On Sunday, April 22nd, 2001, the battle was between Iron Chef Masahiko Kobe
and Challenger Franco Canzoniere. I looked up tomatoes on Stephanie Masumura's
website.
It didn't specify exactly what kind of tomatoes would be used, just that they were
"unusual". In order to cover all possibilities we bought a dozen big red tomatoes,
a couple dozen Romas, and big bag of cherry tomatoes. We saw the eel and crab
mentioned in her review of the show, but decided to skip those dishes because our
family had been having a lot of weird seafood lately. We did get a bag of 30 medium
shrimp and a can of tiny shrimp because everyone would eat scampi. We already
had lots of pasta, but Elaine decided to get a package of fettuccini to try to get close
to the dish on the show. So she made another trip to the store. She bought a small
bag of the little hat-shaped orechette. She also bought some fresh basil and mint for
accent and decoration. White and green onions and fresh garlic completed her
shopping list. While she was at the store, I cut up the onions and garlic. I made the
shrimp scampi ahead of time. Elaine heated up a 26 ounce jar of basic pasta sauce
and cooked the orechette and fettuccini noodles. I cut up some roast beef and ham
that were left over from a few days earlier. The review said Canzoniere would make
a beef stew, so Elaine put our cut beef, tomatoes, onions, and a little salt in a pan,
chopped up several baby carrots, added a little water, and started it cooking. Then
she made a white sauce from a mix and added the chopped ham. I decided that we
were well prepared, so I looked up a basic pasta recipe and had the flour, egg, salt
and oil ready.
Tomato Preparation:
These dishes use three kinds of tomatoes: 5 round medium-sized, 13 Roma, and
about 75 cherry. First cut the tops off of the round tomatoes, scoop out the insides
with a spoon, put a small screen strainer in a 2 cup measuring cup to strain out the
seeds.
Push the tomato pulp through the strainer using the back of a spoon. You will be
using this tomato juice later. Look for the 3 greenest Roma tomatoes, which will
also be the firmest, cut them in half length-wise and set them aside for later. Cut
the remaining 10 Roma tomatoes in half crosswise, scoop out the insides and add
the insides to those from the round tomatoes. Wash the cherry tomatoes and put
them in a glass baking dish in a single layer. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Italian Seasoning Preparation:
The simplest way to have Italian seasoning is to use several of your favorites right
out of their containers. Garlic and onion powder, dried basil and oregano, and a little
black pepper make a basic Italian seasoning. You could buy a product with all of
these ingredients, or you could mix them together in the proportions that you like
best, put the mixture in a used shaker spice bottle, and save the seasoning that
you don't use for later.
Basic Italian Sauce Preparation:
The simplest and quickest way to get a basic Italian sauce is to heat about a quart, or
32 ounces, of your favorite spaghetti, pizza, or other pasta sauce in a pan.
If you want to be more creative, you can use two 16 ounce cans of peeled and seeded
tomatoes. If you use whole tomatoes you need to chop them. Add in a 6 ounce can of
tomato paste to give the sauce that nice red color. Then put in a couple of cloves of
minced garlic, a medium minced onion, a half cup of chopped basil, a tablespoon of dried
oregano, and any other seasonings that suit your taste. I would recommend adding some
chopped mushrooms and maybe some minced carrots ( for color ), and celery or parsley,
or both, for a more vegetable flavor.
When the battle began I saw Challenger Canzoniere start making his pasta, so I ran
in the kitchen, poured the egg, salt, and olive oil in the bowl with the flour and started
mixing. Elaine said that Iron Chef Kobe was making tomato soup, so she went to the
pantry and opened a can of Campbell's®. We already had the orechette done, so we
were ahead on that, but then Iron Chef Kobe put basil in the pasta he was making.
The fresh basil we had wouldn't mix into the pasta, so I put about a half cup of dried
basil flakes in a measuring cup and added just enough hot water to rehydrate the flakes.
I saw that Canzoniere was chopping eel while Kobe was apparently drying tomatoes
in the oven. Since we were skipping the eel and we already had a bag of dried tomatoes,
I had time to mix the basil into the pasta. Then Canzoniere started stuffing hors d'oeuvres
with mozzarella and ricotta cheese, so we stuffed our previously prepared roma tomato
halves and put them in the oven to melt the cheese. When Kobe started a crab dish that
we were going to skip, so I had time to flatten out my green speckled pasta with a rolling
pin. I saw Iron Chef Kobe stuff tomatoes with cayenne pepper and put them in the oven,
so I covered the bottom of a glass baking dish with cherry tomatoes, sprinkled some
cayenne pepper powder on at one end, tapering off toward the middle, and put the dish
in the oven. Then Kobe threw the big curve ball. When I saw him making tortellini's stuffed
with fresh tomato, dried tomato, and mozzarella cheese, I knew that I didn't have enough
time to match his dish. Instead, I took whole cherry tomatoes, wrapped them quickly in
basil pasta circles, and put them in the oven. Kobe was unrelenting. He made a dessert
from the tomato consommé. I whipped up the tomato soup with some yogurt, put the mix
into 5 glass dessert bowls, and put them in the freezer. They showed quick views of the
dishes just before the commercials that precede the tasting, so we had that last opportunity
to see what would be offered and make some quick sketches. We had done well on two
of the Challenger's hors d'oeuvres, stuffing Roma tomatoes with cheese was easy. We had
already plated the scampi fettuccini, we couldn't have guessed that Canzoniere would present
the sauce and noodles separately. The orechette dish was a good match and beef stew was
easy to match. The panel was already tasting the dishes. I had a second look at Kobe's
offerings. The scampi stuffed tomato was good, I cut up a couple of Romas and put kosher
salt on them.
My raviolis were much smaller than Kobe's, but I grated a baby carrot, put a basil leaf,
and a spoonful of Italian sauce in the middle. The baked tomatoes and meat sauce were
a lucky match, although the tomatoes he used were bigger than ours. I opened a can of
Mandarin oranges and spread them onto the dessert, adding a mint leaf.
We heard the judgment, Kobe won, and we sat down to eat right after the show.

Wooden Chef's notes on Challenger Franco Canzoniere's Hors d'oeuvres
 

Wooden Chef's notes on Iron Chef Masahiko Kobe's Hors d'oeuvres
 
 

Four types of Tomato Hors d'oeuvre:

               A          B

                   D           C
Clockwise from top left:
A. Roma tomato stuffed with Ricotta.
Ingredients:
1. Roma tomatoes
2. Ricotta cheese
3. Italian seasoning
4. Chopped green onion
Take 5 of the Roma tomato halves, stuff them with Ricotta cheese,
put Italian Salad Sprinkle on top of the cheese, and put chopped
green onion on top. Lightly spray a baking sheet with olive oil and
put the stuffed tomatoes on it.
B. Tomato Stuffed with Scampi
Ingredients:
1. 2 - 6 ounce cans of Bumble Bee® tiny cocktail shrimp
2. 2 tablespoons of fresh minced garlic
3. 1/4 ounce of fresh chopped basil
4. 1 ounce (about 6 medium) chopped fresh mushrooms
Sauté all of the ingredients together. This makes more than enough
to stuff 5 tomatoes. Stuff the tomatoes with the scampi mixture and
put the tops back on. Place the stuffed tomatoes on the baking sheet
with the Romas. Save the left over scampi mixture.
C. Roma tomato stuffed with Mozzarella
Ingredients:
1. Roma tomatoes
2. Mozzarella cheese
3. Italian seasoning
Take 5 of the Roma tomato halves, stuff them with Mozzarella cheese,
put Italian seasoning on top of the cheese, and put a small mushroom
slice on top. Place the stuffed tomatoes on the baking sheet with the
other hors d'oeuvres.
D. Roma tomato with Kosher salt.
Find the three greenest, which will also be the firmest, of the Roma
tomatoes that you bought, cut them in half lengthwise, and generously
sprinkle Kosher salt on top of each half. Serve raw.

Ingredients:
1. 1 1/2 cup tomato insides left over from the hors d'oeuvres
2. Shrimp scampi filling left over from hors d'oeuvres
3. 30 medium shrimp, peeled and deveined (about a half a pound)
4. 1/4 cup minced garlic
5. 1 tablespoon of minced onion
6. 1 tablespoon of minced basil
Sauté all of the fresh ingredients together. Add the already cooked scampi
after everything else is cooked.

Cook the pasta in boiling water about 7 minutes, or until tender.
Cover with basic Italian tomato sauce, top with grated Romano cheese,
garnish with a leaf of fresh basil.
 
 

Ingredients:
1. 1/2 pound beef eye-of-round, cubed and sautéd
2. 1 - 15 ounce can of sliced tomatoes
3. 1 1/2 cups of basic Italian sauce
4. 15 roasted cherry tomatoes
5. 16 baby carrots, cut in half
6. 2 1/2 leafs of fresh basil, chopped
7. 2 teaspoon of garlic powder
8. 1/2 of a small onion, chopped

Saute the beef first, then add the other ingredients. It's a really quick, simple dish.
 
 

Ingredients:
1. 2/3 cup flour
2. 1 egg
3. 1/2 cup rehydrated basil
4. 2 tablespoon of garlic powder

Add hot water to a half cup of dried ground basil to make the basil moist enough to mix.
Mix all of the ingredients thoroughly. Roll the dough out flat and thin with a rolling pin. Cut circles with a clean shrimp can (you just opened on to make the shrimp scampi). Dip the edge of the flour circle in water, wrap up a cherry tomato by folding the flour circle in half and then folding the top of the semicircle over and securing it with the corners . Make about 30 "tortellinis". Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.
Present the dish with a slice of baby carrot and a basil leaf.
Put basic Italian sauce in the middle of the plate.

Ingredients:
1. 50 cherry tomatoes
2. Knorr® white sauce mix, makes 2 1/2 cups
3. 1 pound of diced cooked ham or Spam®

Put a toothpick into each tomato, sprinkle a little cayenne pepper over them, and bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Make the white sauce and add in the diced ham.
 
 

Ingredients:
1. 10 3/4 ounce can of Campbell's® Tomato Soup
2. 1 cup of plain yogurt
3. 1/2 cup brown sugar
4. 6.1 ounce can of Dole® Mandarin oranges
Mix tomato soup, yogurt, and brown sugar. Use 7 segments per bowl, 6 around and 1 in the middle.
Place 3 mint leaves around the circle of oranges. Put the desserts in the refrigerator until serving time.
 

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DISCLAIMER: Iron Chef is the property of FujiTV and all opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of FujiTV. The author is in no way affiliated with FujiTV or Food Network. The recipes presented here are loosely based on the dishes appearing on "Iron Chef", but are in no way supposed to be accurate copies. Use of copyrighted images is covered under the fair use section of the Copyright Law. This site is not responsible for the content of any other site to which it is linked. All text and graphics are ©Copyright 2001 by Brett Pijan, unless otherwise noted.