Iron Chef

This article first appeared in the Age on September 4, 2004

Following is verbal re-enactment of Iron Chef, which is returning to SBS tonight (8.30pm).

Takeshi Kaga is Chairman of the Gourmet Academy. He lives in his castle with a small army of master chefs who stage food battles in the giant cooking arena, Kitchen Stadium. Iron Chefs are invincible men of culinary skills chosen from around the world. They have one hour to tackle the theme ingredients and the chef who best articulates the flavours of this ingredient wins. If you beat an Iron Chef you gain the people's ovation and fame forever.

Tonight, Iron Chef Chen Kenichi, will battle Takashi Saito who was top apprentice to Chen Kenmin (Kenichi's father) and teacher to Chen Kenichi himself. This will be a summit battle between the heirs of the sage of Szechwan cooking.

Cut, somewhat incongruously, to shots of spurting lava. Music rises to a crescendo, Chairman Takeshi Kaga, magnificent in a velvet embroidered jacket in the new romantic style bites dramatically on a yellow bell pepper. He tells us, it is 'quite a while since I have been so excited.' Tonight, the theme is: PRAWNS!!!!!!

And so, the chefs are off and racing. Dr Yukio Hattori begins his commentary with occasional asides from Shinichiro Ohta (kitchen reporter) and the Tasting Panel: novelist Tumio Kageyama, actress Hisako Manda and culinary critic, Asako Kishi. Following are some edited highlights: 'he's scooping tofu with precision . . . Incisions being made into papaya by Suito . . .Kenichi is boiling half a head of cabbage . . . Ingredients tonight include dried scallops, swallows nest, radish . . . Minced boiled prawns with mayonnaise . . . What, are those pears? . . . That's Prawns, lard and chopped arrow mint bulb. . . They've broken out the tofu . . . the bell peppers have been steamed AND stir fried. . . The iron chef is in his element over the flaming wok . . . We're anticipating some great stuff from the guys on the prawn and chilli sauce side . . .. Here we go, the climax . . . Did he steam that? . . . It's looking an awful lot like a jellyfish . . .He's hunkered down . . . Gosh, that is so interesting . . .A creamy sauce tying it all together . . . Oohh I can't wait to eat all this . . .Hot chilli paste, the heart of Szechwan cooking . . . Oh. My. Wow . . .So much depth to that flavour . . . . These could be the best chilli prawns ever . . . The flames of Szechwan cooking rising . . . Words just can't do justice . . . Five minutes to go . . . Oh look, ketchup, several squirts. . Both chefs' squeezing out sparks of inspiration . . . A wok in progress [laughter] . . . Wow, Chen's wok's on fire, he's earned a bunch of style points today . . .Fifteen second to go . . .the Men going all out with the prawns, the tasters are licking their chops . . . [Applause]: THE PRAWN BATTLE IS OVER.

The challenger Takashi Suito has created four dishes: Kinugasa mushrooms stuffed with prawns, stir-fried prawns milk flavour, prawns in chilli sauce and prawn dumpling soup in papaya. The Iron Chef Kenichi has created five dishes. Prawns wrapped in cabbage, stir fried prawns in bell pepper boats, ground prawns in shark fin soup, that weird prawn and milk dish and prawn in chilli sauce, canape style. It is the Chilli Prawns that will be the decider. There will be a victor. There will be bowing. There will be tears.

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