Iron Chef #2 - Foie Gras Battle
What? No Caviar?!
Challenger Yosei Kobayakawa vs Iron Chef Japanese Rokusaburo Michiba
Iron Chef 1993 Episode 2 - Overall episode #002 - October 17th, 1993
Welcome to the Foie Gras battle. The Chairman has delivered to us the most luxurious cholesterol man has ever forced beast to create!
For those even casually acquainted with Iron Chef, foie gras shows up frequently in non-foie episodes. Along with caviar, truffles, and lobster it forms the Mt. Rushmore of ingredients to best win-over the judges. I am surprised the Chairman had the restraint to wait until the second episode to feature foie gras.
I expect today’s battle to be true to form. Get your popcorn sprinkled with gold leaf ready. We’re getting fancy!
Play-In Tournament Dish: Omurice
We get an introduction video on the dish complete with b-roll of (in order):
Ginza crossing with streetcars in the 1950's
Pedestrians in 1950's Ginza
Omurice and ketchup plate spinning
Shopfronts of 1950's Ginza
Spoon cutting the omurice to display the cross-section
An sad inverted omurice that looks like it was cooked in the 1950's and left on a Ginza window-sill
Fantastic.
We have five challengers in the play-in tournament so I'll keep it brief.
Challenger #1: Noboru Itani
Donut Omurice
Yikes! Itani plated the omurice in a Bundt pan, then filled the center with béchamel and bacon. A chef after our hearts. Literally.
Don’t worry about how you should eat this thing. Worry about if you should eat this thing.
Challenger #2: Fuya Abe
Neopolitan Omurice
Take a Western fusion dish, make it twice as western, and serve it for breakfast at Best Western. Ingredients include frozen diced veggies, diced ham, and chopped hot dogs.
Gold foil sighting! Look at that proud cherry tomato in gilded livery towering over it’s population of frozen diced serfs.
Challenger Abe, you are on academic probation. Take a semester to eat an omurice.
Nope.
Challenger #3: Masatada Oshima
Tamba Omurice
Fried rice wrapped in a crepe made with red-food coloring, wrapped in another crepe without food coloring. Drown that fried rice matryoshka doll in sauteed garlic. In Tamba everyone has fancy red undies under their less stylish undies.
Challenger #4: Yosei Kobayakawa
Magic Omurice
The magic is that it is not an omurice. This is just an omelet atop steak tartar looking fried rice. If you are worried that the color of the rice came from obscene amounts of ketchup, don’t be.
No, not ketchup. The color of the dish was derived when Kobayakawa accidentally dropped his entire spice cabinet into the rice and it got embarrassed.
Challenger #5: Haruhiko Taniguchi
Mushrooms in the Forest Omurice
Taniguchi, I think you missed your off-ramp about six exits back on yoshoku highway. I’m afraid this is the end of the road.
An attempt at an inverse tamago roll and hayashi rice gone awry. The thin crepe did not have the structure to support a runny brown fried rice plated around a runny brown stew. The result is a runny brown dwarf star, the least appetizing of our celestial bodies.
Taniguchi has the creativity of a painter. He also cooks like he replaced his knives with paintbrushes . The forest of raw broccoli florets exists solely to support the omurice rolls and dam up the man-made gravy lake Don’t eat those. Don’t eat any of this. Buy a rice cooker, crack an egg in it, and thank me later.
Just how many “forest mushrooms” did you eat before conceiving this?
The winner of the omurice Play-In tournament is Challenger #4 Yosei Kobayakawa and his Magic Omurice!
Meet the Challenger:
Yosei Kobayakawa
Challenger Yosei Kobayakawa is a French cuisine chef, Italian cuisine chef, certified professional accountant, French cuisine chef. He has been working in the restaurant industry for 22-years, 16 of which was spent wondering whether he wanted to work in the restaurant industry or do something cool, you know… like surfing or being a fighter pilot.
It is precisely Kobayakawa’s indecisiveness that he credits to giving him the advantage in this competition. After his 12-spice “Magic Omurice” secured his play-in victory, he remarked “Why use one spice when you can use them all?” while staring blankly at the pantry.
When away from work, Kobayakawa scrolls past titles on Netflix for hours on end.
Showdown:
Challenger Yosei Kobayakawa vs Iron Chef Rokusaburo Michiba!
Kobayakawa didn’t point. I think he was uncomfortable making a decision on the spot like that. Michiba looks like when the teacher calls on you in class and you absolutely didn’t hear the question.
I’m reversing my stance on the Chairman standing on a box for this segment. I’m now a reluctant member of #TeamNoBox.
Tale of the Tape:
Challenger Yosei Kobayakawa vs Iron Chef Rokusaburo Michiba
The Chairman’s Fit:
Speaking of the Chairman's fit, I'm glad you asked
The Chairman remains undercover as a party magician, waiting for the day he can reveal his true identity as a wizard. A wizard on a quest to party.
The Reveal:
Foie Gras!
The Chairman keeps it classy with an understated delivery for a sumptuous ingredient.
Tough draw for Iron Chef Michiba against a challenger specializing in French cuisine. No reaction from either chef. Both seem underwhelmed being required to showcase a luxurious and ethically murky ingredient (the stuff great Iron Chef battles are usually made of).
The Chairman's Wisdom:
“Eating one hundred times for one hundred flavors”
This quote was from the force-fed goose whose enlarged liver is today’s theme ingredient.
Foie Gras b-roll for our eyes to feast on as we contemplate the Chairman's wisdom:
Ruins of medieval hilltop fort
Foie gras topped with a fried egg
The Great Sphinx of Giza
the Roman Coliseum
A South Asian statue
Evergreen forest at sunset as shot from the highway in a moving vehicle
A too-small pot with a too-large lobe of foie gras
Profound.
Allez! Cuisine!:
Reminder that this is the first episode with a one-hour time limit, but still no minimum number of dishes. Maybe this explains the difference in the energy being brought by the Chairman as opposed to the unenthused competitors.
In the Booth:
We’ve got the usual crew of Kenji Fukui and Dr. Yukio Hattori. Not much to see here until we get to the translated episodes. This is Iron Chef so we can safely assume the following exchange happened:
Fukui: What a luxurious ingredient, Doc! The Chairman is sparing NO expense for this battle!
Dr. Hattori: Indeed. Did you know Foie Gras isn’t just used in French cuisine? It actually dates back to ancient Egypt.
Fukui: Denial (the Nile) isn’t just a river in Egypt, it is also the Chairman’s policy in nourishing us.
Dr. Hattori: Right you are! I pack my own lunch!
The Battle:
In what would become an Iron Chef Michiba tradition, the chef writes out his menu with deft calligraphy before starting to cook. Today it says “Foie Gras + Seafood = ??”
In another Iron Chef Michiba tradition, he makes a katsuobushi dashi called “the Broth of Vigor” using a contractor trash bag full of katsuobushi flakes. His assistants cannot hide their concern. Don’t worry, guys. He does this all the time.
Iron Chef Michiba intends to have a hirame (olive flounder) and foie gras dish. He's actually going to do it. Fish and foie gras. The mad man!
Iron Chef Michiba also plans a Tilefish and foie gras dish. If anyone can pull off two fish dishes with goose/duck liver, it Roksaburo the Rebel. Sadly, this is impossible. Interesting technique skinning the fish prior to filleting.
I expected both chefs to use caviar, because this is Iron Chef. Instead it is just Iron Chef Michiba back at it again. I’m not 100% sure he knows he has to use the foie gras. This is his first episode, after all. We are on course for a great seafood dinner, though.
Meanwhile, big decisions are being made in Kobayakawa-corner. Maybe the challenger should’ve wrote a menu.
That Knife Life:
After plating asparagus with a protractor, Challenger Kobayakawa spends half-an-hour making buffet table garnishes.
The Judges’ Table(s):
J-Pop record producer Yasushi Akimoto (22 battles).
Akimoto ate far too many forest mushrooms during the play-in round. He is unsure if the plant monster behind him is real or not.
Actress Mitsuko Ishii (7 battles).
Judge Ishii can determine the quality grade of foie gras while it is still in the goose. It is an uncomfortable process for all parties involved.
Food critic Asako Kishi (199 battles).
The first appearance of the famed East German judge! She will be filing the role of “the mean judge” on this reality competition, and doing so with aplomb. Even an Iron Chef needs to hear their best effort could have been a little better.
Dishes:
Challenger Kobayakawa completes one dish:
Foie Gras and Matsutake Symphony
Continuing his “plate-everything, leave no ingredient behind” philosophy on editing, Kobayakawa brings a lot of instruments to play in this symphony:
Pan-seared foie gras - Brass section
Breaded and fried matsutake mushrooms - Another brass section
Boiled asparagus - Woodwinds
Sautéed matsukake mushrooms cut into stars - Triangle
Poached salad shrimp - Kazoo
Tomato-peel rose on a lemon peel - The sound made when two balloons are rubbed together.
That being said, this dish get the rare “triple-oishi” from the panel of judges.
Iron Chef Michiba completes two dishes:
Iron Chef’s First Dish: Steamed Tilefish-wrapped Foie Gras
Iron Chef Michiba remembered the foie gras after all! The foie gras was sautéed, cut into batons and wrapped in Tilefish filets with matsutake mushrooms. The whole bundle was steamed in aluminum foil pouches and then plated on the Broth of Vigor and garnished with a daikon julienne.
And caviar, because why not.
This is the better Foie Gras and Matsutake symphony. Iron Chef Michiba just went ahead and remixed that for Challenger Kobayakawa. The second dish may not even matter, which is good because…
Iron Chef’s Second Dish:
Foie Gras and Hirame
Iron Chef Michiba just could not help himself. He must plate a raw dish. It is part of his covenant with Poseidon.
Foie gras cannot be served raw, but do you know what can be? Hirame. Therefore, I made for you foie gras with a hirame blanket. It’s on the back of the menu in Comic Sans.
Whose cuisine reigns supreme?!
Iron Chef Michiba with his first victory!
While the Challenger did not utilize caviar on his foie gras dish, he did plate the components in the shape of the Mercedes-Benz logo. That is the difference between both Chefs’ approaches. Both are very thoughtful. Michiba hand-writes a menu before touching an ingredient. Kobayakawa is still thinking about plating that asparagus into a peace-sign instead. Michiba seemed more organized in channeling his creativity.
Iron Chef Michiba put together the most cohesive dish, whereas Challenger Kobayakawa had many well executed components plated with molecular precision that made little sense together.
Also, he did not have caviar. The judges rescind their triple-Oishi.
Episode notes:
My favorite dish was Iron Chef Michiba’s Tilefish and Foie Gras wraps. The caviar was unnecessary, but so was 60% of the challenger’s plate.
Foie gras will be back as a theme ingredient three more times.
Next up, episode #003 - Blowfish!