Sorry this is a bit late; ESPN’s annual baseball summit took place on Thursday, so I didn’t see the episode until last night.
* Mei’s beating herself up for nearly getting eliminated in the last challenge … but the judges loved the dish, and it isn’t clear that she was that close to elimination. She’s all, “Shit just got real,” but hasn’t the shit been real at least since Doug got bounced?
* Gregory says to Doug, “Dude you’re on fire.” That’s like the GM giving the manager the vote of confidence.
* The chefs travel to an organic farm in the town of Jalpa, in the southern part of the state of Zacatecas. The chefs start acting like kids in a candy store … that’s full of vegetables. The farm provides vegetables to the best restaurants in the city of San Miguel de Allende, and I can see why. Given how immaculate the produce looks, you might think this stuff was grown in a lab.
* Quickfire: Chocolate! Can’t go to Mexico without dropping some Theobroma cacao on this. The chefs have to make two dishes, one sweet and one savory, both featuring chocolate in one of its forms. The chefs have access to chocolate in multiple percentages, from quite dark (I assume unsweetened/100% was there, but didn’t see it), all the way to white chocolate (more on that later), cocoa powder, and cocoa butter. The chefs harvest their own produce. The winner gets first choice of sous chef for the elimination challenge. They only have 45 minutes for the whole challenge, including pickin’ time, which doesn’t seem like much – and they’re cooking outside, so a lot of chocolate applications (soufflé?) are out.
* Doug doesn’t do desserts, but knew he’d have to at some point. So maybe he should have worked on that before coming on the show? There are certainly a lot of basic dessert techniques that wouldn’t be hard for an experienced chef to learn in a few weeks of practice.
* Gregory goes for carrots and spice and dark chocolate for his dessert. I’m already fascinated.
* Mei is making something with duck. I’d criticize her for always cooking duck, but I’m simultaneously thinking how attractive a woman who knows infinite ways to cook duck is.
* Doug can’t just make a ganache, maybe on some kind of crumbled tart crust? Well, that’s basically what he does, melting chocolate into a bowl and serving it with a spoon. He really can’t make any desserts at all.
* Gregory can’t get his white chocolate to melt … because he grabbed cocoa butter, not white chocolate. Cocoa butter is pure fat, solid at room temperature, melting just below body temperature for that mouth-feel that we associate with good chocolate. White chocolate, however, is an emulsion of cocoa butter and butterfat (“milk fat”), with sugar and usually vanilla or vanillin added. It may contain milk solids, but can’t contain any liquids or the emulsion would seize. You can see why Gregory may have had some trouble with this.
* To the food … Mei made duck with bitter greens and chocolate mezcal, cooking it in a mixture of cocoa butter and duck fat; and for dessert she made chocolate yogurt with cocoa nibs and nasturtium (for pepperiness). She used 80% chocolate for the savory dish and 66% for the sweet. Both Padma and Enrique, the head of the farm at which they’re cooking, seem to like both dishes. I’m not sure about chocolate and yogurt, but I generally don’t like applications that pair chocolate with sour elements like citrus.
* Doug’s savory dish is seared hen leg stew with onions, tomatoes, bitter chocolate, and ancho chili; his sweet dish is melted chocoalte with chocolate mezcal and white chocolate cream. He didn’t cook the alcohol all the way out, and also, he served them melted chocolate in a bowl.
* Gregory made a seared lamb with a white chocolate/ancho chili sauce and a green chorizo vinaigrette; his dessert is baby carrots with turmeric, dark chocolate, ginger, and a hint of rosemary. That looks so un-dessert, but you can tell immediately that he nailed it from the judges’ reactions – plus it’s the creative/clever angle that usually wins on this show.
* Doug’s chicken was well-cooked, but the dessert was not “well balanced.” Also, he served melted chocolate in a bowl. Mei’s duck went very well with chocolate; Padma liked the crushed cocoa nibs in her dessert, an idea that might have elevated Doug’s melted-chocolate-in-a-bowl dessert. Gregory’s lamb was well cooked – you almost get the sense that Enrique expected someone to screw up their proteins – and Enrique enjoyed the sauce; he called the ginger and rosemary the “final best touch” to Gregory’s dessert.
* Gregory wins, of course. His dishes had the best balance and he made the best use of the chocolate. Enrique asks to use the dessert recipe at Jalpa. He seems genuinely blown away by it, which (if true) says something given who he likely works with in the local market.
* Elimination challenge: They’ll all collaborate on a six-course meal, two courses per chef. They’ll be given six traditional Mexican ingredients and each must take two to feature (one course per ingredient).
* Gregory takes George as his sous. Mei takes Melissa. Doug takes Katsuji. Melissa seems like the best choice of any eliminated chef because if we know one thing about her, it’s that she has great knife skills. (And I think she makes pretty good pasta; Sarah Grueneberg made it to the finals a few years ago in large part because her pasta was consistently plus, and Nina did something similar last season because of her ability to make perfect gnocchi.)
* The Mexican ingredients are guava, avocado, poblanos, huitlacoche, Mexican cheese, and escamoles. The last one, if you’re not familiar with it (and I wasn’t) are ant eggs – technically the larvae and pupae of giant black ants, a very expensive treat, one that Katsuji says packs a lot of umami. It can run $35-100/kg, according to the Slow Food Foundation’s page on them. Somehow, Doug ends up getting the shaft here – he doesn’t claim any ingredients, Gregory and Mei claim two each, and he ends up with cheese and escamoles, the two he wanted least. He’s pissed, justifiably so, but eventually rolls over and takes those two while Gregory gets the guava and poblanos while Mei gets the avocados and huitlacoche.
* Katsuji says he and Doug are “both sarcastic assholes.” Doug says he really just chose him because he speaks Spanish. I’m not sure why Doug keeps picking him.
* Gregory says he went all in on researching Mexican cuisine after Boston, which seems rather sharp. His mom made lots of stews when he was growing up. He’s at least part Haitian, and about all I know about Haitian cuisine is that it includes a lot of stewed and braised dishes.
* So, huitlacoche, less appealingly known as “corn smut,” is a black or grey fuzzy fungus that can be bitter but has a smoky profile, like a mushroom although technically not one (mushrooms grow in soil or on decaying organic matter like wood). It’s kind of gross-looking on the corn itself, but is usually cooked and used to fill tortas, tortillas, enchiladas, etc. One thing I can’t find out, and would love to know, is if you can brown huitlacoche as you would mushrooms, exposing it to high heat to caramelize some of that glucose.
* (Warning: tangent ahead) One of the major flavor compounds in huitlacoche (and lovage and fenugreek seed) is sotolon, a lactone (a type of cyclic ester, formula C6H8O3) that is formed spontaneously in the bodies of people with “maple syrup urine disease,” an organic acidemia more properly known as branched-chain ketoaciduria that occurs in approximately 1 in 180,000 births. The urine of people with this disease smells, as you might have guessed, like maple syrup, because of the presence of sotolon. I know about this because it is in the same family of diseases as 3-MCC, which my daughter inherited from me and which occurs in somewhere north of 1 in 50,000 births. While 3-MCC can often be largely benign, with modest symptoms like below-average muscle tone or development, MSUD can be very serious and must be managed with a special low-protein diet. Both diseases can be diagnosed via a simple mass spectrometry test that is administered free to newborns in most states. If you’re expecting, when the hospital asks if you want those tests, say yes. It could save your child’s life. (/tangent)
* Mei’s parents are kinda sorta supportive … but not really. She says they’ve never said they’re proud of her, and she wants to win so she’ll hear that. I think it matters more to her than she admits. Gregory’s the opposite – he says his parents are so happy to see him doing well after “seven years” of a “rough road” of drug abuse.
* Mei is just making guacamole for her avocado course? She calls it “guacamole with a twist” … which is still just guacamole, right? Adding xoconostle for acidity or tartness just swaps one tart element (lime) for another.
* Doug says the escamoles have a nutty taste, and he’s trying to serve them a bunch of different ways. He actually seems to like the flavors. I’m not sure I could get over the mental hurdle, though.
* Mei’s got Melissa making huitlacoche agnolotti, which makes a ton of sense – use them as you’d use mushrooms, and play to one of Melissa’s particular strengths. It’s not exactly experimental or creative, though.
* Gregory’s whole mien has changed. Mos Chef is back.
* Meanwhile, Chef Eduardo Palazuelos looks like he should be starring in a telenovela.
* First course – Gregory serves a chilled guava soup with bay scallops, habanero, roasted guava (whoa), shaved fresh guava, and fresh mint. Tom likes the way the heat builds. Blais says there’s a high level of difficulty to make a fruit soup as good as Gregory did. It also made sense as the opener, waking up the judges’ palates with something bright, cold, and tangy.
* Mei served a guacamole roll with xoconostle inside, radish, serrano, and fresh tortilla chips along the top. Padma thinks it’s a little too simple, just a refined guacamole. Bricio Dominguez, another local chef (who only comments in Spanish) wishes he’d tasted more xoconostle. Tom says there’s a lot more things you can do with avocado, which seems like the understatement of the episode.
* Doug first course is a tortilla español with escamoles and escamol aioli, with the eggs stewed slow with garlic and chilies, toasted with garlic, and made into the aioli. Blais loves the aioli concept, calling it brilliant. Eduardo doesn’t taste the escamoles enough; Tom says their texture ended up too similar to that of the potato. Bricio said with fine-tuning it could be a spectacular dish, which is a way of saying it wasn’t spectacular.
* Mei’s very happy with the agnolotti, but wouldn’t pureeing the fungus destroy its texture?
* The agnolotti are filled with huitlacoche and served in a roasted corn brodo with purslane. Zarela likes the roasted corn flavor; Tom does too. Eduardo thinks the huitlacoche came out bitter, but calls it an original dish, saying the broth was very interesting. Bricio would order it again. I’m a little confused – the description and visuals don’t match these comments very well, as it looks like tortellini in brodo, a standard Italian preparation, that just swapped huitlacoche in for the pasta filling. Maybe the broth was really just that special.
* We see a glimpse of Gregory adding more spices and “layers” to his stew shortly before service. That’s the kind of step he took more early in the season than late. His dish: a pork and poblano stew with tomatillos, grilled onion purée, and an escabeche-style pickle of carrots, poblanos, and shallots. Bricio adores itand gets a little verklempt. Blais loves the char, saying it “opens up more flavors.” Tom talks up the complexity of the dish. Gregory is clearly two for two here.
* Doug’s cheese course is built around a mesquite-smoked goat queso fresco with spiced honey, crispy squash chips, charred pickles, and a little chimichurri. Blais says a cheese course could be boring, but this isn’t. Enrique loves the combination with tomatillo.
* I’m glad they included Bricio’s comments with subtitles instead of editing him out. Guy had something to say.
* Padma thought the top two dishes were Gregory’s. Tom said the stew was the star of the show. Blais/Tom/Eduardo all say he belongs in the finale. This seems fairly clearcut – it’s Mei versus Doug for the last spot. Mei’s uncreative dishes and flop on the avocado seem like she should be sent home, but we have the advantage of … foreshadowing.
* Blais says the guacamole dish was “beautiful and uninspired.” Tom keeps calling it a missed opportunity, and don’t they send chefs home for that? Eduardo liked it, and he crushes Doug’s tortilla, saying the key ingredient (the little maggots) was missing both in the final dish’s flavor and texture.
* Padma and Tom loved Mei’s broth. Padma rates Doug’s cheese dish over Mei’s agnolotti. Eduardo backs her up on this one, while Tom would go agnolotti. I think we all know now that she loses any direct battle with Tom.
* Judges’ table: Blais/Tom rave about the guava soup. Eduardo says the pork and poblano stew took him back to his childhood years, that the amount of intensity and flavors were just outstanding. Gregory is the winner, easily, and goes to the finale, so all that early promise he showed this season has been fulfilled.
* Mei is crying already, and the judges have barely started talking about their dishes. Tom says other chefs loved the guacamole, but he wasn’t impressed. Eduardo thought the combo of the broth with the smoky flavor of the corn in her agnolotti dish worked well. He tells Doug that he lost the flavor of the escamoles in the tortilla. Tom says the tortilla was a “very good dish” – he says that a lot, now that I think about it – but there was just too much going on on that plate. Padma praises Doug for what he did accomplish with an ingredient he didn’t know well at all, which is sort of the “it’s not you it’s me” of Top Chef judging. Tom raves about Doug’s cheese course, calling it exciting, saying he did a great job with the flavors, and at this point, if you saw nothing but judges’ table, you’d think Mei was toast, right?
* Tom tries to give a pep talk. Padma says before they announce who’s packing his or her knives, that she “want(s) you both to take ownership of where you are right now.” On the one hand, it’s compassion in an era where most reality shows try to play up hostility and immaturity among the contestants. On the other hand, it’s a competition. The Royals had an amazing season in 2014. I doubt that knowledge makes up for game 7.
* Doug is eliminated. Hard to see this as anything but a penalty for having to cook with an ingredient he didn’t know (although his sous-chef did) and didn’t want or choose. Given the difficulty of the ingredients each chef had to work with, Mei should have gone home.
* I’ll take Gregory over Mei in next week’s finale. You?
Greg got jobbed.
If contestants shouldn’t have to select ingredients based on their speed or proximity to the product table (and they shouldn’t) — then it also shouldn’t be based on “Dibs”. Especially at this point in the completion!
How about a simple selection draft where someone gets the first-and-sixth choice, another second-and-fifth and the last gets to pick third & fourth? Not rocket science.
This is TOP CHEF, not TOP DIBSer
Sorry Doug, not Greg
Here’s my one question – if Doug has never cooked escamoles, and Katsuji obviously had… Why not have Katsuji focus on that part of the dish instead of other stuff?? It seems like very poor planning to me.
Yea how do 2 chefs each pick 2 ingredients out of 6 ingredients before the 3rd even picks one? Greg probably (and I would have too) thought once Mos Chef and Mei picked their 1st ingredient that it was his turn. So he’s sitting there thinking about which to pick while Mos Chef and Mei pick 2 more ingredients.
Top Chef ruins it because they try to create drama when the situation itself is full of drama. Just leave it alone and let these guys cook. Once you get to the finals, I think they should have 24 hours to plan/create a menu. None of this “You have 45 minutes to run 1/2 mile to that field over there, dig up some vegetables, run back and cook 2 different meals with chocolate! Ready? Go!”
Based on judges’ table, I definitely thought Mei was toast. Although I am happy that the two who have pretty clearly been the best two chefs in the competition are the two who will square off for the title. Can I also say how nice it’s been to have a season that’s been relatively drama and controversy-free, especially compared to the last couple seasons?
I agree, I agree, … and I agree. It’s been a pretty congenial season, at least after Aaron was auf’d, and I think the quality of the food in the last 3-4 episodes looked and sounded extremely high. I’ll take that over manufactured drama any day.
Keith, on the huitlacoche texture, I cook with it on occasion & it’s really not so firm like a mushroom. I doubt you could sear it though I haven’t tried that. In my experience it’s pretty delicate and falls apart easily when cooking, so pureeing it wouldn’t really hurt much – the texture really lends itself to sauces or creamy fillings.
I liken it to something like the mold in bleu cheese with a similar color & flavor profile – smoky/pungent but in a good way.
Agree with you on Mei, I thought for sure they were giving her the benefit of her past performance, it seemed pretty clear she underachieved compared to Doug in this one.
Thanks for the info. I’ve eaten it, but never cooked it or even seen it in its raw state, so I don’t know much beyond what I’ve read.
Yeah, I don’t understand why they couldn’t have done a knife pull – replace the cheese with another esoteric ingredient, and have the chefs pull with that, plus the huitlacoche and escamoles, so each gets one from there and one from the guava, avocado, and poblano trio.
I also agree with the more time – 45 minutes to run, pick your veggies, and then clean, prep,and cook them? Seems to be pretty tight, plus another challenge that significantly favors somebody in excellent physical shape.
Keith,
Any thoughts on Best New Restaurant? I’ve watched a few and thought it was somewhat entertaining.
I haven’t watched it, sorry.
I hate when someone is eliminated because of the randomness of ingredient selection. But I know there is always some randomness involved. I find it interesting the rapport formed between Gregory and George. George was out so early and never had a chance to bond with any chefs, but since his return George and Gregory have quickly built a really strong working relationship.
Infuriated by the outcome. Mei gets avocados and turns it into artsy guacamole. This show used to punish people for playing it safe. Now, almost every single chef that has been eliminated lately has been the one that has taken the most risk. Melissa made it to the finals based on dishes showing off “knife work.” Again, we can’t taste their food, but the comments made it seem close to a toss up. And again, this show used to punish people who played it safe. Now we get someone who makes it into the finale who literally made guacamole.
If you wanted to be cynical, you’d make the argument that the producers had a role in ensuring that a woman was in the finale.
I’m pretty cynical and I had that thought too … but for crying out loud, one of the two finalists is a gay chef of color. You’d think that would be enough if they’re concerned about a diversity angle.
Doug mentioned–can’t remember if it was on the broadcast or elsewhere–that Katsuji advised against escamole and potato, likely because of the textural similarities the judges mentioned, but he went for it anyway.
It seems like Doug’s mistake was not deferring to Katsuji a bit more since he actually had experience with the ingredient.
I’m sad to see Doug go but have to think his Top Chief appearance will be a huge boost for his career. He’s really likable and talented. I believe he was line cook as recently as a year or two ago so he’s really making great strides and just getting started.
Keith,
First off–thanks for fighting the good fight against the anti-vaxxers. I do not have my own practice, and therefore am not in a position to do so, but if I were, I’d not allow parents who refused to vaccinate to bring their children to me either. Thanks also for talking about diseases like MSUD. I know you’ve spoken about your daughter before and I’m glad she’s doing well. So many of these disease, like the branched-acid disorders and others like PKU, can be diagnosed easily and cheaply at time of birth. We need way more education about them (and vaccines, apparently.) Anyway, you have a big audience, and talking about these things and your own struggles with anxiety is a credit to you and means a lot to more people than I bet you know.
As for this episode of Top Chef, I felt myself of two minds quite a bit. I certainly felt badly for Doug that he ended up with the hardest ingredients, but I also found him pretty incessantly whiny over the course of the season and just as much in this episode. I thought having Katsuji along was actually a big advantage, both in terms of Katsuji’s knowledge of the ingredients and as a big help shopping. I was surprised that Mei went through on the basis of this episode. I have to think that Tom in particular was thinking about Mei’s performance over the course of the season and that this made for the best matchup for the finals. I’m not sure if that’s fair or not, but that’s how I read it. As you said, with Gregory being a recovering substance abuser, as well as a gay man of color, I don’t think they were pushing that hard to have a female finalist. I think it’s more that Tom perhaps though Mos Chef-mode Gregory was going to wipe the floor with Doug and felt that Doug and Mei were close enough that night to justify going with the better matchup.
I don’t care if they have the best chefs in the final or not. It’s a contest – a game.
I could watch a cooking show on PBS or the Food Network if all i wanted was to see chefs cook.
But it’s been clear for several seasons that, when possible, they carry who Tom thinks is the best chef.
I wonder how much selective editiing took place on this episode. it might be that they edited out some of the criticisms in Dougs dishes or some of the compliments for Mei’s to make judges table more dramatic (manufactured drama? Say it ain’t so!!). I think the folks who are thinking the producers tried to force diversity are underestimating Mei’s talents (full disclosure: I’m a fan of Mei’s). She probably has the most beautiful plating and presentation of all the chefs on the show. Her style differs from Mos Chef as he is a bit more rustic while she is more refined. I do think Mos Chef taps more into his own upbringing to implement his personality a bit more in his cooking. When Mei has brought that side out, it seems to have been well received – not unlike Beverly and Sheldon in past seasons who really flourished when they brought out their childhood influences and incorporated them into their classical training.
I agree that Doug got a bit shafted in the ingredient selection, but I would place most of the blame on Doug himself. He was incredibly passive and didn’t seem to fight at all for the ingredients he wanted. Didn’t Katsuji even say in a cutaway at that point that Doug should speak up for himself or he would be run over by Gregory and Mei?
It’s a competition, final three – no call for being the nice guy at that point. Fight for yourself!!
Also to address the notion that Mei’s gender had anything to do with her earning a spot in the finale….
I’m a big fan of Doug as I noted above, and was sad to see him go. But Mei and Gregory have been the strongest chefs since episode one (Gregory’s slump aside).
The sense that gender may’ve played a role–however small–is I think a result of Mei mentioning the relative dearth of female top chefs over the years history on several occasions. The editors and producers–knowing that she made the finale–obviously choice to highlight that as they shaped the episodes in post, because it provides additional ‘dramatic’ stakes for Mei. Much in the same they chose to repeatedly highlight Gregory’s sobriety and past struggles with drugs and alcohol.
From one of the comments above: “If you wanted to be cynical, you’d make the argument that the producers had a role in ensuring that a woman was in the finale.”
They were basically hammering it over our heads for two episodes that only two women had won Top Chef in the past. Doug was toast from the get-go…. and as someone who works in Reality TV I can say firsthand that, cynical as it may be, that barring a catastrophic dish there was a 0.00% chance that neither Mei or Melissa wasn’t making the final. Much like sports, narrative drives the results of these shows.