we return, the chairman (sans bell pepper) declares the winner (usually the Iron Chef).

The American version stars Andy's favorite chef, Alton Brown as "the commentator" and some no name as the correspondent. Then we've got Wolfgang Puck, Bobby Flay and Mario Batali as our Iron Chefs. They're going up against Sakai and Morimoto, 2 of the more popular Japanese Iron Chefs. It was a good show, and quite entertaining. Especially when they cut the heads off the live trout. Yum.