UTB Offers a “New Classic” Cooking Show
United Television Broadcasting (UTB) is known for showing programs that appeal to a broad variety of viewers. And its cooking shows have always been winners. The new one on UTB’s programming schedule has to be the best of all.
“Ikinari Ogon Densetsu”(“Suddenly, A Golden Legend”—that is, a “new classic”), broadcast Saturday nights, 8:00 pm on KSCI, Channel 18, which takes over the slot that was previously filled by the “Dotchi” cooking show, is not your run-of-the-mill cooking show. There are celebrity panelists and guest stars. But there is nothing new there. The really new slant here is taking people one would never suspect of being cooks and challenging them to come up with their best.
The format is simple. A celebrity is challenged to create dishes in the kitchen in order to win a prize of one million yen. (That is not as impressive as it sounds. One million yen converted to dollars is worth less than $10,000.) The celebrity must create those dishes in the program’s test kitchens against ones created by another contestant and both meals are judged by a professional chef. There are three criteria that are used to judge: presentation, taste and cost. (The more economical, the better.) At the same time, a panel of celebrities in the studio see video of the two working and comment on the action and when the dishes are prepared they also sample them and judge them as well. (Although those judgments are not counted in the score.) The celebrity taking the challenge must defeat three others in a row in order to win the prize.
In a recent program, the celebrity contestant was Ishiguro Aya, one of the original members of the singing group, Morning Musume. (“Musume” means “girl” in Japanese.) In 2000 she left the group after a whirlwind romance and marriage and now she has two children. She is leading a nicely domesticated life. But can she cook is the real question!
The person she was competing against was a Ms. Hokuto, a somewhat brawny and pugnacious housewife. It turns out that she was a gang member in the past. Again, not someone whom you would associate with good cooking.
The two were shown shopping for ingredients for their meals and then cooking in the program’s test kitchens. They were assigned to use chicken for the main dish of their meal. Both women bought 200 grams (about half a pound) of chicken breast for ¥39 (about 32¢) and various other ingredients.
Ms. Hokuto pounded the chicken breast with a tenderizing mallet, vigorously smashing it with all her might. You could see how her gang member background was coming out. At the same time, Ms. Ishiguro and her small daughter, working in the test kitchen next door, frequently cast looks of trepidation in that direction. “What is that noise, Mommy?” asked the little girl. Ms. Ishiguro could only look up for a moment and shrug with a smile as she, too, tenderized her chicken breast.
Ms. Ishiguro was shown preparing a vegetable chicken roll and then mincing the skin of the chicken and frying it. “This is going to be my secret ingredient,” she confided to the camera. She also prepared fried rice with the minced and fried chicken skin, chicken soup, chawan mushi (a kind of egg custard) and salad.
Then it was time for the master chef to judge the meals. Each woman brought her meal to the table one after the other for the chef to appraise. Ms. Hokuto’s miso chicken, in traditional Japanese style, won the day there. “Migoto!” (“Well done!”) he exclaimed.
But he was just as impressed with Ms. Ishiguro’s fried rice and chicken soup. Her secret ingredient? “You pour the soup over the rice,” she told the chef. It was like ochazuke (a porridge-like dish). “Sugoi! Hontō ni umai!” (“Great! Really delicious!”) he said, clearly impressed. That must have been why he judged her the winner of the presentation category.
So it came down to who would win in the cost category. Ms. Hokuto’s meal cost ¥170 (about $1.40) while Ms. Ishiguro’s cost ¥177 ($1.47). Here, too, Ms. Ishiguro won because of the more luxurious feeling to her meal. (By the way, both women used extraneous ingredients in their dishes, like salt, pepper, sugar, soy sauce and mirin, etc., supplied by the test kitchen, which was not factored into the cost. This is also done in similar programs, such on the CBS Saturday Morning segment, “Chef on a Shoestring”— where the budget is $40, quite a difference!—which does not seem fair, but apparently the rationale is that these are ingredients that everyone has in the cupboard and shouldn’t be added in.)
So Ms. Ishiguro won the first round and the next one as well. Unfortunately, space considerations preclude a full description of that round, where Ms. Ishiguro used pan-mimi (heels of bread), bought in a bakery shop in a bag for ¥50 and which she soaked in miso, soy sauce, sugar and mirin and seasoned with salt and pepper, pan fried, topped with cabbage sliced thin and made into a sandwich that fooled everyone, the master chef included, into thinking that it was katsu-retsu (a pork cutlet, Japanese style). She also made okonomiyaki (a kind of Japanese style pan pizza) using pan-mimi that made the chef laugh.
It is disappointing that this program is not subtitled in English, but there are frequent onscreen Japanese captions that preclude the clutter of additional verbiage. It is like a video manga comic book. Nevertheless, the Japanese is very simple, the program is fast-paced and the creativity of the cooking is easily understood. The program is highly recommended as an enjoyable way to learn about everyday Japanese cooking with a unique touch.
Ikinari Ogon Densetsu, Saturday nights, 8:00 pm on KSCI, Channel 18