Recent Stories with tag Iron Chef

While some are supping on sushi in Seattle, I'm down in the Napa Valley attending the Culinary Institute of America's Worlds of Flavor International Conference & Festival, with this year's theme being "Japan: Flavors of Culture."

And while I was especially amused seeing Masaharu Morimoto and Hiroyuki Sakai yukking it up, I must say there's an incredible number of amazing chefs, Iron and otherwise, doing presentations and preparing food. Many of the masters from Japan are here, along with the likes of Thomas Keller, David Chang, and Chris Cosentino from the States.

Yoshiki Tsuji, president of the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka, gave the opening keynote. His look at traditions and innovations of Japanese cuisine was jam-packed with facts, philosophy, and a bit of fun. For example, while Japan is roughly the same size as California, the country has 50 percent more coastline than our entire country, which helps explain (along with other factors he outlined) the popularity of seafood there.... (more)

This weekend's episode of Iron Chef America featured only the second husband-wife cooking team in all of Iron Chef history: Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi, the masterminds behind Wallingford Korean-French-American-whatever else eatery Joule. Along with being an award-winner in its own right, Joule just happens to be (friend of The SunBreak) Gastrolust Jay's favorite restaurant in town--and that's saying something. So we were more than a little intrigued to hear the local duo would be competing in venerable Kitchen Stadium.  Yang and Chirchi chose to take on the newest Iron Chef, Jose Garces. Secret ingredient: Hawaiian moi, the fish of kings.  Let's get ready to cook some fish!

So first everybody got busy scraping off fish scales. Scrape scrape scrape. Fish bones and heads were thrown into pots to make stock. There were different butchering techniques on display, with Yang doing more filets and Garces doing more fish fingers and strips, though Yang also made use of her fish skin, first stretched and then fried. So many ingredients at play:  daikon, carrots, and fennel in the rapid pressure cooker; onions, pear, apple, and jujubes, salted shrimp, and anchovy sauce made into puree; not to mention the soft-boiled quail eggs, banana leaves, salted corn nuts, nori, panko-fried sweet potatoes, and bechamel sauce. Moi was smoked, salt-cooked, stuffed, ceviched, tempura-ed, seared, and tartared.  Something for everyone!... (more)