Top Chef, S14E05.

Welp. This season had two chefs I was truly interested in watching, and one went home tonight, in what is rapidly turning into a bad season of Top Chef: All Stars, where every challenge involves cooking something “southern.” If I wasn’t doing these recaps, I’d bail on this season and just come back if Brooke makes the finale (which I can only assume she will).

* Silvia is shown talking to her mother on her birthday, and apparently there’s a “birthday curse” on Top Chef, with at least three chefs going home on their birthdays in prior seasons. Since curses aren’t real, this is just bad TV nonsense.

* Sheldon says he herniated his disc ten years ago while carrying a pan of noodles, leading to surgery, painkillers, and an eventual return to the kitchen – but his back is bothering him again. He never mentions what he took, and the way he’s dancing around it, I wonder if the painkillers became a problem; it’s hard not to think of that after Prince died from painkiller use just a few months ago.

* Quickfire: The chefs walk in to a dark kitchen with no one there, 40 minutes on the clock, and no ingredients or instructions. (I’m not sure if they see the cameras but don’t realize they’re on, or if they can’t see the cameras at all.) The garage door opens to show the ingredients, and the clock starts, but they still have no instructions. Sylva guesses it’s a biscuit challenge. Brooke is the one loud dissenter, saying, “we can’t just decide our own challenge.” Well, it turns out that you can.

* At least three of the twelve chefs have never made biscuits before, which I find a little surprising for two of them. Neck-Tat has a restaurant in Charleston; how do you cook in the American south and not know how to make a biscuit, at least by ratio? Sheldon and Silvia at least come from entirely different cooking cultures, although I think Hawai’i is Americanized enough that biscuits would be familiar to him. For Silvia, though, biscuits are probably pretty foreign, pun slightly intended; the word “biscuit” and its equivalents in Europe refer to cookies, often those cooked twice (biscotti), but never to the sort of rolled, shaped quickbread we call a biscuit. The closest Italian quickbread I could think of was brazadela, a sweet quick bread of the Emilia-Romagna region, but that’s not a biscuit. An American, Southern biscuit is usually just a vehicle for dairy, both what’s baked into it and what’s slathered on or poured over it once made. Biscuits here are closer in concept to pie crusts, with some boost from a chemical leavener and milk or buttermilk instead of water.

* I’m not sure if Shirley has never made them, or is just saying she doesn’t make them now, as she does say she tries to avoid baking whenever possible.

* The ovens are at 450 degrees. I’ve never cooked biscuits – which Silvia calls “bis-queets” – at a temp that high. I think they’d burn before they cooked through.

* Katsuji rambles on about corn and biscuits, and then it’s like a switch flipped, and he turns into Katsuji Nye the Kitchen Science Guy, explaining why the butter in your biscuits (or pie dough, for that matter) needs to be cold.

* Sheldon’s didn’t rise – he was just copying Brooke, so if he didn’t see her add baking powder/soda or didn’t add enough, that would explain flat biscuits – so he cuts them in half, puts something on the bottoms, and then forgets to put the tops on.

* The guest judge is John Currence, chef-owner of Big Bad Breakfast in Oxford, Missisippi, and now Birmingham; he has a new book out, called Big Bad Breakfast: The Most Important Book of the Day, which includes his acclaimed biscuit recipe on page 183.

* The dishes: Sylva made a grated corn biscuit with pan seared scallops, served vol-au-vent style, which Tesar slagged in the confessional but Currence loved … John made a drop biscuit with cheddar and jalapeño with country gravy … Katsuji made biscuits with sweet corn relish and jalapeño honey butter … Silvia made a strange, savory salmon biscuit with avocado and crème fraiche, but Currence likes it, and says “I hope you do everything this well on your first try” … Neck-Tat made a traditional breakfast biscuit with truffle honey and a sunny egg … Shirley made a biscuit with black pepper mascarpone and blackberry compote … Jim did a cream cheese lard and biscuit with a creamed corn sauce and a seared scallop that he cooked on both sides … Brooke made black pepper and poppy seed biscuits with smoked salmon salad … Sheldon did biscuit bottoms with ham, soft-boiled egg, and parsley.

* Worst dishes: Shirley’s biscuits were dense and her mascarpone extremely salty. Sheldon’s were undercooked, and he only served half. Jim’s were overworked and dense, and Padma said his scallop was “hammered,” one would hope on some good rum.

* Best: Brooke’s was “immaculate” and showed off her technical precision. Katsuji’s was fantastic, Currence liked the dish, and said the biscuit couldn’t have been better. Neck-Tat seems to have also executed well on the classic presentation. But Brooke wins, again, and gets immunity. She’s the 2016 Cubs right now.

* Elimination challenge: Rodney Scott of Scott’s whole pit BBQ – not the same as Rodney “Cool Breeze” Scott, though. The twelve chefs split up into three teams and each must cook a whole hog plus three sides for 150 guests, including Darius Rucker.

* Sheldon’s going for an MRI, which may or may not be TV drama going on. I think based on the previews that this may be an issue in the next episode, but not this one.

* The chefs go to two Q joints first, before cooking. First is Sweatman’s BBQ northwest of Charleston, a place that’s only open Friday and Saturday, as many good Q places are. (When they’re out of meat, you’re out of luck.) Sweatman’s sauces its hog just once, and they try to finish the hog between 175 and 200 – although I may have misheard that, because at 175 the shoulder is not going to be done. Their mustard sauce uses yellow rather than brown mustard and contains a lot of sugar.

* Scott’s sauce starts with a vinegar-pepper base, both cayenne and black peppers, and “maybe” has some sugar. Sure thing, Rodney.

* Here’s what gets a little underplayed here, other than Jim pointing out that grilling is not BBQ. Real Q takes time, and it is not something you’d expect any experienced chef to have done. This is truly low and slow cooking, eight to twelve to sixteen hours depending on what cut of which animal, from pork shoulder to beef brisket to any ribs to this kind of whole hog cooking. You are working with real wood and real fire, so you’re in maintenance mode the whole time, keeping the temperature relatively constant, ensuring the food is cooking via indirect heat and is absorbing flavor from the smoke, but not getting so hot that it’ll cook too fast and fail to have any connective tissue break down. I’ve never smoked anything bigger than a pork shoulder, and while I love doing it, it ain’t easy and I wouldn’t tell you I’m good at it.

* Silvia wants to make a non-traditional potato salad, without mayo, and I can’t decide if this is a good idea or a terrible one. Was the mandate to make traditional southern Q sides, or just to make sides that would go well with smoked pork? Should her teammates have pushed her on this? Hold that thought.

* Sheldon returns, says he has a herniated disc but got “a shot in his spine” and apparently is feeling little or no pain.

* The chefs are up all night, although Brooke seems more annoyed that Tesar won’t shut up (editing?) than about getting no sleep. Silvia also gets to eat her first s’more, which … eh, they’re overrated. Melting cheap marshmallows and milk chocolate together doesn’t make them any less cheap-tasting. She’s only been in US for four years, now co-owns two places and has now opened a third since the show ended. We’re also seeing a lot of Silvia this episode, in case you missed that foreshadowing.

* Did they ever say what kind of wood they used? I didn’t catch it. I always use hickory if I can, because I like that very pronounced flavor.

* This might be the best cooking tip of the season: Tesar wants to make a roux for mac & cheese, but somehow they didn’t get AP flour, or lost it along the way. No one else bought it, but Katsuji offers to swap him some xanthan gum for Tesar’s peeled garlic – mostly because Katsuji was being kind, I think, not really because he needed it. Xanthan gum is big for gluten-free baking, because it can provide the structure that would otherwise come from gluten. Tesar says it’s emulsifying his sauce, but that’s not right – xanthan gum, which is produced by a bacterium that ferments certain simple sugars, is a thickener and a stabilizer, but not an emulsifier. It is a powerful thickener, however; a little goes a very long way, and it’s resilient at a wide range of temperatures, unlike corn starch.

* Shirley cooks baby piglet at her restaurant. Yeah, I know that’s traditional, and there’s nothing inherently worse about eating piglet (“suckling pig” is the preferred euphemism) than pig, but … ugh.

* The green team (Katsuji, Amanda, Silvia, Sylva) is cooking its pig at 350. No way you BBQ at that temp. That’s roasting, and it’s going to end up toughening the exterior if not blowing the whole animal out.

* Sylva adds hoisin and ketchup to make his BBQ sauce; Amanda says it’s delicious, just not a SC sauce, neither mustard nor vinegar-based.

* Silvia says in Italy, potato salad uses a salsa verde, which is like an Italian chimichurri with parsley, garlic, vinegar and lemon. Tom seems OK with this in concept.

* Something’s off with Katsuji’s beans, with a sour, funky smell Tom and Rodney dislike. This is revealed later, but Tom thinks Katsuji took a gland from the pig head when going for the jowl meat, perhaps a scent gland, which would wreck the dish’s aroma and flavor. (Jowl meat itself is fine – if you’ve ever had “head cheese,” you’ve had it.)

* Emily’s beans aren’t quite cooked. She claims that adding salt and vinegar makes them “seize up” and take longer to cook. This is bullshit. Salt your cooking water and the beans should cook a little faster if anything, because (see that link) the sodium in the salt will replace calcium and magnesium in the beans’ skins and allow greater penetration of the hot water into the beans.

* Let’s go already. The yellow team made smoked mac & Cheese (John), braised pinto beans with pork (Emily), sauerkraut-style pineapple slaw (Brooke), and whole hog topped with chile citrus vinegar sauce (Sheldon). The beans aren’t as done as they should be. The pork is delicious and seems to hit all the marks for temperature, texture, and spice. The judges also seem to like the mac & cheese. Tom wipes out his plate.

* Red team: Head and trotter hash, braised cabbage and apples, fresh pickle, and whole hog with pepper citrus vinegar based sauce. Rucker loves the hash, which seemed to be Jim’s main dish; this team also had Neck-Tat, Shirley, and Casey. Their sauce seems less “interesting.” The cabbage and the hash were Rodney’s favorites. Tom seems satisfied with the pork, however, and we all know this is Tom’s show.

* Green team: Whole hog with a hoisin-vinegar sauce and apricot glaze; kale and pickled apricot slaw; potato salad with salsa verde and red onion agrodolce; and Katsuji’s beans. There’s something off in Katsuji’s beans; Gail notices it too. Tom mutters that Silvia’s potato salad is “terrible.” Padma says don’t call it potato salad, since that means people will expect mayo, but if it was delicious they wouldn’t care what she called it. Amanda’s slaw has no flavor. The pork is mushy. Rodney says potato salad in the south has to have mayo; Gail says it was slimy. It really sounds like this team went 0-for-4 while the other two teams combined went 7-for-8 on their dishes, with Emily’s beans the lone exception.

* Yellow team wins, so Brooke comes out on top again, although she doesn’t get the individual win, which goes to Tesar for the xanthan gum mac & cheese. It’s his first elimination solo win ever on the show; he does say to the judges it was a team effort when thanking them, but I think it’s completely fair for him to take credit for this one (except maybe for thanking Katsuji for the assist), since he had to make up a new recipe on the fly.

* Green team is on bottom, of course. Rodney thinks the jowls hurt Katsuji’s beans, although I assume he means the glands; the beans’ sauce was “murky” and had – wait for it – too many ingredients. Everyone went for “sweet acidity.” Tom says the hoisin didn’t work at all, making the sauce as thick as something from a bottle at the supermarket. Silvia deviated from the tradition, but again, it seems like a failure of execution more than concept, as Gail said the texture of sauce between the potatoes and vegetables was off, the vegetables were undercooked, and the dish didn’t look appetizing (it had a greyish cast on TV). Amanda somehow escapes special criticism here despite making a slaw that the judges agreed had no taste.

* Silvia is eliminated. This is hugely disappointing given some of what she did earlier, even in the quickfire here, and we lose yet another rookie from the show. What’s particularly disappointing about this season even beyond the rookie/veteran format is that the challenges so far have almost all involved regional cooking from just one region, and you can be a great chef without being versed in the cuisine of the American South. The new chefs are all at a disadvantage, while Shirley and Sheldon at the least appear to be at a disadvantage because they learned cooking traditions outside of the continental U.S. – and Sylva seems to have done the same, with a Haitian background and culinary training in Paris. Are we looking for the best chef, or the best Southern chef?

* So this elimination leaves us with seven veterans against four rookies, two of whom haven’t shown any reason why we would want to see more of them. Silvia may very well have had the worst dish – I wasn’t there, so I can’t really argue this – but I’d rather see more of her than more of Katsuji, whose beans were apparently borderline inedible, or Emily, who’s been repeatedly on the bottom and was saved this week by her teammates’ food.

* I think Brooke is the overwhelming favorite at this point: She executes, she’s imaginative, and her only dud of the season so far came in a team challenge with one of the worst contestants as her partner. After her, I’d go Jim, Sheldon (if healthy, as if he’s another pitching prospect), Shirley, Sylva, Casey, Tesar, Katsuji, Amanda, Neck-Tat, Emily.

* LCK: I skipped the last two episodes of LCK for the same basic apathy I’m feeling about the main show. But Tom is far more entertaining here than on the main show – he seems to have far more fun on LCK. It turns out Sam won the last two challenges here, so it’s him versus Silvia. The two chefs must cook with seven of the available “lucky” ingredients. Silvia ends up winning with a branzino dish against Sam’s chicken-fried pork chops; I thought the pork looked overdone, given the color and Tom appearing to have some trouble cutting it, but he only dinged Sam for the bitterness of the browned kale, while his only criticism of Silvia’s was that her onions weren’t cooked enough.

* One unrelated LCK observation: Silvia tried to make an aioli in her Vitamix, but said it wasn’t working. Does anyone on this show test the equipment? Or if something malfunctions, do they not just have a spare machine or alternative (like a stick blender) lying around? Sometimes I wonder if these mishaps are deliberate attempts to make the chefs think on their feet, but if that’s the case, I’m not sure I understand the point of the show any more.