Previously on “Top Chef”: it was time for Restaurant Wars! Since we couldn't have diners (or servers) we instead had a chef's table and the contestants served all the food. Honestly I think it was the best way to do this challenge. Kokoson decided on a Latin-Japanese fusion, based on kaiseki which has a very rigid sequence of courses. It was possibly the best Restaurant Wars team/restaurant in the history of the show. Maria won for amazing front-of-house service. Penny had the theme of “seafood”, which did not go well because the courses didn't make sense. And they were not all cooked well. Sara cooked one dish that was not great, and one that it seemed like only Tom liked, so she was sent home. I know people are mad because Dawn didn't tell anyone what her dishes would look like and she for sure was not a team player, but Sara's dishes were still not great. (click for more)
In Last Chance Kitchen, Sara and Sasha had to make a three course tasting menu, but each course had to be one bite in a spoon. Somehow both of them made scallops with caviar, and steak, but Sara eked out a win.
Dawn is crying in the Stew Room and she feels partially responsible. She says Sara didn't deserve that because she'd never been in the bottom before. A lot of people think Chris has been in the bottom too many times and should have been sent home. I would argue that supposedly it's just based on this one challenge and not who overall has done the worst, but they did have that weird editing the week Avishar was eliminated, where the judges literally said that Chris's food has no soul and it never does, but then he was safe. Not sure what's up with this editing but I suspect shenanigans.
Time for the Quickfire. There's a lot of retro equipment for some reason. The guest judges are Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen from “Portlandia”. They do a bit about interrupting each other. I don't know that I've ever seen this show. Anyway the challenge is to make fun of how Portland is hipster by using ingredients such like hemp oil, almond flour, kombucha, etc. Padma starts to tell them the rules but Carrie begs to do it. They have 30 minutes and I think they have to use the vintage stoves. They played it off like a joke so it takes a second for the contestants to figure it out.
Oh they also have to use things like, the old stand mixers and a hand egg beater. Dawn grabs the cast iron mold that's shaped like ears of corn. My uncle has that one. Jamie says she uses non-dairy milks but not because she's a hipster, because she's lactose intolerant. Heh. Maria can't get her blender to work. Of course the stoves are garbage because they're electric. I think Shota is cooking something on the stove top in a corningware baking dish. You know the white square ones with the three blue flowers on the side? You know what I am talking about.
Gabe: “Portland sausage”: kombucha braised purple yam, crispy yam skins, pickled purple cauliflower. Shota: spicy nutty green beans with watermelon seed butter, toasted almonds, pickled beets and asparagus. He has written it down on his hand. Hee! Jamie: mushroom and pickled asparagus dumpling, turnips and hemp seed oil vinaigrette. Maria: tomato soup with harissa and coconut milk, tomato peel and cardamom crumble. Dawn: fonio and semolina quickbread with pancetta jam, pear butter and goat butter. Fonio is a kind of millet, I think. Chris: variations of cauliflower with giardinara and sauerkraut black pepper aioli. Byron: pan-seared striped bass, endive, finger limes and pickled beet salsa.
Jamie's dumplings were too chewy and Chris's dish was salty. It also lacked texture. Gabe's purple yam was playful, and Maria's soup was balanced. And Dawn's quickbread was fun and delicious. The winner is Dawn. She wins an advantage, and she says she's never won before. No, she won an Elimination challenge. Sigh.
Dale and Blais come in for the Elimination challenge. Padma says all of the judges either have written or are working on cookbooks. I do have one of Padma's. Haven't made much from it, except for a chutney recipe that nearly killed me it was so spicy. And I think I bought Dale's as a present. The contestants should create a recipe that takes 90 minutes to prepare. It should be aimed at non-chefs. That means actual measurements and easier instructions. 30 minutes to plan and shop, and then 3 hours to test and write their recipes tonight. Tomorrow they'll serve the judges. Dawn gets 15 extra minutes tomorrow.
Generally it takes weeks to hone recipes, come up with them, test them, get the measurements right. No actual shopping today, so we basically go into the three hours of cooking. Dawn says you have to write the recipe knowing you will need to put every step in. I mean...does your recipe have to say “grab a bowl”? I guess it doesn't hurt but at some point you have to assume the reader has some basic grasp of cooking.
Tom Time! Everyone looks just a little more panicked. My guess is that they assumed a twist. Shota has braised pork belly, but he's not going to crisp it up because it's easier to skip that step. Listen I had some great pork belly over the weekend but the skin was so chewy and inedible it was a little disappointing. Chris wants to make gnocchi. Parisian style which means boiled and then pan-fried. He also hasn't made good pasta here yet. Gnocchi is tricky. Jamie is making french toast and some compote and I think foie gras? Tom says he'll look her up next time he's in Vegas and she promises to get him drunk. Hee. Tom then announces to the room to do a good job because they may have “a little test” tomorrow.
I just noticed this episode is 90 minutes? Ugh. Anyway, after Tom leaves the contestants wonder who will be following their recipes. Byron likes his dish; it looks simple but has layers. Dawn throws out her batch of buttermilk mixture. Everyone is typing and frustrated. Maria says her recipe measurements are huge but she's out of time.
Back at the hotel Shota talks about his son, who lives in Japan with his mother. He only sees him twice a year. Aww.
Day Two. Everyone grabs a printout of their recipe and they start picking up their ingredients. Then a bunch of All-Stars show up to be the recipe testers. I think a bunch of them guessed. Actually it's only Gregory, Melissa, Kwame, and Kristen. So everyone is making two recipes? I think Melissa only has Chris's recipe. Gregory has Gabe and Jamie, Kwame has Shota and Byron, and then Kristen has Maria and Dawn. Not sure how they made those divisions. I mean we know production made the choices, I'm just not sure why those particular pairings and why Chris's is the one by itself.
I think while the All-Star is making the dish, so is the contestant. Gabe says he's not changing his recipe at all so that it matches whatever Gregory makes. Meanwhile Gregory says the recipe is actually pretty good, but it does ask you to debone cod, which can be tricky if you don't know what you're doing. Kwame is also following the recipe exactly. For some reason Maria's recipe calls for eight pounds of meat. For six people. Yeah I'm seeing what she meant by her measurements being wrong. Kristen has to use multiple pots because they are just too full. Chris put his recipe measurements by volume and not weight and he's regretting it. Melissa is not having a good time.
So they're serving side by side so you can compare. Interesting. Gregory's plates look very close to Gabe's. Gabe: banana leaf steamed black cod with crispy skin and salsa veracruzana. Gregory does tell everyone deboning the cod is hard for a home chef. The dish itself is delicious. Gregory's version isn't exact but they don't seem super disappointed in it. I guess you can't expect it to be identical?
Kwame couldn't get his sauce to reduce enough, or at least as much as he thinks it should be. Shota: soy braised pork belly with turnip puree and pear salad. Kwame tells the judges there was too much liquid to reduce properly but the recipe was easy to follow. The dish is great, but Kwame couldn't make it because the recipe wasn't written properly. It wasn't a total disaster, though.
Maria is serving very full soup bowls. When Kristen comes out, she basically says “Maria what the fuck girl” which is hilarious. We establish that between the two of them they cooked 16 pounds of meat for this one course, and Maria's excuse is “I'm Mexican”. Maria: “gallina pinta”: traditional Sonoran pork and bean soup with cilantro, onion and lime. It's got lots of flavor, and it's rustic and homey. They joke about how it's supposed to serve six, but then you just have leftovers. No big deal.
Melissa doesn't know how her dough should look, because the recipe doesn't say. She doesn't get it cooked in time, and there is some discussion about if she should serve it. That's how bad it is. Chris: sorghum gnocchi, green romesco, braised dandelion greens and saucisson sec. Saucisson sec is a cured meat. Melissa basically says the recipe did not say anything about how the dough should look, should you add more flour, and her dough fell apart. The dish is OK, but Melissa's version is not. And Gail points out that Melissa is clearly a strong cook, and the recipe failed her. So imagine a home cook.
Gregory is not worried about following Jamie's recipe, he's a little concerned about if it will work in terms of flavor. The dishes look pretty similar. Jamie: seared foie gras with brioche french toast, blueberry compote and black sesame. Gregory says it was an easy recipe to follow. The french toast is sweet and too mushy. However Gregory's dish is identical.
Kwame tells us Byron's recipe is four pages long. He also thinks it should take three hours. He manages to set the lid of a bamboo steamer directly on the stove as he tears around trying to finish. Only a minor fire. Byron: steamed striped bass with seafood broth and beans. The plates look very similar but Kwame does reveal how long the recipe is. Blais doesn't think this is a Byron dish. Byron's beans are undercooked. There are 45 (!) ingredients and Gail says you can't taste all of them. Or many of them.
Dawn knows her sauce is sweet but she doesn't want to adjust it because Kristen won't. Dawn: salmon with buttermilk sauce, gai lan and olive puree. The recipe was extremely clear. It is a great dish and it seems like a restaurant dish. Very straightforward.
Judges' Table. Maria, Shota, Gabe, and Dawn are singled out as the top. Gabe's sauce was amazing. Dale thinks that it would be a very impressive dinner party dish. Blais raves over the sauce some more. Shota's dish was delicious, but the recipe could still use some editing. Dawn really thought about how her recipe was written, was it easy to follow, was it accessible. Maria's soup was delicious and homey, but the recipe was for so much food. It made the dish seem very difficult. Maria says she doesn't want it to be an excuse, and then all of a sudden Tom says that's what editors are for and he hates writing recipes and if you see anything with his name on it, his wife wrote it. Interesting. The winner is Gabe. Padma tells him to write a book of just sauces.
OH it's a sneak peek of “Top Chef: Amateur”. That's the extra half hour. I'll watch it and see what's up but my assumption is this is some clips from the actual episodes so we'll see it again.
Jamie, Chris, and Byron are the bottom. Byron knows he had a huge recipe with too many things. The final dish didn't have enough of a payoff for all that work. Chris wanted to be more adventurous. The gnocchi were very dense, and the dish failed. Gail says this is the third time they're talking to him about his pasta dough and it's the same issue every time. Jamie knows home cooks can make french toast and compote. Everything in the dish was soft, and it was very sweet. Dale at least appreciates she was brave enough to put foie gras in her recipe.
Jamie's plate didn't look appetizing, and her dish wasn't good, but she at least wrote a good recipe. It's just that the dish itself was too sweet. Byron made a simple dish too complicated and then it was boring. And it had a million ingredients and somehow was bland. Chris put too much cheese, and then Padma points out Melissa won All-Stars and put out a terrible plate. It's not that Melissa can't do it, so it must be the recipe.
Tom says they're sending someone home not for writing a bad recipe, but for making the worst dish. And then they send Chris home, which is hilarious because they just said his recipe was garbage. Chris is upset, but honestly he keeps trying to make pasta and it's been bad every time. He's been in the bottom a lot.
Next week: tofu, I think a Quickfire elimination, cooking outside, some kind of voting.
So each person on Top Chef Amateurs is a fan, but they also aren't complete noobs. One of these girls is a food blogger and the other one I think has been cooking since a young age. They each get an All-Star to work with (Dale and Kwame this time). Shirley and Gregory are the judges this time and Gail is hosting. I love Shirley. So you have one challenge per episode and it's a Quickfire throwback? This time they have to make two dishes with chocolate, one sweet and one savory. Everyone is super nice and the All-Stars are helping but not being bossy. Some good-natured banter from Dale yelling that he's single digits OG Top Chef and he certainly does know when to start plating. Heh. Both dishes are great and then someone wins and is declared “Top Chef Amateur”. Interesting. Also, who cares because I see Toups.
Last Chance Kitchen: Chris wants to prove he can cook. Blais is here for some reason, next to a big monitor. He has garbage delivery because they clearly put a bunch of puns in and he can't say them without emphasizing them so it's ruined. Sara is not surprised to see Chris. Oof. Oh, here is Tom out on a racetrack somewhere with a car and a helmet. He tells Chris he overthinks when he has too much time, so that means no time to think. Tom will race around this track ten times, then he'll go back to the kitchen. When he arrives they'll have one minute to plate. So you can see what lap he's on, but I'm not sure they know how far he is from the kitchen. You can make whatever you want.
Sara immediately goes for vegetables. They have no idea how much time they have. Chris goes for something he's made before. Avishar is helpful and shouts out that Tom is done with one lap, and it was 1:05. So they'll have about ten minutes plus however long it takes Tom to get back.
Blais comes over to investigate. Sara has turnips and some pickled seaweed. Hopefully everything will cook down in time. Chris has halibut with aguachile. Avishar says Tom is going faster each lap. Normally Chris would take five minutes to plate but obviously that's like a third of his time. Sara's turnips are still crunchy but it's too late to turn back. Chris's halibut takes ten minutes to cook. Tom finishes his laps and says the GPS says five minutes. So it seems they got maybe 15 minutes to cook? They have a slo-mo shot of Tom walking into the building which is hilarious to me for some reason. Chris puts his fish in the oven? With a minute left? He does not forget it. Sara loves her dish.
Sara: beef braised turnips with pickled nori and shiitake mushrooms. Chris: halibut with seafood and pepper broth with fennel oil. Blais is thrilled with LCK since he has no experience with it. Chris's dish is simple and has bold flavors so they are pleased. What happened to the aguachile though? Sara's dish is quirky but complex. After some discussion, Sara wins. She says in confessional that part of her thought Chris should have gone home last week instead of her so she's very pleased she won. Oof. Chris is not particularly happy but he says he's going to listen to the judges' critiques.
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