ShareThisFood Network premieres another round of its traveling food fights this week. Only this time it's one for the record books.
For the first time, the Food Network Challenge's battling chefs not only will be competing against one another, but 10 of the competitions within the four-day special will have a shot at Guinness World Records.
Beginning Monday night with an episode titled "Sugar Skyscrapers," three pastry chefs set out to build the tallest sugar structure ever constructed in competition. Using fragile sheets and blocks of sugar, the chef who best tops the existing record of nine feet will take home a Guinness World Record and a prize of $10,000.
The episode, the first of four airing on consecutive nights, was filmed at the Mall of America and premieres at 9 p.m., EDT/PDT. A representative from Guinness World Records will be on hand to keep matters sorted out for it, and the following episodes.
But if you think that episode overreaches, tune in for the Godzilla-sized competition on Tuesday night. That's when a single team of 11 carefully chosen food fanatics takes on a challenge of building the largest ever popcorn structure. In their sights is the current record-holder, a 16-1/2-foot-tall popcorn sculpture of Godzilla.
Appropriately enough, since the episode was filmed at Disneyland, the team chose Mickey Mouse as its icon. Again, $10,000 is at stake if a record falls.
Following on Wednesday night is "Fastest Foods" in which speed, not height, wins. Ten challengers meet at Universal Orlando Resort to attempt to break records that include the most ice cream cones prepared in a minute, the fastest time to peel a 50-pound bag of onions and, as we approach Halloween, the fastest pumpkin carved.
Prizes of $2,500 await anyone who sets a world record in each of five contests.
Concluding the Guinness World Records Breakers Week is "Pizza Champions." Four pizzaioli gather at the Mall of America to compete in contests that include highest pizza toss and the largest dough round ever spun. But on this one night there also is a tasting component:
The competitors must make the best-tasting pizza that does not include any of the top 10 pizza ingredients.
Keegan Gerhard, who has been emcee for 48 of the 50 previous Challenges, returns. And he is impressed with the sheer size of this effort.
Possibly the best illustration, he said, involves the Popcorn Giant episode. Five thousand pounds of popcorn was popped at a commercial facility Chicago and loaded into 18-wheelers and trucked to Florida, where the Challenge team practiced for two weeks. In doing so the team, which includes a pastry chef, two ice carvers and a group of students and alumni of the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, had to overcome several hurdles even before they were ready to suit up.
Among the difficulties was the discovery that none of the edibles usually used in molding popcorn, like molasses, would hold their giant Mickey _ they chose to build the sorcerer Mickey from "Fantasia" _ together. After much ado, they settled on an environmental-friendly, if inedible, marine epoxy. Once they had the basics solved, they moved the whole show cross-country again to Disneyland.
But for those with a sweet tooth, "Sugar Skyscrapers" might just take the cake. During it three executive pastry chefs, Regis Courivaud of New York's Le Mode, Alain Roby of Chicago's Hyatt Regency in Chicago and Isaac Tamada of Peppermill Hotel and Casino in Reno, Nev., super-size their usual efforts.
Their credentials?
Courivaud has made desserts for the likes of Salman Rushdie, Mikhail Gorbachev and Woody Allen, and won an earlier Challenge. Roby, known for creating life-size pastry centerpieces, includes among his clients Eliza Minnelli and former President Bill Clinton, and his second, Al Gore. Each year he makes a birthday cake for Chicago's mayor. Tamada, who also competed in an earlier Challenge, has won the American Culinary Federation's gold medal for a "best of show" chocolate showpiece.
Some carpenters. Some crumbs.
