Should Have Seen This Coming: ‘Iron Chef’ Visits White House for ‘Kitchen Garden’ Challenge

Comerford and Flay get fresh (veggies) in the White House garden.

Jeesh, speaking of predictions, Y&H should have guessed this would happen as soon as the White House broke ground on its kitchen garden in March: Iron Chef America has trotted out three of its, ahem, heaviest hitters to cook a meal from ingredients plucked from the hugely symbolic garden.

The special two-hour episode of Iron Chef America, dubbed with a stunning lack of subtlety, Super Chef Battle, features Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse, who take on Bobby Flay and White House Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford in the competition.

The episode has already been filmed, and according to The New York Times‘ account, First Lady Michelle Obama laid out the ground rules to the teams (they had to cook five dishes using ingredients from the White House kitchen garden) and put in a good plug for her Healthy Kids Initiative.

The show will air on Sunday, Jan. 3, on the Food Network.

Not surprisingly, the air date is politically tinged. So says Y&H’s virtual friend, Obama Foodorama, who writes:

The show’s January airdate is timed perfectly to be right before Congress comes back into session, when legislators will be addressing the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which provides federal funding for school feeding programs. Better school lunches are one of Mrs. Obama’s priorities, and President Obama’s too; Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack frequently notes in his public remarks that this was the very first subject President Obama discussed with him during their “job interview.”

And here’s another interesting twist: The ingredients used for the actual cooking challenge in Kitchen Stadium were not from the White House garden. So says both The New York Times and Obama Foodorama, who notes:

Today, the chefs reunited in New York in the Iron Chef Kitchen Stadium, the stage set where the competition part of the show occurs. In addition to the “secret ingredient” of White House Kitchen Garden veggies (stand-in organic veggies were used for the actual filming–) the chefs were given a baby pig, and a pantry of dairy products to work with, among other things. Guest judges for the competition part of the episode were cookbook author/chef Nigella Lawson, actress Jane Seymour, and Olympic swimming champ Natalie Coughlin.

Photo courtesy of Obama Foodorama

Tags: Bobby Flay, Cristeta Comerford, Emeril Lagasse, Food Network, Healthy Kids Initiative, Iron Chef America, Mario Batali, Michelle Obama, Obama Foodorama, White House kitchen garden