In case you were wondering what was on the menu at Wednesday night's state dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao, according to The Washington Post, "executive chef Cristeta Comerford and pastry chef Bill Yosses created a menu of pear salad with goat cheese, poached Maine lobster, rib-eye and old-fashioned—how American—apple pie with vanilla ice cream. The menu included honey and herbs from the White House garden as well as produce from the Chef's Garden in Ohio, a family-run business specializing in fresh food."

Photo of White House staffers in the Old Family Dining Room preparing for the State Dinner by Samantha Appleton

If you haven't yet had a chance, like Y&H, to watch the Iron Chef America episode in which the not-so-secret ingredient is the White House vegetable garden, you might want to stop reading now.

Otherwise, you'll never forgive me for what I'm about to do: reveal the winner in the star-studded cook-off that pitted Mario "Orange Crush" Batali and Emeril "Bam Bam" Lagasse against Bobby "Death Smirk" Flay and White House Executive Chef Cristeta "I'm Surrounded by Too Much Testosterone" Comerford.

I have a reason. The New York Times' Kim Severson and Sam Sifton suggested yesterday that the fix was in during their give-and-take on the Diner's Journal blog. As in: The winner was a foregone conclusion given the fact that the show was provided access to the most powerful house in the whole stinkin' universe (American interpretation, naturally). Take a read:

K.S.Seriously, the only one who kept her peas in the basket, as it were, was Cristeta Comerford. She was cool as a cucumber, even when her pastry guy was in the weeds and Alton Brown asked her strange, overwrought and unanswerable questions. And her look was flawless throughout, which is more than I can say about the brothers. I completely heart her now. Here’s the bigger question: Was the fix in? I mean, I know reality TV isn’t exactly real, but this felt like a set up of the highest order. How are you going to get your Food Network show invited to the most powerful house in the world and not give the gold to the host team?

S.S. Let’s turn that question over to the readers. For myself, I think it would have been hard, even for British subjects like Ms. Lawson and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (Ms. Seymour’s greatest role) to deny Ms. Comerford and her employer’s vegetables the win. I think that would have been the case even if that chowder thing she and Mr. Flay made wasn’t as dodgy and weird and gross as it looked and sounded.

Also, that there was a fix would suggest the idea that Mr. Batali burned the radishes on purpose. And I love that idea. (”I charred some icicle radishes,” he said, as if this were smart cooking, when he introduced the dish. Dude! Nice try!) Because: did you see the expressions on the judges’ faces after they ate Mr. Batali’s sweet-potato raviolo, with the egg yolk inside? They were rapturous. That was a winning dish, right there. I suspect that Mr. Flay’s barbecue and tamale dish was, as well. But my feeling is he would have won with a pile of blue-corn tortillas, some honey mustard and a heap of steamed kale.

OK, readers, let's get into it. What the fix in?

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

Burros points out that Kass' appointment not only signals good news for the local/sustainable movement, but also, believe it or not, for Comerford herself. Reports Burros:

Walter Scheib, former White House chef for the Clintons and Bushes, said the decision to bring Mr. Kass to the White House to fill an open slot is “a master stroke.” It’s a tremendous resource for Cris, he said, a reference to Ms. Cristeta Comerford, the executive chef who became the first woman in that job when she was appointed in 2005.

“This will make her job much easier because she will understand better and faster what they like,” he said. “She doesn’t have to spend months reading the tea leaves.”

Other administrations have found ways to have their favorite foods in the White House. Nancy Reagan preferred the cooking of one of the White House chefs, Frank Ruta, and plucked him from the kitchen to cook in the family quarters. Mr. Ruta now owns Palena in Washington.

The Johnsons brought their family cook of 21 years with them from Texas. The cook, Zephyr Wright, made the southern food the Johnsons preferred and was famous for her tapioca pudding, one of Johnson’s favorites.

I don't know, this strikes me as an extremely shred move on the Obamas' part: They won't carrying the stain of being the ones to fire the first ever female White House chef, but they also get to have their old personal chef right there in the White House, too.

Barack Obama's transition team has just announced that it will retain current White House chef, Cristeta Comerford, a naturalized U.S. citizen from the Philippines. Hate to tell you, but Palena chef and owner Frank Ruta, a former White House cook himself, virtually predicted such a thing back in November when Young & Hungry contacted him.

Here's the money quote from Ruta back then:

Typically, that position does not change with administrations, however, each administration can make a change if they want to. Usually, and it was my understanding that for continuities sake, The Executive Chef stays the same.

So all those stories trying to predict who'd be the next White House chef, from Art Smith to Rick Bayless and beyond (Anthony Bourdain? Really?), turned out to be nothing but parlor games that ignored the history of the position. Think we'll remember that the next time around? Doubtful.