Top Chef Masters, S4E8.

Is it just me, or is this show kind of limping to the finish? Perhaps it’s the lack of urgency from chefs playing for charity rather than for personal gain or career advancement. I’m not seeing the tension I would expect on Top Chef: Original Recipe.

* Quickfire: The chefs are paired up, Chris and Patricia vs Kerry and Lorena, and must work in tandem with one chef in the pantry and one on the hot line – but with neither chef able to cross to the other side of the kitchen. So that means the chef working pantry must rely on the chef at the stove to fire his/her dish correctly.

* Intelligentsia coffee makes its appearance in the pantry, which is only notable because I made my first visit to one of their shops this morning. The espresso was outstanding, smooth yet with plenty of character – I guess by smooth what I really mean is that the flavor wasn’t interrupted by unwanted bitter notes. I was very impressed and am grateful to reader Stan, who works for Intelligentsia, for hooking me up and joining me for coffee.

* Pretty sure I heard Awful Chris ask Patricia, “do you want water in the salt?” I believe Thomas Keller would approve of that phrasing.

* Patricia was once Chris’ boss, so the two are working very seamlessly and without conflict. Kerry and Lorena aren’t communicating as well, and Lorena ends up frustrated that Kerry blows her dish off to make sure his is cooked correctly. This, it turns out, is also a function of scoring – the judging is based on a single dish, not on a team’s output of two dishes together.

* Patricia, working pantry, chooses to make a tempura-fried tuna dish that cooks for only two minutes, to make it easier for Chris (and, I presume, herself).

* Lorena is making a tom-a-teeeeeeyo sauce. She’s pretty clearly playing that accent up for the camera. It’s like watching Dora. Anyway, her salmon dish ends up incomplete when the rice is never plated, which is apparently Kerry’s fault but I’m not sure why.

* Guest judge: Johnny Avello, who runs a sports book in Vegas that also takes bets on entertainment events, including Top Chef. 

* Chris’ dish: Berber style duck with dates, pine nuts, and mint. Curtis and Johnny both thought Chris could have rendered more fat; Chris chafes at the suggestion, but I’m with the judges here – render more of that fat out so the finished product is mostly crispy skin and duck meat. Duck fat is a glorious cooking medium but you don’t really want a mouthful of it in its solid state.

* Patricia makes a nori and wasabi-crusted tuna with ginger and scallion vinaigrette. I’m guessing this was expertly made but not adventurous enough.

* Kerry: Farfalle with shrimp and a yellow tomato fondue that was “tangy,” so I must have missed an ingredient in the sauce, something like goat cheese or creme fraiche. This was boxed, dried pasta, which is fine for home use but not really what I expect on Top Chef.

* Lorena: seared salmon filet over salsa verde (with tom-a-teeeeeeyos) and an arugula/cherry tomato salad. Johnny says it’s “just salmon.” I don’t see how white rice on the side was going to rescue this dish.

* Kerry’s pasta dish wins, even though Lorena’s dish flopped, and the two split the $5K prize. That’s a bizarre way to judge a team challenge. 

* Elimination challenge: Like Awful Chris, I’d never heard of Diner en blanc before this show. It’s a pop-up dinner party where guests all dress in white and bring the tables, chairs, linens, and so on. The all-white getups push this over the line from cool to pretentious. 

* This dinner party will include 300 guests in the plaza at the Venetian. Each chef will have to serve a three course packable meal to be eaten “picnic style” (yet with silverware and plates, which is rather fancy for a picnic), and each chef is responsible for feeding 75 attendees.

* Lorena going to make a spicy jalapeño chocolate mousse, because, you know, she’s from Latin America, which she might have mentioned before.

* Kerry says he got inspiration for his cold cauliflower soup from Hillary Clinton, who uses it in place of cream. I may have heard this wrong too because that sentence makes zero sense to me. I don’t even get the whole mashed cauliflower in lieu of mashed potatoes thing. You’ll never get the texture right without loading it up with fat and cooking the cauliflower to death (also known as “English-style”). So why not just use potatoes?

* Chris and Patricia are still cooperating, which really pisses off Lorena. Who cares? Shut up and go cash another check from Taco Bell.

* Awful Chris is making a terrine with pork belly and chicken livers, which makes some sense because it’s a dish designed to be eaten cold. But forcemeats are apparently very fussy dishes (I’ve never made one, since no one else in my house would eat it) and Chris even acknowledges the risk involved in rushing one and slicing it before it can chill and set fully.

* Chris pushes Kerry to get his stuff on the cart in time, which Kerry later credits him for doing during judging. I have no objection to seeing cooperation among the chefs, but I think that’s why this show feels so much less dramatic than the regular version.

* Lorena’a three items: huancaina style potato salad with aji amarillo and cilantro; jerk chicken salad with mango and caramelized pine nuts; spicy chocolate mousse with berries and whipped cream. The mousse became too thick and stiff overnight and the chicken salad gets lukewarm reviews. That potato salad does sound like a showstopper and is easily the best-reviewed item in her boxes.

* Patricia tries to do a Silk Road-inspired trio: daikon, edamame, and radish salad with whitebait; Uighur-spiced bison with chili jam; sumac-dusted flatbread with curried cauliflower and red chief lentils. The flatbread grew stale overnight and there are mixed reviews on the bison, with comments that the spice in the jam overwhelmed the meat. James says her dishes were too busy, required too much assembly, and that he wants his binky.

* Awful Chris: swordfish conserva (or confit – he uses both terms) with green beans, tomatoes,and olives; marinated wild mushrooms with toasted pine nuts; pork and chicken liver pâté with hazelnuts and truffles and carrots cooked in … Did he say hay? Everyone raves about the terrine, with the Diner en blanc founder saying it’s one of the best he’s ever eaten. Swordfish may have been slightly overcooked – that fish is so lean it dries out really quickly. I haven’t eaten it in ages because it’s been overfished and can contain more mercury than most other species. So hooray for us destroying the planet.

* Kerry’s French accent sucks. His dishes: cauliflower soup with saffron coulis; green bean and orzo salad with fresh mozzarella and pesto; grilled chicken and kielbasa with peppers and paprika pepper coulis. This sounds the least interesting to me of all the picnics, certainly the least experimental, with two dishes that I could easily recreate at home. Francis, meanwhile, says Kerry swung for the fences. He grilled chicken. That’s not even the right field fence at Yankee Stadium.

* “Robin Leach TV personality” is really its own punch line. 

* Judging: Kerry gets tons of praise, especially that the three dishes worked in a progression. Lorena’s chicken salad was too sweet, her mousse got too thick overnight, the potatoes were great but there was too much sweetness overall. Chris gets raves for the terrine, with Ruth pointing out the sea-forest-land theme across the three dishes. (Chris never says whether that was deliberate.) Ruth didn’t love the chili jam and bison together cold in Patricia’s dish, and overall it sounds like she prepared items that would have been better served hot.

* Awful Chris wins again, another $10K, which I think brings him to $36K total for the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

* James calls Patricia’s salad a “mouthful of bitterness,” and I suppose he would know what that’s like.

* Patricia is eliminated. It’s Understandable, as she didn’t make food that could survive sitting overnight. Chris has to be an overwhelming favorite as the next two best chefs are now gone, although next week’s challenge appears to involve cooking with kids, which seems like a big random variable to include.