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Iron Chef America Battle Apple. I would say something about the content of the show, but I’m still - uhh - not quite sure what to write about this battle.

Chef Mark Tarbell hails from Arizona, and entered kitchen stadium, choosing to battle Iron Chef Cat Cora. The chairman chose Apples as the secret ingredient. I think Alton Brown mentioned that there were at least four different varieties of apple available. The Judges? The regulars Jeffrey Steingarten and Karine Bakhoum, along with a judge I’ve never seen, Bone Crusher. Seriously, The guy’s name is actually Bone Crusher - how could he be an Iron Chef America judge? I want to be an Iron Chef America judge! I’m sure I’d be able to give a more eloquent and communicative impression of the food I would be served on the show.

The battle was a very poor battle to try to follow last week’s Battle Parmigiano Reggiano - it wasn’t nearly as good - lacked excitement, wasn’t as entertaining and the ingredient was very common, yet viewers had to think about what you would even be able to make with apples - aside from pie. Even with the challenge, I thought the chefs did pull off some creative dishes. I liked Tarbell’s Dessert, a trio of small apple orbs - one coated in caramel/toffee, one coated in chocolate, and one coated in the classic red candy that’s at the hard crack stage. Cora also presented a caramel apple, but used very small apples, which I’m sure were much harder to eat. the judges didn’t seem to like it, either! I called a pork and apple dish at the beginning of the battle, and sure enough, Tarbell presented it to the judges. It was the only dish of the challenger’s that the judges didn’t like.

The judging panel was odd. Steingarten commonly comes off as being a bit moody when the other judges don’t agree with his pallet, or when he doesn’t like the food. This isn’t necessarily always bad, but it reminds me of a grumpy old man who has no regard for other people, which can justly be viewed as a judge, but doesn’t really help the viewer of the show. When someone else says “I don’t taste the apple in this dish”, and his only rebuttal is “I disagree - I DO taste the apple” it just doesn’t work for people who aren’t there, smelling and tasting the dish. Bone Crusher actually played a very nice contrast to Steingarten, even nudging him and tell him to cool it down (which everyone on the panel laughed about,) but the end result leaves us feeling as if we’re viewing a cackle of geese on screen fighting. This has happened many times in Iron Chef America, and it’s the only thing I don’t like about it. There’s obvious tension on the panel, but it’s not always justified.

Anyway, to critique the judging and not mention that the judges are supposed to convey to the audience exactly what the dishes are like wouldn’t provide positive criticism to them. To Bone Crusher: We obviously expect the dished on Iron Chef America to be excellent - we expect them to be good, but you didn’t tell us what was good about them. You either liked it, really liked it, or didn’t like it - but we didn’t know what you did or didn’t like about it. Steingarten mentioned that one of Tarbell’s dishes (the one with the scallop) was overcooked and the scallop was rubbery - you disagreed, but just said “I think it’s good.” -that may be the truth, but if you disagreed, which part did you disagree about? Was your scallop overcooked? Anyway, food for thought to help the viewers the next time you judge Iron Chef America

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Iron Chef Mario Batali and Chef Andrew Carmellini battled it out in Iron Chef America’s Battle Parmigiano Reggiano last night, and it was probably the best ICA battle I’ve seen in a long long time.

Carmellini, an italian-style chef born in Cleveland, and Batali had it out in an all-out battle involving a whole lot of Parmigiano Reggiano. People here in the US tend to end up eating Parmigian cheese - and this Parmigiano Reggiano that was ICA is a completely different beast. They had monsterous cheese wheels imported from Emilia-Romagna, in Italy. This is the only place that you can actually get authentic Parmigiano Reggiano - and unless it’s imported from there or some other distributor, it’s not authentic Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. Alton even popped up and showed the markings from something like an Italian cheese authority, the Consorzio, who uses a wooden mallet to grade the Parmigiano Reggiano. Crazy stuff. anyway, ICA had three different types of Parmigiano Reggiano - 2 year old, 4 year old and 6 year old cheese. I’m sure these have exotic Italian names, but they didn’t disclose them on the show.

So, great battle, great ingredient, and NO SEAFOOD! I’m a huge advocate of food without fish, being allergic to both shellfish and anything else I’ve eaten that swims in the ocean, so I was very happy about this. I also enjoyed when Batali lit half a wheel of cheese on fire with some alcohol - this was to smooth the inside of it out, and make way for a pasta dish plated inside the wheel. Both chef’s pulled extremely saliva-inducing dishes - I would have loved to be there. I can dream, right? The judges didn’t really say anything bad about any of the dishes, and even mentioned how hard it would be to declare a winner. In the end, Batali won, by one or two points, beating out Carmellini in the taste category, losing one point to him in plating, and tying with him in originality. All in all, it was a fantastic battle.

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Geeky content follows:

What’s your favorite Good Eats episode? Mine? I’m not quite sure yet. I have, however, been catalogging about 200 gigs of all the Good Eats episodes that I’ve recorded over the past two or three years.

I’ve got my computer setup to automatically record all Good Eats episodes. Then, I rip the commercials out, and recompress them into mp4 videos so that I can watch them on my iPod. I used to resize them to 320×240 instead of leaving them at around 640×480, so that I could save a bunch of space. About a year ago I decided to keep my videos at a reasonable resolution, and a reasonable bitrate so that they didn’t look like complete crap if I decided to view them on my television, which I now permanently have a media computer hooked up to. Anyway, I’ve been replacing old, low resolution versions with newer, higher quality versions. I have over 225 episodes recorded - I have multiple versions of some episodes. I’ve been going through them and actually watching enough of the episode to identify the episode name, and then looking on Food Network’s Good Eats Episode Guide so that I can get the appropriate season, and episode number. Needless to say, it’s a little bit time consuming. I got through about 75 of them yesterday, between cleaning my garage, moving cars around, and helping my wife paint. I have quite a few really early episodes, and I also have quite a few that I can’t find in the episode guide. Anyway, here are some geeky things about Good Eats:

• You may have seen an episode in the last year called Pop Culture - the name shown IN the episode is actually Pop Art. When I come across other episodes, I will have to point them out.
• The episode seasons are listed in really weird orders. season 1 is prefixed with EA1A, Season 2 is EA2B - yet season’s 09, 10 and 11 are prefixed with EA09, EA10, EA11. I wonder if they switched production companies or something? Anyway, it’s a weird change. Also, there are special episodes, prefixed with EASP and “Cable In The Classroom” episodes, prefixed with EACL. I even have a few of these special educational series - they’re shown on TV at like 4:30-5:30 in the morning. Hey, I’m not up, but my computer is

So yeah, geeky stuff. Anyway, I need to continue compiling episodes. Once I’m done, I’ll have to find a way to fill in what I’m missing. My wife bought me the Good Eats: Meats, Sweets and Holiday Treats collection last Christmas - Maybe I will have to wish for the Good Eats 27 pack DVD Collection (I think it gets bigger every year!)

I like Alton Brown’s show, if you couldn’t already tell

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