Kamikaze Kitchen: Eddie Lin, Val Herrera, Chef Ben Ford + A Smoked Beaver Tail

One of our new favorite web series these days is Kamikaze Kitchen, a collaboration between Good Food and sometimes L.A. Weekly contributor Eddie Lin (DeepEndDining) and Trippy Food blog author Valentino Herrera. The comedic duo just dropped their first episode on YouTube back in September and have plans to release several more episodes in the near future.

The point of the show invovles challenging L.A. chefs to “get real weird” — to borrow a phrase from Workaholics — with an unusual mystery ingredient. Thus Lin and Herrera drop in on chefs at their restaurants, give them a brown bag with the secret (and very strange) protein, watch the chefs cook with it, then sample the results.

The first episode, which features chef-owner Ben Ford and chef de cuisine Gavin Lansdale of Culver City's Ford's Filling Station, involves a large slab of jet-black beaver tail which the nose-to-tail-inclined chef transforms into smoked beaver tail tacos with chile verde and beaver skin cracklings, plus a beaver and chorizo flatbread (both which had us drooling at our keyboards). The best bit, though, might have been when Lin plays a prank on Ford — whose father is Harrison Ford — by timidly asking him to have his dad sign a Han Solo photo, before getting kicked out by a faux-furious Ford.

Check out the entire video:

For more, read Squid Ink's 2012 interview with Herrera: Meet Your Food Blogger: Valentino Herrera of Trippy Food.