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Good Eats: Fry Hard III: Fry, Tempura, Fry!
Is tempura a monster that will conquer even stalwart cooks? It can seem so, but Alton has an approach using sound science and good technique that can bring the “pinnacle of the frying art” within the reach of ordinary cooks. Cutting technique, frying technique and proper batter preparation are all important to a good Tempura recipe. And when you're done frying, you need a dip. Alton's choice is Soy Ginger Dipping Sauce.
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Episode Info
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Episode number: 14x8 Production Number: EA1408H Airdate: Thursday October 07th, 2010 |
Recap
Alton recalls the many episodes of Good Eats devoted to frying. Pan frying, wok frying, sautéing, deep fat frying – many are represented by the array of delicious dishes before Alton on the table. But all are child's play compared to... Alton hears crashing noises outside and pauses, but it is quiet. There is, he continues, a dish of lethal cunning and devilish design, so terrifyingly brilliant it can only come from Japan. The house begins to shake back and forth and Alton slides up a window casement, poking his head outside to see the source of the commotion. He screams, for the one-eyed monster he sees is Tempura, a horrible fiend that comes ashore every hundred years to feast on the flesh of cooks! As Alton watches, chefs flee the horror, save for one unfortunate who trips, and then disappears down Tempura's gullet to the accompaniment of crunching sounds!..Read the full recap
Episode Notes
Cards
- Shojinage is tempura that consists exclusively of vegetables.
- Tempura is sometimes served with soup and pickles in Japan.
- According to legend, the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu like tempura so much he ate it to death in 1616.
Episode Quotes
Alton: In the pantheon of fried food there exists a dish of such lethal cunning, such devilish design, such confounding delightfulness, such terrifying, nit-picking brilliance that it can only come from Japan!
Alton: It is the horrible monster Tempura, which comes ashore every hundred years to feast on the flesh of... cooks!
Alton: If we stand up and fight our irrational fears with sound science, simple everyday ingredients, well-turned techniques and basic issue hardware, tempura can magically morph from monstrous to monstrously... Good Eats!
Alton: Further examination of the same reveals a thoroughly cooked base food encapsulated in a crystalline crust which exhibits proper adhesion and a snappy... well... snap!
Alton: If you ask me, this is a tool for very picky professionals, and that certainly rules me out!
Alton: Tempura is all about subtle differences.
Alton: As the lucky diners receive the golden goodness you have wrought, they should quickly dip each piece into the soy-ginger sauce. (Alton tries to do this, but discovers the dipping bowl contains no sauce.) Oh, bother.
Alton: A once-dreaded ten story tall engine of doom is reduced to a perfectly docile culinary critter.
Cultural References
The title is based on two cultural references. “Fry Hard III” is the latest in a series-within-a-series of frying episodes (the others are here and here). The series “subtitle” is a parody of the Bruce Willis action franchise that began with the film Die Hard in 1988 (a film that arguably launched British actor Alan Rickman's American career). The second part, “Fry, Tempura, Fry” is probably a pun on the Silver Connection's 1975 release, “Fly, Robin, Fly” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 in November of that year.
The monster Tempura is a send up of the Japanese daikaijū (“movie monster”) genre. The most famous example of this is Godzilla, who first graced the silver screen in an eponymous 1954 film, but there are many other examples (some of which Godzilla fought, aiding mankind, in other films). All are immense and all are extremely dangerous, difficult or impossible to deal with using brute force (except possibly that available to a similar creature). Godzilla, like a number of these monsters, arose from nuclear radiation misused and is in a sense a metaphor for this.
During Alton's exposition on the history of tempura, he uses animated characters drawn in the anime style, a style developed and popularized in Japan for both comic books and animated films. Media in the anime style has been exported from Japan for years, and the style has caught on in the United States and elsewhere, where local creators now practice it.
Once again descending to his cellar (no longer a wine cellar but now a root cellar), Alton claps twice to illuminate the space. He has clearly wired his lighting to “The Clapper”. Since 1985, this sound-activated switch has been part of American culture with its distinctive “clap on... clap off” jingle (borrowed from an earlier commercial for cold medication). One claps twice to turn on whatever the Clapper controls, and twice again to turn it back off.
Alton's “handy” assistant Thing appears once again. “Behind The Eats” revealed that this assistant was actually “Thing, Jr.” the son of the character from The Addams Family (1964). That "Thing" was an apparently disembodied hand that resided in hinged boxes scattered about the Addams household, and helped them with such tasks as retrieving the mail (it also lived in the mailbox) and handing them other small, useful items. It was most commonly portrayed by the hand of Lurch actor Ted Cassidy.
Discovering there's no soy-ginger sauce, Alton sighs, “Oh, bother”. He borrowed this phrase from A. A. Milne's children's character Winnie the Pooh, as he has on several previous occasions.
Episode References
This is the third in a series of episodes on frying. Previous episodes are Fry Hard (which covers the basics of frying) and Fry Hard II: The Chicken (which demystifies fried chicken).
Other Episode Crew
| • Creator | Alton Brown |
| • Executive Producer | DeAnna Brown |
| • Editor | Amy Carey |
| • Line Producer | Dana Popoff |
| • Music | Patrick Belden |
| • Camera Operator | Ramon Engle |
| • Animator | Walter Biscardi |
| • Director of Photography | Marion Laney |
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