Theme Ingredient: Udon noodles
Iron Chef: Sakai
Challenger: Tooru Komori, a traditional Edo period chef
Remarks: This episode aired on Food Network sometime in the late fall of 2000, no later than December 9. Tooru Komori, a traditional Edo period chef, was the challenger. He chose IC French Hiroyuki Sakai, which was kind of a surprise to me; I expected him to pull an Ohta Faction-like challenge and go after Morimoto. Guest commentators were actor Toiyu Watanabe and actress Miyako Furitari; the other judges were photographer Tenmei Kanoh and the ubiquitous Asako Kishi.
The theme ingredient was udon noodles. Like I've seen with some other noodle challenges, they stopped Sakai after 50 minutes and let Komori finish his dishes. It's done this way because cooking straight through, then serving the challenger's dishes before the Iron Chef's would mean that the IC's dishes would sit for 10-15 minutes getting soggy. When Sakai returned from the break, it looked like it took a while for him to get his rhythm back. Or maybe it was the fact that Komori and all his sous chefs stood at the edge of Sakai's side of the kitchen staring at him.
- Komori's dishes:
- Udon in a glutinous root sauce
- Steamed egg custard in turnip
- Baked udon with miso sauce. Very interesting presentation here; he tied bunches of noodles into knots and baked them. It looked pretty cool.
- Deep-fried udon with snapper and shrimps
- Udon wrapped in deep-fried tofu
- Udon pudding
- Sakai countered with:
- Udon and sea urchin gratin
- Udon salad a la Charlotte
- Sauteed shrimp wrapped in Udon
- Udon curry
- Udon Iron Chef style (and the others weren't? I missed what went into this)
- Udon blancmange
Unfortunately, I missed the tasting. Komori won 3-1: Kanoh 19-18 Komori, Furitari 20-19 Komori, Watanabe 19-18 Sakai, Kishi 18-16 Komori.
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