Iron Chef

I told one of my friends that I have this blog for my writing class, and I asked her to tell me if she knew any good American food in Seattle. She suggested crawfish, and told me about a restaurant (which I will talk about next time). Then one day she called me and said "turn on the TV! They are cooking crawfish!"

Her voice sounded very excited, so I quickly turned it on and found the show. It is called Iron Chef America, and it is like a game show. They have five famous chefs, and a contestant picks one of them, and they compete to see who cooks best.

Every episode they have a special ingredient, and this time it was langoustine. My friend thought it was crawfish, but she was wrong. Langoustines come from the northeast Atlantic Ocean, and are sometimes called "Norway Lobsters." They are similar to crawfish, but they’re bigger and live in salt water.

Copyright 2006 Hans Hillewaert, licensed under Creative Commons CC-SA

When I started watching, I was surprised to see someone I recognized. The host of the show is Alton Brown, the same person who makes Good Eats, the show that taught me how to make corn bread pudding.

The show goes very fast, and I didn't understand some things they were saying. Each chef has some assistants who help him cook the food. They have one hour to make several dishes, and all of them must have the special ingredient in them. It was very exciting and stressful. Since they did not know the ingredient before they started, they had to design their dishes as they cooked. I can't imagine how they could create such beautiful things in so little time.

Even though it was so fast, I recognized many of the things they did from my own cooking. But they way they put everything together was beautiful, and made me hungry. I do not normally watch TV, but like Good Eats, it gave me many ideas. In the future I want to try to cook beautiful food like this. (But I will give myself more than one hour to do it!)