Iron Chef: The Official Book

A behind-the-scenes look at the popular Food Network program offers an episode guide, interviews with the Iron Chefs, and menus and recipes created for the show.

"All chefs are equal in the eyes of an ingredient." So challenges Fuji Television's heart-palpitating Iron Chef: The Official Book, translated by Kaoru Hoketsu. In his foreword, Gourmet Academy chairman Takeshi Kaga remembers the early days of the competition: "Battles were fought and gourmet dishes created." Readers must hold on to their saliva glands, as they are whisked through "exclusive stories and recipes behind meals never before attempted, meals filled with lobster, foie gras, truffles, and other delicacies." The book reveals the show's apparatuses with the breathtaking hype familiar to its television audience, via "The Rules of the Game," Iron Chef interviews and profiles, "Testimony of the Cast and Staff" and various "Prestige Menu[s]." Nearly a household name, the Iron Chef will please legions of fans with this volume.

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Although the Japanese build many of America's television sets, Japan has contributed little to television programming beyond Godzilla and Saturday morning cartoons. So who would have suspected that they'd take the U.S. by storm with their hit cable cooking show, Iron Chef? Speaking the international language of good eating and using over-the-top showmanship, the culturally revealing show has attracted an ardent following. Fans of the Food Network's series will revel in Iron Chef: The Official Book , jam-packed with chronologies and other tidbits about this hour-long video extravaganza that mixes cooking shows, sports, game shows, and plenty of showbiz pyrotechnics. The book documents the show's genesis from an idea of Takeshi Kaga, the spectacularly coifed chairman of the Gourmet Academy. Diehard fans who follow the art and the antics of these gifted chefs will create plenty of demand for this exhaustively detailed guide to the show. Recipes are for experts only, but those who want to eat the Iron Chefs' creations may use the book's inventory of the worldwide restaurants where iron chefs cook for the public. Mark Knoblauch
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