Top Chef, 12/21/11

Product placement duty fell to Cute Chris this week; he makes the obligatory TOYOTA TOYOTA TOYOTA Siennas mention; then everybody hits the road headed for Austin. Padma and Tom inform the chefs that for this Quickfire, Twitter fans will decide what they must do. Oooooh, fun! I want some really crazy suggestions. Crazy — not gross. Please no “Everybody’s gotta cook monkey brains, like that scene in Indiana Jones!” Grayson’s hoping for no cupcakes; Sarah, for no baby food. Winner gets $10k but no immunity. The first tweet instructs everyone to make a bacon dish. (Vegetarian racism.) The second, to make hash a component of the dish. The third, to pick a pantry ingredient and give it to another chef to use. I’d be looking for something I’d never heard of and couldn’t pronounce, but they’re going easy on each other with items such as sriracha, maple syrup, limes, and scallions.

In the bottom are Grayson’s shrimp puff with crispy bacon hash cake — the puff was wet and heavy; Ponytail Chris’s corn puree, bacon and butter-poached potato hash, seared scallop — too salty; and Ed’s soft shell crabs, braised bacon and mustard, spread, potato and cocoa nib hash — he burned the hash. (Plus, potatoes + chocolate = effing GROSS). In the top are Beverly’s (and of course Heather looks mad about this) crispy pork belly with corn, habanero, and potato hash; Sarah’s burrata-stuffed squash blossom with bacon and zucchini hash (Time out. Burrata: Italian cheese made of mozzarella and cream. Time back in.); and Paul’s bacon fat, crispy bacon, clams, asparagus, and blackberries with chorizo and mushroom hash. And the winner is … Paul. Who’s super-stoked, cuz he hails from Austin. And who’s up to $30k in winnings, lucky bastard.

(When I first started watching Top Chef and similar shows, I used to feel sad about all the food that got wasted. Then I realized that the producers, camera guys, set directors, janitors, groundskeepers, personal assistants, lesser assistants, assistants’ friends, lighting crew, makeup peeps, etc., etc., probably cannot WAIT for each segment to wrap so they can chow the hell down on all the non-perfect food that didn’t make the cut. Eat up, people!!!)

After the Quickfire, the chefs relax in the hotel bar ... and are entertained by none other than cookbook author and singer extraordinaire, the awesome and amazing Patti LaBelle. WTF no fair I’m stupid jealous!!! She’ll be the guest judge. Padma informs the chefs that they must cook a meal for Ms. LaBelle (I can’t call her anything else) and friends that pays homage to the person who taught the chefs how to cook. Grayson thinks of her dad; Heather and Beverly, their moms; Cute Chris, an uncle; Ty, his Japanese nanny; and Sarah, Ponytail Chris, Paul, Lindsay, and Edward, their grandparents. Since they couldn’t afford meat, Edward’s grandma would cook a lot of meatless meals, so he’s doing a vegetarian dish. YAY!

- Heather: beef stroganoff with herb spaetzle and roasted wild mushrooms
- Ponytail Chris: lemon pepper NY strip steak with asparagus, carrots, mushroom, and fingerling potatoes with sour cream and bacon
- Paul: quail adobo with ginger rice green mango salsa
- Sarah: stuffed cabbage with pork sausage, spinach, and brown butter
- Beverly: braised short rib with edamame-scallion puree and mushrooms
- Cute Chris: salmon with confit potato and brown sugar-carrot-curry puree
- Lindsay: trout spanakopita with leeks and trout roe
- Ed: a take on bibimap: mushrooms, pickled carrots, pickled cucumbers, sautéed zucchini, fried egg, rice patty, with lemon chili sauce and nori
- Grayson: ribeye with grilled veggies and German potato salad
- Ty: buttermilk-battered chicken tenders fried in duck fat over pickled peaches

(Tom, in response to Patti LaBelle’s dinner invitation: “I’ll be there with bells on.” Ms. LaBelle: “With LA-bells on. Heeeeeeeeeeey!” ROFL.)

Grayson, Cute Chris, and Heather are in the bottom. Tom says there’s too much going on in Cute Chris’s dish and the salmon was cooked improperly; Emeril says there was too much dill; Padma says it was unappetizing. Grayson’s meat was "tough" and “stringy” and “gristle-y” and “sinewy.” Padma says Heather’s dumplings were dry, chewy, and overcooked; Emeril says he can’t recognize the cut of meat in her stroganoff; Ms. LaBelle says it was “bigfoot.” (Burn!!!) Heather says she should’ve used the pressure cooker but didn’t because it messed her duck up last time; Tom says, “Well, Beverly used the pressure cooker, and she’s not [in the bottom].” HA HA HA HAAAA! That was intentional. Tom specifically mentions the chef that Heather spent all last episode insulting. I effing love Tom.

Beverly, Sarah, and Ed are in the top. YAY Beverly and YAY Ed’s vegetarian dish!!!! All three dishes get glowing praise. And the winner, announces Ms. LaBelle, is … Sarah. Aw darn. Oh well. Good job, guys!

So clearly, the bottom two are Grayson and Heather. And ... Heather is sent home. If you ask me, she so rubbed the judges wrong way last week that they were quite ready for her to GTFO. Good, cuz so was I. Thank you for being an obnoxious racist bullying bitch, Heather!

In Last Chance Kitchen, it was Heather vs Nyesha. NYESHA WON. *does dance of joy*

Terra Nova, 12/19/11

In 2149, Lucas chats with … some guy; they plan their Terra Nova invasion. Some Guy asks Lucas something I’ve been wondering: how’d he get those scars on the back of his neck. Nikoraptor attack, Lucas explains. HA. Commander Taylor lived alone and unprotected in the jungle for months; he doesn’t have any scars. Taylor is clearly made of infinitely more win than his son. In Terra Nova, the soldiers head to the portal to oversee … whew! It’s just the 11th Pilgrimage peeps arriving. A young family … Josh’s girlfriend Cara … oh wait, then a dude with bombs strapped to himself. BOOM! Jim is knocked unconscious. He wakes in the hospital disoriented, stumbles outside into a ravaged and ruined Terra Nova. Elizabeth explains the explosion was three days ago, it destroyed the portal, and before Taylor et al. could get back, Lucas et al. opened another fracture closer to TN and took it over, forcing Wash to surrender by killing civilians. Twenty six people are dead, Taylor’s missing, and the evil bad guys are in control.

(One of the deceased is Cara. Skye is so off somewhere googling “How long should you let a guy mourn before putting the moves on him?”)

Wash and Jim put their heads together and start planning how to get things unFUBARed. Jim visits Malcolm, who’s busy repairing a new portal, which he was forced to do when his assistant was killed when he originally refused. Ugh. Can you imagine dying just because your boss decided to take a stand? I’d be the world’s most pissed-off ghost. Lucas, Mira, and Some Guy drop by looking for Jim to interrogate him about Taylor’s whereabouts; Jim and Malcolm pretend Jim is deafened, hobbled, and mentally impaired because of the explosion. The next day, Some Guy tells Mira that “our employers” (Oh, just say their names already!) want her to take a trip to an area called The Badlands. Meanwhile, Lucas has Skye brought to see him and tells her he knows she warned Taylor about him; she better not betray him again. ::eye roll:: Lucas, please stop talking like you’re Jesus. Thank you.

Elizabeth removes some bullets from a bad soldier who got shot in a skirmish with some good soldiers, notices somebody etched a bunch of numbers into them. She shows Jim; he realizes that they’re map coordinates to a rendezvous point. A message from Taylor. YAY! (And gosh, how clever. I’d’ve been trying something wack, like flashlight signals.) Malcolm and wheelchair dude Casey arrange a diversion so that Jim can stow away on a convoy manned by Lucas and Some Guy, who’s complaining about some big ugly bug that bit him. OTG, Lucas and Some Guy-whose-name-is-Weaver discuss how much money they’re going to make strip mining TN for ore; a bad soldier mentions that the only problem is the wildlife. Weaver grabs a gun and kills … a brachiosaurus. (We’re meant to contrast that with how Taylor and the good soldiers took care to tranq, not kill, any dinos if they could help it.) Nope, not a nikoraptor or a T Rex, but a big, slow-moving, plant-eating, sort-of-cute brachiosaurus. Weaver: not just evil but stupid. (Lucas, who’s evil but is still a scientist, tells Weaver that the dinosaur he killed was harmless.) Jim listens to Weaver and Lucas’s plan to detonate pyrosonic charges to clear out the vegetation and wildlife, then sneaks off to meet Taylor and the good soldiers (Yay! Hot Mark is alive!) and tell them the plan. They get to the charge, deactivate it, steal it. A furious Lucas grabs a rocket thingy and shoots a missile thingy, but misses. “SON OF A BITCH!” he screams. (And lol, he screamed it the way you really scream it when you’re super-mad, so it sounds like “SON OF A BETCH!”)

With Jim and Wash’s help, Taylor and the good soldiers wage war. They steal supplies from the bad soldiers’ rover convoys, interrupt their little forays into the forest, etc. (Which, lol, is exactly what the Sixers used to do them.) It’s driving Lucas ape-crap crazy, so he goes to the bar for a drink, and orders Skye to join him. He gets a little handsy; valiant Josh, mad about Cara, comes to her defense, and Lucas has the soldiers beat him up. Skye runs to get Jim, who comes and beats up several soldiers, thus revealing that he is, in point of fact, not deafened, hobbled, or mentally impaired. Lucas has him searched, and they find the transponder he’s been using to communicate with Taylor. (Really? It didn’t occur to him to leave that with somebody else before he went looking for trouble?) Lucas has Jim and Josh sent to the brig.

Lucas releases Josh, thanks to Skye’s begging; after he leaves, Lucas whips out an electric zapper cattle prod thingy. (*SHUDDER* Torture? I wouldn’t last 17 seconds before I’d give up Taylor’s whereabouts, reveal who really shot JFK, and admit to masterminding every bank heist in the last quarter century if you’ll, please, for the love of God, just make the pain stop.) In the hospital, Weaver gets a shot for a hella bad rash that he’s developed from that bug bite. Then Elizabeth sweetly tells him that that wasn’t medicine. Nope, it was a very nasty disease, which she’ll give him the cure for only if he gets Jim released. HAAAAAAAA! Elizabeth is so boss. But we should expect no less; she already broke Jim out of prison once. As Lucas repeatedly zaps Jim with the cattle prod, we FINALLY get to the bottom of Lucas’s hatred for Taylor. So, back in Somalia, rebels overran the camp and made Taylor choose if his wife or his son would get to live; Taylor (probably with his wife’s blessing, wouldn’t you think?) chose his son. The rebels “took their time with her.” :( And ever since that day, Lucas has felt that Taylor hated him and blamed him for his mother’s death. I’m slightly less mad at Lucas now. Not because Taylor did anything wrong, but because having to go through that at age 14 and carry around that memory for the rest of your life would screw anybody up.

Weaver bursts in just then claiming that Taylor’s camp has been found; Lucas leaves; the Shannon fam sneaks in and gets Jim; Elizabeth knocks Weaver out with a sedative. “Mom? That was cool,” Josh says. I second that emotion. Wash gives Jim a message for Taylor, then blows something up and gets arrested to distract the bad soldiers so the Shannons can escape. She won’t tell Lucas where they went, so he kills her. :( Childhood trauma notwithstanding, I am soooooo going to enjoy when he dies. Mira returns from her trip to The Badlands with … something that we’re not shown. Weaver promises her that as soon as the portal’s fixed, she’s free to go back to 2149 to her daughter. The Shannons take up residence in the good soldier’s camp. Taylor’s staring morosely into the fire, sad about Wash; little Zoe comes and gives him a hug. Awwww. Taylor interprets Wash’s message: they need to destroy not only the portal but also Hope Plaza so Lucas and Weaver can’t bring hordes more soldiers through and raze Terra Nova. Doing so would mean permanently cutting themselves off from 2149, but it’s the only way. Jim agrees. Me too.

Lucas and Weaver toast to the portal being repaired. Weaver heads out to ready the first shipment of ore for transport. Skye stops in to tell Lucas she’s had a change of heart and wants to be all cool with him now. This is obviously a trick and Skye’s up to something, but Lucas totally falls for it. On the way, Skye tells him she knows how to contact his father. He stops the truck—and Hot Mark and another soldier swoop in, tie Lucas up, switch the truck for one with Jim hiding in the cargo hold, and carry on to the portal. Stowaway Jim is sent through to 2149. Lucas realizes Taylor wants to obliterate Hope Plaza, gets free, knocks Skye unconscious, and tries to radio the bad soldiers at the portal, but there’s too much interference; he heads off on foot. (I’m glad he didn’t kill Skye, but he left her unconscious and alone. She could have been eaten by a passing nikoraptor! Jerk.)

In 2149, Weaver explains to a couple employers how much money they’re all going to make mining ore: “Gentlemen. Today, you’re rich. Tomorrow? Well, it’s just going to be stupid.” Ha hahahaha ha ha ha ha ha ha! High five to the writer responsible for that line. The employers ask Weaver if he looked into that other matter, in The Badlands. He says yep and opens the cargo container Jim’s hiding in … but not before Jim gives the sedated carnotaur inside a shot to wake it up. The container opens, the carnotaur bursts out and eats an employer, and Jim sneaks off. (Wait—so what was it that Mira brought back from the badlands that had everyone so fascinated? They better explain that. That was like the breakfast scene in Pulp Fiction when Vincent opened the suitcase and stared transfixed at the glowing contents.) Weaver sends the other employer running straight to the carnotaur; as he’s eaten, devious Weaver run in the opposite direction to get help. Jim sets the stolen pyrosonic charge.

Skye radios Taylor that Lucas got away. Taylor finds him running through the forest and beats the living hell out him (as I cheer). But then Taylor falls for the I’m-so-upset-please-hold-me-daddy ruse, and Lucas stabs him. NOOOOOOOOO! Then just as he’s about to slit Taylor’s throat, BAM! Skye shoots him. He tries again to kill Taylor; Skye shoots him dead. YAY SKYE. Back in 2149, Weaver is about to kill Jim when the carnotaur kills him. YAY CARNOTAUR. (Somewhere, the murdered brachiosaurus is laughing.) Jim takes off running for the portal and makes it through just as Hope Plaza is blown to bits. In the forest, Jim finds Elizabeth; Skye and Taylor realize that Lucas is gone. As in, not dead. DAMMIT. One of the bad soldiers tells Mira that they’re stuck on Terra Nova forever; she looks (understandably) furious. Bartender Tom radios Taylor to tell him that the bad soldiers have all left Terra Nova, inexplicably heading north. So come home.

Taylor, Malcolm, Shannon, and the good soldiers arrive back at TN to hugs and applause from all the colonists. Rebuilding of their ravaged home begins immediately. Hot Mark tells Taylor and Jim that the bad soldiers have been spotted headed toward The Badlands. Jim remembers the switched cargo container; they open it to find … the prow of an ancient ship. Huh? How it got to The Badlands or why the bad soldiers are headed there, no one knows. Taylor says to keep the whole prow thing hush hush. The episode ends with the Shannons safe and sound at home, watching a meteor shower. RIP, everybody who died. Especially Wash. :( Hope they name the school or the hospital after you.

Sooooooo many mysteries to delve into in season two! Wtf is going on in The Badlands? Are they really cut off forever from the future? Once he’s able, what complicated revenge scheme will Lucas come up with?

Terra Nova, 12/12/11

Taylor and Jim inspect the portal that brings people to Terra Nova. Like, specifically to Terra Nova, as opposed to several kilometers away or in the middle of a lake, as happened before it was built. The 11th Pilgrimage peeps are to arrive in a few days; Taylor tells Jim he wants that pesky mole found before that happens. (How perfect that it was folks from the 6th Pilgrimage who went rogue. “Sixers” sounds way cooler than “Three-ers” or “Eleveners.”) Jim’s interviewing all females who were in the medical complex the day that evidence was destroyed; when he gets to Skye, she says she was hanging with Josh teaching him to play chess during the time in question, then hurries to find Josh and ask him to back up her lie. Too complicated. She should’ve just told Jim she was alone in her room reading or something.

Let me quickly sum up the subplot, in case we should need to know any of this later: Maddy’s core on her plex, which is Terra Nova-speak for the battery thingy on her laptop thingy, dies; Josh tells her she can trade for a new one with Casey, that wheelchair dude in the market; Maddy offers up a green scarf, a teddy bear, and an abacus, FAIL; Casey tells her to get something somebody actually wants; she notices he needs a new wheel for his chair; she gets one but Casey’s already made the wheel-core trade with Tom the bartender; Maddy goes to Tom to trade; upon finding out she’s the sheriff’s daughter, he just gives her the core and tells her to shoo. The End.

Skye sneaks out, gives the Sixers some fresh Terra Nova intel, and sits with her ailing mother for a visit which is interrupted by Taylor’s son Lucas. “I want us to be friends,” he says, so you know he’s up to absolutely no good. He wants Skye to retrieve some data from The Eye for him so he can figure out how to make the portal go both ways and destroy dear old dad. Skye asks why he hates Taylor so much; Lucas says ask Taylor about August 2138. Then he calmly threatens if she doesn’t do what he’s asking, he’ll kill her mother. What a jerk. And I say again, I don’t understand why Skye doesn’t just tell Taylor the Sixers have her mom and are forcing her to mole-ify. Skye gets him the data, but she’s caught on camera sneaking under the fence. Jim goes to Josh, who admits he lied about the chess; Jim grounds him. (Josh actually gripes that he’s been grounded since he walked through the portal. Well maybe you should stop sneaking outside the gate, working with the Sixers, and lying for their spies. Just a thought.)

Jim reports to Taylor, who’s saddened to know that the girl he helped raise after her parents died (or so he thinks) is the mole, but quickly gets over it and decides to set a trap for the Sixers. As he and Skye later play a game of chess, Taylor tells Hot Mark which route a supply convoy will be taking … but the Sixers don’t attack the convoy. Jim deduces that 1. Skye never gives them any info that they could use to really hurt Terra Nova and 2. she’s probably working for them because they’re forcing her to. Pretty quick on the draw, that Jim. At the Sixers’ camp, Mira’s pissed cuz Skye didn’t tell them about the convoy, which Skye pretends not to have known about. Lucas, meanwhile, is elated cuz he’s figured out how to make the portal go both ways. OH NO. He tells Skye not to go back to Terra Nova cuz his employers are coming to wrest power from his dad and things could get ugly. He forehead-smooches her warmly as if they’re old pals, then heads out to go get started causing carnage. Upset about what she hath wrought, Skye goes crying to Mom, who tells her to run back to Terra Nova and tell Taylor, and not to come back. Ever. :( Skye kisses her goodbye and leaves … and runs into Jim and Taylor, who’re out searching for her, and tries to warn Taylor, but he doesn’t believe she’s even met Lucas. Until she says that Lucas mentioned August 2138, that is. Taylor and Jim hop in their rover and speed toward to portal, get there just in time to hear Lucas promise he’s coming back with reinforcements, then step through the portal and disappear.

God I hope he calculated wrong and ended up, like, stuck in ancient Egypt.

Taylor explains to Jim that August ’38 was when Lucas’s mom died cuz Taylor couldn’t protect her. Currin (Was he always that tall and handsome?) sneaks Skye’s mother out of the Sixers’ camp and safely to Terra Nova; Elizabeth says the medicine she was being given can be replicated, so she should be ok. Yay! (WHY THE HELL DIDN’T SKYE TELL TAYLOR ABOUT HER MOTHER AGES AGO???) The Sixers, realizing they themselves had a mole, desert their treehouses and relocate to parts unknown to wait for The Return of Lucas and Friends. Taylor pep talks everyone in Terra Nova, tells them a battle is coming, but if they stand together, they’ll prevail.

Let’s hope so.

Top Chef, 12/14/11

Padma and guest judge Tim Love, who’s kind of a hottie, inform the contestants that for this Quickfire, they must taste a bunch of tequilas, select one, then create a dish that pairs well with it. Reason #2 I can’t be a chef: I hate alcohol. (Reason #1: I’d weigh 476 pounds.) No immunity, but the winner will win $5K. That’s ok. $5K > immunity.

Can I just say that I love early in the competition, when there are a bunch of chefs running around, throwing things to each other, yelling angrily about all the [food item] being gone, and darting around shouting “Behind!” It’s chaos in the kitchen! Anyway, Ty-lör wins the Quickfire with his steamed clams in Thai style fish caramel sauce, paired with the 1942 tequila. Caramel + seafood + alcohol?????? I would rather beat my head into a wall than eat that, but yay Ty! I like him and his goofy grin. And after nearly chopping off his finger and then being in the bottom last episode, he needed a pick-me-up. I hope he and his boyfriend go on a fun-filled vaykay with that five grand.

For the elimination challenge, the chefs are split into teams of two. Padma says “the game is on,” and Tim says each team has to cook a dish for his “game dinner,” so I at first I thought they were talking about stupid sports. Then I realized they mean game meats, thank god. Nyesha and Dakota get venison; Sarah and Paul, squab; Grayson and Ponytail Chris, elk; Lindsay and Cute Chris, boar; Heather and Beverly, duck; and Edward and Ty, quail. And all the chefs will get to judge each other’s food and send three teams to the chopping block … and an entire team is going home. Double elimination, oh no! The winning team gets to split $10K. Fat ass prize money, oh boy!

Last episode, Dakota called Heather an obnoxious bully for how Heather treated Beverly. At the beginning of this episode, Nyesha said how Heather treated Bev showed a lot about Heather’s integrity. And now a third person has taken notice. “Honestly, Heather’s being a complete bitch.” says Edward, who’s not one to mince words (COOKING PUN!), and I have to say, I wholly agree with him. Heather is extremely bossy, not at all willing to compromise, and hypercritical of Bev. She “doesn’t think like a chef,” Heather sniffs (twice). But what really started to annoy me was when Heather simply would not stfu about “I just want to make sure that the whole dish isn’t too Asian.” “Bev cooks Pan Asian, and I cook American farm-to-table plates.” “We might wanna think about the name of our dish. I don’t want it to appear to be a completely Asian dish.” Jesus christ, Heather. I bet if an Asian water showed up to take the dish to the judges, Heather would start screaming about a conspiracy and demanding a white guy. To her credit, Bev never once flies off the handle at Heather, the way I would if my teammate kept repeating that she doesn’t want our dish to be “too black.”

The Voltaggio brothers’ Samsung commercial: THEY ARE SO FRIGGING HOT.

- Lindsay and Cute Chris: roast rack of boar with peach barbecue sauce, kohlrabi slaw, farro fried rice
- Beverly and I Hate Asians: five-spice duck breast, polenta, pickled cherries, herb salad
- Grayson and Ponytail Chris: juniper roasted elk, sweet potato, citrus greens
- Ed and Ty: sorghum quail, pickled cherries, eggplant
- Nyesha and Dakota: roast rack of venison, kabocha squash, beet gratin
- Sarah and Paul: pan roasted squab breast, squab meat sausage, nectarine pickles, shallots, jalapeno

Ed and Ty made the fave dish. Yay Ed! Holy crap, Ty won TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS in this one episode. Color me jealous. The chefs get together to decide which three teams will be up for elimination: Nyesha and Dakota, Grayson and Ponytail Chris, and Beverly and Asians Keep Out.

The judges say Beverly and Please No Asian's dish was too disparate. Tom asks Asians Are Icky if she feels she deserves to be in the bottom; she says no, it’s the result of everyone being jealous that she won the steak dinner challenge. Eyes roll. The judges loved Nyesha and Dakota’s dish, but the meat, which Dakota cooked, was too rare. Grayson and Ponytail Chris’s meat was yummy, but the sweet potatoes, which Ponytail Chris cooked, were a major misstep.

Tom asks Bev why she thinks her team is in the bottom; before she can get three words out, Down With Asians interrupts her, tells the judges that she and Bev have never gotten along, and that all Bev did in the steak challenge was cook shrimp for two days, which means Bev has a bad work ethic. Dakota, bless her, stands up for Bev. Bev defends herself but starts crying. I HATE CRYING I HATE CRYING. Only slightly less than I hate No Asians Allowed. Back in the stew room, Asians Go Away irritates the living hell out of everyone bashing Bev and the Asain aspects of their dish. Dakota points out that it wasn't the Asian flavors that the judges had a problem with; Grayson points out that throwing your partner under the bus make no sense because it’s a dual elimination; one of the judges points out it’s pointless to bring up old issues.

And … Nyesha and Dakota are sent home. This decision makes sense; it was a game challenge, after all, and their meat was undercooked. (But in last week’s steak challenge, the person who made potato gratin, not steak, was sent home, and the person who made cake, not steak, won. Go figure.) Bye bye, fellow black girl. :(

But wait! Nyesha won Last Chance Kitchen. So she's still in it. Yay!

Top Chef, 12/7/11

Padma and guest judge Dean Fearing, whose last name is like totally a verb, inform the chefs that this Quickfire will test their saucier skills. Everyone must make a new sauce based on one of the five “mother sauces”: béchamel, espagnole, velouté, hollandaise, or tomate. Oh man, I used to looooooooooooove a good sauce drizzled on some delicious meat; these days, I still cherish it, on some fire-roasted veggies or expertly seasoned seitan or tofu. Because I could drink a bucket of béchamel, I paid attention to those dishes. Edward’s cauliflower milk béchamel over snapper, crab, and oyster looks yum; Heather’s gruyere croquette over apple and ginger compote with Asian slaw is savory + sweet nastiness; Dakota’s is a severely complicated peach-infused béchamel (GROSS!) creation that I gave up trying to type after having to rewind five times. It lands her in the bottom. Edward totally triumphed in Battle Béchamel. The Quickfire winner is Grayson; her charred corn hollandaise over corn ravioli with a blueberry balsamic reduction wins her immunity.

For the elimination challenge, everyone has to work together to create a four-course steak dinner for 200 Texans. The winner of this challenge will win a brand new TOYOTA TOYOTA TOYOTA Venza. Two of the four dishes must contain steak, which must be cooked medium rare. OH NO. I’m going to have to watch steaks being cut open to make sure they’re bleeding. :( You can call me unsophisticated, but the only way I could eat steak during my carnivore days was well done. Bloody meat is DISGUSTING. Oh, and I wasn’t alive when Dallas started airing, so I never watched it, so I can’t join in the merriment at serving on the Southfork Ranch.

Sarah, Beverly, Dakota will make soup. Nyesha, Ty-lör, Whitney, and Ponytail Chris are making sirloin; Edward, Paul, and Cute Chris are making ribeyes. Heather, Lindsay, and Grayson are making dessert. (Note: the first- and fourth-course folks are showing some pretty smart strategery; it’s the meat that’ll be judged most harshly.) Heather’s playing it hella safe, making the same cake that was such a hit during the quinceanera challenge. The next day is a flurry of prep. Heather says Beverly’s taking too long with the shrimp. Dakota calls Heather an obnoxious bully. Nyesha is heating up her knives with a blowtorch; I don’t know why, but it looks really damn cool. Dean and Tom quiz everyone about what they’re cooking. (Texasism: instead of po-tay-toe, Dean pronounces it p-tay-tuh. “This is the ptaytuh for the steak?” Lol. The variations in Southern accents tickle me. We Floridians don’t pronounce it that way.)

Serving time! Oh yay, the dinner is a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. I’ll refrain from all the nasty meat comments I was gonna make, since this is for a good cause. Eff off, cancer. Eff off and die.

The first course is a tomato, cucumber, and watermelon gazpacho served with an olive oil-poached shrimp. (YUCK. Not my cup of tea.) It mostly goes over well. Second course is grilled New York strip steak carpaccio with mushroom “bacon” and a salad of heirloom tomato and asparagus and pistachio vinaigrette. Tom says the asparagus is undercooked and the dish has no point of view; Handsome Hugh says he would’ve peeled the tomatoes; Dean says the steak is cooked well. Then there’s a time issue in the kitchen; the steaks were apparently cooked too soon. Uh oh. Third course is grilled ribeye, potato gratin, and braised Brussels sprouts and greens, with bone marrow-red onion compound butter and some unnamed sauce. Dean says the steaks aren’t medium rare. Uh oh. Tom says the potatoes are undercooked. (I’m mad I was robbed of the chance to hear Dean say “ptaytuhs” again.”)

Fourth course is a “right side up” Texas peach cake with shaved peach salad and candied pecan streusel. Heather says they didn’t make a very sweet dessert because they wanted to serve something light after that heavy dinner. Wtf? Unless dinner was a 5-lb bag of sugar and a milkshake, DESSERT SHOULD ALWAYS BE SWEET. THE SWEETER THE BETTER. If anybody ever served me a barely sweet dessert, I’d return it with a death threat. Heather’s cake, same as last time, is a crowd pleaser, but Handsome Hugh says the cream needed sugar. Hear hear, Handsome Hugh! Tom says he was ok with it cuz he doesn’t like sweet desserts. EPIC AND EVERLASTING FAIL, TOM. Guess that explains why Gail, not Tom, is the judge on Top Chef Just Desserts. And why I superlove her.

In the top are Nyesha (black girl high five!), Heather, and Ponytail Chris. Between Ponytail Chris’s carpaccio, Heather’s “light as a feather” cake, and Nyesha’s sauce and compound butter … the cake wins. Heather gets the Toyota Venza. Ty’s mis-cooked steak, Whitney’s potato gratin, and Edward’s asparagus-tomato salad land them in the bottom. (Note: no one from the first or fourth courses is in the bottom. Told you that was smart strategery.) Tom is really mad at the boring and poorly cooked food. And … Whitney goes home. I disagree with both those decisions. It was a steak challenge. Ponytail Chris should have won; and Ty should have gone home.

The Walking Dead, 12/4/11

If you, like me, are going through The Walking Dead withdrawal today, here are some thoughts to ponder as we suffer through the mid-season hiatus. We’ll get through this together, people.

- Question: Is Merle dead?
- Discussion: Pre-Zomb Sophia, I would’ve said no. I was holding out hope for the racist old s.o.b.; I really was. But Sophia didn’t make it, and she was a-ok physically. Merle, on the other hand (pun intended), had just sawn off his own hand. That kind of injury, that kind of blood loss, with no medical attention? Dude didn’t make it 20 feet before he was zomb food. Now he’s appearing to Darryl in dreams as a guardian angel. He’s dead as dead can be.
- Answer: Yes.

- Question: Would you stay on Hershel’s farm? (Glenn, stop screaming “Yes! Yes!” I’m not talking to you. Lol.)
- Discussion: Why would you want to? Dude was keeping a frigging barn full of zombs! I don’t care what his justification was; you do not join forces with zomb-lovers! What if they got out? Also, notice the lengths he was willing to go to: both Jimmy and Rick nearly got bitten trying to corral that zomb dude in the river. And I don’t care if Lori’s pregnant! Women have been popping out babies without any medical care for thousands of years. Also, even if Hershel grudgingly agreed to let you stay; he still wouldn’t really want you there. He might up and change his mind and decide to kill you in your sleep.
- Answer: HELL NO!

- Question: Is Shane a bad guy?
- Discussion: Yes! Proof: he killed Otis! But in doing so, he saved Carl. Shane loves Lori; he couldn’t let her son die. Further proof: he wanted to stop looking for Sophia! Callous and unkind, but also right. Darryl and Carl had both almost gotten themselves killed looking for her. Plus, after so much time had passed, it was pretty obvious she was never going to be found. PLUS, she was dead and zombed all along. :( More proof: Dale thinks Shane’s a bad guy, and Dale is never wrong! But Shane doesn’t kill Rick so he can have Lori to himself, or take his anger out on Carl. And, what made Shane snap and go get the guns so he could kill the barn zombs? Finding out that Lori’s knocked up with a baby that’s probably his. He wanted to protect them.
- Answer: Remains to be seen.

- Question: How much more do we like Andrea now?
- Discussion: Because omg seriously. Whiny Suicidal Andrea was making me want to kill her. I get that she was a little out of her head after her sister Amy got zombed, but still. Ugh. “I hate you Dale cuz you made me not get blown up.” “Why won’t anybody let me have a gun; all I did was try to kill myself!” “Darryl, please kill that poor zomb in the tree; I don’t want it to suffer.” “I’m just going to walk around all emo and pouting all the time.” Arrrrrgh. In my recap of the season premiere, I was literally listing ways she should off herself. But no longer. Now she’s all Bad Ass Andrea. Hey zombs, die! Hey Shane, give me sex! And those of you still mad cuz she shot Darryl, cut her some slack, lol. Darryl forgave her. And he did look JUST LIKE a zomb right then. Plus, all Lori and Carol want to do is cook the food, wash the clothes, and get knocked up. Andrea, in contrast, wants to do more than be a 1950s housewife, thank god.
- Answer: OODLES.

Top Chef, 11/30/11

“So we get in our Toyota Siennas, heading to Dallas.” In case you missed that product placement, TOYOTA SIENNAS, TOYOTA SIENNAS, TOYOTA SIENNAS. (You’re welcome, Toyota. That’ll be $3,447.) On the road, we learn Cute Chris used to be a chubster (Former fattie high five.), Edward and his wife just had their first anniversary (Awww.), and Ty-lör has a boyfriend (and I HAVE THE WORLD’S WORST GAYDAR). Padma and guest chef New Orleans’ own John Besh (Love him!) interrupt the road trip for a side-of-the-road Quickfire. The contestants have 30 minutes to cook a meal using ingredients from survival kits full of packaged, canned, and dry foods; winner gets $5k and immunity.

Whitney and Lindsay are all blah blahblah blah these ingredients are so beneath me. Blah blah I would never cook with this. Which — DUH — is kind of the point. Time’s up! In my opinion, Edward pretty much blew everybody else’s cafeteria food creations outta the water with his Thai peanut soup, fried hominy, and nori-wrapped fried crab-and-artichoke cake. Did somebody slip him a gourmet basket instead of a survival kit? Cute Chris made me mad serving a dish with raw, underseasoned tofu. I hate tofu abuse. Winner: This-Is-Beneath-Me Lindsay, with her soup and sandwich: triple decker club of crackers with a tuna-sardine filling and French onion soup with Vienna sausage.

For the elimination challenge, the chefs have to cook the appetizers, entrees, and desserts for a progressive dinner party in some swanky Dallas neighborhood. Dakota’s mad cuz she once again is stuck making dessert, and after her colossal fail of a birthday cake in the quinceanera challenge, I can kind of see why. Hey, I like the wife at the entrée house. She reminded me of me: doesn’t like bell pepper and is not a fan of over-the-top adventurous foods. So no slimy octopus or lamb’s balls, guys. Ok, the wife at the entrée house reminds me of me, too. She hates spicy food and doesn’t eat meat. (Vegetarian high five.) Omg, ha! The dessert wife is like me, too! She’s suuuuuper tall. Seriously. She totally towers above everybody in the kitchen — including her husband. (Two-handed fellow giantess high five, and a chest bump!!!)

God, I am soooooooooo sick of having to hear a chef or two or three every season say they can’t make desserts. THIS IS SEASON NINE. If you haven’t figured out by now that you need to know how to make a dessert to compete on this show, you’re a moron.


Appetizers:
- Ponytail Chris – roast chicken with bread wrapped in braised collard greens
- Sarah – grilled artichokes with date puree
- Lindsay – roasted-and-raw beet salad with charred chickpeas and Greek vinaigrette (Gross.)
- Whitney – seared sea scallop over sweet corn with zucchini succotash
- Paul – fried Brussels sprouts with grilled prosciutto and crème fraiche (Omg. Must try frying Brussels sprouts asap.)

Entrees:
- Heather – garlic and rosemary grilled lambchops with garbanzo beans and mint chimichurri
- Chuy – sockeye salmon filets stuffed with goat cheese cream topped with avocado-cherry tomato relish
- Beverly – pan-seared scallops over polenta (Polenta gives my mouth orgasms.)
- Ty-lör – spice-rubbed grilled pork tenderloin over summer slaw topped with avocado-guacamole salsa and pineapple (Savory + sweet = YUCK.)
- Nyesha – roasted filet of beef with vegetable mélange and red wine sauce

WTF! WHY DID NOBODY MAKE A MEATLESS ENTRÉE FOR THE WIFE??? VEGETARIAN RACISM!!!


Desserts:
- Dakota – banana-Reese’s peanut butter cup bread pudding, banana-date milkshake in edible cups, banana mouuse
- Cute Chris – strawberry cupcake filled with chocolate frosting and banana cream, mint-chocolate chip ice cream
- Edward – panna cotta, cantaloupe consommé, raspberries stuffed with basil pudding
- Grayson – chocolate sponge cake, caramelized bananas, semifreddo

In the top are Sarah, Grayson, Paul, and Dakota. (Sarah actually says “Oh no” when Padma calls her name. Have a little more confidence, Sarah.) Dakota’s delicious bread pudding totally redeemed her after the birthday cake disaster, but Paul wins. Yay, yummy Brussels sprouts! Both of the Chrises, Ty, and Chuy are in the bottom. Cute Chris had too much on the plate. Gail mentioned the pineapple in Ty’s dish specifically. See? Savory + sweet = evil!!!! Chuy’s salmon was not cooked well. Ponytail Chris’s collard green cigar didn’t work at all. And … Chuy goes home. :( Shoulda gone meatless, Chuy.

Terra Nova, 11/28/11

Taylor leaves Jim in charge and heads off into the forest on a secret mission which he’ll tell no one about, despite having issued an order that everyone must have a valid reason for leaving TN now that Mole Hunt is in full swing. Taylor heads for the waterfalls where his son Lucas has scrawled equations all over the rocks, bumps into a gun-wielding Mira, who takes him prisoner.

Ok, that was waaaaaaaay too easy. Taylor knows good and well how to avoid capture. He must’ve wanted to be caught.


Jim and Reynolds, whom I prefer to call Hot Mark, see someone sending signals to the Sixers and head off to catch the person. They get there too late; all they find at the scene is a drop of blood in a jar of paint thinner … because Skye cut herself with the piece of glass she was using to send the signals. I KNEW IT! I said episode one she was the mole! Skye volunteers to go help dig a ditch, then sneaks away to take some TN intel to the Sixers. In exchange, they give some desperately needed medicine to a sick woman. Who is Skye’s mom. Wait— WTF?? Skye’s parents are supposed to be dead! Malcolm isolates the blood from the paint thinner; Jim takes it to Elizabeth to identify the culprit; Skye sneaks in later and ruins the sample. I guess the reason Skye doesn’t just explain to Taylor that she’s mole-ing in order to keep her mother alive, which he would totally understand, will eventually be explained to us.


As Mira and Taylor walk through the forest, squabbling like a couple in the midst of a contentious divorce, Taylor suddenly makes a run for it. He doesn’t get far thanks to Mira’s stun gun, but he manages to snap a sharp spine off a plant, which he uses to start cutting his ropes. A few minutes later, he gets free, overpowers her, and starts marching her back to TN. I knew it! That was his plan all along. Although … I’m sure the two toothy, hungry dinosaurs following them weren’t part of it. Just as Mira and Taylor find some common ground talking about their kids, the dinos attaaaaaack! Mira and Taylor jump off a (very pretty waterfall) cliff to get away. Now they’re gun-less, night is falling, and the dinos are coming back. But fret not, folks. We all know who comes out on top in every round of Taylor-vs-wildlife.

Hot Mark declares to Jim his intention to marry Maddy one day. HOW ADORABLE. “She’s sixteen,” Jim grumps. Hot Mark, who’s all of what, barely eighteen?, says he will wait, then says “I’m going away now.” Tee hee! Oh, those crazy kids. And given all the dancing and feasting at last episode’s Harvest Festival, I bet a Terra Nova wedding is hella major fun.

Taylor and Mira make a bow and some flammable arrows, scare off the dinos, share a dinner of grubs (Yuck.), and admit that if they didn’t have to kill each other, they totally could have been BFFs. Mutual respect: they have it. In the morning, they part ways, but not before Mira warns him that it’s almost over, because Lucas has almost figured out a way to reverse the portal. Say it with me: uh oh.


The Shannons share a cutesy family scene releasing a baby anklosaurus back into the wild. Later Elizabeth tells Jim the blood sample has been destroyed; he asks her to put together a list of everyone who came into the medical center yesterday. 84 people. Elizabeth examines the incomplete results the sample produced before it was destroyed. The mole is female. 47 people. Won’t be long now, Skye.

The Walking Dead, 11/27/11

Maggie shakes her head no. Dale nods his head yes. Whoever goes last wins, duh, so Glenn lets the cat out of the bag about the barn zombs. The group has a fight. Shane wants to go in there guns a-blazing and kill them all (Um … YES.); Rick says no cuz that’d make Doc make them leave. Shane says good, cuz The Endless Search for Sophia (TESFS) needs to stop anyway (Um … YES); he and Daryl almost fight. Rick says he’ll talk to Doc about the barn zombs. Pissed off that Glenn told, Maggie smashes a rotten egg on his head.

Carl tells Lori he doesn’t want to leave before they find Sophia. Or even after that. Lori assures him they’re not leaving. (Really, guys? Cuz finding out that Doc et al. have a horde of zombs locked in the barn would completely rob me of the desire to be neighbors.) Daryl’s still really weak, but he tries to saddle up a horse to go TESFSing. Carol stops him; he gets mad, calls her a bitch, and storms off. Dale tries to get Andrea to see the light about Shane; as always when he gives her good advice, she shrugs it off. Dale decides that to protect everyone from Secretly a Bad Guy Shane, it’s best if he (Dale) hides the guns.


Rick tries to reason with Doc, but Doc is having none of it. He wants Rick and his people gone by the end of the week. Rick even plays the my-wife-is-pregnant card; it doesn’t change Doc’s mind. Rick later tells Shane he (Rick) wants to stay so badly cuz Lori’s pregnant, and you can totally see the it’s-MY-baby wheels turning in Shane’s mind, even as he congratulates Rick. Maggie, who overheard her Dad arguing with Rick, tells Doc he’s wrong for making them leave. She quotes from The Good Book and also tells him that “the Asian boy” — “his name is Glenn!” — saved her from a zomb yesterday. Jimmy rushes in just then to tell Doc “it happened again.”

Shane tells Lori that Rick isn’t going to last very long in the Zombie Apocalypse. He’s not built for this world, Shane tells her. Ricks too soft, incapable of making hard decisions. Then he tells her that he knows the baby’s his. Lori says, “Even if it’s yours, it’s never gonna be yours, and there’s nothing you can do to change that.” “I don’t need to,” Shane says (He thinks Rick’s gonna get himself killed soon, you see.), and strolls off. Time out. So, regardless of who the father is, Lori is bound and determined to raise the child as though it’s Rick’s? Disapprove. First of all, that’s not fair to Shane. Second, Rick forgave her for sleeping with Shane when they thought he was dead; I think Rick would understand if a pregnancy resulted. This is dumb, Lori. You can’t make Rick be the father just by your say-so. Then again … Shane killed Otis and threatened to kill Dale, so who cares what’s fair to him. Ok, time back in.

Carl, who’s matured a lot since getting shot, tells Shane that it’s bullshit that Shane wants to leave before Sophia’s found. Shane says ok, then tells Carl to watch his mouth, lol. Shane heads for the RV, where he’s pissed off to find that that Dale has taken the guns. Meanwhile, Daryl apologizes to Carol, tells her that he really believes Sophia’s still out there. Doc goes to get Rick, and we find out that the it that Jimmy was saying happened again is zombs getting stuck in the mud in the swampland out back. As they corral the two snapping, struggling zombs, Doc says this was something that Otis used to do; now he and Jimmy have to do it. And Rick best help if he wants to stay. Elsewhere, Maggie and Glenn have it out. He says he had to tell everybody Doc’s secret because zombs are dangerous (Um … YES), so she can be mad at him all she wants; he was just trying to protect her. Awwwww. And then they totally make out. High five, Glenn! Shane finds Dale hiding the guns in the swamp. Dale threatens to shoot Shane, but since he’s not an asshole like Shane, Dale can’t just shoot a man in cold blood. He gives Shane the firearms — but keeps a rifle for himself. Good call. — and then the day takes an intense turn.

Shane heads to the farmhouse and gives Andrea, Theodore, Daryl, and Glenn guns, starts pep talking the troops to head out and kill the barn zombs. Just then, Doc, Jimmy, and Rick return with the two prisoner zombs. Shane effing loses it. He shoots the one Doc is guarding, then takes the locks off the barn door. Rick yells at Doc to get his zomb so he can stop Shane, but Doc just falls to his knees and doesn’t move. You wonder if Doc knew all along that this should be done. As the barn zombs come out, Shane, Andrea, Theodore, Daryl, and Glenn (with Maggie’s tearful ok) shoot them all. Well … almost all. There's one last zomb. It’s Sophia. OH MY JESUS GOD, NO. But yes. It is. She’s a rotting, snarling zomb. :( Daryl grabs Carol, who tries to run to her. The firing squad stops shooting. Nobody can do it. Nobody can kill Zomb Sophia. So Rick does it. He strides purposefully forward, that same pain we saw when he had to kill a little-girl zomb in the premiere of season one back on his face. He pauses only to steady his shot. Boom. TESFS is officially over.

Why didn’t anybody tell them Sophia was in the barn? Nobody knew. You’ll recall that Doc said putting any zombs that wandered onto the property in the barn was Otis’s job. The others didn’t know there was a little girl in there, and Otis got killed — Thank you so much, Shane. — before he learned they were looking for her. Oh, and there goes Shane’s theory that Rick isn’t tough enough. Like everybody else, Shane could only stand there horrified; it was Rick who had to kill Zomb Sophia.

Yes, I too am mad that we have to wait til February. But last season was only 6 episodes; this season is 12, so I shall happily wait it out. Cuz this show effing rules.