Despite all the hype about celebrity chefs - whether they're on TV or simply known because they're good at what they do - and their cookbooks, the best selling ones are still the same type of cookbooks that have always been popular: basic, all-around cookbooks with tried-and-true recipes. But how could books from Phyllis Pellman Good's Fix it and Forget it series outsell books from the likes of Rachael Ray, whose name alone is definitely a household word?

The answer is simple and lies just underneath the surface of current cooking trends. Right now, both slow food and "30-minute meals" are popular, as are organic ingredients, exotic flavors and learning to cook as a pastime, the premise that reinvented the Food Network. The fact is that, no matter what the trends are, most people already know how to cook something and have been cooking longer than the Food Network has been telling them how to do it.  Recipes were passed around and improved over time. It may not have been organic or gourmet, but food had to be cooked and whatever it was usually tasted pretty good to everyone in the family.

A few weeks ago, we managed to find out that an upcoming episode of Iron Chef America would feature both Rachael Ray and Giada de Laurentiis, pairing Rachael with Mario Batali and Giada with Bobby Flay. Even the wordsmith host of the show thinks that this battle will be one for the record books, saying “The only way this battle could be better for the Food Network would be for them to have Emeril Lagasse as the secret ingredient” in an article in the Ithaca Journal.

The episode was actually filmed in January, but it is scheduled to air sometime in November, which means that Rachael and Giada have already done their thing in Kitchen Stadium – and both report that it was one of their most challenging experiences. Interestingly enough, the article also gives confirmation that the chefs learn about the ingredients in advance, as before the taping the ingredient was revealed to them: cranberries. Given the ingredient, the episode will most likely air in mid-November or around Thanksgiving, but we’ll have to wait until then to see how well the celebrity chef pairings worked together and to find out whose cuisine reigned supreme.