I think my parents got rid of satellite TV. This is a tragedy because after watching a three-ep Blow Out marathon on Jet Blue on the flight over here, I was so jonesing for more. And I really wanted to catch up on The Dog Whisperer.
Anyway, while totes bored, as I often am in La Puente, I was flipping public channels and landed on the all Japanese network. I discovered this CRAZY AWESOME Japanese cooking show called DOTCH something something. It's like S&M porn for foodies.
Basically, there's a battle between two dishes created by two chefs. This episode's battle was beef rice bowl vs. sea urchin rice bowl. There are seven celebrities who vote on what they'd like to eat. The hosts spend the whole first part of the show showing informative and delicious segments about where the ingredients come from, how they are cooked, where they are raised, etc.
They showed a segment on an 88 year old man who claims to be the ORIGINAL SEA URCHIN FISHERMAN. He's so good he can practically find the best sea urchins by ESP. The sea urchins he collected, and which were being served, were bright, navel orange and super fresh looking. Then they showed the 20 year old Kamebishi soy sauce that they would serve with the competing super marbled beef, a demi-glace thick soy sauce so precious that the family did not sell it.
Over the course of the show, the chefs cook the tantalizing dishes in front of the voting celebrities. They cracked those sea urchins open right in their faces. They fanned the flames of some glowing red logs underneath a huge, fatty slab of meat which oozed and popped with caramelizing goodness. The seven celebrities cast several preliminary votes for what they'd like to eat, the saliva practically gushing in rivers from their titillated mouths. As they close in on the final vote, the celebs get a tiny taste of each dish.
Then they cast the final votes, and here's the rub -- if you vote for the losing dish, YOU DON'T GET TO EAT. The sea urchin rice bowl won the most votes, so the sea urchin rice bowl backers got to gorge on huge bowls of mitsuba, wasabi, and yamaimo strewn sea urchin goodness, while the losers who voted for the equally delicious looking beef bowl had to watch, totally titillated but unfed. IT'S SO CRUEL, I LOVE IT! And then, bizarrely, they sent the losing chef to the back to eat his beef bowl by himself which was actually really lonely-looking and sad.
If you catch it, you must watch it. As an added bonus, it has the awesome translated subtitles that used to run on pre-Food Network Iron Chef.
DOTCH
9 p.m., Saturdays (at least)
Japanese network on public television in L.A.
This show rocks! It is so mesmerizing! I wonder when they're going to dub it like post-Food Network Iron Chef...that I think will complete the sheer cheesiness of it all.
Beef vs. Sea Urchin is also the episode I happened to watch. Unfortunately it's been the only one as well. Although, I think it may come on on Fridays at 9 P.M.
Hopefully I'll catch another!
Scratch that, I believe it's 8 P.M. on Fridays.
in l.a., i assume you mean. i have no idea how to find it in brooklyn. i don't even know if my tv gets a japanese local channel. tv, it is a mysterious machine.
I discovered the show about a year ago. Thought it livlier and from an American perspective, goofier than Iron Chef; I just love it, and think it would be as big a hit on FN as Iron has been. Try not to miss any of the episodes.
I discovered this show about 6 months ago on KSCI-TV (18) here in L.A. and I can safely tell you that I LOVE THIS SHOW!!! Iron Chef is totally LIMP compared to the Dotch people!! And as far as American cooking shows go...ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ...
If an American network adopted the approach this show has, they just might solve the obesity problem in this country...because after watching this, I can't honestly see why anyone would ever want to venture into McDonalds, BK, KFC, etc. DO NOT PASS UP THIS SHOW, PEOPLE!!