Previously on “Top Chef”: we finally had a BBQ episode. There was also a Quickfire that Nick won but they made it a twist so whatever. For the Elimination challenge everyone had to make brisket and then be creative with it. Evelyn won by making a curry that Padma liked. Ashleigh had huge cuts of brisket and didn't season her meat properly so she went home. (click for more)
On Last Chance Kitchen, Leia, Sarah, and Ashleigh had three minutes to shop and then they could cook whatever they wanted. Leia failed to get salt or pepper so she was eliminated. Then Sarah and Ashleigh traded stations and had to make something with the other person's leftovers. Ashleigh did a better job so she is coming back to the competition.
Jo calls home to talk to her fiance. She's very homesick, but she says it's hard to live in Texas and be LGBT and she feels she needs to be visible. I wondered when they were going to bring that up. This season got some backlash for filming in a state with some very restrictive laws.
Waiting in the Top Chef Kitchen is Padma, Nini, and Kelsey. Interesting. Oh and also Ashleigh is returning. It does feel weird for her to immediately return, but Sarah is still in LCK so she might get back.
The Quickfire challenge involves a whole table of sweet and salty ingredients. One side of the kitchen will pick one salty ingredient each, and one will pick a sweet ingredient. There is no fighting over things. You must make a sweet and salty dessert. Padma reveals ice cream and the sponsor, which is whatever. They have to work in pairs, obviously. You can taste the sponsor's flavors to get “inspired”. They allow the chefs to pick their own partners. Luke interviews that he's standing next to Buddha, who has honey, and miso and honey will work well together. I'd try miso honey ice cream. Ashleigh has gingersnaps and she ends up with Nick, who has pork rinds. The winners will share $10,000 and they will BOTH get immunity. Also your dessert will “help inspire” a new gelato flavor but as we have seen previously with the gum that is completely meaningless. You do not have to make ice cream for this Quickfire.
45 minutes. Everyone runs to grab gelato which makes no sense. It's ice cream. You are locked into your flavor pairing based on your partner so it's not like anyone is getting flavor inspiration. Damarr and Monique have sweet corn and pepitas. That sounds good. Jo and Evelyn, Marcona almonds and peaches. Jackson and Jae, pistachios and Asian pears. These pairings aren't weird, except pork rinds and anything. Jackson is making cookies and pistachio butter. Nick is making gingersnap cake and...I'm not sure what they are doing with the pork rinds. Buddha has pastry experience so he's getting fancy with tuiles and stuff. Evelyn is making bunuelos (a type of fried dough), and Jo is making basil cream. I would totally order that. Damarr doesn't know desserts so he's relying on Monique. Jackson is kind of frantic and Jae needs him to calm down. Evelyn's batter is sticking to the form and she's starting to freak out. I think everyone gets done.
Jae and Jackson: rosemary poached Asian pear with pistachio cookie, pistachio cream and salted crème fraiche. Ashleigh and Nick: gingersnap bundt cake with lemon ice, salted molasses buttermilk and brown butter pork rind mulberry crumble. Evelyn and Jo: salted almond bunuelo with candied peach and basil cream. Monique and Damarr: cornbread with corn ice cream, pumpkin seed and Parmesan crumble with pumpkin curd. Buddha and Luke: miso cake crumble, miso honey ice cream and miso honey caramel with miso and honey leaves.
Everything was great. Padma says that she should let them be weird all the time. Nick and Ashleigh could have had a disaster, but it tasted like tres leches. Damarr and Monique had a great combo. Evelyn and Jo made a delicious combo. The winners are Nick and Ashleigh. She is so thrilled. There is no way the gelato people are making shit from pork rinds.
It's time to “get into the heart of Texas” for the Elimination challenge. Tiffany comes out. I liked her. You will make dishes honoring five trailblazing Texas women. It's an individual challenge, but there are two chefs who must draw inspiration from the same person. Ann Richards (former governor), Nick and Jo. “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias (golfer and athlete), Ashleigh and Jae. Barbara Jordan (politician), Monique and Jackson. Bessie Coleman (aviator), Luke and Buddha. Selena (singer), Evelyn and Damarr. Jo is really excited to showcase these women. The guest judge will be Christine Ha, who they already cooked for at the night market. You may also recognize her name if you watch MasterChef, as the blind woman who won season 3. I really liked her on that show and her food looked amazing and I am very glad she has found success after being on TV the first time and I love that they will never mention that she was on MasterChef. They're going to serve a whole table of women, and they will each have an equal vote on who wins. 2.5 hours to cook tomorrow, and today they will get a dossier on the woman they will be inspired by.
We talk about the women, who as usual are amazing but people are making the most tenuous connections. Ashleigh doesn't know Norwegian foods so she's just making things from Appalachia that she does know. Evelyn was Selena for like 5 years in a row for Halloween. In the car everyone talks about their inspirations, but then we have to have a short segment about how Luke has dyslexia and it took him a while to read the dossier. Monique wants to have a story for this challenge. Jackson says Barbara Jordan is gutsy so he's making offal? I guess.
Back at the apartment everyone hangs out and the girls talk about how they are inspired and the boys do not get to talk. I mean maybe they did but all we see is Damarr say props to the women left in the competition.
In the morning Ashleigh raps which is cute. She's not bad.
2.5 hours to cook. Nick is cutting potatoes into mushroom shapes. Sure. Jae is making gumbo. She worked for Leah Chase for five months, and Babe makes her think of Leah. Gonna be hard to make gumbo in two hours. Buddha is making poulet in vessie, which is chicken cooked in a pig's bladder. Only he's calling it “Bessie” and using a sous vide bag. I mean sure, I am sure Whole Foods doesn't sell pig bladders. Ashleigh claims she isn't acting like she has immunity. She's making “killed lettuces” which is lettuce drenched in hot bacon fat so it wilts.
Tom Time! And Tiffany. Luke mentions that Bessie is part Native American, so he's making cured salmon. Monique figured out what Barbara would have had available to her and she's using those ingredients. Tom expresses doubt that she can pull off fried oysters. Damarr is making tortillas from scratch, only he's never made them before. And he doesn't have store-bought as a backup. Oh like Tom would have tolerated store bought tortillas. Evelyn is using her favorite song as an inspiration.
Damarr's tortillas aren't working. The judges arrive, and it's all women and then Tom. Heh. Buddha hopes his chicken isn't dry. Also Monique is breading her oysters now and they shoot it like it's going to backfire. It feels like foreshadowing. Evelyn is freaking out and asking for help.
Evelyn: “Como la Flor”--snapper with Asian pears, chives, avocado, orange zest and aguachile with chipotle chili olive oil. It looks very pretty. Damarr: green pozole with tortillas, cabbage, radish and cilantro. Evelyn's dish is delicious and well-balanced. The pozole is pretty good and his tortillas did turn out after all.
Ashleigh: candied pork with salt and vinegar potatoes, killed lettuces and herb yogurt. Jae: seafood gumbo with okra kimchi. No one warned her that Tom doesn't like okra. Jae cries when she talks about her dish because it turns out Leah Chase wrote a letter to help her get her visa so she could be here now. The gumbo is great, but maybe she's not inspired by Babe but by Leah. Christine points out that Ashleigh's pork was tough and she struggled with cutting it. The dish was unbalanced.
Buddha: “Poulet en Bessie” with Paris mash, sauce Robert and corn with chicken mousse. The mash is in a figure 8 because of Bessie's stunt piloting? In the plate we see, I don't see a figure 8 but sure. Sauce Robert is a brown mustard and demi-glace sauce. Luke: cured salmon with oyster emulsion and chicken fudge with chicken and rye bread crumbs. Chicken “fudge” is some kind of mixture that is strongly chicken flavored with a very thick texture. Buddha was clever and there is a ton of technique for two hours. Luke needed salt and some texture, but he did at least try to find himself in Bessie's story. Tom tells a bad joke and the women roast him.
Nick: potato encrusted red snapper with beet risotto, kale romesco and “mushroom” potato. Jo: gulf shrimp with coconut lime salsa verde, fresh corn polenta and salad. Jo's dish was sweet, and some of the women who knew Ann say she was spicy. Nick's dish was beautiful but the potatoes are “cute” and why cut them that way.
Monique has cut her oysters in half, because they're big, but that means they'll get soggy, so she puts less broth. We're really lampshading the oysters today. Monique: fried oysters with assorted beans, pickled okra, and pancetta bean broth. Jackson: tagliolini (pasta) with chicken and offal ragu. He has to read his inspiration from his notes, which is weird, but everyone kind of laughs at “gutsy = offal”. Tom's immediately salty about the cut oysters. It's not the most exciting dish and there's not enough broth. They do like the offal, although some people there don't know it's organ meat. Oops. Everyone gets to vote for the winner.
Judges' Table. Evelyn, Jackson, and Buddha are the tops. Evelyn had such a personal connection. Christine says she can't see the dish but it was perfectly balanced in terms of flavor. Jackson had successful pasta and he managed to make the offal delicious with a ton of flavor. Buddha had lots of technique, moist chicken, and a great connection to his inspiration. The winner is Evelyn. She's overwhelmed finally and she says winning is pushing her to stay true to herself.
Bottoms are Monique, Ashleigh, and Luke. Luke tried to relate his inspiration to him, but it's impossible to cure salmon properly in 2.5 hours. It wasn't there yet. The oyster emulsion was supposed to be combined with the chicken “fudge” but they only got a tiny bit of it so they can't get the flavor. Monique had some timing issues, and then Tiffany says the bean salad tasted like it came out of a can. Gail only got beans and oysters, but no broth or apple or whatever else she was supposed to get. Monique says “sorry” and it's cut like she's indifferent about it and not really sorry. Most of the flavor was in the broth. Also cutting the oysters meant the broth was lost. Ashleigh wanted her dish to be like this, so to her it turned out fine. The pork was tough and there was a lot of vinegar so it wasn't balanced. Ashleigh is a little emotional and Padma is like, well you aren't going anywhere though. She just got eliminated, then got back on the show, won immunity, then was in the bottom. Cut her some slack. Padma acts like they wanted to make sure she got feedback, like they're doing her a favor. I mean, yeah, they are, but she's not hysterical.
Luke was missing something from his dish. The chicken fudge was a strong flavor but there wasn't enough to flavor anything. Monique's dish was boring and the oysters were dry. That's all they say. Monique and Luke come back out, and Tom says they can't hesitate at this point in the competition, and then Monique is eliminated. She feels she hasn't gotten to show what she's made of. She's been reminded of how strong she is.
Next week: dinosaurs, some dumbass Jurassic Park crossover, fake effects of shaking. Come on guys, we know it's fake.
Last Chance Kitchen: Monique thinks she played it safe and she should have been more bold. She's surprised to see Sarah, and makes a comment about how she hasn't seen Sarah for a very long time. It makes sense, but only because I think the way they film LCK is to wait until right before someone is supposed to return. Then they film them all at once. So if that's the case, then it's a day or two before someone is coming back at final 4, not a few days after Sarah was eliminated. Monique's dish was too timid and she said all her flavor was in the broth, which Tom says was also not exciting. 30 minutes to make broth and a composed dish using it. You must serve your dish plus a side of the broth.
Sarah says brunch broth and grabs some marrow bones. Monique says she prides herself on knowing broth. She's making sinigang which is a sour Filipino soup. Sarah says it's pretty much always like this in LCK. They are both hustling to get the broth started. Monique is also trying to make shrimp stock to poach salmon in. Sarah used to make this broth for a breakfast dish with crispy bacon. I'd eat ramen for breakfast. She's busted out the pressure cooker which is probably the best idea. I'm sad they seem to have sent the peanut gallery home. Sarah is cooking spaghetti, because there is no way she can make ramen noodles, but they're not exactly right so she's hoping her butternut squash hash works. But she wants a backup in case it doesn't. Monique dumps in some canned clams for more depth.
Tom Time. He seems impressed with Sarah's whole display and plans. Monique says something about plantains, but Tom had said bananas so I'm not sure what she has. Sarah takes the lid off her pressure cooker and they play the “oh shit” sting but she says it's tasty. Monique is confident.
Sarah: “breakfast” bacon broth with poached egg, “toast-garashi” (chilis and spices) and squash “hash”. So many quotation marks. Monique: sinigang with tomato, onions, ginger base and shrimp stock. They're both good. They're both balanced, with good depth of flavor. Tom enjoyed one a little more, and that's Sarah's. Monique seasoned her broth well but she didn't season anything else. Sarah is pleased to win with a dish she really stands behind.
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