My buddies Miriam, Anna, and Arona invited me to their apartment last night for an Iron Chef party. Iron Chef is an awesome show! Without cable in Manhattan you do not have television reception. But luckily, many buildings in New York have access to free basic cable (i.e. a cable cord sticking out of the wall that you affix to your TV and voila!). Basically, when you have basic cable service in the city, you get like 3 bonus channels to the normal ABC, CBS, NBC options. You get TBS, TNT, and the Food Network. That basically translates to mean that at any time of day you can choose to watch a Jim Carrey movie on TBS, a Law & Order rerun on TNT, or Iron Chef on the Food Network. To be perfectly honest with you, what more in life do you need?
Iron Chef originated in Japan which was the best best show. Reason being: subtitles. Subtitles in kung-fu? Awesome! Subtitles on chef competition? Priceless!
The premise of the show is that it begins with the "Chairman" who comes out and announces the contest's main ingredient. It is then the competitors' job to make several different dishes containing that key ingredient, from appetizers, salads, entrees, desserts, and more. Then the Iron Chef competes against one of their challengers to see who can prepare the best meal and are judged in terms of creativity, plating (display), and taste. The best contest I ever saw was the eel episode. One of the chef's even made eel ice cream! Yum! The evening's winner takes home all the glory!
So my friends love the show. They decided to have an Iron Chef party making several dishes from one key ingredient. Last night they chose mushrooms! I couldn't have been more happy! They made for the guests mushroom barley soup, mushroom pizza, mushroom spinach pasta, mushroom pizza, mushroom onion phylo thingys, and baked portobello mushroom tomato pizzas. Everything was bellisimo! Arona doesn't eat mushrooms. She must not have been part of the ingredient discussion. We didn't have any mushroom dessert ideas unfortunately. I suggested shroom brownies, but alas, the idea was nixed. :)
The hosts also wore hats (made for the occasion by YI) that noted which was the "Iron Chef" and which were the sous (not soux or sioux) chefs for the evening. Everything was delicious and I'm hoping we can repeat the festive evening!
We followed the meal with a special episode of "Iron Chef America" featuring Giada De Laurentiis paired up with Iron Chef Bobby Flay and Rachael Ray with Iron Chef Mario Battali. Usually its just one Iron Chef versus one challenger. The main ingredient was cranberries and surprisingly, no one chose to make cranberry crunch, a staple in the Jewish community. That and the cranberry jelly from a can dish. Yum all the way. The yummiest looking this was the cranberry glazed shrimp wrapped in thinly sliced porcetta (pig). Why are all the best things treif? God is always testing us! Oy. The winners were Rachael Ray and Mario. Although, the real winners were those who got to sample the delicacies. Luucckkkyy...
4 comments:
That is one of the only advantages to living in the "Upper Heights" in my opinion. When I lived on Fort Wash, we got TBS, TNT, and Food Channel (and ESPN and Starz a couple days a year, but who knows where that came from), it was like Christmas morning every day. Now on Bennett, we only get TNT. Its very sad, but what can you do, right?
Um, pay for cable cheap-o. If you're lucky, they'll even throw in Country Music Television!
Dude! You totally forgot the best part - The craisin commercial that was on like 20 times.
also on TBS - Friends - hello?
You are soooo right Arona. Forgot bout that. Thats why bloggers need to make outlines before they jump into a rant. OMG, the same exact Craisins commercial was shown FIVE times. The main ingredient was cranberries and Craisin (naturally) was the sponsor of the ep, but seriously, 5 times?! Not only that, but it was some totally creepy commercial with these three people standing in a "ocean" of cranberries. Do cranberries grow in oceans like that? And then the guy says to the little girl, we are going to get her to eat these instead of her candy. And the little girl goes, they're sweet....like yooouuuu. Ewww, seriously, was that just a pedophile moment in a Craisins commercial? And did we need to see you gross me out 5 times? Seriously!
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