From CableFax.com, an advance peak at the January 3rd episode at the White House.
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Iron Chef and Emeril Go DC Veggie
Just when you thought you’d seen it all, Food Network comes up with a few culinary rabbits to pull from its hat to begin the new year.
On January 3 at 8pm, the wonderful U.S. adaptation of Japan’s Iron Chef, Iron Chef America, will premiere an episode that truly fits the series’ name. The chefs will be asked to create “American meals,” whatever that is, and they’ll be working with produce found in Washington, DC. For this special episode, the “secret ingredient” will be anything the 2 teams of chefs can extract from the backyard of the public housing development on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, otherwise known as the Obamas’ vegetable garden, outside The White House.
One of the takeaways from this show is a look at the depth and breadth of the White House garden. Based on the ingredients the chefs used in this battle, this ain’t no backyard enterprise. Sure there was broccoli, tomatoes, onions and carrots, but there were also varieties and colors that impressed even Food’s resident brain and Iron Chef commentator Alton Brown. Indeed, at one point during the show another White House chef mentioned that the garden’s excess is donated to soup kitchens in the D.C. area.
But the surprises, and frankly the delights, don’t end there. For this episode Food abandons its usual format of Iron Chef vs a challenger. Instead Food makes like WWE, staging what at times seems a tag-team match of titan chefs, including one, chef/restaurateur/culinary personality Emeril Lagasse, whose departure from Food for Discovery’s Planet Green some time ago left a bitter taste in the mouths of network officials and Emeril devotees alike.
Somehow Emeril is back on Food’s screens, for this night at least, making his debut on Iron Chef. Emeril teamed with Iron Chef regular Mario Batali, his red hair blazing, along with his trademark shorts and bright orange crocs. Their competition is Iron Chef staple Bobby Flay and White House Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford.
While it would have been appropriate to stage this battle of family-grown vegetables in America’s kitchen in The White House, the venue was the sound stage known as Kitchen Stadium, near Food’s Chelsea Market seat in NY City. Fortunately, the Washington, DC, feel of the show is aided by the fact that it opens with the chefs walking the lawn of the White House, unaware of the specifics of the challenge.
To be fair to viewers, we won’t reveal who greets the chefs at The White House, but we’ll say the cuisine celebrity trio of Flay, Batali and Emeril seems genuinely awed. The audience of about 50 lobbyists, congressional staff, D.C. insiders and cable association heads who attended a special screening of this episode recently at NCTA Headquarters, just steps from the Capitol, were equally awed (see photo below). A gasp went up from the uneasily impressed crowd when this person appeared on NCTA’s theater-size HD screen in the association’s first-rate theater.
The show itself, a special version edited down to 45 minutes from 90 minutes for this occasion at NCTA, was exhilarating, largely because the teams were so evenly matched. When you pit Batali and Emeril vs Flay and Comerford, it’s difficult to predict a clear winner. The creativity of the chefs usually is the centerpiece of this series; it was on this night, too. As new Iron Chef Jose Garces, who was on hand for the screening, told us when we asked if he’d picked up any lessons from the screen, “Everyone was challenged,” he gasped. (By the way, Garces prepared the hors d’oeuvres, drinks and desserts for the special screening. They were divine, particularly a ginger-based cocktail and a mini chocolate bomb to die for.)
It was also a chance to see Emeril actually cook, putting to rest the rumor that he’s lost his touch as a hands-on chef. (Anyone who’s attended a taping of Emeril’s erstwhile Food Network hit, Emeril Live!, knows Emeril’s personality not his knife skills was the star of that show. Most of the “cooking” on that series was done by Emeril’s staff offstage.) But here, on this night, Emeril, noticeably heavier than in his Food days, was covered in sweat, jaunting around Kitchen Stadium, paring White House vegetables with a roast turkey and concocting New Orleans beignets, with vegetable filling, and chicory coffee for dessert.
And there were even more surprises than the gorgeous celebrity judges—Food’s Nigella Lawson, actress and gardener Jane Seymour and Olympics swimmer Natalie Coughlin. While nothing we’ve seen looks bad on NCTA’s HD screen, the HD picture clearly made this food fight even more mouthwatering than it will be in standard def Jan 3.
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