......to Iron Chef. Allez cuisine! (Or whatever it is Kaga says in the beginning!)
The best part? Trying to bet what the secret ingredient will be. Tonight? Duck Battle! Zteen and I are waiting for Iron Chef: Toast!
The funniest part of IC, though, are the voice-overs. There is always some idiot girl helping with the commentary who knows even less than I do about cooking. Zteen and I laugh and laugh.
Tonight's food might have tasted good, but it all looked pretty icky. Duck just isn't that pretty a color when it's cooked, apparently. At least on our TV it was a pretty revolting grayish brown.
And tonight, we saw the absolute ugliest dish we've ever seen. It was a duck soup, but before they cooked the duck they pureed it into a liquid with MSG, salt and some sugar (yes, that's what they said). They then poured this liquid into boiling Chinese soup stock. I will leave it strictly up to your imagination as to what it looked like when they did that.
And sorry, I'm not eating duck tartare. Nope. Not even with fried duck skin right beside it. Nope. You can take the girl out of West Texas, but you can't take West Texas out of the girl. I like my food cooked, thank you very much.
Erik would probably have LOVED it.
I have rarely encountered a duck dish I didn't like, and, yes, I would try duck tartare (I am a huge fan of beef and lamb tartare, so why not?), especially with crispy duck skins. Oh yeah. Bring on the duck skin. My poultry dealer sometimes gives me duck skins that they have left from butchering ducks for parts. Have I mentioned how much I like my poultry dealer?
I play a version of Iron Chef with my Amalia. We go to the Berkeley Bowl or the Housewive's Marketplace (the butcher has the best selection of variety meats I have ever seen), and I let Amalia pick whatever catches her eye. Chicken feet? OK, I cook chicken feet.
The only thing I draw the line at is a pig's head, because the last time I made my headcheese (which was delicious, if you like headcheese), I had few takers (and a lot of headcheese). The look on Melanie's face when she lifted the lid of my big pot only to see dinner looking back at her, now that was precious. I don't think she wants me to make headcheese again, though.
Anyway, I call the game Toddler Chef, and it really is fun. Usually I end up with something fairly big (spareribs were a great one), and selected after careful questioning: "did this come from a bull? Was it a baby bull? A Mamma Bull? [no, Amalia, Mamma bovines are the cows. All bulls are Babbo bulls] Did the bull have horns? Can we go to the bullfight?" And so on and so on. I always try to have the questions answered before the butcher gets there, or it could take forever.
The night before I was to be induced with my daughter JB, Noah, and I sat up all night and watched Iron chef. Needless to say, it may have not been the best decision. This was three (wow! 3 already!) years ago when they were still doing Iron Chef marathons. The one I remember was the Bell Pepper battle.
I think the favorite line from that girl you mentioned is " Mmmm . . .? This is very interesting."
My favorite critic is the Fortune Teller. She always says things like: Oh, that doesn't even sound good!
You would think being a fortune teller . . .
Duck breast medallions with cous cous, by the way, is both beautiful and delicious . . . I guess they missed that one.
Youkoso! One of the "ditzy actresses" d'jour is actually a top grad from Tokyo University in math, which is no mean feat (at least to get in).
I recommend www.ironchef.com for a good, if not update in a long time, fan site.
Tonight, the ingredient is quail. The challenger is Seiya Kawasaki. He is described as a master of wild game cooking styles.
Robert,
Merely the mention of "wild game cooking styles" makes me taste marjoram, juniper berries, red wine and wild mushrooms. Gotta go kill me a deer! Oh wait, not in season. Alas, I will have to wait.
I have found that one can make a good free range chicken cacciatore, and it does the trick if you can't get your hands on a wild pheasant.