Iron Chef

The basic premise is that a really rich person named Chairman Kaga set up a place called Kitchen Stadium. In the stadium he would have top-notch chefs compete against his personally chosen "Iron Chefs" in a contest to make a variety of dishes based on a secret theme ingredient.

The dishes then would be presented to a four-person panel of judges who would then decide whether the Iron Chef or the challenger had prepared the better dishes.

There are four Iron Chefs; Iron Chef Japanese, Iron Chef French, Iron Chef Chinese, and Iron Chef Italian. The actual men who appeared as Iron Chefs during the series did change over the years at times.

The show has become a cult hit in the U.S. I look forward to seeing the program each Friday night. It's really fascinating seeing who the challengers are, learning what the secret ingredient is and then watching both chefs compete to come up with the best dishes they can. Sometimes the dishes are very straight-forward types of dishes but sometimes there are some really strange things prepared like the time Iron Chef Japanese Morimoto prepared "hot dogs" using spaghetti instead of actual hot dogs.

The Iron Chef as aired in the U.S. featured the later shows, with Morimoto as Iron Chef Japanese. Then another set of shows was released, these prior to the ones already aired and featured Michiba as Iron Chef Japanese. Michiba was the oldest Iron Chef and really seemed very calm, collected, and never seemed to hurry but always seemed to get everything done without hurrying.

One thing I wondered about for a while was one of the tasters that was one quite a few of the Michiba-era series. The older man who was always seated last on the right was identified as a Rosanjin scholar yet, if memory serves me, there was never any explanation of what a Rosanjin scholar was.

So I decided to find out. Kitaoji Rosanjin was born in 1883 and lived until 1959. He started out in his youth being a calligrapher and antique dealer. For the next part of his life he entered the field of cooking. The general idea at the time was to emphasize the presentation of the food. Rosanjin, noted as being sort of cantankerous, emphasized the flavor rather than the presentation. He said "Cookery is a splendid art because people can be greatly moved by the flavors of food. therefore, it is most important for a chef to understand flavors well. Anyone can become good at preparing sashimi or cooking tempura if they practice for many years, but understanding flavors is a talent one must be born with, it cannot be learned with time."

In 1921 he founded the Bishoko Club (Gourmet's Club) which became a private restaurant and four years later he opened the Hoshigoaka Restaurant in Tokyo. To become a cook in one of his restaurants you had to pass a test. You had to prepare food at Rosanjin's own house. The chef was given the head and bony parts of a fish and told to go into the field behind the house and find vegetables. Since there was no gas, the food had to be prepared on a charcoal-filled drum with a grill on top. If you cooked once, you didn't get employed. If you were invited to cook at his house a second day, then you had passed his test.

Then later in life he began working with ceramics and became an expert in that field also.

Iron Chef is worth watching; not only is it entertaining but you can learn a lot about the Japanese culture.