Alton Brown teaches us Japanese cuisine

Monday night's new episode is a clear example of why I greatly admire Alton Brown. The episode, "Pantry Raid XII: Turning Japanese," looked into different cuisine, gave information about the basics of that cuisine, had much humor and, as often the case and why AB is on a pretty high pedestal in my kitchen, it inspired me to try something different and outside of my normal day-to-day cooking mindset.

I am an admirer of Asian cuisines; therefore, take great interest in learning how to make these dishes myself. It is also fortunate that there is an Asian market locally and I have seen some of the items Alton discussed in the show. So that greatly added to the inspiration coming from the episode. One of the elements of Good Eats that I love is how Alton transfers his enthusiasm to the viewer. I've received many sparks to go cook a new dish thanks to Alton and this show was no exception.

On my list, the miso soup. I did not know how very simple it is to create. I was excited to see from the packaging on the tofu AB used looked to be the exact brand I use! Yay! The miso glaze for the fish also caught my attention, I my make that before the miso soup. The other intriguing item, the noodle soup. I've had some tasty udon soup before; however, it contained skittake mushrooms and my throat paid the price for that mistake. With help from AB, now I can have my own version! Truthfully, all of the items presented in the episode looked interesting and things I will try. Turning Japanese is correct!

This episode opened a many possibilities to expand culinary knowledge and to become familiar with a new cuisine enough to prepare it at home, that alone is enough to place it high on the list of favorite episodes. But there's more. The best part of the show was the homage to the Saturday Night Live samurai skit, at least I think AB was doing that in the episode. It was just an added bonus to why Good Eats is more than a plain ol' cooking show! On the humor level, this was one of best episodes in recent memory thanks to the awesome samurai skit and Bart Hansard who was just great as the samurai. His characters are also great, but this may have been his finest.

The other cool thing about the episode, AB using he iPhone as a timer. My goodness why haven't I thought of that! I do download recipes on my iPod touch and take it to the kitchen instead of printing, but the thought of using the timer escaped me... until now. Thanks AB for another great idea.

I was surprised, however, no reference to Godzilla (or those type of movies) from Alton in the show. Being a film geek and all, and having referenced them in the past, I was certain AB would break out a monster destroying Tokyo. ;)

The recipes are available on Food Network, here, so we can all get cracking on making these new dishes. I know, Friday after work I'll be heading to the local Asian market in town to get the supplies.

I would say Seven Samurai for the episode, but my rating only goes to five and only film geeks would get the joke probably ;) So I'll give AB five samurai swords for making Japanese cuisine accessible to us, for inspiring Western cooks to make these wonderful dishes and having a lot of fun doing it.