Top Chef, S12E09.

My analysis of the Wil Myers three-team trade went up last night for Insiders, and I held my last Klawchat of 2014 today.

Two amazon sales of interest – Ann Leckie’s Hugo/Nebula Award-winning 2013 novel Ancillary Justice is just $2.99 for Kindle right now; I bought it yesterday, as I’m working my way through the Hugo winners. Also, the excellent iOS app version of Stone Age: The Board Game is still on sale for $2.99.

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We see Doug waking up Katsuji in the morning, after which he tells the camer that Katsuji “is the most bizarre person I’ve ever met, probably my favorite person in the house; I don’t know why.” Then we find out Katsuji’s wife is seven months pregnant with another little one at home, and she’s running their restaurant while he’s gone and probably cursing his name every twenty seconds. On a related note, I believe we call this “foreshadowing.”

* Quickfire: Gronk is in the house. He’s listed at 6’6”, 265, but he has to be bigger than that, no? He also turned Padma into a 15-year-old girl: “do you mind if I call you Rob? … you can call me honey.” Have we ever seen her blush like that before?

* Gronk says he’s Polish so he wants Polish sausage. The chefs get one hour to make the best sausage they can from scratch, during which Padma will continue to hit on Gronk. Does she know he slept with a porn star?

* When Gronk says “I’d eat a big sausage,” Padma pauses and smiles: “Me too.” I’m just going to leave that there.

* I didn’t hear which chef said it, but someone was surprised there was venison? That makes damn good sausage. I kind of thought wild game sausage was a thing now. There was a food truck festival in Arizona where one truck had sausages made from deer, boar, and even reindeer meat.

* Katsuji uses liquid nitrogen, cooling the mixture so the fat doesn’t break and can maintain an emulsion. I think that’s the first time we’ve seen him talk any food science on the show. Blais would be proud.

* I was surprised and pleased to see them all using the same KitchenAid grinder attachment I use. I assumed they’d have access to much better equipment.

* Both Melissa and George end up struggling to get the meat/fat mixture through the grinder – I haven’t had that happen, so I don’t know if they didn’t cut the meat into small enough pieces or something else went wrong – but while Melissa just ends up making half-sized sausages, George abandons the cases entirely and makes sausage patties.

* Doug says the casing “shouldn’t feel like a used condom.” It’s really the “used” that takes the analogy too far, isn’t it?

* Doug made the most traditional dish – a beer-braised pork sausage with onions and whole grain mustard on a roll. Gronk, who by the way comes off as very personable the whole time, says it’s “a good pregame meal.” Because, you know, before I work out I go crush something fatty with lots of onions. Melissa’s little sausages have wild boar and pork with lentils, cucumber, fennel, and red onion on top. Mei’s Asian-style pork sausage has ginger, garlic, and fish sauce, topped with avocado, coconut puree, yuzu aioli. Gronk loves the sauce – how could you not love a tangy citrus mayo with fatty pork? Katsuji’s sausage has brisket and pork with habanero, cumin, coriander, and saffron. Gregory’s pork and boar sausage has makrut lime leaves (see below), chiles, lemongrass, garlic, cucumber, and carrot salad. Gronk says it got spicier as he ate more of it; I’m shocked Padma didn’t chime in on that. George served his pork and veal sausage patty with a sunnyside up egg, flavoring the sausage with cumin and coriander..

(Gregory uses the common term “Kaffir,” which is considered a racial slur in many parts of the world, notably South Africa where it’s comparable to our n-word, while in Muslim societies it’s a derogatory term for non-Muslims. While the origin of the name of the fruit is hopelessly unclear, there’s no good reason to keep using the term when “makrut lime” refers to the same thing.)

* George meets Gronk and says he “can’t say I’m a fan of yours” before Gronk tastes the dish. What a dipshit.

* Worst: Melissa’s sausages were way too small, not surprising since Gronk emphasized that he likes traditional, oversized Polish sausages. Gregory’s had too much spice and toppings; do Polish sausages ever contain red pepper? I can’t think of one, but I’m not that familiar with Polish food. The best: Doug’s, of course, and George’s, which looked like a burger but was delicious. George wins, despite his inability to shut his trap, and gets immunity. Doug is clearly displeased since it wasn’t a real sausage in casing … but that was never a requirement of the challenge, was it?

* Elimination challenge: Tony Maws – great name for a chef – is in the house; he owns Craigie on Main in Boston and Kirkland Tap and Trotter in Somerville, which I will forever associate with “slummerville” even though it hasn’t been worthy of that nickname in about twenty years. The chefs must create dishes inspired by one literary work from any of a half-dozen New England writers. The diners should be able to visually see the story on the plate in some way.

* Gregory picks first and takes Edgar Allen Poe, which would be (I think) the most fun to work with because you can be macabre without needing gore. Katsuji takes Stephen King, whose work is gory and, more importantly, is not literature. George takes Dr. Seuss. Mei takes Henry David Thoreau. Melissa takes Nathaniel Hawthorne, but ends up not using The Scarlet Letter (as if anyone knows any of his other books). Doug gets Emily Dickinson by default and is unthrilled to have a “depressed chick poet from the 1800s.” But she has the most notable style of anyone but Poe, both in content and in the use of iambic pentameter in every one of her poems. “Because I could not stop for Death” has to be among the top ten poems every penned by an American, right? I need some poetry students/experts to weigh in on this, especially since I can’t put anything but “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” at number one: “In the rooms the women come and go/Talking of F.P. Santangelo.”

* Doug – who jokes that Dickinson “wrote Pride and Prejudice, right?” after which I might have murdered him in his sleep – likes the poem “Bring me sunset in a cup” for its opening image. I don’t think he kept reading, though, or he would have used some honey, some turtle meat, and perhaps some quail or squab in his dish.

* George chooses One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish after Padma warns him not to serve green eggs and ham. Blue’s a tough color, though, so he ends up using purple potatoes. I don’t (or didn’t, at the time I watched) know how literal the judges expect the chefs to be, but if you ask any two- or three-year-old about colors, they’ll tell you in no uncertain terms that blue ain’t purple.

* Gregory chooses “The Raven,” and gives a rather scholarly analysis of its contents as well. HE plans to use grilled cornish hens, parsnips and beets for the snow and love, and some sort of nori “technique” for the blackness clouding the man’s soul. That said, I might have chosen “The Telltale Heart” and actually cooked something like beef hearts – but I’m writing that with the benefit of having already seen the judging.

* Mei’s drawing of her dish is cute – she or Bravo should take stuff like that and auction it off to fans for charity. Stick a frame around that and hang it in your kitchen for a conversation piece. She’s using charred onions to represent the soil, blending them to a powder with butter … like a graham-cracker or Oreo pie crust. I’m surprised it doesn’t just taste like ash, but I’ve never tried it.

* Melissa chooses a Hawthorne book I had never heard of called The Blithedale Romance. Even if you know and like the book, if the judges don’t, haven’t you just shot yourself in the foot?

* Francis Lam is a guest judge. Tom says the chefs’ efforts looked promising in his kitchen walkthrough, but the “proof is in the pudding.” Francis tries to correct him and claims it’s Shakespeare … but Bill never said that, and while the phrase is generally credited to Cervantes, it’s probably not his phrase either.

* Gregory serves first: seared beef tenderloin, grilled hen, parsnip puree, beets, and crispy nori. Tony’s beef was a little medium-rare, while the other four plates had it rare. Is medium-rare that big of a crime? Granted, beef tenderloin is kind of an overrated cut anyway.

* George’s Dr. Seuss riff has calamari, mussels, clams, pan-seared branzino, a seafood emulsion, and red peppers and purple potatoes for the colors. Gail says the dish feels a little “tight.” I have no idea what that means, but that’s four fish, not one or two.

* Mei’s plate has roasted vegetables on charred onion soil, coated with tom kha (I assume coconut milk flavored with lemongrass) “snow,” and a radish and carrot top vinaigrette. Gail says the soil and snow both add subtle flavor. Tom calls it “roasted vegetables ‘Walden Pond,’” which seems like an enormous compliment.

* Melissa’s dish has seared halibut, spring veg, morels, charred baby corn, asparagus, peas, with a mushroom broth served tableside. She claims it’s to represent the four seasons, with the charred corn symbolizing the increasing darkness of autumn, but 1) where’s winter? and 2) would anyone in that room have eaten her dish and said, “oh, man that is totally Blithedale Romance.”

* Katsuji splatters his red beet sauce on his dishes so it “looks like somebody just got killed on this plate.” He gets a reaction from the diners, but then forgets the title and author of his inspiration due to nerves.

* His dish is a fabada with white beans, chorizo, jamón serrano, short rib, veal osso buco, red beet puree and hot sauce (with his voice overdubbed to say the last two ingredients). It’s a long explanation of the connection between the story and the dish. Tom says the “most unappetizing-looking dish I’ve ever seen in my life.” Gail likes the “discordance” in the dish because Carrie is a horror story. No one’s going to mention that he had four proteins from three different animals plus beans in the dish?

* Doug’s Emily Dickinson riff is a carrot bisque with grilled carrots, orange, cumin vinaigrette, radish, and dandelion. The soup has an intense carrot flavor from his various methods of cooking the carrots. The judges rave about it.

* The judges seem to have liked all of the dishes, with a few slight preferences. Mei connected the work, the author, and the dish better than anyone, but Doug executed that almost as well. Gail argues for Melissa’s fish and presentation of vegetables, but again, no one points out the tenuous connection to Hawthorne. George’s presentation was a little underwhelming, but he has immunity. Katsuji’s was big and bold, but it was a mess to behold.

* Judges’ table: Tom says it was all really good, despite a hard challenge. Mei, Melissa, Doug are the top three. Mei wins, which I infer is for a great dish with the most inventive presentation; the “soil” and “snow” weren’t just gimmicks but added flavor to the dish.

* The bottom two are Katsuji and Gregory, with George safe due to immunity. Katsuji’s sauce was too thick, pureed beets rather than a strained “au jus” (sorry, Tom, but the juice itself is just the “jus,” without the “au”) that would have had a more vibrant color without the inconsistent texture. Gregory gets dinged for an overly symbolic dish that was not evocative enough of Poe or “The Raven,” yet Melissa’s fared no better in that department and she was in the top half. This feels a bit contrived, unless something else was amiss with Gregory’s plates beyond one serving of slightly overcooked beef.

* Katsuji is eliminated, as his food didn’t quite hold up to the presentation for Tom. Axing Gregory for an insufficiently literal interpreation of his inspiration would have been ridiculous.

* Quick power ranking: Gregory, Doug, Mei, George, Melissa. Doug may really be neck and neck with Gregory at this point – a little more precise, but a little less imaginative. He’s outperformed everyone of late.

* Last Chance Kitchen: The three chefs must cook with 20+ ingredients, Katsuji-style. Katsuji makes a mole, which is a great way to use twenty ingredients in one shot, and he ends up over 30 ingredients in his dish. Adam wins with a ceviche; Katie is eliminated despite Tom praising her tomato chutney, just saying the other two dishes were better.