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It’s been a long time since I saw a new Iron Chef America on television. Tonight? It’s Iron Chef Symon versus a friend and old classmate, David Adgie (this is horribly misspelled, I just know it!) in battle sturgeon.

Interestingly enough, there are new judges that I haven’t seen before - and they’re both kind of food bloggers. Random, but Iron Chef has been doing a lot as far as throwing food bloggers a bone and inviting/allowing/whatevering these people to their shows. The show before this, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, also had a blogger as a guest chef. It’s partially natural progression (I mean, foodies communicate everyone communicates online much more effectively than any other medium) so maybe FN has no choice but to allow these people onto their shows.

Sturgeon pops and immersion circulators abound in kitchen stadium. Fun. It looks like there are lots of interesting things going on, but who knows what’s going to happen. I’m sure this is not a new episode, but (sadly) haven’t been able to watch ICA in the last few weeks because I’m working on a project that actually has me working Sunday nights. *sigh* It will be done someday

Challenger Dishes:
- Carpaccio of Sturgeon
- Sutrgeon chowder with Sturgeon lobster finger
- Cedar-roasted Sturgeon
- Bacon wrapped Sturgeon with collard greens
- Smoked Sturgeon with Celery Root Hash

(Random note: The judges are complete freaking whack-jobs! None of them can decide on any of the dishes. They also tend to change their minds while disagreeing with things. Strange. The guy with the white coat? Throw him out ;-p)

Iron Chef Symon’s Dishes:
- Smoked Sturgeon Belly with Caviar, radish & lemon zest pancakes
- Sutrgeon Puttanesca
- Butter poached sturgeon with curried applesauce
- Sturgeon with Lamb sausage and bean broth
- Grilled Sturgeon with ragu

And the verdict? Well, I will have to let you watch and find out

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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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Oh my god - This guy is an insult to geeks everywhere. Homaro Cantu, with his Scrolling LED name badge from thinkGeek, Laptop, Digital Cameras and headsets, this guy makes my brain hurt. And that’s generally a hard thing to do. I’m a huge geek, but this guy is just wayyy too much. It makes me think he’s probably a schwazz. I hope he gets his ass kicked by Morimoto. :-p The secret ingredient? Beets.

Alegedly, this guy is trained in “postmodern cuisine”, but you wouldn’t know it so far, 9 minutes into battle. Iron Chef is still trying to explain all of this guy’s gadgets.

Oh, now onto the judges - Melissa Clark, Naomi Moriyama and Jeffery Steingarten (The man who ate everything).

Oh man, this is an insult - he’s using edible packing peanuts, and edible rice paper that he’s printed stuff onto. How does this have anything to do with beets, the secret ingredient? I can’t imagine how that stuff can taste good, at all. Yuck :-\

Cantu just started using his class 4 laser to carmelize sugar on something fried. Oooh, now he’s using it to poke holes in that edible packing material. That’s so lame :-\

Uh, they just stopped to take a picture with their digital camera. They’re not taking Iron Chef seriously. Oh, he imported the photo into MICROSOFT WORD - Sacrelidge!

Cantu’s inspiration for his dishes are… USB cables and personal computers? That just makes me cringe :-\ He’s onto judging now. His dishes are: Beet Maki roll with synthetic champagne, hot and cold beet soup, surf and turf (prepared tableside with a “hyper-insulated box”), frozen sphere of beet, mascarpone with beets and “liquid delivery system”. His final dish is chocolate pudding with julienned beet and horchata paper.

Morimoto is now onto judging, wearing traditional Japanese clothing - he’s changed out of his normal outfit. His dishes are: 3 kinds of beet sushi, where Morimoto made faux salmon eggs out of beets. They look neat, and apparently taste really good. The second dish Morimoto presented was toro tartare with pureed beets. His third dish is gold beet soup with beet foam. Beet foam? Fourth: beets cooked in Miso. Fifth dish: Tempura, udon and rice. His final dish was beet souffleith yellow beet ice cream. The judges loved the yellow beet ice cream.

Oh no! Chef Cantu won!? Morimoto actually got the jump on him with Originality of dishes, too! How is this even possible?! :-\ Okay, in taste Morimoto lost out by one point, 25 to 26. In plating, he also lost by one point, 13 to 14. In originality, he won, 13 to 12. So in total, Cantu won by one point.

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So, last night I got around to watching Iron Chef America, battle Frozen Pea. It was, as most other episodes, entertaining, but was just a little odd.

The first thing I noticed is that Iron Chef Bobby Flay was missing from the battle. I mean seriously, how can you have a Iron Chef America without Bobby Flay?! Mario Batali took up the slack though, so it was entertaining enough. I enjoy how Batali converses with Alton Brown though - he does a great job at competing and enriching the viewer’s minds by letting us in on all those crazy Italian words he has a tendency to use.

The battle was against a chef named Morou - and unfortunately I can’t remember his cuisine style. The good news is that this wasn’t a new battle - it’s been on the air before. Anyway, the challenger’s cuisine included pea filled fritters, and frozen pea and cream cheese pea-sicles. Apparently, they were tasty. I wouldn’t know because Iron Chef America hasn’t yet invited me to be a judge (just a note for when they do: I’m allergic to seafood, so it’ll have to be battle MEAT, no seafood allowed.)

I must say - this time the judges were all culinary critics or related to the food industry in some way. The unfortunate thing, though, is that one point in the battle, one of the female judges says something to the effect of “I can definitely taste the pea-ness in this dish”, which obviously completely and inadvertently sounded like penis. Well, what do you do, right?

Anyway, it was a good battle

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