[Sca-cooks] pennsic iron chef competition

[Olwen the Odd]

Well.  Thank you El Hermoso for that informative discourse found wedged
amongst the hand slapping and 'you idiot' comments.  I said I had never seen
the show.  I wouldn't have asked a question if the silly weblink gave
"newbie" information on the subject.  Gawd.  Sorry I asked at this
marketplace.
Olwen

>On Saturday 04 January 2003 11:01 pm, Olwen the Odd wrote:
> > [...]but what if you
> > have planned all these vegetable dishes and desserts and the suprize
> > ingredient is a fish?[...]
>
>ARGH!
>
>If you PLANNED the dishes before the competition, you did it wrong! :-)
>
>The very essence of "Iron Chef" is improvisational cooking!  In the context
>of the SCA, we have the added challenge of "authentic, medieval"
>improvisational cooking (which, in my opinion, makes it even more fun).
>
>In the show, the "home team" is a stable of 4 chefs, each with their
>own specialty.  A visiting chef shows up and challenges one of them to
>a cook-off.  On the day of the competition, with no warning, the person
>running the competition unveils the ingredient, and the two competing chefs
>have 1 hour to put together a collection of dishes that exemplify whatever
>the secret ingredient is.  Judges then taste and score the dishes as to
>how tasty they are AND how well the reflect the character of the secret
>ingredient.
>
>I am reminded of the time a chef showed up and challenged "Iron Chef
>Chinese"
>(Chen Kenichi, the "home team's" master Chinese-food chef)...and the secret
>ingredient turned out to be yogurt.  Not exactly a common ingredient in
>Chinese cooking.  Mr. Kenichi has a rather expressive face, and the "deer
>in
>the headlights" look was wonderful.
>
>He won anyway, as I recall.
>
>In the SCA context, a big part of the test of skill and knowledge is having
>a
>good idea of, when presented with the surprise ingredient, which medieval
>cultures made use of it, and what cooking techniques were used in period
>for
>the ingredient, and what other ingredients were combined with them.  The
>rest
>is a matter of "how well can you and your team cook?" (NOT "how well can
>you
>and your team follow a recipe"...)
>
>I don't recall EVER seeing the Iron Chefs (on the show) pulling out
>cookbooks
>when the ingredient was announced...
>
>In MY (admittedly narrow and possibly minority) opinion, there should be NO
>advance planning, and the "test" of the contest should NOT be "who has the
>biggest collection of cookbooks with the best indices to look up the
>ingredient in and copy recipes out of" but RATHER "who can best represent
>authentically medieval creative cooking with the ingredient".  This is a
>good
>thing, otherwise you'd end up with every team having nearly the same
>collection of dishes (after all, there are only so many primary-source
>recipes for each ingredient available) and it'd be rather dull...
>
>I like to imagine that one is a medieval cook, just hired on by a lord, and
>the very moment you walk in the door on the first day, before you've even
>had
>a chance to look at the lord's pantry, he plunks down a pile of
>(ingredient)
>in front of you and says "I've invited a bunch of important people to a
>feast
>tonight, and want to impress them with a feast themed around THIS.  Hop to
>it!".  What, as a medieval cook, would you do? ...
>
>signed,
>El Hermoso Dormido, who greatly enjoys improvisational cooking, and
>convinced
>"authentic" and "creative" are NOT always exclusive...


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