So a couple of thoughts on this episode ... Within the first 15 minutes of cooking, I was really impressed with the base flavor pairings that Oringer was taking on, and I found myself strongly in the camp against Cora. After contemplating my emotion, I think by default I cheer against Cora because I think I can cook many of things she cooks, not boasting, just not very intrigued by her techniques and often not craving the courses she puts forth. My gut feel is that there's a bit of redundancy in her approach, like I swear I've seen her throw something on a brioche round with an egg and bacon a few times before, and I know I saw her do this in the last battle with the green eggs and ham. More generally, I think my default emotions are Pro Batali, Pro Morimoto, Very Pro Symon (probably because he's the new kid on the block ... oh and I sort of cook like him), on the fence with Flay each time (more negative when I see him whip up yet another Johnny Cake), and almost patently Con with Cora.
As I'm kibitzing with my wife on how I think she's about to get her ass kicked, we start talking about how cool it would be to see a "challenge test" where the show would forcibly rotate out the weakest chef each year by having a cookoff among say, the chefs with the three worst records for the season. It could be all in one day, like a 3 hour marathon with round robin (a food network special like the superbowl), and this time the guest judges wouldn't know who was presenting each course (i.e. blind tasting). If they really wanted to get bold, they could have the judges be the 2 chefs with the top record or point total for the season along with Jeffrey Steingarten (he's brutal, but he knows food inside and out). Granted, this sort of event would be a risk to the food network in that viewers loyal to the losing chef would likely be less likely to tune in, but it would be hard to argue if the losing chef got objectively stomped by his / her peers. On the upside, this would give food network the opportunity to concurrently add a new Iron Chef each season while maintaining 80% of the gauntlet of talent, and over time this would only further their influence on celebrity chefdom as they make or break a new crop of emerging and prominent chefs each year, thereby progressively exerting increasing influence on what "prominent chef" really means. Well given that the foodnetwork execs actually allowed McDonalds to sponsor one of their Iron Chef America battles last year (I kid you not), and there was even some commotion they were party to subliminal advertising for said insult to the culinary arts, I can't imagine this will happen, but it was a fun daydream anyway.
Back to the battle, so honestly I'll have to watch it again to figure out all the zany things that Oringer pulled off, but I was very surprised with how close the scoring was in the end. The key differentiator though, despite Oringer's utilization of molecular gastronomy, was taste as Oringer garnered a near perfect 29 of 30 points. We saw the same thing in the Cora battle with Alex Stupak, the molecular gastronomist made all these weird and amazing things, but still kicked ass on taste. I think this might mean there's a correlation with these people seeking out molecular gastronomy techniques and their broad spectrum understanding of taste, it's a new and semi-systematic approach that concentrates on new ways to present and concentrate flavor and texture, and to beguile the eater's assumptions about what something on a plate is and what it should or could be. In any case, with all the science that Cora's been blinded with so far this season, hopefully food network and Cora are taking note that molecular gastronomy can no longer be thought of as that science stuff, but as a very legitimate and significant trend in cooking. On Cora specifically, I think she might want to learn some new tricks, or maybe food network will just need to get her some easier opponents.
|