Iron Chef

By Joel Stein

For years Californians have been willing to watch a Japanese cooking show without English-language translation on an obscure local cable channel. The program, a sweaty competition among chefs given an hour to make a meal around a particular ingredient, was so fiercely serious that it provided entertainment aplenty. Now, though, the Food Network has fashioned it into perhaps the most exciting cooking show ever made, simply by adding a mix of dubbing and subtitles. In the show's current incarnation, you can listen to a Bob Costas-like commentator as he is interrupted by Christiane Amanpour-esque reports from the chefs' camps ("We can definitely see something being applied to the beef--and it's not bread crumbs!"). All that and usable tips on Asian cooking too.

--By Joel Stein