The Amateur Gourmet: What I Can Tell You About The Taping I Attended of "Iron Chef America" Without Having To Pay The Food Network $1,000,000

...it’s (mostly) a setup: “These people know or at least have a very good idea of what the secret ingredient is going to be. And with all the stops and starts and editing and lack of music, a live performance of Iron Chef America is as tense as watching two 90 year olds play a game of hopscotch.” No big surprise, given that we never see the chefs pausing to plan recipes or timings: something which I would find as interesting as the cooking…