Previously on “Top Chef”: we had the blind taste test. They had 26 ingredients in alphabetical order but no one caught on. Manny somehow won but then made a boring dish so he did not win all of the money. Savannah made the best dish. Then the Elimination challenge was the standard “it's the last week here so everyone make a dish that shows how you've grown” only this time they had to have a story about the dish/how they have grown. Savannah made potato pave and said that potatoes have everything they need to be pave, they just need heat and pressure. Just like Savannah needed heat and pressure to become a better chef. So she won handily. Laura made a good dish so she also moves on to the finals. Danny did OK in the Quickfire, so it's between Dan's oversmoked fish and Manny's raw fish. Finally Manny was sent home. Not only was it raw but his story was “I make this dish all the time”? So the judges knew there was no excuse for it to be bad. (click for more)
I have to tell you that I had potato pave at dinner and it was pretty good. The chef said they bake it to cook the potatoes and then it's supposed to sit overnight with a weight so it sets up. Then you cut squares and crisp it on the flattop. He also tried to take bernaise sauce and wrap frozen chunks in filo dough and fry them, but it was supposed to be liquid and it wasn't. The crispy parts were good texture, though.
Everyone shows up to Curacao and they meet Kristen, Tom, and Gail on a pier. Kristen has brought drinks because Kristen knows what's up. I'm not sure how much time it's been. Savannah got engaged which is cute. One last Quickfire. They will have to cook with lionfish. Lionfish are invasive, and also they have poisonous spikes. So they don't have to break them down, thank goodness. Oh and also gouda. Gail starts talking about the Dutch and how they brought cheese and that this is related to the national dish, keshi yena. Savannah knows it because Savannah is genre savvy and has of course researched Curacao and things she might have to cook. Keshi yena is a ball of cheese stuffed with spiced meat, and then baked or steamed. I'd like to point out that the “spiced meat” is generally not fish. This Quickfire will not be considered during the elimination judging, but you can win $10,000.
30 minutes. There are kitchens outside and some displays with pantry ingredients. Danny is not happy about having to put gouda with some mild fish. Savannah is making a raw dish because why try to cook anything in 30 minutes. She makes a strong sauce and puts chili crisp in it. Dan feels it's like a snapper so he's making sort of a ceviche with aguachile and cheese. We cannot escape the aguachile. Danny is the only one cooking his fish. But he's making a croquette, which might not be terrible. Dan tried to make frico, just melted cheese that makes a cracker, but it is now glued to the pan. Savannah has wisely made hers in the oven on a silpat mat so it's fine.
Dan: lionfish tartare, orange and Fresno aguachile, gouda frico. Kristen asks a question and we discover that the fish is tossed in a little kewpie mayo. Laura: lionfish crudo, guava sauce, gouda crunch. Danny: lionfish croquette, gouda sauce, red cabbage slaw. Savannah: lionfish crudo, keshi yena-inspired sauce, gouda frico, chili oil. As Savannah walks back to the kitchens there is a deliberate shot of all the judges drinking water.
Savannah's sauce was great, and they liked that it was like keshi yena. Somehow Dan's kewpie mayo worked very well. Danny didn't do a crudo, which is an advantage, but Tom says he didn't taste a lot of fish. Laura's use of guava was a good local touch, but she didn't use very much cheese at all. The winner is Dan. You could have guessed by his confessional earlier where he said he had won once and didn't have very much money. Or this is his first win? Whatever.
Time to go on a cruise! It's a [product placement] cruise on the cruise ship they've all been staring at. I went on a cruise last year and I think I made the mistake of going on a high-end one first because now I'm spoiled. But it was great. Anyway, the cruise line has some initiative about local fresh fish, where they pick up fish from each port or whatever. So the Elimination challenge is to make an eight course fresh fish tasting menu, as a group. Obviously that means you have to make two dishes. Each course must have a different fish, and you must use the following preparations: raw, steamed, mousse, poached, fried, roasted, smoked, and blackened. Savannah gets first dibs on what fish she wants and what preparations she wants. She's a little worried she might do better with fewer options. I could see her overthinking when she can pick anything, and rising to the challenge if she gets stuck with something. 2.5 hours to cook onboard tomorrow, for the judges, Ed Lee, and some of the ship's crew. The ship will provide a pantry, but right now they can have $100 and ten minutes at the floating market for produce. The winner gets $10,000 and a 10 day cruise for two. Plus they get to stay onboard tonight, have dinner on the ship, and an excursion tomorrow morning.
Everyone is loving the produce, even though they don't know what they're going to be cooking with or what preparations. Danny has a whole crate. The staterooms are very nice, because of course they got good rooms. Everyone shows up to dinner, and then they walk up to the buffet and MORIMOTO is back there, all casual like “what's up guys?”. This is hilarious to me. It takes Danny a second but you can see Savannah just standing there with her mouth open. I guess he launched this fish program with the cruise line. They are like, is that really him? “Chef Morimoto is gonna cook for me and these three goons?” Heh. Morimoto brings tuna pizza and says it's good because he made it. Everyone is still freaking out.
Morimoto brings them the fish list and kind of laughs at them before leaving. The fish list is: Atlantic salmon, black bass, black grouper, dorade, monkfish, rainbow trout, red snapper, sea bream, and striped bass. Dorade is maybe also called seabream? Savannah claims the salmon as a raw preparation, and striped bass fried. Danny claims trout to smoke, and sea bream to make a mousse. They also seem to be trying to space courses, so the same person isn't doing two courses back to back. I hope they keep a sensible progression. Dan is not super happy, but I think that's because Danny already claimed smoked fish. He takes poached and blackened, and then starts to claim the fish he wants. Laura interrupts and says she wants grouper and snapper, and Dan is like, well I also want snapper. I saw a theory that Laura is not necessarily the villain, she just gets very focused and ignores things like people asking her questions and paying attention to niceties. See then after commercial Laura lets him have snapper. I guess he wanted grouper too? Whatever, it was resolved. So Dan has snapper for blackened. I'm not sure what other fish Dan is using, there were nine fish on the list. Laura is going to steam black bass and roast grouper. Ah, Dan is going to poach dorade. Morimoto brings dessert and says he's not staying for tomorrow. Aww. Dan asks for an autograph and everyone else also gets one. He writes “only one time” on their menus.
In the morning the excursion is to an island with beaches and horseback riding and whatever. It's one of those cruise lines that owns a whole island that they take you to for the morning. The contestants get in a fenced-off part of the beach to stand amongst stingrays and Danny freaks out. He says he likes nature from a distance. Everyone sits on a balcony and contemplates how they might be out.
Time for cooking. Savannah freaks out a little bit since breaking down fish is how she cut herself a few weeks ago. Dan is pretty confident since he won the Quickfire. Danny lights some wood on fire and turns a whole oven or something into a smoker. There is a lot of smoke in there whenever he opens the door. Laura has some banana leaves for steaming. Danny makes spheres of sauce or something. He says this whole dish has one texture but different flavors. He also says there are a lot of things that can go wrong with the mousse, just as we cut to commercial.
Did they take this ship out empty? There is no one else in these shots. Savannah is frantically making hand rolls. Savannah: sake-cured salmon roll, salmon tartare, twice-fried plantain, ginger dressing. Good flavor, although it's maybe too big for one bite. Tom complains that the sauce was grainy.
Dan's fritters are kind of mushy, but he isn't sure why so he just double fries them. Now they're greasy but closer to what he wants. Laura: black bass recado negro, squash, fried plantain. The banana leaves aren't cleaned so they have a weird flavor. But her sauces are on point.
As foreshadowed, the mousse didn't rise and get light as expected but it does seem to be cooked. Danny: sea bream mousse, fines herbes salad, scotch bonnet and green garlic spheres. Tom straight up asks if the mousse is cooked, which is a bad sign. The spheres are fun, but it's not enough to overcome the mousse.
Savannah is getting frantic with her fried fish. She isn't where she needs to be and I think she's starting to freak out. Dan: poached dorade with coconut and turmeric, yucca fritter, grilled pumpkin, and chili-garlic crisp. Dan returns to the kitchen and brags that Tom ate all of his dish. Smash cut to the dining room, where Tom is cracking jokes. Dan had said he hadn't cooked dorade since 2005 and Tom is like, he still hasn't! It's raw! Ed thinks it at least soaked up the flavor in the sauce. The sauces and herbs are good, but the yucca is clunky.
Savannah does not really seem to like what she's putting out. Savannah: fried striped bass baguette, pepper kosho, aji amarillo aioli. The fish is fried well, but maybe there's too much bread. The proportions are off. Tom is still mad at Savannah and complains that she's played it safe.
Laura: roasted grouper with guajillo pepper glaze, guajillo-XO emulsion, pineapple broth. Tom's pointed question this time is if she seared the fish before roasting, and she did not. Several people have fish that's kind of underdone, or just kind of OK. Kristen says hers isn't raw raw, but it doesn't flake like cooked fish would. The emulsion also had a weird texture and it felt broken. Kristen promises the cruise line people that the contestants have made much better food. They're scared now and holding back.
Danny: smoked rainbow trout, plantain pumpkin puree, hazelnut lemon relish. There is also trout foam, so the dish looks like a bowl of white foam with some lumps in it. It does not look appetizing. However somehow the foam keeps the fish from being super dry. The hazelnut lemon relish, which I think was a last minute addition, is really great and everyone loves it.
Dan gets his fish plated with only minor cursing. Dan: blackened snapper, butter-poached potatoes, mandarin butter sauce, and dill oil. Gail asks why there are so few oranges, and Dan is like, have you ever tried to supreme an orange! It's hard! OK it's not that hard? Especially mandarins, like I feel you can separate the wedges easily? Maybe trying to peel all the membrane off is hard. Ed loves it. The most moist fish today, and it's not “traditional” blackening spice.
Everyone hangs out on the deck and talks about how they fucked up and how Tom asks pointed questions. Dan points out that you can think you did well and then in an hour you'll realize all the ways you fucked up. Savannah says if it's her she had a great time.
Judges' Table. Laura didn't clean or prepare her banana leaves properly. She maybe also had too much sauce. Her roasted fish dish had several problems, mainly that the fish was unevenly cooked. It sounds like if she had put her mayo-emulsion sauce on top of the fish, the fat would have helped roast it? But instead she put it under the fish, and then put broth in the dish so it looked curdled.
Savannah had a great raw salmon flavor, and the plantain was nice, but Tom says maybe not the best dish to showcase raw salmon. Plus the sauce needed to be strained. Savannah puts her foot in her mouth by saying she did strain it and then put the ginger pieces back in? What? Why would you say that? The fried fish was done properly, but there was too much dry bread.
Tom immediately tells Dan his poached fish was raw, and Kristen and Ed back him up. Dan is like, but it flaked. Maybe it fell apart and didn't flake? Oof. The sauce was good but the yucca did not work. However Dan's blackened fish was amazing. Ed says if people made blackened fish the way Dan does, the dish would not have died out in the 90's.
Danny's mousse was bad. They think he wrapped it in plastic, and then the condensation got back into it. So it was just like, cooked egg whites. The rest of the dish was interesting, though. The smoked trout was unexpected, and putting the nuts and lemon under the foam made it surprising.
The winner today is Danny. He breathes a sigh of relief. Kristen says that Dan is also moving on. Yeah they had the two dishes they said were good. After the chefs leave, the judges discuss Savannah and Laura. Savannah wasn't particularly creative, and she was very safe, but her flavors were good and Gail argues she had the least amount of flaws. Laura undercooked a lot of fish and Kristen can't get over the banana leaves not being cleaned. Tom thought Laura's grouper was baked and not roasted and his least favorite dish today. Ed argues her sauces were good.
Tom tells both Savannah and Laura they have done better. Laura is out. Savannah looks like she might pass out. Laura gives everyone hugs on the way out. Tomorrow is a new day. Kristen says to have fun with it, stop freaking out. And she gets choked up when she tells them it's amazing and they're going to remember it forever.
Next week: eliminated contestant helpers, Emeril shows up, Danny throws something in the garbage. My recording cut out again but you guys can guess. Someone panics, something is amazing, etc. etc. Someone will win. I for sure will have this up late next week.
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