Top Chef, S13E04.

If you missed them, I wrote up the Todd Frazier trade for Insiders and then held a Klawchat here yesterday.

Mild spoiler: The Quickfire in this episode was far more interesting than the elimination challenge, both in terms of the actual task set in front of the chefs and the food that came out of it.

* The Quickfire takes place in the desert, using solar stoves and solar ovens to cook. The guest judge is Jose Andres, the Asturian-born chef who was one of the leading proponents of tapas (small plates) in the U.S. and who has lately been an advocate for fuel-free cooking methods like these devices. The winner gets immunity and chefs are assigned at random to use either a solar stove (a parabolic device with the ‘burner’ in the center) or a solar oven (a glass tube located at the focus of two reflective panels that form a sort of half-cylinder).

* Grayson wants to make skirt steak, which cooks quickly and likes high heat, but she has an oven rather than a stove.

* Giselle explodes her oven by putting water in it, which Marjorie says was “dumb.” While I understand what Marjorie is saying – you’d never pour water directly into an oven, right? – the GoSun oven tubes are made of borosilicate glass (like Pyrex), which has a very low coefficient of thermal expansion. That’s why you can put Pyrex in the oven or the microwave without it shattering, or even stack them in each other while still warm. Otherwise, they’d break. Now maybe Giselle didn’t know that’s what it was, and it’s still bizarre to pour water into an “oven” of any sort, but I’m also shocked to see it shatter like that rather than break into large pieces. The only thing I can think of is that the liquid she added might have been very cold. Any physicists out there have a better explanation?

* Grayson’s oven isn’t getting hot enough. Isn’t there a thermometer or some kind of indicator on it to tell you if it’s working? The outside of these devices stays cool (I checked their site), so you can’t tell by radiant heat if you have the right temperature inside.

* Philip is going to plate his dish on rocks he grabbed off the hill and rinsed off. That’s … peculiar. I’m not afraid of dirt or anything, but there might be things crawling in or on those rocks that you can’t see.

* Least favorites: Grayson’s steak was a little bit dry, probably from prolonged exposure to the heat in the oven as she tried to get it to brown; Giselle, whose dish never came together after the explosion; Philip, whose raw oyster wasn’t ice cold, with Padma saying it looked “like snot on a rock.” Padma was in rare form in this segment; when Grayson said her oven didn’t get hot enough, Padma said, “”Did you not hear when Jose said to angle the stove towards the sun?” I’m shocked Grayson didn’t just tell Padma to go fuck herself after that.

* Favorites: Jeremy, who made a seared halibut with pickled mushrooms and tomato vinaigrette on a solar stove; Wesley, who made shrimp with coconut broth, pickled onions, and sauteed mushrooms on a solar stove; and Isaac, who made cornbread, taking the “most risk of anyone, to use the oven to bake bread,” along with smoked butter. I thought Isaac would win after that praise from Chef Andres, but Wesley takes it, getting immunity plus a $10K donation to World Central Kitchen made in his name. Chef Andres appears to decide on the spot to give Wesley a solar stove too, saying, “We can change the world with them.” Getting these to poor areas in third-world countries where fuel sources are unavailable, scarce, or highly polluting, is a great idea, but I wonder if impoverished people will use them if there’s actual training required.

* Elimination challenge: They’re on a golf course, and split into two teams, each to serve a four-course meal, working on refreshment carts without a proper kitchen.

* Giselle and Angelina are getting pushed together, but there’s real enmity between the two now. I don’t think I realized Angelina’s “this bitch beat me again” comment from last week was said out loud to everyone – I thought it was from a confessional clip and was piped over a live shot, mostly because who the hell says that out loud while standing right next to the target?

* The chefs leave their environmentally friendly challenge to go to Whole Foods in their giant SUVs. Cool.

* So let’s move ahead to the dishes, since all we get in between is shots of the various judges cooking. Karen and Jeremy made a ceviche of citrus-marinated halibut with kumquats, passion fruit “caviar” (that’s just the pulp, so spare me the euphemisms) and avocado mousse (smeared unappetizingly on the side of the bowl). They serve the ceviche in a plastic bowl set in another bowl with a little ice in between the two, keeping the ceviche ice cold, as it should be.

* Kwame and Chad serve a tuna and swordfish ceviche marinated in tangerine sweet potato ponzu with a sweet potato emulsion and peanuts. Jose says a was a “little bit warm” compared to the other one.

* I think there’s a “let’s all laugh at how bad Padma is at golf” thing here, but since I have never played a single hole of golf I’m not picking on anyone here.

* Mary Sue Milliken (of the famous quinoa fritters, a big hit in this house) and Richard Blais are among the guests/judges.

* Grayson/Angelina made grilled shrimp with guacamole and corn-chorizo hash. Jose wishes the corn had been left uncooked to bring “freshness” into it. Grayson makes the “executive decision to leave the corn sauteed in the hash” because the corn isn’t that “amazing” (I assume she means it wasn’t very juicy or sweet). That “executive decision” is what we around these parts like to refer to as “foreshadowing.”

* Jason and Marjorie also serve grilled shrimp, along with summer squash salad, roasted eggplant puree, and a tomato/celery salad. It sounds like they nailed this dish, both in execution and in getting the right temperature and flavor profile for the hot day.

* Wesley and Carl serve a roasted pork loin, with (cooked) grapes, green apples, greek yogurt, and green chili. First judges didn’t like cooked grapes so they added some raw for the second group’s plates.

* Giselle and Amar served a spice-rubbed grilled NY steak with bacon asparagus potato salad and salsa verde. Chef Andres says it did not come together as a complete dish, and then just slams it to the ground when he says it’s “not maybe something I would be enjoying.” Ouch.

* Neither Philip nor Isaac, each of whom is making a dessert, can keep his burners lit in the wind. Philip moves his portable stove to the driver’s seat, which seems like a rather significant fire (or explosion) hazard. All his bowls are blowing away in the wind too. This doesn’t seem to be very much about one’s cooking ability.

* Isaac made a grapefruit sabayon (isn’t it zabaglione when it’s dessert? I think of sabayon as savory) with agave-tequila whipped cream and a lemon shortbread-almond-grapefruit zest crumble. Jose wishes there had been a little bit more grapefruit.

* Philip makes a makeshift tent to protect his stuff and serves the dessert from under a blanket. His dish is coconut pudding with strawberries, basil and rum lime mint “air” (it’s foam you knob) with a touch of serrano and sea salt. Jose doesn’t like coconut and strawberry together, and when Blais asks “is this the texture you were looking for?” it’s pretty clear the dish flunked.

* The best dish was Karen and Jeremy’s ceviche, and since Jeremy handled the fish and it was his idea to do the bowls of ice, he gets the actual win.

* The worst dish was Grayson and Angelina’s shrimp and hash. With fatty avocado and fatty chorizo, there was not enough lime to counteract the lipids, while the shrimp was a little rubbery and the corn just was not that good. The judges do the usual “who do you think should go home?” bit but neither chef takes the bait.

* Grayson is out. Tom tells her, “It was the corn.” Grayson is “furious” and cuts Tom off twice when he’s trying to give her feedback. Am I the only one not sorry to see this experiment end? Grayson was much more fun the first time around.

* LCK: Two surprise ingredients for each chef. Garret gets tomatillos and crisp broad beans. Grayson gets gingko (ghinko) nuts and coconuts. Grayson is trying to cut the coconuts open with a chef’s knife – does she not have a cleaver? (I just bought this stainless steel cleaver for $10 last week, and it’s awesome.) Gingko nuts can’t be eaten raw, and they’re mildly poisonous to eat at all as one of the chemicals in the nutmeat, called gingkotoxin (4′-O-methylpyridoxine) is heat-stable; excessive consumption can cause epileptic seizures and even death. Handling the raw nuts can also irritate your skin. Remind me why we eat these things again?

* Grayson serves pork tenderloin with sweet & sour coconut shrimp, fresh herbs, and candied gingko nuts. Tom likes the texture the nuts add to the dish. Garret made a broad bean-crusted branzino with wilted fennel (or did he say melted? I could not have heard that right), chorizo, and tomatillo salsa. Grayson wins. She’s also far, far brighter here than she was on any of the regular episodes.

* Rankings: Kwame, Jeremy, Carl, Marjorie, Karen. Angelina is clearly the bottom chef remaining, although Giselle isn’t far ahead.