Post by ironchefcanadian on Oct 3, 2007 9:36:46 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/dining/03note.html?_r=1&ref=dining&oref=slogin
Cooking as contest, cooking as derring-do: that pretty much sums up “Iron Chef America,” on which Mr. Flay and Mr. Batali have been mainstays. It’s colorful. It’s kinetic.
But it has limited relevance to the home cook. And it has dubious connection to the actual kitchen paces that any of the chefs in the competition have gone through or might. At no restaurant I’ve ever visited do the kitchen hands or customers present the chef with a surprise ingredient, give him or her a stringent time limit and say, “Go!”
“Iron Chef America” has been so successful that it has created a spinoff, “The Next Iron Chef,” which will have its debut on the Food Network on Sunday night. The show features eight near-celebrity chefs from around the country vying, in an elimination competition, to join Mr. Batali and Mr. Flay as permanent gladiators and become, in words actually spoken by one of the show’s hosts, “a culinary God.”
Toward the end of the first episode, they’re asked to do something with doubtful inspirational value: press an unlikely savory ingredient — squid, tripe and catfish are three examples — into the service of dessert. I’d caution you not to try this at home, but there’s little danger of that.
The most priceless moment comes near the episode’s beginning, when one aspirant, Traci Des Jardins, the executive chef of the restaurant Jardinière in San Francisco, confronts an array of basic tasks that include filleting a salmon and deboning a chicken.
It’s a situation more firmly grounded in kitchen reality than a typical “Iron Chef” stunt, and what’s fascinating is the way Ms. Des Jardins responds to it. Looking nervous, she says with admirable candor that she can only hope the requisite skills are still in her command, because she doesn’t handle such chores often anymore.
Cooking as contest, cooking as derring-do: that pretty much sums up “Iron Chef America,” on which Mr. Flay and Mr. Batali have been mainstays. It’s colorful. It’s kinetic.
But it has limited relevance to the home cook. And it has dubious connection to the actual kitchen paces that any of the chefs in the competition have gone through or might. At no restaurant I’ve ever visited do the kitchen hands or customers present the chef with a surprise ingredient, give him or her a stringent time limit and say, “Go!”
“Iron Chef America” has been so successful that it has created a spinoff, “The Next Iron Chef,” which will have its debut on the Food Network on Sunday night. The show features eight near-celebrity chefs from around the country vying, in an elimination competition, to join Mr. Batali and Mr. Flay as permanent gladiators and become, in words actually spoken by one of the show’s hosts, “a culinary God.”
Toward the end of the first episode, they’re asked to do something with doubtful inspirational value: press an unlikely savory ingredient — squid, tripe and catfish are three examples — into the service of dessert. I’d caution you not to try this at home, but there’s little danger of that.
The most priceless moment comes near the episode’s beginning, when one aspirant, Traci Des Jardins, the executive chef of the restaurant Jardinière in San Francisco, confronts an array of basic tasks that include filleting a salmon and deboning a chicken.
It’s a situation more firmly grounded in kitchen reality than a typical “Iron Chef” stunt, and what’s fascinating is the way Ms. Des Jardins responds to it. Looking nervous, she says with admirable candor that she can only hope the requisite skills are still in her command, because she doesn’t handle such chores often anymore.