Top Chef, S12E06.

Klawchat today at 1 pm ET.

* Everyone is glad that Aaron’s gone. That’s before he was arrested, too. But the entire episode feels different without him around – there’s no bickering, no obvious conflicts, no enmity among the chefs still there. I’m sure eventually that will pop back up, but it was a clear shift in tone even if it’s a temporary one. At some point someone will tell Katsuji to shut the hell up, I’m sure.

* Adam says he’s concerned about Dougie, Melissa, Gregory, and Mei as his main competition, which sounds about right. He also calls Katsuji “a mess in a dress,” which I don’t understand.

* Melissa talks about her girlfriend back home, and the love/support notes she gave her before the show. So Melissa is Asian and gay … am I wrong to think that was probably not an easy childhood? It seems like a disproportionate percentage of Asian-American contestants on both Top Chef and Project Runway share a story of parental disappointment at their career choices. (That could be producer selection bias, I suppose.)

* Tiffani Faison from season one walks into their condo. (There’s a great profile of her from a recent issue of Boston magazine.) I had no idea she had a Texas-style Q joint in Boston, called Sweet Cheeks BBQ. Have any of you been? Texas Q ain’t nothing to fuck with. It had better be good.

* So they drag all the chefs down to a cranberry bog, probably down by Lakeville towards the Cape. The quickfire challenge is going to involve cranberries, and the sponsor/partner is Ocean Spray … and maybe for the first time ever, I’m completely on board with a product placement on this show. Ocean Spray is a cooperative, owned by its farmers, which has its own challenges – during my brief tenure in consulting right out of college, they were a client of my employer and I was on that case for about two months – but at least means the people doing the actual growing are able to reap the rewards of their work. I still think there’s a lot of untapped potential in the firm and the product, even now about twenty years later; people just don’t know what to do with cranberries because you can’t eat them raw (hot cranberries > raw cranberries, Ken), so you have to educate the consumers with products. Why not cranberry yogurts? Ice creams? Jams or preserves? That would have made a great challenge for the show, now that I think about it. But I digress.

* So we see a bog that’s been flooded for the harvest; the chefs have to put on waders and run back and forth to gather the berries (about six million floating in a closed loop on the surface), and the first four to fill their buckets get an advantage in the next challenge. I’m not a fan of challenges on this show that reward size or athleticism, which doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with cooking.

* Mei is 5’2″ and can’t swim. It’s not that deep, but I can understand her fear of the water if she can’t swim. We more or less forced our daughter to learn with lessons at age four, right when we moved to Arizona, because we viewed it as an essential life skill, especially in a state where every other house has a pool. You just have to know how to swim, right? I’m not winning any relays for my team out there, but I do know how to swim from A to B.

* So it turns out that Katie is a great athlete; apparently cooking was a way for her to move to Lake Tahoe and ski all the time. She wins the challenge, but after her it’s three boys – Adam, Gregory, and Doug. Meanwhile, Katsuji is mugging for the cameras, rolling around on the ground like he needs CPR.

* The actual Quickfire challenge is to create a dish that highlights the “unique flavor of the cranberry.” The top four harvesters get to use the high-end pantry, with better proteins, fresh herbs, and produce; the rest are much more limited by the low-end pantry. Fresh cranberries, dried (and sweetened) cranberries, and juices are available for all nine chefs. The winner gets immunity.

* Doug grabs pork tenderloin; isn’t that kind of a boring cut? It’s lean and pretty one-note, especially if you don’t have time to brine it.

* Katie is doing a cranberry borscht, a dish that’s typically sour anyway due to the use of vinegar. Doug thinks it’s a terrible idea, except he chose pork tenderloin, so maybe I’m not going to worry about what he says this time.

* Stacy explains away the low-end/high-end pantry difference by saying that if you’re a chef, “you should be able to work with anything at all.” That’s true, but if your ingredients are better, won’t your dish taste better?

* Katsuji is using skirt steak for tartare. Is this just a case of not knowing your ingredients? That’s a very tough cut with long muscle fibers, and needs to be cooked very very quickly over high heat to be chewable. There’s a reason it’s one of the cheapest cuts of cow at the butcher counter. I really like it, but only, you know, cooked.

* Adam made a bourbon and cranberry sauce-glazed strip steak with cranberry-infused mushroom fricasee. He lost the liquid he was going to use for a couscous element, and chefsplains it to Padma and Tiffani, who tells him not to talk about the mistakes like that. Gregory serves an Arctic char (a salmon-like fish) with sweet and sour cranberry sauce, trumpet mushrooms, and fresh pear. Keriann serves a carrot soup with cranberry and crab; that doesn’t sound remotely appealing to me, three ingredients that probably shouldn’t even appear in any combination of two. Doug does a bourbon and cranberry-glazed pork tenderloin, crisped Brussels sprouts, and cranberry mustard. Tiffani says it “tastes like fall in New England,” but neither she nor Padma have any praise at all for the pork, just everything around it.

* Melissa serves fried turkey with apple butter, cranberry compote, pecans, and fried sage. Katie’s borscht comes with creme fraiche, charred Brussels sprouts, and pancetta. I don’t think I’ve ever had real borscht, btu I love beets, and everything about her dish sounds fantastic – beets need acidity to balance their sweetness, and they play well with all kinds of fruits. I love a beet salad with orange supremes and a citrusy dressing. Katsuji’s steak tartare with chile de arbol mayo, olives, and cranberry hot sauce presents some mastication problems for the judges. Stacy made a curried cauliflower soup with a smoky pepper cranberry relish, but gets dinged for having too little sugar with the berries. Mei serves a sweet and sour pork with pickled mustard seed and apple salad. She’s unconcerned about the low-end pantry problem: “my fucking dish was great.” I don’t doubt it. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell her, 5’2” or not.

* So one more thought on cranberries: They’re too astringent to eat raw (just try it), but are high in pectins, which means they form a gel easy in the presence of heat and sugar; and in tannins, which are very bitter on their own and may interfere with some nutrient absorption (mostly proteins, which their structure of three to five carbon rings allows them to hold together in pairs) in the human GI tract. Tannins are what create that unpleasantly dry sensation in your mouth after you drink red wine or black tea. In On Food and Cooking, which every home cook should own, Harold McGee suggests sugar as a cover for the astringency of tannins; adding milk, gelatin, or another protein to keep the tanning busy so they don’t suck up the proteins in your saliva; or adding ingredients rich in pectins, gums, fats, or other oils to “take some tannins out of circulation” or slow their binding to proteins. That’s why cranberry sauce, which is high in sugar and gets those pectins active, isn’t astringent while the raw fruits are.

* The worst dishes were Katsuji’s because they couldn’t chew it; Adam’s, because he practically told them to hate his dish; and Stacy’s, whose soup was underseasoned and clunky to eat. The best dishes were Doug’s, a great fall dish that didn’t really push the boundaries on the key ingredient; Katie’s borscht is hard, which did push the envelope, swapping cranberries in for one of the signature ingredients in the dish; and Mei’s, which was complex and elegant. The judges didn’t specifically say that Mei’s “fucking dish was great,” but I think we know that’s what they were thinking.

* Katie wins, however, for her creativity, and gets immunity. Given the elimination challenge, that’s probably a big deal this time around.

* That elimination challenge: Cook an authentic Thanksgiving meal, historically accurate from ingredients to cooking implements, at Plimouth Plantation. They’re working as one giant group to make a traditional feast, and are only told up from that they’ll be limited to native ingredients and what the colonists brought with them. I *love* this – no gimmicks, no truffles or bacon or fish sauce or liquid aminos or whatever, no mounting everything with a stick of butter or a cup of cream. It’s as honest as food gets. Although I did wonder one thing: Did colonists bring salt and spices? The second Anglo-Dutch war in the East Indies didn’t occur until about forty years after the Mayflower reached what is now Massachusetts; at the time the ship left England, Banda/Run was still under British control, I think, so they should have had access to some of the spices from that region, notably black pepper and nutmeg.

* The diners will include James Beard winner Ken Oringer (of Toro, Clio, and La Verdad, the last one a taqueria right behind Fenway that I recommend for a pregame meal); members of the two Wampanoag tribes; and descendants of pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower.

* Gregory refers to Doug as “a little guy, very cute and a little fuzzy.” So he’s a Muppet? Or maybe a chinchilla? It sounds like he needs his own chew toy.

* The chefs arrive to find a lot of squash, legumes, and shellfish, tons of duck fat, and several containers of goat’s milk. There’s a fair amount of land-animal protein available, but it’s less traditional meats – venison, goose, and rabbit in particular. There’s one hearth with a pot, fire pits, and a lot of cast iron cookware. Adam and Doug are all over the spit-roasting set – Adam mentions catching and cooking with the drippings, which is both historically accurate and delicious. There’s a new Adam in this episode; he’s all camaraderie and teamwork this week, so maybe all he needed was for A-A-Ron to be gone. I don’t even think Adam told us where he was from in this episode.

* Gregory is going to cook the goose. I know there’s a huge layer of fat under the skin, but he says the meat itself is leaner than turkey meat. I had no idea, although I guess duck dries out pretty quickly (you can’t cook duck breast past medium or it’s a brick) so this makes sense.

* Doug is spear-roasting the rabbit, and wants the meat to spoon-ready because there are no forks for the diners. That’s thoughtful, though I imagine the pilgrims and their Wampanoag hosts weren’t squeamish about using their hands to eat.

* Katie is making a stuffing with lobster, walnuts, cranberries, and pickled blueberries. She’s taking a “big big leap” due to immunity. I can’t even imagine what this is going to taste like. I don’t really like fruity stuffings. That just sounds wrong.

* Melissa is just making a vegetable side dish because everyone else is cooking proteins. She says she’s showing off her execution and knife skills, but is that really what carries you once you’re halfway through the season?

* Mei is making a trout vinaigrette for cabbage she’s roasting with duck fat. I love this and want to try it immediately.

* Keriann was going to make a blueberry pie, but scraps it because the dough won’t stay cold, instead switching to venison and repurposing her filling, which at least she hadn’t sugared yet.

* I may have missed it, but I don’t think anyone at the table referred to the Wampanoags as “redskins.” It seems like such an easy way to honor them, too.

* Anyone else dig all the earrings Philip Wynne, one of the Wampanoag members at the table, was wearing? I might draw the line at the ring through the septum, though. I think I’d always feel like I have to sneeze.

* The dishes: Doug’s spit-roasted rabbit with garlic, ramps, hazelnuts, chestnut, and radishes required no forks, but the Wampanoags say they usually serve rabbit whole and just tear it apart at the table. The spit-roasting flavor is a winner, though. Katsuji served roasted pumpkin (or butternut squash?) with poached lobster, chestnuts, and ancho chile butter. That sounds amazing, but half the diners at my house next week wouldn’t touch it. Another of the Wampanoags says that they usually use lobster as bait to catch fish, not as food for themselves. Stacy’s ramp-smoked clams with butternut squash, roasted lobster, sesame seeds, and fresh ramps has some flavor that Gail and Padma in particular don’t like, although Tom praises her for finally “dirtying up” her food. She plated on the ground, though, which seems a little unsanitary. You can take the authenticity thing too far. Melissa’s roasted vegetable medley included parsnips, green beans, zucchini, and charred ramps with a vinaigrette. All four good but I’m not hearing a lot of praise for Melissa’s

* Tom mentions how, as a kid, his family’s Italian-American Thanksgiving always started with lasagna. It was the same in my house – often baked ziti rather than lasagna, but the same idea. And no one was really that hungry afterwards. We haven’t continued that tradition in my house, because no one can feel good after eating all of that.

* Doug steps in to help Gregory finish the goose, in part because they’re buds from PDX, but also because he loves that Gregory insisted on getting a bird on the table. It’s more of the camaraderie I mentioned above – it’s like Bizarro Top Chef where everyone gets along.

* Adam does a twist on succotash, with beans, corn, summer squash, wilted spinach, and spiced goat milk. Several of the Wampanoags say they love it, particularly as a twist on a dish (succotash) that’s very traditional for them. Katie’s blueberry stuffing with blue-cornmeal cornbread and sauteed lobster is a huge hit after all.. Gail says it’s “wacky-looking” (is that like crazy business?) but they all love it. Mei’s duck fat-roasted cabbage with trout vinaigrette also goes over well; she usually uses anchovy for salinity in the dressing, but Ken says the vinegar “just pops.” Is it just me, or are we seeing more vinaigrettes than ever this season? Gregory’s roasted goose, goose thigh confit with herbs, green beans, and gingered onions was just fair, as the confit wasn’t tender enough. Keriann’s seared venison loin with blueberry compote and buttered/herbed hazelnuts seems to have fared well, so her choice to switch worked out. Nobody really did poorly; Tom says, “There’s not a bad dish on the table.”

* Adam says to the group that “us nine absolutely nailed this as a team.” No true New Yorker would ever say anything so sappy. Come on, man.

* Padma’s favorite was Mei’s cabbage. Gail’s favorite was Doug’s. Padma also liked Katsuji’s squash. Tom loved it – calling it “sticky, gooey, savory.” He also loved Katie’s stuffing, although he says it didn’t need the lobster.

* Melissa’s vegetable medley was light on flavor. Ken questions her choice of dish; with two plus hours to cook on open fires, this is what you do? Gregory’s confit was a little dry and rough. Keriann’s blueberry sauce was too sweet on its own. Stacy’s stuffing upstaged the clams, but more importantly, it had that flavor a few people didn’t like. Tom kind of sounds bummed that they’ll have to send someone home for a dish that was only a little flawed, rather than an easy call on an outright failure.

* Doug, Katsuji, Mei are the top three. Katsuji produced intense flavor with just a few simple ingredients. Doug’s rabbit was successful because of the flavor of the wood-fired meat. Mei’s cabbage had crunch, smoky flavor, and a “pure comfort food” feel even though I at least don’t think of cabbage as comfort food. Katsuji wins, although it’s just bragging rights.

* Stacy, Melissa, and Gregory on the bottom. Padma pauses before saying Gregory’s name, but I can’t imagine anyone was surprised. Ken compliments Gregory’s cojones; Gregory said tradition made it important to get a bird on the table. Chefs rarely get sent home for taking too much of a risk, at least not this early in the competition. Stacy’s had a flavor that turned the judges off, and someone speculates that it might have been dirt from her plating.

* Stacy goes. Tom says her dish was very tasty, just the least favorite of a good group. She was probably the weakest competitor left anyway.

* Quick ranking, top to bottom: Gregory, Mei, Doug, Melissa, Adam, Katsuji, Katie, Keriann. Melissa’s been more potential than production, though.

* Next episode: Restaurant Wars! And Last Chance Kitchen is coming back! I believe we’re off next week, so my next recap will be the Thursday after Thanksgiving.