Iron Chef Morimoto’s Mother Is Italian (And Wagyu Beef Can Be Too)

Posted by Carey Jones, September 24, 2008 at 12:15 PM

Is she really? Well, no. But that’s what the oh-so-Japanese Iron Chef Morimoto told a seminar at the New York Culinary Experience, so as to explain the Italian staples like mascarpone and mozzarella that found their way into his five-course homage to wagyu beef.

Wagyu cattle were traditionally kept from moving, but lavished with attention—massaged frequently and fed on beer or sake. (Not a bad life.) As a result, their meat is thicky marbled. Ribbons of fat run through the darker pink flesh, resulting in a pink, streaky appearance and unbelievably tender meat.

The beauty of wagyu, clockwise from top left: wagyu tartar with mascarpone and a sugar cane paddle, rice-covered wagyu ready for the steamer, cutting up the wagyu, and panzanella with wagyu shabu shabu.

Before cutting up a beautiful slab of beef—the highest grade available, and retailing, he noted, at around $100/pound—the Iron Chef handed us a birth certificate for one Yurio, son of Yuishige and Yasuka. It noted three generations of ancestry, his birthdate, and his noseprint. So as to ensure a pure wagyu lineage, the breeding of each cow is recorded and certified. Hello, Yurio.

Once the Iron Chef lovingly sliced into our new friend (watch a video here!), he demonstrated the versatility of wagyu beef, so tender that it needs no heat to soften it up. In a progression of cooked-ness, he chopped the meat into a mascarpone-and-caviar-topped wagyu tartar, flash-cooked it shabu-shabu style to serve over a panzanella, steamed it in banana leaves, seared one steak, and grilled another.

Any good cut of beef, the Iron Chef made sure to say, can work in these preparations. But does every good cut of beef come with a birth certificate? If only.

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Tags: classes, NYCE