Previously on “Top Chef”: a new season started, in London, with winners and finalists from several of the Top Chef spinoffs. Looking forward to some fantastic international food. For the Quickfire everyone had to pair up and cook seafood. Someone tried to cook risotto in 30 minutes, and it went as well as you would expect. Dale and Sara won immunity with a well-balanced dish. The Elimination challenge asked for vegetable-forward dishes, which resulted in many dishes being dinged for having meats that were just there. Charbel basically served everyone an onion, and was given the win. Several people did not highlight vegetables, but Samuel didn't clean his shrimp so he was sent home. Or, to Last Chance Kitchen. (click for more)
Samuel won his season, and he was the first out. It's like the finale, but it's the first episode. People are quietly freaking out.
Sara pumps breast milk to ship home for her new baby. Wow. That is some dedication.
At the Top Chef Kitchen Padma introduces this week's guest chef, Santiago Lastra, who is a local chef with a Michelin star for Mexican food, which is very rare. Today's Quickfire involves making an amuse bouche, with “unique and unexpected ingredients”. You can pick one of these ingredients, and your amuse bouche has to fit on a Ritz cracker. No mention of the fact that an amuse bouche is supposed to be one bite and not everyone can fit an entire Ritz cracker into their mouth at once. But product placement should be in the Quickfire so I'm not that mad about it. We pretend the guest chef owes his love of cooking to Ritz crackers. They don't let people run up and create chaos, they have to calmly walk up and pick. Oh here is a twist! Groups of three, assigned by Padma. Sara, Nicole, Sylwia (goat cheese, guajillo peppers, horseradish); Tom, Amar, Begoña (piquillo peppers, bottarga, oyster leaves); Charbel, Luciana, Dale (wasabi, plantains, capers); Ali, Victoire, May (yeast extract, kumquat, hibiscus); Gabri, Dawn, Buddha (jackfruit, tamarind, caviar cream). It is not a team challenge, but a head-to-head challenge. You have 30 minutes to make an amuse bouche with your group's three ingredients. The judges will pick their favorite from each group, and then an overall winner from those five. Winner gets $10,000 and immunity.
Oyster leaves are some kind of leaf from a succulent. Bottgra is salted and cured fish roe. There is some shoving just because they are all in each other's way. Dale doesn't know anything about plantains. May and Victoire are not familiar with yeast extract, which is basically what Vegemite is. Or Marmite. May is making kumquat jam and putting the yeast extract in instead of salt. Amar says that oyster leaves taste like oysters. Tom says Ritz crackers are English, and the most English thing he can think of is shrimp cocktail. Luciana asks him how it's going and he says “Todo bien (all good) uh, yo necesito focus on my shit”. Heh. Begoña loves bottarga and she is probably the only one happy about it. Buddha thinks the two things his “teammates” have, jackfruit and tamarind, are great together. And then he has caviar cream. I think everyone is going Southeast Asian. Gabri is kind of frantically working. Sara is frying the crackers. Sure. Nicole has been catering so she makes small bites a lot. She's making salsa but also worrying that she's screwing herself. Dale is making tempura fish, with plantains in the batter. So much flailing. Amar has the smoke machine out. Begoña only plates one cracker.
Sara: brown butter and guajillo fried Ritz cracker with goat cheese, pepper jelly, and apple and horseradish salad. Nicole: grilled bavette with goat cheese and horseradish black garlic jam, and salsa macha. Bavette is a cut of beef. Sylwia: guajillo peppers on pillow of goat cheese with truffle. Padma and Santiago step back to decide who wins this round right now, and that is Nicole. Well balanced umami.
Begoña: oyster leaf mousse and bottarga tapenade. Padma lets Santiago eat it. Amar: smoked cod dip with avocado, pickled mustard seeds, and shaved bottarga. Tom: “shrimp cocktail my way”--shrimp tartare, avocado roulade, oyster leaf, bottarga persillade. Persillade is a parsley based sauce. Tom wins, although when he introduced his dish he simpered which was unnecessary.
Charbel: sauteed corn and capers with plantain. Dale: plantain fried cod with wasabi caper aioli. Luciana: plantain salsa with fried capers and wasabi. Dale wins for being creative with the plantains.
Victoire: panzanella with kumquat salad and smoked mackerel. Ali: Ritz cracker with yeast extract, mascarpone mousse, kumquat jam, and glazed hibiscus. May: spicy kumquat jam with hibiscus juice and yeast extract. The dishes are all very different, but the winner is May. Her proportions were great.
Buddha: veal tartare with jackfruit, tamarind, and caviar cream. Dawn: caviar butter basted salmon with tamarind and jackfruit tiger cry. “Tiger cry” is a spicy sauce, but all the internet hits I got said “Crying Tiger” but somehow I feel like this is on brand for Dawn. Gabri: jackfruit a la Mexicana with caviar paste and tamarind butter. Gabri wins.
So the overall winning dish was unexpected, and surprising, and belonged to May. She says now they know her. Padma kicks Santiago out and then introduces the Elimination challenge. No ingredient has caused more chefs to pack their knives than rice. Oof. Then, I guess Santiago was just the Quickfire judge, because the actual Elimination guest judge is Lorna Maseko, host of “Top Chef: South Africa”. How come none of those chefs are here? Anyway, they also let this woman show up in a graphic T-shirt and it would be nice if Padma could be more causal sometimes. You must make a rice dish, which can be sweet, savory, or risotto. Heh. Also, serve 100 people and the judges. Victoire says do not make risotto. Luciana asks for a rice cooker. Heh.
Ali says he's not stressed while other people are. Luciana says she came here intending to stay three months, but she's been here 19 years. She's making kedgeree, which is delicious. It's a British Indian dish, with fish and eggs and rice, that you eat for breakfast. Victoire is making sauce maafe, which is African groundnut or peanut stew. May's making dessert, because she knows most of the other chefs are going to go savory. Ali is making ouzi, an Arab rice dish that looks like biryani, which his mother used to make for him. He says his restaurant makes a point to hire female chefs, because so many chefs are men. Gabri is searching for 54 different ingredients for mole. Dawn wants to make black rice congee because she says it will hold better over the course of a few hours, something you need when serving a large number of people. She also brags that she knows rice so we'll see. Gabri says his season of Top Chef didn't have shopping? He is also out of money. He has to beg May for her unused money so he can buy all his stuff.
Two hours to cook. Everyone runs around with big pots. Charbel says his first job was cooking rice, and he got yelled at a lot, but he learned. He can cook basmati rice blindfolded now. Dawn wants to make oxtail, because she refuses to admit she is shit at time management. Also black rice takes a long time to cook, and she needs it cooked today so she can make congee tomorrow. Buddha roasts Tom because Germans don't use rice a lot? I mean German food doesn't? Tom says he's making Sri Lankan lamb biryani. Heh. Listen, he's from Germany, he isn't locked into German food. Luciana has the rice going well but now she has to cook a lot of eggs. Gabri has to make his mole today, instead of taking two days. Amar is going to make arancini, which requires he make risotto. The chyron says fesenjan, which is an Iranian stew made with pomegranate. I think this is in addition to the arancini.
Tom Time! And Lorna. Sara says “everything rice” which is sticky rice with everything bagel seasoning, crisped up on the plancha. Dale is also making congee. It's overcooked, so it's not bad. He is using koshihikari rice which is sushi rice? And short ribs. Sylwia has potatoes, but also coconut rice and Massaman curry. I don't know. Begoña is cooking seaweed rice, but she also says the word “risotto”. Tom bails and everyone flails. There is no space on the stove, and Amar yells several times about if he can move some pots. There is no response so they're moved somewhere. Luciana goes to find her eggs and of course they were her pots, but he was loud. Come on. Pay attention. You can't bitch about how unfair it is when you weren't listening. Dawn's rice isn't cooked. And congee is supposed to be overcooked.
Challenge day. Begoña says to May and Sylwia that the three of them understand each other in English, but she can't understand the Americans. Heh. Luciana laughs about freaking out yesterday. They all hate the Top Chef kitchen but what can you do?
Outdoor booths and one hour to cook. Dawn puts her rice in a pressure cooker in the hope it cooks enough. Gabri yells at the blender for not working. He also says risotto needs love like a spoiled child. Ali gets some charcoal to smoke his rice, as traditionally ouzi can be slow-roasted underground with coals and smoke. May is dedicating her dish to her mom. Sylwia is putting vanilla salt? Dawn claims her rice is cooked. Everyone shows up and of course they let everyone in at once like always for maximum stress. Tom orders some sparkling mead “because why not?” In a change from usual, the judges sit down at a table and are served each dish. I liked when they went around to the booths and stood in the way and watched people's last minute garnish flailing.
Luciana: kedgeree with curry, smoked haddock, and duck egg. Sara: everything rice with salmon, cucumber, and cream cheese. Nicole: crispy furikake rice with negitoro. Furikake is seaweed and flavoring you sprinkle on rice, and I think negitoro is the scraps you scrape off the tuna once you get all the nice cuts for sashimi and sushi. Sara was creative, although maybe not rice forward. Nicole somehow used too much rice? The kedgeree is somehow overcooked and hard at the same time. Luciana asks some random person how her dish was and they seem to answer “oh...good...yeah” like they are lying.
Begoña: lemon rice with pickled ginger, beetroot and seaweed. Sylwia: coconut rice with Thai style Massaman curry. Victoire: basmati rice sauce maafe and shrimp. Begoña is out there but it works somehow. Sylwia just put rice on the side. Also it's weirdly sweet. Victoire made a rice ball and broke the grains, but the sauce is good though.
Buddha: Hainanese chicken rice, which is simply flavored poached chicken and rice. Gabri: green risotto and mole negro. Dale: congee with short rib, pickled mushrooms, and chili oil. Buddha cooked everything very well but again, rice is not the center. Gabri balanced the risotto and mole very well. Dale also balanced his dish.
Tom: Sri Lankan lamb biryani with raisin and goji berry salad and green sauce. May: rice pudding with watermelon puffed rice, salted coconut milk and sweet potato. Charbel: Lebanese spiced basmati rice with grilled chicken, mint and cucumber yogurt, toasted nuts, and fried parsley. The biryani is pretty good, but Charbel's rice is cooked better. May's dish is amazing. I would order that dish in a heartbeat.
Ali: lamb ouzi—smoked rice, toasted nuts, minted cucumber, and yogurt. Amar: pomegranate beef stew with saffron arancini, and herb yogurt sauce. Dawn: black Venus congee with black bean and five-spiced braised oxtail. Amar's beef stew is great but the rice isn't highlighted enough. And the beef is tough. Ali had a good smokiness, and this balance between rice and other ingredients is good. Dawn's dish is broth with crispy rice, not congee porridge. And no flavor in the rice, although the oxtail is delicious. The judges like Gabri, Begoña, May, Ali, and Dale.
Judges' Table. Padma collects Gabri, Dawn, Luciana, Ali, May, and Sylwia. Oh, so tops and bottoms today. May, Ali, and Gabri are the tops. They don't even ask the other three to step aside, they have to stand there too. Oof. Gabri was inspired by two of his mother's dishes, and it ended up being a great mash-up. Ali describes how he used the charcoal to get the smoky flavor, and it was very different and exciting. May did a dessert, with multiple textures and she was also inspired by her mom. She cries a little bit, and Sylwia gives her a hug. May is just moved by her mom's struggles. The winner is Ali. He balanced his dish and highlighted the rice.
All the dishes were good, but it's a rice challenge and the bottom three had bad rice. Luciana's rice had no flavor and was somehow overcooked and undercooked at the same time. But the fish was nicely smoked and the eggs were good. Dawn talks about cooking “jus” down into her rice. I'm not sure what she is talking about, unless she means the jus from the oxtail? She thought the starch from the black rice would be enough to make porridge. But it was all crunchy. Sylwia was happy with her dish, but she doesn't make rice very often. She tells them about the vanilla salt, which they freak out about a little bit. The curry was great but it's a rice challenge.
Luciana didn't have enough flavor and was poorly cooked. Sylwia made dessert rice and so it was unbalanced. She did understand it was bad, though, and Padma thinks Luciana and Dawn didn't really get what the judges were saying. Tom tries to defend Dawn somehow, but Gail is like “this dish was not congee”. In the Stew Room Dawn says she wanted to take a risk with the black rice and if they don't like it then they don't like it.
Tom talks about how difficult rice is, and then Padma sends Dawn to Last Chance Kitchen. Maybe the internet will chill out about her now. I get that she has poor time management but some people are acting like casting her automatically ruins the season. She obviously didn't expect to go home this early. Honestly I feel she needs to just focus on restaurants and not compete on TV anymore. Some people don't do well in that kind of environment, and that doesn't mean you're a bad chef.
Next week: pub crawl, team challenge, naturally some arguing.
Last Chance Kitchen: Samuel says that it was very hard to get back into the competition. Dawn also was not expecting to go home, and she's like “it sucks to be the first American go to home”. She also says it's not acceptable, which is an interesting contrast to Samuel saying he accepts that he screwed up.
Tom says some platitudes about how tough this competition is, and that three times, someone has gone though LCK and ended up winning Top Chef. Samuel didn't clean his prawns, and he says he thought he cleaned them all but he must have missed some. Dawn's dish didn't come together, and she claims she's used similar rice and that worked so she thought this would work too.
Today's challenge is to use ingredients from one of their finale dishes. Top Chef France gets 10 hours for their finale dishes. Wow. Of course Tom would like them to use the ingredients, but make something totally different in 30 minutes. They can't make the original dishes anyway.
Samuel has to use salmon, and Dawn has to use lamb. He is going to make a dish he makes in his restaurant, with some teriyaki. He asks Dawn what she's doing, and she says something about “fondant Japanese potato” but also that she is “still developing the flavor profile for the lamb”. Eventually she decides on a Ghanaian flavor with a condiment called shito. Samuel worries about plating, because he has big plans for painting the plates. Dawn puts some tomatoes in the wood-fired oven and makes breadcrumbs.
Tom Time! The return of Sassy Tom. Dawn is clearly much more frantic, but Tom is giving Samuel some shit for saying he is making Japanese cuisine but with a cream sauce. Dawn bitches that the oven isn't hot and now she has to put the tomatoes on the stove and also put the shito in there instead of wherever it was going to be. Samuel has to blend his puree of mushrooms and cream, but he is almost out of time. Dawn's shito is very spicy, so she's putting honey and salt in there. Not sure if that will work.
Samuel: grilled salmon with mushroom cream, mushrooms, and pine nut vinaigrette. Dawn: pan roasted lamb saddle with shito tomato salad and herb bread crumbs. They're both good dishes with good flavors. Tom's least favorite dish is Samuel's. It's not Japanese enough, and not seasoned enough. I just read something that said Tom really wants lots of salt in his dishes, and that gives the Americans an advantage since they already know that. So I wonder if that happened here? Or if Tom just loves Dawn. Samuel wishes he had more time to express his cuisine. If he opens a restaurant in America, he has to remember Americans love salt. Dawn claims she needs this because she doesn't have time to overthink. Is overthinking her problem? Or is it time management?
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