"alton brown" news and stories

Usually, when they introduce the secret ingredient on Iron Chef America, we can fool ourselves into thinking the contestants really have no idea what they're about to see. The music, the flashing lights, the screaming from The Chairman -- it all overwhelms the fact that the two chefs who are challenged to make five courses out of this stuff look, well, shockingly unshocked.

Never was that more apparent than this week. When the lids came off the trays and the no-longer-new-to-this-Iron-Chef-thing champ Jose Garces and fresh-faced challenger Kelly Liken were presented with mounds and mounds of stinky blue cheese, they didn't so much as blink. Hell, Garces didn't even look up at the chairman. When Liken unnaturally leaned in and started petting some of the cheese wedges (?!), the gig was up. This, clearly, was not an ingredient that was "new" to them.

The recipes reflected as much. Liken's stock-in-trade in Vail, Colo. tends toward local/regional cuisine, and her recipes were for the most part sophisticated and well thought-out -- except for that final fruit crisp that substituted a blue-cheese layer for butter, just under the crumb topping. Kudos for ingenuity, but -- ew!

It's been a few weeks since we checked in with the bizarre ritual/quite-possibly-rigged competition that is Iron Chef America. In that time, not only has the intermittently gaunt Alton Brown gained a little more color to his complexion, but also -- wonder of wonders! -- reigning Iron Chef Cat Cora was upset by Holly Smith in a grape face-off.

It was the first true Iron Chef loss this season, not counting the White House special where Bobby Flay and Mario Batali went head-to-head with non-Ironers. Would lightening strike twice? Would the Food Network judges reaffirm our faith that they're not, shall we say, stacking the decks?

Don't crack open the champagne -- or rather, the prosecco -- just yet. We mention the sparkling beverage because, in a fit of hubris, that's literally what this week's challenger did. Demonstrating a trick we've never attempted, venerable NYC chef Geoffrey Zakarian opened his prosecco with a few quick slashes of a chef's knife -- shattering the neck of the bottle while he was at it.

If there's one thing we can count on in an Iron Chef challenge, it's the secret ingredient. The opposition might be woefully mismatched, the sous-chefs can be fumbling their utensils all over the place, and Alton Brown could be peddling staler puns than your late grandpa -- but still, we get to watch talented pros tackle proteins we'd never try at home (offal, mackerel) or let loose their most complex, impressive techniques on your everyday household avocado or cherry.

But despite the promise of this week's installment being "ladies' night" -- ultra-imposing defending champ Cat Cora versus New York's chef laureate of Mexican cuisine, Julieta Ballesteros -- and despite the usual fanfare from Brown and the chairman (beamed in via satellite), we have to say we were a little let down by the surprise guest.

Ricotta? Really? The Body Snatcher of cheeses -- creamy white stuff that's usually so bland it takes on the personality of any other ingredient it touches? We suppose it could've been worse -- they've been tacky and chosen eggs or milk or something, you know, "womanly" -- but it wasn't a great start to the face-off.

You can take your coffee after your meal, or, like photographer and cook stinkkatze, take your coffee and put it in a marinade. Based on a recipe from Good Eats host Alton Brown -- who uses good strong coffee, cider vinegar, molasses and mustard to tenderize and flavor pork -- our blogger uses chicory, which is naturally non-caffeinated. The marinade is later cooked down as a glaze for the meat. Here it's served with sweet potatoes and onions.

A terrific source for all things porcine (as well as for another killer coffee-molasses marinade) is the Complete Book of Pork: A Guide to Buying, Storing, and Cooking the World's Favorite Meat, by Bruce Aidells.

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