There is a community event currently running at the good old GW General Forum that I think many people throughout the community would enjoy participating in, but for whatever reason... be it lack of exposure or what have you, only four people have competed so far. What am I talking about? Why.. Iron Chef GW of course!

Iron Chef GW is our own adaptation of the popular television show Iron Chef America, which is a spin-off of a Japanese game show from the 1990s. The basic premise of the show is that two chefs are pitted against each other in the 'Kitchen Arena' (a fully stocked and equipped kitchen with top of the line ingredients and utensils) where they prepare a multi-course meal based upon or featuring a special ingredient revealed at the beginning of each episode. The champion is crowned by a panel of judges who rate the dishes on presentation, taste and originality. Unfortunately our panel of judges cannot taste the dishes, but they can subjectively guess what they taste like based upon what ingredients and method were used to create the dishes. Due to this, presentation and originality weigh in heavier on the voters minds in our competition.

So by now it should be obvious that we had to modify the rules a bit for our little internet competition. Many things had to be changed, but most importantly the time constraints needed to be altered. Rather than just one hour, our competitors have been given around two weeks to complete their dishes in the two rounds so far. Most people are not chefs, nor do they have two professionally trained sous chefs or sauciers on hand to help out either. So thanks to the special conditions to make this work, our rules concerning courses are also a bit more lax... the rounds thus far have only called for three courses and there is no dessert requirement to be fulfilled as on the show. While you are welcome to make an ice cream with the theme ingredient, it is not necessary to create a bizarre dessert to even be eligible to win.

Our competition has as of the time of this writing completed one entire round and begun a second. The first round was announced by Bart, who chose to use Carrots as the theme ingredient, titling his round simply 'Genesis', but I appreciate the brevity. The competition was stiff in the first round, with Lifexplosion making an incredible soufflé, and Bart making some fantasitically complex dishes, and he actually used meat, which several of the other contestants including myself did not do, so kudos to him. Silhouette also put forth an excellent set of dishes, but his entry was severely set back in the competition by the poor quality of the cell-phone pictures that were provided. In the end WashCycle prevailed, winning some 60% of the popular vote. I am sorry... this is vain. I'm really not the right person to report on this. Here are some of what I found to be the best dishes from the last round:



Anyhow, despite any self-gloating I may or may not do, the rules of our adaptation stipulate that the winner not only can win a premium membership or give it to a friend, but he or she gets to pick the next theme ingredient. After a week of intense deliberation, I chose to make the next ingredient the ever versatile Chickpea, titling the round 'a Honore di Ceci' (I don't know any Italian, so I just made it sound Italian). Other finalist choices included but were not limited to: Chocolate, Bell Peppers, Rice, and Zuccini. Regardless, I guess I would encourage any and all to participate in the next round. Even though its a competition, it's not really about winning or losing because no matter how you slice it or dice it... cooking is loads of (cheap) fun, and these competitions can be done for under 20 dollars. I did my last entry for $12.13 worth of herbs, vegetables and yogurt. So... if you have a couple extra dollars laying around and 2-4 hours that you have no idea what to do with, I would emphatically encourage you to participate. It's a hell of a lot of fun, and hey... you might win a premium membership! Here's a link to the topic. Good Luck!