][1]MasterChef’s Greg Wallace is well known for his catch phrase ‘Cooking doesn’t get tougher than this!’ Well, those hardy souls taking part in Channel 4’s imminent Iron Chef UK will almost certainly beg to differ.
Variously described as ‘Ready, Steady Cook on steroids’, ‘MasterChef meets Gladiators’ and ‘Come Dine with Me scripted by Quentin Tarantino’, Iron Chef UK pits four celebrity chefs against each other and against a team of professional chefs, every week, in a pressure-cooker atmosphere.
Based on a successful Japanese format, which has already become a smash hit series in America, the UK Iron Chefs are Tom Aikens, Judy Joo, Martin Blunos and Sanjay Dwivedi.
They will be going toe to toe with a group of challenger chefs which includes Craig Dunn of Glasgow’s Abode, Edinburgh’s Pierre Levicky of Chez Pierre and Tony Borthwick of the Michelin-starred Plumed Horse in Leith.
At the start of each show, a mystery ingredient is unveiled by the enigmatic Chairman who controls the competition and the chefs have to create the best food they can within a limited time period.
Nick Nairn commentates on the show while flamboyant presenter Olly Smith runs around dispensing some of the world’s worst puns. Naturally, it’s a hoot.
Judy Joo explains its appeal:
‘I think that eachof the Iron Chefs has different styles of food, different approaches, different techniques, different ingredients, places of inspiration and that’s one of the things that’s going to make the show so interesting, the diversity of the chefs.
You have Sanjay, who’s classic trained French, but is also Indian, and has been living in London forever. Then you have Martin Blunos, who has a Latvian, Eastern European twist on his modern British cuisine.
Tom Aikens is one of the young guns, is extremely successful and pulls inspiration from all over the place.
And then you have me, who’s this French-trained Korean-American Londoner.
So there are a lot of influences going on, it’s going to be quite a surprising show. I think the food will look stunning, and the personalities will definitely be a big part of it as well.’
Joo used to be a derivatives banker so is used to stress but reckons that Iron Chef UK takes the stress-o-meter to a whole new level.
‘There are so many different elements in play – you’re trying to cook, but then you’re being interviewed on TV at the same time, you’re trying to manage your sous chefs and then you’re trying to keep track of the time, and all the equipment’s a bit unfamiliar.
It’s like being in a fish tank where everybody’s watching everything you do, and you have to try and forget that. It was stressful on many different levels – probably one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done in my whole life.’
Iron Chef UK starts on Channel 4 on Monday 26 April.
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