The Kitchen Stadium Message Boards are proud to the present the first in a series of “Iron Chef” episode reviews, written to highlight episodes available on Iron Chef Collection. Our first review is of the famous Potato Battle with Iron Chef Chen Kenichi and challenger Katsuyo Kobayashi.
Chen vs. Katsuyo Kobayashi
Original Japan Airdate: 8/26/94
Iron Chef, The Official Book episode# 43
Iron Chef Collection episode# 232
Imprinted upon your brain, forever, will be two facts by the end of this episode: Only one woman challenger has entered Kitchen Stadium before; and she defeated Chen Kenichi.
Now, Katuyo Kobayashi, known by millions in Japan for her TV show, “Today’s Cooking,” faces the Iron Chefs. In addition to appearing on TV since 1968, she’s authored over seventy cookbooks, creating over a thousand recipes each year. “I never run out of new ideas when it comes to cooking,” she explains. “I’m swamped with new ideas all the time.” The Chairman exhorts today’s challenger: “Now, Kobayashi, with all the housewives in Japan behind you, entertain us with your ultimate home cooking!”
Kobayashi starts by breaking a basic Kitchen Stadium convention: She won’t pick an Iron Chef. “So you say,” asks Kaga, nonplussed, “I can make the choice?” With a gleeful (perhaps even diabolical) smile, he selects Chen.
The ingredient: potatoes. As an Italian chef once told Kaga, “Go for the tail of the potato.” “You may be surprised, but there is a head and a tail to this round vegetable.”
Commenting on today’s battle are actress Mayuko Takata, Dr. Yukio Hattori, and Kenji Fukui. Among those in the observers’ box are the challenger’s daughter, Mariko, and son, Kentaro (a future challenger).
Kobayashi’s style is deliberate and reflective and, as Otah remarks, “so relaxed” as she calmly cuts her first potato. But her pace picks up as she talks continuously (as TV personalities must), runs around the Stadium looking for the right plate, and gives orders to young assistants who can barely keep up.
Chen not only has to forge from the flames dynamic potato dishes; he also has to shrug off constant reminders and jabs from Otah and Fukui about his previous loss to a lady challenger (about which he supposedly “still has nightmares”).
Kobayashi is the only challenger I know of who crosses over to the Iron Chef’s side, during the competition, to check how he’s doing. Chen is polite, as one would expect, but says, “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I had great fun doing this!” Kobayashi tells Otah after the battle. Asked to rate his work this time around, Chen replies, “I never score my own dishes.”
The challenger offers a magnificent set of seven dishes:
- Chicken & Potato Meat Ball in Soup
- Beef & Potato Stew
- Potato Rice
- Potato & Mushroom Salad
- Stir-fried Potato & Garlic with Parmesan Cheese
- Fried Tofu & Potato Balls
- Potato & Banana Desert
Iron Chef Chen counters with a set of four:
- Potato Salad with Lobster & Caviar
- Stir-fried Pork on Fried Potato Nest
- Steamed Potatoes in Chicken Stew
- Potato & Peach in Papaya Milk
On the judging panel are Former Lower House Member Shinichiro Kurimoto, Mayuko Takata, and Rosanjin scholar Masaaki Hirano.
“I’m impressed with this innovative dish,” Hirano says emphatically of the Potato & Banana Desert. “I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly!”
Kurimoto nearly swoons on tasting Chen’s Potatoes in Chicken Stew. “You did stumble right out of the gate,” comments Hirano (he and others didn’t care for the salad), “but now you’re back to your norm. Sorry, but–that’s what I feel. In this, the flavors are SO profound.”
“A little starch in some of the comments. Heads or tails? We’ll see how the verdict goes.”
Check out the episode on Iron Chef Collection to see who takes home the victory!
Side notes: I recently went to New Orleans with my wife; she for business (as editor of a nursing journal), I to eat (twice!) at restaurant Stella! Chef-owner Scott Boswell knows several Iron Chefs, and it was here that I met Sakai in March of 2006, an event chronicled on Stella!’s web site, www.restaurantstella.com (look in the Stella!Photos section).
Rodney Schroeter
April 2008
Kitchen Stadium Board
24 April, 2008