Top Chef, S14E11.

If you’re looking for this week’s Klawchat transcript, click that link.

Down to the final four, with no rookies remaining, and the final episode in Charleston before the series heads to Mexico for the final rounds.

* Quickfire: Guest judge Michael Solomonov of Zahav here in Philly. I’ve still not been to Zahav, although I’ve been to their hummus bar Dizengoff a couple of times (it’s incredible). With a name like Solomonov, does he just split all his dishes down the middle?

* It’s that stupid partition challenge where they have to give instructions to someone they can’t see. It was on Top Chef Masters once and was painful to watch then. The winner gets $10K and a Joule sous-vide machine, which J. Kenji Lopez-Alt reviewed favorably on Serious Eats last year.

* It’s John’s wife, Sheldon’s wife, Brooke’s sister, and Shirley’s husband. This is ridiculous – there’s no way three of them didn’t recognize their spouses’ voices.

* OK, Sheldon figured it out. The face he made when he realized it was priceless. “Knowing the skillset of my wife, I’m going to keep this one super simple.” If I said that to my wife, I would not have a wife any more.

* Brooke’s got her sister poaching eggs, which is not easy at all – they can stick to the bottom, they get very stringy and wispy if you don’t strain the extra liquid from the white, etc.

* Sheldon’s a former WDW cast member! I’ve asked him on Twitter what his job was.

* Tesar doesn’t have a guess who he was working with. He’s surprised when he sees who it is, saying his wife is shy and didn’t want to be on TV. Their dishes are pretty similar.

* Shirley seems legitimately surprised too. “I’m glad I didn’t recognize your voice, otherwise I would be flustered.” Her husband Jimmy’s dish is slightly better seasoned.

* Brooke sees it’s her sister and asks, “how did I not recognize her voice?” Theirs look pretty similar and taste very similar. Padma seems to pick on Jessica’s poached egg, but I think it looks good for a novice; I’ve probably poached eggs a dozen times or so and I’ve read a bunch of tips (Ruhlman’s in Egg is probably the best recipe) and mine still don’t come out perfect.

* Sheldon and his wife also got their dishes to look very similar, right down to the knifework. He wins the challenge and is closing the gap between him and Brooke to be the favorite to win.

* Elimination challenge: Mary Sue Milliken of Border Grill and Top Chef Masters is there. The chefs must prepare dishes that represent their journeys in Charleston, and the winner will get to serve it at the James Beard House there. Padma is cooking dinner at the house for the four chefs and their family members.

* Sheldon’s going to make noodles from rice flour by grinding his own Carolina gold rice rather than buying rice flour – but the rice noodles aren’t forming. He ends up adding more rice flour and some tapioca starch, which is a strong thickening agent and often found in gluten-free recipes and wheat-flour alternatives.

* Brooke is braising her pork shoulder in cola in a pressure cooker. Braising liquid tends to reduce a lot over the course of cooking, so anything in the cola, like the sugar or the various acids, will end up concentrated in the resulting dish.

* Tesar’s making a fairly simple seafood dish with clam broth, coating his fish in what he’s calling a “soo-frito,” but which looks to me like a made-up mirepoix of onions, garlic, and bell peppers. He says he’s leaving the peppers unpeeled because he doesn’t want the peppers to turn too soft in the pan. Really, this is a saute of aromatics, which is fine, just not what he’s calling it.

* The diners are Ken Oringer, Renee Erickson, Sean Brock, Milliken, and Solomonov. That’s some serious heavy hitters at one table. I’ve been to a couple of Oringer’s places, both of Brock’s Husk spots, Milliken’s Border Grill, and Solomonov’s Dizengoff. They’re all pretty fantastic.

* The food: Tesar serves “soffrito”-topped scallops with braised leek “sea broth.” He says he kept it simple, with very few ingredients, and wanted to get the sense of the ocean into the dish. The broth has clam broth, butter, lemon juice, and green Tabasco. Brock says it captured the ocean. Tom doesn’t like that John didn’t peel the peppers, which produced a real bitter note in the dish. (I’m not sure what the process is here, though – do you scorch the peppers to get the skin off?)

* Shirley made oil-poached grouper with meat-and-bone herbal tea consomme, collards, and cracklings. She says she combined her heritage with Charleston cooking. Tom says it “should be a signature dish.” Brock says “I’d really like for you to open a Chinese soul food restaurant in Charleston.” Chinese soul food sounds like something I would greatly enjoy.

* Brooke isn’t in love with her dish; she wanted to make it beautiful and it’s not, saying she wished she’d had more time to “fine-tune.” She serves braised pork shoulder and tenderloin on smoked island sweets, with braised radishes and egg yolk. MSM loves the radishes and greens. Gail loves the texture. The egg yolk nods back to a challenge earlier in the season. But Brock doesn’t like the texture of the sous-vide tenderloin and everyone seems to agree the cola’s sugars became too concentrated and overpowered other notes in the dish. I really don’t like cooking with sodas for this main reason – to me, it’s like cooking with full-sodium boxed chicken or vegetable broth. You’ve taken away my ability to control a central taste (salt) in a way that I can’t dial down unless I dilute everything.

* Sheldon made Carolina rice chow fun with pork belly, okra, annatto seed, and turkey neck broth. Brock says it’s “insanely good. … you should be proud that Tom ate the okra.” Later says “I’m going to steal that technique” of making noodles from the Carolina gold rice.

* It’s clear that nobody failed this time around; Brock says he was “pretty blown away” by the whole meal.

* The top two were Shirley and Sheldon, so they’re through to the finals. Sheldon wins – of course he does, he made fresh pasta!

* It sounds like Tesar’s was really good except for the pepper skins. Padma asks if he “worried it would be too simple.” Brooke’s dish was comforting, with “homey” flavors, but the sous-vide may not have been necessary given how small pork tenderloin is, and the dish was a little too sweet. I find pork tenderloin kind of boring; it is very easy to cook, as long as you don’t overcook it, but it’s really lean, doesn’t have the flavor of shoulder or belly, and the texture is kind of bleh. For me, that cut is entirely about what’s around it on the plate.

* Brooke is eliminated. The season-long favorite goes down.

* Tom reminds her that “I will see you in LCK,” to which Brooke says “yeah, shut up.”

* Of the remaining chefs, I’d rank them Sheldon, Shirley, Tesar. One of Brooke or Casey will rejoin the group in Mexico; I’d probably still slot Brooke in at 1 if she wins Last Chance Kitchen, and Casey behind Shirley if she wins.