I’ve got a family wedding to attend this weekend, so I’m not chatting today or appearing on the podcast. I will probably post here once or twice as my schedule permits, and you might spot me on Twitter. This week’s recap is a little brief, in part because I’m on the move, but also because it turned out to be less dramatic than I anticipated, probably because they crammed in four head-to-head battles in the elimination challenge.
* Quickfire: preppin’ weapon time. The chefs must separate 18 eggs, grate two pounds of Parmiggiano-Reggiano, and portion five 7.5-8.5 ounce filets from a beef tenderloin without using a scale. The first two to finish get to cook using their prepped ingredients. Chris is stoked. Lorena is not. The three chefs who don’t advance become the judges.
* Chris attacks the beef first, but Kerry notices Chris’ steaks are small – and sure enough, one is under 7.5 ounces and Chris is eliminated from the quickfire. Patricia is also out with three steaks under the minimum size. How reasonable is it to expect a chef to be able to hit that narrow weight window without a scale? I honestly don’t know the answer to that.
* There’s cross-contamination everywhere. Chefs touching the raw meat and then the Parmiggiano makes me want to bleach my television.
* Hand-grating two pounds of cheese sounds excruciating. This is what food processors are for.
* Takashi passes. Kerry just barely passes. Lorena doesn’t get to finish and is enfadada.
* The two advancing chefs get fifteen minutes to cook. Kerry makes a parmiggiano-crusted filet, pounding them by hand; his pan isn’t hot enough and they start to stick. He serves them with wilted arugula and sage brown butter; Lorena thinks they’re perfectly cooked even though Kerry thought he’d overdone one side.
* Takashi sautéed his beef with a sunny-side up egg and Provençal vegetables. The other chefs are all amazed he could prep and cook potatoes in fifteen minutes. He also gets credit for cooking the meat in time for it to rest so it doesn’t bleed all over the plate when cut, but the chefs all agree his yolk wasn’t runny enough.
* Kerry wins, so (in my view) the weakest remaining chef gets immunity. Coming into this episode, I would have ranked them Chris, Patricia, Takashi, Lorena, Kerry, top to bottom.
* Elimination challenge: Sugar Ray Leonard, a celebrity whom the chefs actually recognize (as opposed to pretending to recognize one for the cameras). On a more serious note, it’s nice to see a retired boxer who still has his faculties – he was mentioned in A Naked Singularity, which includes digressions on a famous boxer who ended up with early dementia – although I can’t believe he’s 56 years old and looks 35.
* Kerry’s immunity means he doesn’t cook in this challenge at all as the other chefs go head to head. Patricia calls him a “bum” for getting to skip the challenge entirely. I thought she was kidding until she told him to “get a job.”
* Round one: Chris faces Takashi, Lorena faces Patricia, which reveals that Lorena is still rather hacked off about last week’s tiff. Patricia wants to fight Chris in the final round.
* Sugar Ray rocks the purple shirt at judges’ table. Maybe James was smart enough to ask for some sartorial advice.
* The other guest judge is Jane Goldman, who founded chow.com, one of the most useful food sites around. Their “You’re Doing It All Wrong” videos are always fun even if I don’t intend to ever cook the dish described, and while I don’t like the tone of most of the restaurant discussions on their message boards, the recommendations I’ve found there are generally rock solid.
* Chris and Takashi’s secret ingredient is bacon. Or is it just pork belly, which would be uncured? Takashi mentions emphasizing the sweetness and saltiness of the bacon, so perhaps it’s cured and unsmoked? These things make a big difference and we should have had more explanation.
* Chris makes an extra everything because Takashi is always so perfect. This turns out to be pretty significant – he has to borrow another egg from Takashi, but then later gives Takashi his extra piece of bacon because somehow Takashi (maybe forgetting that there was an extra judge this time?) ended up a piece short. Chris says he wants to win on merit, not technicalities, which I fully respect while recognizing that this would probably never happen on the regular Top Chef. It’s easier to be altruistic when you’re already among the top people in your profession.
* Chris’ dish is his take on bacon and eggs, with a “cal-mex” twist, including a corn and julienned jalapeño slaw and a wedge of avocado. Everyone says his eggs are cooked perfectly, while Sugar Ray praises Chris’ hand speed – which I thought was a pretty good insight, something a chef might not necessarily notice but a man who lived (and could have died) by hand speed would pick up on immediately.
* Takashi makes a bacon steak with caramelized figs, dried apricots, dates, orange, and fennel salad, Kerry loves the mushrooms, which somehow weren’t mentioned in the original description; I can’t believe how many things Takashi managed to cook in twenty minutes on that small station. Despite that, Chris wins and advances to the finals.
* Lorena talks about putting Patricia in her place. Their secret ingredient is also bacon.
* Patricia, who cuts her vegetables like she’s meditating with them, snipes at Lorena’s loud cutting technique; I agree, as Lorena’s method, which involves lifting the entire knife from the board and hacking quickly at the vegetables, is dangerous. I cut the way Patricia does, balancing one part of the knife on the board and rocking it to cut. Patricia finishes early and starts cleaning up her station, which might be showing off for someone else but seems to just be Patricia’s personality.
* Patricia makes a “BLT,” a bacon, leek, and tomato salad, served slightly warm. Jane loves balance of the favors, James says the leek reduction is “piercingly sour,” Kerry says it really reminded him of a BLT, and Sugar ray says it was amazing. After the judging I felt like I still had no clue what it tasted like.
* Lorena makes a potato and bacon chowder with corn and bacon soffrito. Jane says the bacon got a little lost, but loved the texture and creaminess.
* Winner: Lorena. How did she win by deemphasizing the main ingredient? Either Jane’s comment was an isolated opinion, or the criteria changed. Bacon should be the star if it’s the secret ingredient … or even if it’s not. So my bottom two ranked chefs (ranked from my living room) are both guaranteed to advance, while chefs #2 and #3 have to fight to avoid elimination.
* Finals: Chris and Lorena get sugar as their secret ingredient. This is a huge disadvantage for meat-guy Chris, who makes a zabaglione with summer fruit. Zabaglione is a sweet warm custard of eggs, sugar, and usually Marsala wine, typically served with berries. It’s cooked slowly over a double boiler and the chef must whisk it constantly to avoid having any part of the eggs scramble because it stayed in contact with the hot bowl too long.
* Lorena backs into a three-item dish, making a flourless chocolate cake that doesn’t seem to be cooking fast enough, so she makes a dulce de leche sauce and serves it with caramelized walnuts and seared (and thus also caramelized) pineapple. Patricia and Takashi think making the chocolate cake was foolhardy, but they end up cooking correctly so Lorena serves everything.
* Chris’ dish gets dinged for a touch too much salt, but really, Lorena won this because she made three things and they were all very good. That’s $10K for her charity.
* Patricia and Takashi battle to avoid elimination. Secret ingredient: chicken livers. Patricia makes a warm asparagus salad with chicken liver and prosciutto, James complains – really, his voice can’t merely criticize, but always complains, almost whining – that his liver was undercooked, while Jane says it was perfect and Krista liked the clean pure favors of the dish.
* Takashi sears his livers and serves them with crispy prosciutto strips and pickled red cabbage. Jane praises the combination of textures and the aesthetic appeal of the dish.
* Patricia wins, so Takashi ends up eliminated. Takashi had already won $20K for his charity, so while I would have preferred to see Kerry go, it was a pretty successful run for him. Chris points out that Takashi cooks “better French food than the Frenchies.” I still say Chris and Patricia make the finals, but with Takashi gone I’ll go with Lorena over Kerry for the third spot.
For me, bacon looked smoked based on the color.