JoelF wrote:

whiskeybent wrote:Iron Chef Flay paired up with Giada, vs Iron Chef Batali paired up with Rachel Ray....

Yeah, but will anybody bet against Batali? At least Rachel's got some knife skills, might be competent as a sous/prep chef.

But Big Head Giada has at least worked in a professional kitchen. The only thing Ray Ray will be able to do is take orders.

Big Head Giada

lol x2

JoelF wrote:Update from the FoodTV page:
Tramonto/Gand vs Batali on July 30

No word on the Homaro Cantu battle there yet. An article at Fast Company says July, but that doesn't jibe with the FoodTV schedule.

Over a month later, Chef Cantu's battle is still not scheduled for airing.
He is listed as a "Challenger" on this page, which links to this very brief profile

I had heard it will air sometime in September.

Some details I don't think i've seen mentioned here:

MSNBC wrote:Take two: The "reveal" of the secret ingredient isn't quite as much of a scramble as it looks. As with many elements of the show, it's taped until the right level of drama is caught on camera. During one taping, Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto and challenger Homaro Cantu are given several chances to repeat their choreographed lunges toward the just-unveiled item until the right dramatic effect is nailed. "This time," the stage manager genially tells Cantu, "act like it's a secret."

And this article at msnbc has a great action shot of Chef Cantu filling a balloon to later be frozen with liquid nitrogen.

Sounds like it'll be a great episode.

Oh oh, forgot these:

Gand and Tramonto take on Batali in battle fennel

Cantu takes on Morimoto in battle beet

Edit: I see Joel mentioned this in the second post to this thread. Man, I should read better.

Woot! Two of my favorite ingredients

Damn...Tramonto/Gand got spanked!
At least it was from Batali and not Cat Cora.

I knew they were doomed when they got the multiple "I can't taste the fennel !" refrains.

Bummer.

Talk about running into a brick wall. It's always hard to say since we can't, you know, actually taste any of this, but that may be the best menu I've yet to see on ICA.

My feeling is that the Tru Crew could ordinarily stand toe to toe with Batali, but that ingredient was squarely in his wheelhouse. That's not even a hanging curve... that's slow pitch. I wonder if the Tru folks chose Batali before or after they knew the ingredient was fennel

I was kind of half-watching it, knowing my TiVo was getting it all, but how far apart was the final score? I hope the Tru Cru at least got plating, because some of that stuff was astounding -- a live fish first for Iron Chef America.

Every one of those dishes looked great, but I don't know that I could eat an all-fennel meal.

Yeah, Tramonto and Gand got plating, 15-12, but they were otherwise totally blown out:

Taste: 28-21 Batali
Plating: 15-12 Tramonto/Gand
Originality: 14-10 Batali

Total: 54-46 Batali

My memory of the breakdowns:

Batali +7 in taste (28 to 21 out of 30)
Gand/Tramonto +2 in plating
Batali +3 in originality

I'm positive of the first, not so sure on the last two.

Oops! Dom beat me to it, and his were right, to boot.

I agree that fennel was a slam-dunk for Batali and that the Tru team's meals looked good. However, sometimes Tru's dishes seemed so laden with ingredients that you knew fennel would not be the primary taste -- for instance, Rick Tramonto's risotto, which the editor from Food & Wine described as "gummy." Texture notwithstanding, he had fennel and lobster and lobster juice and lots of butter and cream -- at that point, are you ever going to get more than a hint of the fennel? Ditto with some of Gale Gand's desserts, which looked fabulous, but the fennel seemed muted. I wonder if they would have given Batali, with his fennel expertise and all, more of a run for it if their recipes were more fennel straight-forward. But it was a fun episode and I think they represented their restaurant well.

The clear winning technique on ICA is to pick a high quality luxe ingredient and stick the secret ingredient on it with a minimum of complication. Grilled Kobe beef with a slice of poached fennel; lobster with fennel broth; beluga caviar on a fennel blini with a shot of pernod on the side. Having watched a couple of these, it seems obvious that showing off vision and technique is a waste of time. I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing, since the stuff I just described appeals to me more than a fennel napoleon with fennel foam served in a black licorice lattice bowl on a dried fennel-filled tuffet.

Jeff... that's what made Batali's menu so great. It wasn't that at all. The menu just exuded fennel of every kind from every direction. It wasn't luxe ingredients with a touch of fennel.

Does it seem odd to anyone but me that Gail Gand just happened to have some multicolored candied fennel seeds with her? Surely, there is neither the time nor equipment to manufacture them in Kitchen Stadium within the 1 hour time limit

stevez wrote:Does it seem odd to anyone but me that Gail Gand just happened to have some multicolored candied fennel seeds with her?

Steve,

If it was Adam Perry Lang*, the BBQ guy from Daisy Mae's in NYC, absolutely, Gale Gand, a pastry chef, not so much. If David Burke travels with plastic sheeting coated with pastrami spices, who knows what the chefs have in their kit bags.

Enjoy,
Gary

*Lang is also executive chef at Robert's, a steakhouse in NYC known for both terrific dry age beef and being located in a strip club.

stevez wrote:Does it seem odd to anyone but me that Gail Gand just happened to have some multicolored candied fennel seeds with her?

I believe I read once that on the original Iron Chef, the chefs knew that the secret ingredient would be one of five different items. This allowed them to prepare a bit in advance, but still maintained that they had to think on their feet a bit. I would assume that the new version works somewhat similarly.

Then again, as Gary said, it doesn't really surprise me that Ms. Gand would show up at a cooking competition with a full complement of candied items. (Heck, she even had origami instructions!)

Best,
Michael

I believe on ICA they now tell the chefs that it will be one of two "mystery" ingredients, instead of one of five.

That's probably why they sometimes have to do a few takes on the reaction shots when they reveal the ingredient -- no one is actually surprised.

I wasn't surprised about the outcome, but I do think that Mo Rocca should be one of the celebrity tasters on all future episodes of ICA.

HI,

I saw the fennel ICA on Saturday evening. From reading above, the female judge was from Food and Wine Magazine. I recognized another judge was Ed Levine. Who was the 3rd judge?

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Who was the 3rd judge?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Rocca

Best,
Michael

Truly, a Harvard education has not been put to such good use since Franklin Roosevelt's.

Hi,

Thanks, I assume he is the food light weight on the panel standing in for the Japanese actress on the original Iron Chef. Mo had the least to say with Ed Levine dominating followed by Ms. Food & Wine. Do they have a different panel for each show?

Regards,

They switch it up a little every time, and new ones sneak in here and there, but they've definitely developed a stable of regulars that usually takes up 2/3rds of the panel, if not all three.

Jeffrey Steingarten, Mo Rocca, and Karine Bakhoum seem to be the most common judges.

The best part about Steingarten and KB being on the same panel is that she's willing to stand up to him. As much as I love the man, it's a lot of fun seeing someone tell him to shut up every now and then

Things I find odd:

1) The Cantu battle still hasn't aired.
2) The current ICA schedule on the FoodTV site only lists the next two weeks (usually it lists 5-6 weeks out), and both are reruns.
3) The Cantu battle isn't listed anywhere on the full schedule page.
4) The Cantu battle isn't among the full episode listings for season three.
5) The episode numbers for season three follow the sequential pattern IA0301-IA0316, except that IA0313 is missing.

Anybody else wondering if it got scrapped for some reason?

I'm guessing Cantu's battle won't air until late fall/early winter, given the secret ingredient is beets.

The episode numbers are probably based on when they were filmed... I have serious trouble believing they'd scrap a battle as bizarre as this one will surely be.

i actually contacted them from their website recently. got a mechanical response that it wasn't currently scheduled and to check back @ another time.