| IRON
FISH!
Winter, cold and cranky, has finally reared
its head in our quiet town. It looks kind of like Keenan Wynn, except with
wee icicles on its face in place of whiskers. Frozen and terrible lay the
city, futile human motion visible only inside the tiny orange bubbles of
warmth in which the people dwell. Is there anything on television? There
is not.
Actually, "Iron Chef America" was just on,
and that was all right. As I've said before, I like Alton Brown, and I'm
fond enough of the "Iron Chef America" series, and tonight they had a guy
using lasers and edible printer ink in his dishes against one of the original
Japanese Iron Chefs, Morimoto -- and did he win? I aint tellin' -- but there
was just something about the original Japanese Iron Chef series that the
American series just hasn't been able to capture: whacking apart live animals.
The original series had its share of days where
the secret ingredients were fairly conventional, I wont argue the fact. There
were plenty of times where the sheet was pulled back and it was, like, a
watermelon, or apples, nothing to get excited about. But almost as often,
the sheet would be pulled away to reveal a massive holding tank full of some
kind of live squid or blank-eyed fish, or horrible, aquatic insect. And you
just knew, whatever else the coming hour held, there were going to be graphic
scenes of God's critters being chopped clean in half while still struggling
to get away.
The day they had octopus was bad, but for sheer
horror, nothing held a candle to the day that they all had lobster. Eeeee
-- that one should've been in 'Faces of Death." Most of the horror was due
to the lobster's intensely simple nervous system, which is very similar to
a cockroach's in that it doesn't rely so much on having an intact brain to
keep all the motors going. The lobster's head would be on one side, while
it's neatly-bisected body would be doing a Shemp Howard spin on the table
beside it. The chefs themselves clearly go no thrill from the slaughter,
but, man, that sure didn't hold 'em back, either. They'd yank off all the
legs in one go, or scoop out all the organs while they were still throbbing
inside the body cavity -- Gah! Horror!
But let it not be said the Japanese are a wasteful
people -- every portion of those unfortunate critters was used in a dish,
even (especially!) the parts you wouldn't normally envision one'sself eating
without having a gun to the head. Thankfully, the Japanese have long blown
out their taste buds on fish, and the judges did not complain.
Speaking of fish, those were a pretty common
ingredient on the old Iron Chef -- mostly live, though the larger ones were
brought in sectioned. I suppose it shouldn't seem nearly as odd to me as
they do, the frequent fish battles, but in my mind I've never been able to
section the fish strata as cleanly as others. To me, there's Chicken, Beef,
Pork, and Fish, and what species of fish makes very little difference --
they've all been marinating in the same stuff, basically. I'd give you ten
to one odds that you could fix me up a plate with small slabs of tuna, perch,
dolphin, shark, and whale, and I'd not only be unable to identify them, I'd
be unable to determine whether or not they all came from the same fish. I
would, of course, be judging solely on color -- Lord knows I'd never let
any of 'em touch my tongue.
In closing, Iron Chef, please bring back the
whacking-apart of live, culinary critters. Your college-age following will
thank you.
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