Iron Chef America 3/16 — Finally a new episode! Akira Back, from Las Vegas, took on Bobby Flay in Battle Spinach. They had three varieties of spinach on display, but I don’t think there’s much difference when they’ve been cooked. Back’s two sous chefs were brothers, which was kind of funny. Flay had trouble with one of his new sous chefs — when she tried to make a steak sauce he was unhappy with its consistency. “Renee, it has to flow,” he said. Then for good measure: “Renee, it has to flow.” Okay… Jeffrey Steingarten told us that raw spinach is not as good for you as you might think, but Alton Brown pointed out that it’s still pretty good for you. There was a little excitement when Flay almost hit a camera man with a steak, but it amounted to nothing. Back made chowan mushi, an egg custard that chefs on the Japanese Iron Chef made all the time, so that was cool. He also made a spinach shabu shabu, continuing the Japanese theme of his meal. For one of his dishes he used what Alton kept studiously referring to as “lemon-lime soda,” and then at the tasting Chef Back outright called Sprite. Anyway, his dishes were pretty sophisticated, but spinach never seemed to be the star of the show. Bobby Flay made what was apparently “perfect” creamed spinach on his steakhouse plate, and he ended up winning by a lot. (Food Network, Sunday at 10pm)

Good Eats 3/17 — A rare new episode called “The Alton Crown Affair,” which is a pretty clever pun. Alton showed us how to make a crown roast of lamb. The secret to getting the perfect crown shape? Cook it in a bundt cake pan. (Food Network, Monday at 8pm)

Last Restaurant Standing 3/18 — This week concentrated on staffing and management, front of the house. There was a secret ingredient, and it’s too bad the commercials spoiled it. Raymond Blanc sent each restaurant one of his favorite ingredients: live eels. The couples were challenged to motivate their staff to sell the eels. The fishmongers showed each couple how to butcher the eels — basically you cut their heads off and then pull off the skin. Emma almost threw up when this was demonstrated, and her husband Martin refused to do the dirty work. “Take them back,” he says. He also calls this assignment “ridiculous.” The narrator dramatically intones that this is the second time Martin has refused to do a challenge, but as we learned last week, you can fail a challenge and not get shut down. Jeremy thinks skinning the eels is a waste of time, and only preps a few servings. The cute twins Jess and Laura hacked away at the eels, but there was a lot of squealing as they did. Finally, Martin’s Spanish sous chef convinced him to use the eels in a traditional Spanish dish. Jeremy decided that he wants the menu to read sauce “vierge,” which neither his wife Jane nor I have ever heard. He doesn’t want to simplify things by calling it a tomato and herb sauce. To motivate their staff, the twins bribed the waiters with a gift certificate to a nail salon. Adua and Lloyd go the marketing route, having their servers tell customers the spicy eel dish is “Ghana on a plate.” Emma tells her staff how disgusting the eels were — nice motivating strategy there. It’s amusing to watch someone failing a challenge and not realizing it. When the restaurant opens, she begins telling the customers the horror stories about butcher the eels. I start to slap my forehead, but then the customers order the eels anyway! Jeremy got caught out, having not been prepared for the popularity of the eels. Somber brothers Mike and Ed have a rough night, forgetting to make food and leaving a hair on the plate of a couple celebrating an anniversary. And despite the fact that they had only 17 covers, the kitchen couldn’t handle it. At “Spinach,” they had a lazy waiter that Adua tried to send home, but Lloyd reversed the decision and made her bus the tables. When the inspector arrived, Mike was brutally honest with her while Ed lied like a snake. During the judgment, Blanc called Martin a hypocrite for not wanting to kill the eels. Also, the narrator apparently mislead us earlier, as Emma only sold four each of the eel appetizers and mains. Blanc is furious at Jeremy for not tasting the eels before sending them out. However, the restaurant made a huge profit. Lloyd says he felt undermined when Adua tried to send the waiter home, but I felt like he undermined her decision. The couple lost over 200 pounds for the night, ouch. We saw someone named Grant, who we did not see at all during the main part of the show, who sold a lot of eel but made less than 100 pounds. The anniversary couple from Mike and Ed’s place waited around for the inspector and passed along a personal message to Raymond Blanc about how awful everything was. That’s about as bad as it gets. AND they lost over 200 pounds. The cute twins won the challenge again, and became my new favorites. (BBC America, Tuesday at 9pm)

Bizarre Foods 3/18 — Zimmern continued in Bourdain’s footsteps, this time in Russia. In St Petersburg, the “not so tourist-friendly” city, Zimmern went to a giant market and ate a pork terrine, a mound of pickled vegetables, honey, and dried salted herring roe. He called the latter bitter “like iodine,” but also called it “awesome.” He extolled the virtue of Russian sour cream and sampled some street side kvas, a low alcohol beer. Blinis are the most popular Russian fast food, so Zimmern made some and then ate some. He called the one he had very salty and fishy, but he liked it. At a place that caters to both tourists and Russian traditionlists, Zimmern ate lamprey. Now, in high school biology we studied lampreys, and I can’t imagine anything more disgusting. Zimmern agreed, calling it an ammoniated nasty fish. Then he tried the brown bear, cooked as a pan-fried meatloaf. He called it fatty, greasy, and gamey, but tasty. Apparently bear has the “mineral” aftertaste “associated with large animals.” Zimmern gorged himself on Russian caviar at the Grand Hotel Europe, and then defined blinis for us. Way to edit this piece guys — we’ve already seen Zimmern making blinis. Finally, he left for a weekend at a dacha in the country. Then we were treated to the sight of a half-naked Zimmern sweating in a banya, or bathhouse. Bizarre indeed. (Travel Channel, Tuesday at 10pm)

Top Chef 3/19 — The quickfire challenge started at a Chicago farmer’s market — but the chefs were told they could use only five ingredients to make an entree (excluding oil, salt, and sugar) so they had to choose carefully. Judging by some of the contestants, they also had to choose quickly. Mark, the New Zealander, was running around like a madman and being rude to the vendors. He was in such a hurry that he forgot his bag of mizuna. Later, when he realized he lost the mizuna, he decided to replace it with butter, which is strange since mizuna is a peppery green leaf. Spike decided to take it easy, and he hoped that enjoying the market would “calm [him] down.” Wylie Dufresne was the guest judge, and since he is one of the country’s premiere molecular gastronomists Richard Blais figured he had an advantage. I’m surprised that they aren’t friends. Blais made a chicken soup with eucalyptus. I get that eucalyptus is a comforting scent, and chicken soup is a comfort food, but that sounds gross. Apparently it was gross, Dufresne called it oily and unrefined. Crazy Andrew used balsamic vinegar, and was disqualified because he used more than five ingredients. Mark, the pushy New Zealander, won, and he got immunity this week. For the elimination challenge the chefs drew the usually knives. The first one read vulture, and everyone became uneasy. Then bear, which is not so unusual. Then lion, so we all realized that they weren’t going to be cooking with these meats. Andrew informed us that he, in fact, is a lion, and growled to prove it. Then someone drew penguin and Andrew still hadn’t caught on that they wouldn’t be cooking these. The last animal drawn was gorilla, and I pictured a bushmeat challenge for a moment. The real challenge, which was actually pretty cool, was to prepare dishes based on the diets of their respective animals, for a staff cocktail party for 200 at the Lincoln Park Zoo. The producers thankfully prepared a list of foods, so we were spared the sight of these idiots trying to figure out what a gorilla eats. Unfortunately, Team Gorilla decided to add meat to the vegetarian gorilla’s diet. It’s almost like these guys have never watched a reality show before. And the other members of the group are scapegoating Valerie already. Spike informed us that he, like Andrew, had morphed into an animal. Nikki in Team Bear decided to spend some of their money on decorations for the table, much to her teammates’ annoyance. Other than that, the Bear menu seems pretty solid. But the lions are serving a beet dish, which makes no sense at all. Valerie’s black olive blinis don’t look anything like blinis (and thanks to Andrew Zimmern, I know exactly what a blini should look like), and they’re being made way to far in advance. Over with the Bears, the mushrooms came out looking like crap (literally), and Dale refuses to serve them. Then they decided to serve them. Then they were too cold, and they pulled them. Then the judges came by and they served the mushrooms to them. Thanks for the decisiveness, Nikki. Gail showed up for the judging, along with Dufresne. It’s pretty clear that Andrew (Team Penguin) rocked the challenge with his squid, and sure enough, he won the challenge. Both the Bears and the Gorillas got called in for losing, and the Bears got a hard grilling about the mushrooms, which no one wanted to take responsibility for. Ultimately, the Gorillas got the worst of it for their soggy crab salad and their terrible blinis. At first I was kind of mad that no one called them on adding the meat, but then I realized that this makes perfect sense in the Top Chef world, where as long as the food is good you can be forgiven anything. As it stood, the food itself was so bad that the judges didn’t even need to address the menu. Anyway, to no one’s surprise Valerie was sent home. Coming up next week: Field trip! Rick Bayless! The f-bomb! (Bravo, Wednesday at 10pm)

Posted by Howard