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*

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.