Top Chef, S11E07.

Today’s Klawchat transcript is MVP-heavy but I tried to take a fair number of prospect questions, and I posted my hypothetical MVP and Cy Young ballots for Insiders on Thursday.

This was in the preview from last week’s episode of Top Chef, but we see Nicholas talking to a doctor and learning he has strep throat (“step thrope,” as my daughter used to call it, not to be confused with “the cold”), so he has to skip the Quickfire and will have to forfeit if he can’t cook in the elimination challenge. Tough break, although there’s not much the producers can do about it.

* Quickfire: There is an actual human being named Kermit Ruffins. He lives in New Orleans in a magical tree and holds the keys to the Land of Pretend. Also, he plays trumpet, sings, and cooks barbecue at his shows every Thursday. The chefs must “improvise” for him, starting at one station but then moving around the kitchen to another station (with its partially-finished dish) whenever Kermie plays the horn. This is all very, very silly.

* I think my favorite part was watching Justin try to roast quail in a toaster oven. I’m sure it can be done; I just wouldn’t want to be the one to have to do it.

* The way it works out, every chef starts at one station, moves to at another, then goes back to his/her original station, and then moves one more time to a new one. I’m not sure what this proves about any of the chefs; it’s great that you can improvise, I guess, but it’s also, well, kind of like judging a hitter by his RBI total: It’s more about what the people before you did.

* Those pants. My God, Kermit’s pants.

* I’m skipping ahead a little because this just wasn’t that interesting – Brian ends up winning immunity with the dish that Sara started, a duck/mussels combo with “Asian flavors.” Isn’t that Beverly’s shtick? I was more interested in Louis’ rosemary okra with rendered pork, confit potato, and frog legs. He seems to be keen on getting the most out of his vegetables.

* Elimination challenge: Now we cook – the chefs split into three teams and must create a potluck meal, after which someone has to explain “potluck” to Patty. The teams: Shirley, Louis, Justin, and Sara; Patty, Brian, Travis, and Nicholas if he returns (which he does); Nina, Steph, Carlos, and Carrie. My money would be on the third team to win and probably the middle team to lose, since at the time we didn’t know if Nicholas was returning and both Patty and Travis are near the bottom of the remaining twelve.

* Louis says he’s doing a dish with charred broccolini and pickled radishes because making vegetables taste good is hard, as opposed to some of the easier items you’d normally find at a potluck dinner. He also mentions that he worked for Thomas Keller, which floored me as he doesn’t carry himself like that.

* Nicholas is cleared to cook. Modern medicine is great. Vaccinate your children.

* Stephanie mocks him for cooking while on PEDs, saying she’ll “call bullshit” on him and won’t put him on her Hall of Fame ballot in ten years. Has she seen his backne?

* Carrie’s hair is getting shorter with each episode. I do not support this trend.

* We see Patty’s team talking about finding chili threads for their watermelon salad. This, kids, is what we refer to as “foreshadowing.”

* Guest judge: Sue Zemanick, executive chef at Gautreau’s, whom I had never heard of previously but who also appears in a Chase Sapphire commercial.

* To the food … Justin serves hominy grits with brown shrimp, roasted okra, fava beans, and smoked bacon. Louis serves his grilled and pickled vegetables with cripsy sunflower seeds and a mustard vinaigrette. Shirley and Sara collaborated on a glazed beef with charred onions, melon pickles, and a pickled ginger vinaigrette on top.

* The grits are very buttery, which is good because grits on their own have all the flavor and nuance of Elmer’s Glue, but the judges seem to feel it’s lacking that certain something. Louis’ grilled vegetables are really good. Shirley and Sara’s beef wasn’t consistently cooked and many portions were dry, although one diner says he “ate it all” anyway.

* Nicholas notices that his barramundi (fish) is sliced so thinly it’s cooking too quickly. This is also known as “foreshadowing.”

* Patty forgot the chili threads. I tried to tell you this was going to happen.

* More dishes: Brian and Travis served a togarashi fried chicken with clover bee pollen, honey, and ponzu sauce, where I assume the togarashi refers to the shichimi spice blend rather than just plain chili powder; Nicholas’ barramundi came over a summer vegetable fricasee with truffle and yuzukosho, another Japanese spice blend, this time using fermented chili peppers and yuzu peel; Patty’s watermelon salad with tomatoes, goat cheese espuma, and Szechuan pepper; and Travis and Nicholas collaborated on caramel-glazed barbecued ribs with dehydrated potatoes and peanut gremolata.

* We don’t hear much on the fried chicken other than that it was very crunchy; that sounded sickly-sweet from the list of ingredients. The barramundi was bland and, shocker, a little dry and overcooked. The rib rub was overcooked, possibly burnt. And everyone kills Patty’s salad for sloppy cuts and lack of spice or heat. You can see this elimination coming a mile away.

* The final team leads with Stephanie’s crispy fried (I should hope they’d be crispy) baby artichokes with preserved lemon and anchovy aioli (which is now just marketing for “mayonnaise”); followed by Nina’s semolina gnocchetti with fresh sausage, and Carrie and Carlos’ summer “tiramisu” with nectarines but, as it turns out, no coffee in it, which is enough to cause the Italian government to collapse.

* The artichokes were nicely cooked, the gnocchetti were nicely cooked, everything was nicely cooked. Just once I want to hear Tom get fired up and say, “They fucking NAILED that dish.” Not going to happen, I guess. The tiramisu was not nicely cooked, however, and was more like an English trifle than tiramisu.

* The interlude has the chefs talking about ambrosia salad, which I have never had and will never have, ever. It doesn’t even qualify as food. Patty, who is Puerto Rican, can only say, “You Americans.”

* Judges’ table – the consensus is that the food was overall pretty good. The green team’s artichokes were beautiful, and the gnocchi was perfectly made, but the tiramisu “really brings everything else down” for Sue. They rehash most of what we already knew here.

* Padma comes into the stew room and calls … the gray team, Patty, Travis, Nicholas, and Brian. She’s flat-out solemn as she asks for them.

* In front of the judges, the chefs say the food was a collaborative effort. The fried chicken was delicious and nothing else was good, unfortunately. The watermelon comes in for the most abuse here – it wasn’t dressed enough and had no spice. Patty said there was a lot of szechuan pepper in the dish – I believe she said she “doused” the salad – but no judge tasted it, and of course, she forgot the chili threads.

* The green team was the overall winner despite the tiramisu. Food nicely seasoned, beautifully cooked. Steph everyone liked artichokes, aioli delicious, fried capers too. Tom asks Nina taught her to make gnocchi, but she seems to say she’s self-taught. I’d like it if somewhere here Nina or Tom or anyone said, “the key is (insert key here.” Don’t work the dough too much? Don’t add too much flour? Chill before rolling? Give me a clue here, folks.

* The tiramisu flop was really a trifle in disguise. Carlos made a pistachio sponge cake, which was good, Sue says the dish needed more layers. Tom says tiramisu needs coffee (and rum, Tom, rum!), and that he would have been fine with the nectarines and the coffee together. And rum. He forgot to mention the rum, but I know he meant it.

* Winner: Stephanie, for the fried artichokes. She looks like she can’t believe it and says she hasn’t won anything at all since high school. I’m more stunned that the winning dish is actually something a little innovative. I’ve never seen crispy fried artichokes, and serving them with preserved lemons and fried capers put twists on two of the most common accompaniments to our favorite thistle.

* Patty is indeed eliminated. No one in stew room seemed surprised either, although there’s a ton of emotional support, with Carlos saying, “we’re all so proud of you.” This is an uncommonly nice group of contestants this year, which might be why the season feels less dramatic. The bad apples were auf’d early, and now the remaining chefs are mostly getting along.

* LCK: An onion challenge: Break down a tub of onions, then do all your prep work before you begin cooking. Janine doesn’t sear pork enough, but her apple rolls with goat cheese, bacon, and caramelized onions carry the day over Patty’s seared pork loin with onions and fried/confit potatoes, because those potatoes were way too salty.

* Projected top three: Nicholas, Nina, and Justin, followed by Shirley, Carrie, and Stephanie. I still think Stephanie is a dark horse here because she has more vision than some of the chefs who execute better than she does, but this was only the second episode where she really nailed a dish. Bottom three: My bottom-ranked chef has been eliminated in the last two weeks, so this is getting trickier, but I’ll go with Carlos, Travis, and Sara.