→ December 30, 2014
→ By

To Say Nothing of the Dog.

Connie Willis’ Hugo-winning novel To Say Nothing of the Dog is a tight mélange of three distinct styles of fiction: A comedy of manners, a time-travel novel, and a literary parody, all tied up into a coherent single narrative that reminded me of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels, less witty but more sophisticated in structure and story.

Ned Henry works as a time-travelling historian in the 2040s, helping the imperious Lady Schrapnell rebuild the Coventry Cathedral in as authentic a fashion as possible, which means jumping back to just before the Luftwaffe’s raid on Coventry to see what the cathedral looked like, including the evasive (and very ugly) bishop’s bird stump, a wrought-iron monstrosity that has disappeared from the records and the scene. When one of Ned’s colleagues, the beautiful Verity Kindle, appears to break the rules of time-travel by bringing a non-insignificant object back from a trip to the 1880s, Ned is sent backwards in time to try to undo the damage, dropping himself into a Wodehousian setup of mismatched couples, mistaken identities, charlatans, mad mothers, and precious fishes – to say nothing of the dog.

Willis’ title comes from Jerome K. Jerome’s fictional travelogue, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), which I’m reading now to try to catch up on the allusions I missed. (One is off base, though; Willis puts an actual dog in Jerome’s boat, even though the real-life boat trip that Jerome used as the basis for his book did not include the canine Montmorency.) Fforde’s literary allusions and stabs at satire were broader and easier to catch; Willis succeeds more in the other two aspects of her novel, mimicking the Victorian comedy of manners (and, later, early 20th century English mysteries) and utilizing time-travel as more than just a plot device.

Willis’ time travel involves a self-correcting “continuum” that works to prevent historical incongruities that would change future events; for example, historians who attempt to travel back in time to assassinate Hitler can’t land anywhere close (in space-time) to him. Jumps into the past can create “slippage” of time or space that increases around a potential incongruity, so when Verity brings back something she shouldn’t have (in fact, that the “net” of time-travel should have prevented her from bringing back at all), the scientists assume they’ve created an incongruity and worked to correct it.

The shift from the imitation of comic novels – including the Jeeves-like butler Baine, who did, in fact do it, but “it” isn’t the it you think it might be – to a mystery that takes on aspects of those of Agatha Christie and especially Dorothy Sayers (the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries), with Ned and Verity working together to try to figure out where the bishop’s bird stump has gone, what the incongruity might be, and how to fix it. As in Christie’s novels, there are side mysteries, such as what Ned’s colleague Finch is doing running around in 1888 pretending to butle while on a secret mission for the time-travel department, or why the continuum sends Ned back to a dark tower in the late 1300s when he was just trying to get back to the present.

The greatest strength of the book is the Victorian characters, who are mostly of the upper-class twit variety, including the domineering yet gullible Mrs. Mering, her simpering daughter Tocelyn (“Tossie”), and the fraudulent psychic Madame Iritosky. We’re also treated to an ongoing debate between two professors of history in 1888, Professor Overforce and Professor Peddick, whose argument on the nature of free will and the causes of history itself dovetails nicely with the overall theme of the net, the continuum, and self-correction of incongruities. There’s also a plethora of silly (but still funny) jokes around confusion of names and people, and a fair bit of physical comedy as well.

To Say Nothing of the Dog drags for a short stretch after Ned has first arrived in 1888, once when we’re waiting for him to realize what he’s brought back for Verity (it’s obvious to the reader from the start) and another time when we’d really like the Merings to just get on with whatever it is they’re supposed to be getting on with, two sections where the situational humor can’t mitigate the glacial pacing of the plot. Those are temporary, and once Ned and Verity get cracking on the ultimate mystery of the continuum’s odd behavior, the narrative steps on the gas and doesn’t let up until a rousing, pitch-perfect finish that wraps up almost every plot thread but leaves one critical question unanswered for us and for the characters, an ambiguity that would have driven Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells to spontaneous combustion.

Next up: Before tackling Jerome K. Jerome, I knocked off Jo Walton’s Hugo winner, the wonderful novel Among Others, which is on sale for $2.99 in the Kindle edition through that link.

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→ December 28, 2014
→ By

Saturday five, 12/27/14.

This is up a bit late, due to the holiday, travel, and a visit with family that includes seeing my grandmother, who is now in hospice after renal failure and is not expected to live more than a few more days. She turned 100 in June and in many ways was a third parent to me, there for most of the significant events of my childhood, the person I woke up to see when I was three years old and my mother had left for the hospital during the night to give birth to my sister. I’ve known this day would come for a long time, but it hasn’t made seeing her like this any easier.

I haven’t had any ESPN content this week, but my top ten new boardgames of 2014 ranking is up for Paste. There’s some overlap with my overall top 60 boardgames ranking from November, but the Paste list includes a few I hadn’t played enough to include in the global list.

This week’s links:

  • Quantum physics just got less complicated. That might be overselling it – we’re not about to start teaching it in kindergarten – but the study discussed here claims that wave-particle duality (that a particle can behave like a wave, or a wave like light can behave like a particle) is just one manifestation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
  • An amazing video collage of twisted snowmen from Calvin and Hobbes. Watterson’s strip was brilliant across the board, but I don’t think I enjoyed anything as much as Calvin’s demented snow sculptures.
  • This woman collected all her trash from a single year and fit it into a mason jar. I think it’s amazing that anyone could cut down on her trash production to this extent, although the woman also clearly has no kids or pets, and she must go through a lot of water to clean all of the reusable cloths she has to use. It’s still a great thought experiment – you can recycle more stuff than you think, and you can absolutely cut down on your trash with some effort. I’d even argue, based mostly on my own experience, that the 80/20 rule applies: 20% of the effort will cut down on 80% of your trash. Composting, better recycling, and smarter shopping do it pretty painlessly.
  • The science behind catnip’s effect on cats. The best part here was the embedded video of big cats getting high off the stuff.
  • Twitter doesn’t think these rape/death threats are harassment. I love Twitter for a lot of reasons, but their response to obvious harassment of women is inadequate if not embarrassing. The company has every right to sweep these trolls right off their service, but they hide behind a vague concept of free speech. Save that stuff for anti-government activists fighting autocratic regimes, not for anonymous cowards trying to scare women.
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→ December 22, 2014
→ By

Broadchurch vs. Gracepoint.

The 2013 ITV series Broadchurch was a single-story, eight-episode arc that began with the discovery of the body of 11-year-old Danny Latimer on the beach of the small Dorsetine tourist town and followed the investigation led by new Detective Inspector Alec Hardy and Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller, whose son Tom was Danny’s best friend. The series focused on the personal impacts of Danny’s death and the subsequent revelations uncovered by the police, the media (local and national), and through the consequences of the various questions those entities ask of anyone who might have been connected to the crime. By splitting the show’s attention across two foci, the writers gave us something we seldom see: a show about a murder that depicted real grief, sorrow, anger, and denial. The script gave the characters the space to develop the depth to make them play like real people, able to show a broad range of traits and emotions that don’t appear in shows that try to tell a story in just 44 minutes.

Broadchurch earned broad critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, winning the BAFTA for best drama in 2013 while Olivia Colman won best actress for her performance as D.S. Miller and David “Argus Filch” Bradley won for best supporting actor for his role as Jack Marshall. Alan Sepinwall of HitFix named it one of his top 20 shows of 2013 as well. The show was a huge commercial success in the U.K., and will return for a second season next month, even though its creators originally conceived the series as a one-and-done.

Of course, this called for an American-made version to air on a U.S. network, because God forbid anyone ask us to watch a show that isn’t set here. At times a shot-for-shot remake of the original, Gracepoint lengthened the series by 25%, spending more time with side characters and misdirections that blurred the sharp focus of Broadchurch on the people involved. The superlative cast of the American series continually delivered, with David Tennant reprising his role as D.I. Hardy (renamed Emmett Carver, because reasons), two-time Emmy winner Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad) as Ellie, two-time Oscar nominee Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook) as Susan Wright, and three-time Oscar nominee Nick Nolte as the renamed Jack Reinhold. I doubt any will receive major award nominations, given the mediocre reception critics gave the remake, but all four were above the threshold for consideration, especially Weaver. However, the story meandered away from the heart of what made Broadchurch great – the focus on the emotional lives of its characters – in what I think was a misguided attempt to heighten the mystery, which misunderstood the point of the original series entirely.

I’m still convinced the main reason FOX chose to remake Broadchurch rather than air the original is the accents. David Tennant’s Scottish accent isn’t as easy to understand as an upper-class English accent would be, and I think in general there’s a belief in Hollywood that Americans won’t watch a TV show where all of the dialogue comes at them in the King’s English. (You’d think by now the success of Downton Abbey would have left that myth as dead as a doornail.) The former part I can understand – I had a few instances where I had to rewind to catch something Tennant said – but I hold no truck with the latter. And FOX made the innkeeper character Becca into English expatriate (named Gemma) on Gracepoint, even though she wasn’t American on Broadchurch.

Such changes in characters made up the bulk of the gap between the American and British versions of the show, and in almost every instance, the alterations were for the worse. Gracepoint appeared to be trying far too hard to appeal to the audience, commensurate with the #SuspectEveryone marketing campaign, with multiple characters rewritten or recast to be more suspicious or just creepier:

* The vicar Paul Coates is just that, a clergyman who runs the town’s computer club for kids and plays the peacemaker in a town with few churchgoers; the American priest Paul has carried a torch for Danny’s mom for over a decade, and becomes increasingly forward with her rather than just providing comfort and counsel, while he engages in a sort of cold war with her husband, Mark.

* Both versions of Mark commit the same transgressions, but the American one is colder to his wife, openly hostile to Paul, and miserly with his employee Vince.

* Vince – called Nige in the British version, which won’t do because no one born in America has ever been named “Nige” – is an angry but sometimes well-meaning simpleton in Broadchurch; his American counterpart is constantly scowling, is more devious and greedy than Nige, and is shown butchering something (which turns out to be a deer he shot) in his shed.

* Susan Wright is irredeemable in both versions, but she’s far more sinister in the remake, appearing to threaten Tom and frequently seen spying on others’ in the background; the only time she reveals her true nature in the original is the threat to Maggie.

* Maggie, meanwhile, was turned into a bad punchline in Gracepoint. The original Maggie receives no backstory; we hear nothing of a personal life or her orientation. The American version is a lesbian who says she “realized (she) didn’t like penises,” and is given a raccoon-like hairstyle that ages her at least ten years. (I assumed her character was supposed to be in her late 40s or early 50s, given her looks and demeanor, but the actress portraying her is only 38.) There was no point to revealing Kathy’s orientation other than to provide a token gay character and play it for that one cheap laugh; her personal life never comes into play in the story, and she’s largely a minor character the rest of the way.

* Karen White, the big-city reporter in Broadchurch, shows actual signs of humanity when her articles on Jack are rewritten to vilify the shopkeeper, and again at the end of episode eight when she twice shows her remorse through tiny yet significant actions. Her American doppelganger, Renee Clemons, has no second dimension beyond her ambition, and appears to be there just to look hot and annoy the viewers with her lack of empathy. She doesn’t appear at all in the Gracepoint finale.

* Even Chloe’s character changed, although at least the Gracepoint actress looked like she could possibly be the biological child of the two actors playing her parents. The American version was more rebellious, and what was an innocent “happy room” her boyfriend created for her in Broadchurch became a more sexualized dance in the bar area by the docks.

There were character shifts in the American version that worked, but those appeared more organic, the result of different casting rather than changes in dialogue or actions. Anna Gunn’s Ellie is a stronger character from start to finish – less mousy, more vocal, less tolerant of Carver’s indignities as they happen, although in the end none of it amounts to much given the conclusion of the story. Jacki Weaver, who was amazing as the matriarch of an Australian crime family in Animal Kingdom, made Susan Wright more three-dimensional with her portrayal, making her seem almost addled at times even as she reveals herself to be vindictive. I found it easier to accept her as a victim than the English version, played more stoically by Pauline Quirke. (According to the Broadchurch wikia, Vince the dog was played Quirke’s dog Bailey.)

Tennant’s performances varied beyond the shift to an American accent – which never bothered me in the least, although I’ve seen several critics harp on it as a problem for them – as he was more curt and dismissive with Ellie in Gracepoint, lacking the signs of empathy he flickered in the last few episodes of Broadchurch. His heart ailment seemed to only factor into the core narrative as a way to force a time limit on the investigation, since he has just a few hours to finish the case before he’s forced to take a medical leave. However, the American remake’s insertion of his daughter as a brief subplot proved a complete waste of time, a way to stretch the original series by 88 minutes of content.

Red herrings – like the backpacker, who was a total dead end – ended up giving Gracepoint a sense of density and slower pacing than Broadchurch with no added payoff; if anything, the result was a net negative, taking a series that focused exceptionally well on the emotional impacts of the murder of a child and the ensuing investigation and turning it into a murder mystery. American police procedurals rarely give much if any screen time to grief; we get a quick police interview with the next of kin, some tears or perhaps some wailing, and then we don’t see the family member again unless s/he is the killer. Broadchurch threw that script out the window; the fabric of Danny’s family starts to strain at the seams, while the investigation ruins one man’s life and exposes secrets and lies in those of several others. The finale of Broadchurch was more British than any other aspect of the series: It was slow by design, so that the viewer couldn’t help but linger over the wounds opened or reopened by the revelation of the killer’s identity, followed by the beautifully shot memorial, for a much stronger buildup to Paul’s “I passed the word; maybe the word was good” response that closes the season.

–

Below this point, I’ll discuss the ending and the identity of the murder. If you haven’t watched either series, you may wish to stop now.

The writers made a slight change to the conclusion of Broadchurch when remaking it as Gracepoint, although the shift was as much about motive as it was identity, providing a much less satisfying explanation in the end while also straining credibility around Tom’s ability to keep his part of the secret from his mom for the entire length of the investigation. It points, again, to the American version’s compulsion to sharpen its edges, which felt to me like a way of talking down to an American audience that FOX felt wanted a bigger emotional impact. (The conclusion didn’t matter for viewership, though; the series was DOA after the first week’s ratings were weak, something I blame on FOX marketing the show strictly as a murder mystery rather than as a high-quality drama.)

Danny’s murder at the hands of Joe was half a surprise, because the writers shoved it in our faces in the penultimate episode’s confrontation between Ellie and Susan outside the police station, where Ellie asks Susan,
“How could you not know?” and thus sets herself up for an ironic outcome where she learns just how Susan might not have known what was happening in her own house. That heavy-handedness aside, however, the writers did a better job planting the seeds for Joe’s role in Danny’s death in both versions of the show, depicting him at various points as a devoted father and husband who finds himself gradually fading in importance from the lives of his wife and older son. It was a simple explanation, one that took place right under the noses of everyone in town, and Danny’s death is the result of the unmollified rage of a repressed pedophile. Gracepoint made Joe’s attraction to Danny more explicit, and turned Danny’s death into a tragic accident that involved Tom, who was trying to protect his friend, not hurt him. Such things can happen, of course, but the crime was no longer a murder, but the ensuing coverup by Joe. It felt like a change for change’s sake, made because the American series had to offer a different ending.

–

As odd as it might seem, I’d still recommend both series. If you only want to make the time investment in one, make it Broadchurch – it’s better written, has much more heart, and is 88 minutes shorter. You still get David Tennant, and several of the secondary characters, especially the vicar Paul, get more sympathetic/less prejudicial treatment. But Gracepoint has equal or better performances from several cast members, and because the central story is so similar it’s no less compelling, just a little out of focus when compared to the superior source material.

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→ December 21, 2014
→ By

The City & the City.

China Miéville’s The City & The City, co-winner of the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel, takes the idea of the split city – Berlin, Budapest, Jerusalem – to an entirely new level, one where the boundaries are less geographic than psychic. His novel takes place entirely within such a metropolis, where a murder in one part involves the police in the other and eventually invokes the shadowy authority that governs the tenuous territory that connects them.

Besźel and Ul Qoma are twin halves of a whole city, one with a nebulous history that at some point split the population into two groups, with distinct governments, religions, and customs, albeit two languages that appear to be almost the same aside from their alphabets (as with Serbian and Croatian). Citizens of both city-states are taught to “unsee” everything from the other half – buildings, vehicles, people. Streets may be “cross-hatched” – located in both Besźel and Ul Qoma – or may include adjacent buildings in different countries, with salients from one side jutting out to include one Besź building between two Ul Qoman ones. While residents of one country can walk partway into the other, they are expected to unsee any foreign elements there, lest they “breach,” a psychic trespass that calls up the third power, called Breach, that can simply “disappear” anyone shown to have thus ignored the barrier between the two nations.

That setting is by far the most fascinating aspect of The City & the City, which is otherwise a fairly straightforward political thriller/murder mystery. A body is dumped in Besźel by a van that was stolen and apparently crossed the border from Ul Qoma, where the murder was committed. A legal manuever through the one true border crossing (a central building called the Cupola) keeps the investigation away from Breach and in the hands of the Besź Inspector Borlu, the narrator, eventually, an Ul Qoman counterpart who helps with the joint investigation when the trail leads back across the border. The investigation involves a sort of forbidden archaeology that hints at the shared origins of the city-state and the long-rumored existence of a third society, called Orciny, that exists in the spaces between the other two nations, people who would be unseen by both Besź and Ul Qoman people alike, and who’ve inhabited such spaces (called dissensi) for generations.

While review quotes on the book’s cover refer to Chandler and Kafka, Miéville never quite evokes the paranoia of the latter or the panache of the former. Breach is discussed, and eventually its agents appear, but it acts with clear rules and within clear boundaries to its authority – the story is marked by Breach’s refusal to investigate the original murder because the crime occurred beyond its jurisdiction. There’s no sense of foreboding here, or of patently unfair or arbitrary rulings; when Borlu is taken off the case, it’s not as if he’s suspended for no good reason or without an explanation. Miéville creates a wildly compelling setting, with a deeply consider geopolitical construct and even some clever portmanteaux to express it (although it took half the book for me to get some of them straight), but the story he layers on top of this milieu doesn’t measure up to it in depth or imagination.

Next up: Corinne Willis’ Hugo winner, the comic time-travel novel To Say Nothing of the Dog.

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→ December 20, 2014
→ By

Saturday five, 12/19/14.

I’ve been busy writing up transactions all week, which is putting a real damper on my ability to make calls for the top 100 prospects list, but I shall persevere. Here are all of the Insider pieces I’ve written in the last seven days:

* The three-team trade featuring Wil Myers
* The Justin Upton trade
* The Derek Norris trade
* The Nate Eovaldi/Martin Prado trade
* The Chase Headley re-signing
* The Melky Cabrera signing
* The Jed Lowrie, Alex Rios, Brett Anderson signings & more

I also wrote up the Jimmy Rollins trade the week prior, slipping in at least eight references to Black Flag, Henry Rollins’ former band, although to this point no one has mentioned catching them.

As promised, I created a second Spotify playlist, with 40 songs that just missed the cut for my top 100 this year, although I guess I’m using that term a bit loosely:

And now, the links:

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→ December 19, 2014
→ By

San Diego eats, 2014 edition.

I have been writing the things for Insiders, on the Justin Upton trade and the Derek Norris/Jesse Hahn trade just in the last 24 hours.

The best meal in San Diego, our annual big writers’ night out, was at Juniper & Ivy, Richard Blais’ restaurant in Little Italy and one of my favorite restaurants in the country. I arranged the dinner well ahead of time, so we had a prix-fixe menu that included some items (like the amazing mac and cheese with house-made pasta and fontina) that aren’t on the typical menu. The takeoff on the Yodel is a regular item, though, and it’s bonkers … I split one with USA Today football writer Lindsay Jones and it didn’t stand a chance. There was a second dessert, not listed on the menu, that had to be tasted to be believed: blood-orange gelée, frozen yogurt, clementine supremes, lemongrass ice cream, and shards of roasted-citrus ice. I wanted to take that gelée home, but was afraid I couldn’t get a pound of it through airport security. The staff went all-out for us, clearly, and the service was exemplary. I reviewed J&I in full in March, and have now eaten there three more times, never once walking away less than fully satisfied.

If you aren't jealous, you should be. @juniperandivy @richardblais

A photo posted by Keith Law (@mrkeithlaw) on

Bird Rock Coffee Roasters, based in La Jolla, opened a second location a month ago, right across the street from Juniper & Ivy, and it’s now the best coffee option in the city, a small-batch roaster that is also the only direct-trade outlet in San Diego. I had an espresso macchiatto there each morning, but they also offer pour-overs and Chemex brews as well.

My other dinners in San Diego came at Cucina Urbana and Prep Kitchen, both strong, with Cucina Urbana my preference among the two. A new, upscale but reasonably-priced Italian trattoria, Cucina Urbana features a deep menu of pizzas, house-made pastas, and a slew of small plates, including the daily “polenta board,” assembled tableside with a ragù spread on top of a thick smear of creamy polenta on a wooden board. My pasta dish, bucatini with tomato, guanciale, cabbage, chili pepper, and a poached egg, was a great southern-Italian comfort-food dish, satisfying in texture (al dente, with the added bite from the jowl meat and the cabbage; smooth from the egg mixing with the tomato) and flavor (obvious), with just the right portion size between the starter polenta and the fact that I wasn’t leaving without trying the chocolate donuts with hazelnut filling, which didn’t even need the passion fruit dipping sauce except maybe to cool them off enough to eat them.

Prep Kitchen was a little more hit-or-miss. The yellowtail crudo was actually a slight disappointment, with a not-subtle fishy note marking the tuna as less than perfectly fresh, and the chocolate “budino” wasn’t a budino (an Italian custard, often thickened with cornstarch as well as eggs) but a warm chocolate cake served in a mason jar, but the pumpkin bread pudding had great balance of sweet and savory flavors without turning to mush, and the porchetta (which appears to be off the menu already) was superb if slightly fattier than I’ve had elsewhere.

I grabbed lunch twice at Bottega Americano, located just east of Petco Park in a cute space that combines a little Italian market and deli counter with a sit-down restaurant. Despite the grammatical error in its name, the restaurant serves excellent sandwiches and salads and makes a legit French macaron as well. The speck (smoked prosciutto), fuyu persimmon, shallot marmellata, arugula, and goat cheese sandwich on olive bread was my favorite for flavor, although I found it tough to tear through the speck, which they need to slice more thinly before serving; the olive-oil poached tuna sandwich with yellow pepper aioli and farmer’s egg (I didn’t know farmers laid eggs, but perhaps that’s a new mutation) was much easier to eat but needed more acidity somewhere in the mix. That was a better option than Kebab House, which is outstanding if you’re looking for cheap eats near the ballpark but was much heavier and I think a little overloaded with garlic.

I am in love with the Mission for breakfast in San Diego, and ended up eating there three mornings out of four; the one variation was at the Fig Tree Cafe in Hillcrest, where I had a disappointing salmon benedict with a potato/arugula side dish that couldn’t live up to the Mission’s amazing rosemary potatoes. I know the Tractor Room gets raves for its brunches, but I wasn’t there any morning when it was open for breakfast and have to save that for a future trip.

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→ December 18, 2014
→ By

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.

—

Top Chef logoWe 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.

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→ December 16, 2014
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The Lowland.

I wrote about the Yankees signing Chase Headley, the White Sox signing Melky Cabrera, and the various signings of Jed Lowrie, Alex Rios, Brett Anderson, and others for Insiders.

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Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1999 for The Interpreter of Maladies, a scintillating collection of short stories that focused mostly on the experiences of Indian emigrants to the United States, beautifully crafted stories with empathetic characters and gorgeous prose. Her second collection of stories, 2008’s Unaccustomed Earth was just as impressive, but didn’t earn the same acclaim because it wasn’t her debut work and because in the interim, she only published one work, the 2003 novel The Namesake, a less well-received book turned into a mediocre film that starred Kal “Kumar” Penn in a serious role.

Lahiri’s second novel, The Lowland, came out late in 2013 and has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the National Book Award, with stronger critical reviews than Namesake received as well. It’s a melancholy, introspective book of lives destroyed by the ripple effects across generations caused by one seemingly small choice made in the passion of youth. It features Lahiri’s evocative prose and strong characterization, but with the longer form available to her, she takes the opportunity to grab your heart with both hands and wring it out like a damp towel, yet without the critical or philosophical payoff I’d demand of a novel that delves so deeply into personal pain.

The lowland of the title is a swampy area near the Kolkata home of two brothers, Subhash and Udayan, who are as close as any two friends can be despite very different personalities. Subhash, the elder brother, is shy, cautious, scholarly, and eager to please; Udayan is more daring, outwardly emotional, and, ultimately, politically motivated. As the brothers come of age in the mid- to late 1960s, Udayan gets involved in local communist movements, eventually joining the real-life Marxist-Maoist movement known as the Naxalites, which still exists today primarily as a terrorist organization with only superficial political aims. While Subhash is studying marine biology in Rhode Island, the Naxalites’ activities turn deadly, after which Indian security forces arrest and kill Udayan, leaving his barely pregnant wife Gauri living with in-laws who can’t stand her and pushing Subhash to sacrifice himself to save her from a miserable future and raise his brother’s daughter. That choice has far-reaching and unexpected consequences for all three of them, covering the last two-thirds of the novel, during which we also receive more details on Udayan’s actions and his murder by way of explaining Gauri’s alienation and depression.

The resulting book covers four generations of this family, from Subhash’s traditional parents to his daughter (in all but the biological sense) Bela, who is nearly 40 at the end of the book and has a daughter of her own, with an especial focus on Subhash, Bela, and Gauri dealing with the holes left in their lives by Udayan’s death and in particular Gauri’s emotional withdrawal after it. I found it almost impossible to process Gauri’s lack of connection with Bela and eventual decision to leave her family to pursue an aimless academic career; that her sudden widowhood destroyed something in her is realistic, and Subhash would certainly never replace what she had lost, but for her to bear and raise Bela without forming an emotional bond or attachment just didn’t compute for me.

The ultimate problem with The Lowland its lack of any clear direction or point; it’s an engrossing, tragic story of people broken by history, carrying the fractures across an ocean and through generations, but what is Lahiri trying to get across? She is one of the preeminent writers of immigrant fiction, yet with her second novel, she has only added a good story without saying anything new about the experience of Indian-Americans coming here and returning home after the United States has changed them.

Next up: I’m nearly done with China Miéville’s Hugo Award-winning novel The City & The City.

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→ December 14, 2014
→ By

Saturday five, 12/13/14.

My Insider content from this week’s activity in San Diego, which was the best setup I’ve ever seen for the winter meetings and resulted in more trades and signings than any meetings I can remember covering:

* The Jimmy Rollins trade
* The Mat Latos and Alfredo Simon trades
* The Matt Kemp trade
* The Rick Porcello/Yoenis Cespedes trade
* The Wade Miley trade
* The Howie Kendrick/Andrew Heaney trade and Brandon McCarthy signing
* The Dee Gordon trade
* The Jon Lester signing
* The Francisco Liriano re-signing
* The Miguel Montero trade
* The Jeff Samardzija trade (and David Robertson signing) and Oakland’s return
* The Jason Hammel signing
* The Brandon Moss trade

Outside of ESPN, my review of the boardgame Concordia is up at Paste. I’ll have my top ten games of 2014 up for them next week.

Here on the dish, I posted my top 100 songs of 2014 and top 14 albums of 2014, as well as this week’s Top Chef recap.

And now, this week’s links…

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→ December 13, 2014
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Top Chef S12E08.

Sorry this week’s recap was delayed, but I didn’t see the episode until Friday night due to the winter meetings and all-day travel on Thursday (I passed on taking a redeye home, and I’m not sorry about that part).

Top Chef logo* We start with a window on last episode’s decision to send Keriann home rather than Katie. Gregory says in the stew room that “you don’t mix bananas and chocolate and call it a mousse,” to which Katie concurs, saying “that wasn’t a mousse.” Remember Tom and/or Barbara saying you could play hockey with it? Well, I guess we know now. I don’t think anything without whipped cream folded into it could be called a mousse; chocolate mousse has both that and an egg white foam (meringue) to provide structure and lightness by incorporating air.

* Gregory’s an ultra runner and has run 50 miles a couple of times. I’m not sure if I should be impressed or horrified. If I run 50 miles, it’s because there’s a large carnivorous animal chasing me.

* Quickfire: Jasper White’s in the house. I’ve been to his Summer Shack a few times and liked it. I’ve heard him credited with inventing grilled lobster, although I don’t know if that’s apocryphal.

* This is a sudden-death quickfire, involving clams, with a table full of buckets of clams available for the chefs. They’ll be making “chowdah,” as Padma says it, although I could have sworn it was said differently:

The chefs have to create their own unique versions of clam chowder. White wrote a book on the dish, called 50 Chowders.

* The winner gets immunity; the loser has to fight to survive. The chefs have thirty minutes, which isn’t much time to create strong clam flavors.

* Mei grabs the whole bucket of littlenecks, which apparently are one of the most desirable clams up there, but ends up sharing them with Adam when he asks … only to have Melissa swipe them right off her station when she heads to the pantry. That’s bad Top Chef etiquette, at best, and sleazy at worst.

* Gregory is making razor clams, which he chose because they’re juicy, tender, and really quick to cook. I’m light on clam knowledge here, since my wife is allergic and I eat clams maybe once a year when dining out.

* Adam is trying to make a light chowder, which would differentiate itself from everyone else’s, but he’s really just making a Manhattan chowder by using tomato water instead of potatoes.

* Melissa is using lemongrass in her chowder, which will taste like tom kha gai. Katie makes a black tea sourdough chowder, using the bread to thicken the chowder, which sounds like it’ll work for thickness but not for mouthfeel.

* Mei made a steamer clam and lobster chowder with yuzu aioli, celery, and fennel. Katsuji makes a green chowder with oysters, poblanos, jalapeños, and toasted garlic broth. Gregory’s dish is a razor clam and sweet potato chowder with bacon, dashi, and coconut milk broth. He grilled the clams and thickened it with the sweet potatoes, an idea I’ll definitely steal for something. Adam’s Manhattan chowder features red wine poached clams, boiled potatoes, carrots, celery, and tomato water.

* Melissa’s cioppino chowder has clams, shrimp, white wine, onions, leeks, and garlic. Doug made a grilled oyster chowder with a steamed clam broth using the clams’ liquor for flavor and fresh jalapeño. Katie’s clams in lobster stock with black tea and sourdough is a take-off on the bread bowl.

* Katie says “sudden death makes me think of death.” That might be taking it too far.

* The favorites are Adam, Gregory, and Melissa, with Gregory winning. Mos Chef is back … and has immunity. That’s his third quickfire win, with Adam apparently a very close second.

* Least favorite: Doug’s dish was very salty; Katsuji’s masked the taste of the oysters; Mei’s seemed underseasoned; Katie’s raw sourdough bread overpowered the soup and gave it a gummy texture. Katie ends up on the bottom and has to face…

* … one of the previously eliminated chefs. Those seven vote to pick one of their own to face Katie. George, who is Mike Isabella’s business partner and was eliminated in the very first quickfire of the season, gets four of the votes and wins the right to face Katie to get back into the competition.

* The challenge: cook rabbit. Katie hasn’t cooked with it in seven years, since culinary school. They have 45 minutes to cook any part of the animal that they want.

* That’s probably the protein I’d least want to face if I were in a cooking competition – that or venison. I’ve never cooked rabbit, because there’s no one here who’d eat it (my daughter is horrified that people eat rabbit, even though I’ve explained that they’re vicious animals who will chew your face off without a second thought). I also don’t love rabbit, even though I’ve had it several times; it doesn’t taste like chicken, but I find its flavor unpleasantly sharp and gamy. I’ve had it at some pretty good restaurants, but I guess I need to keep trying it.

* Katsuji hopes Katie wins because “we know she’s not the best one,” while George might be better than anyone realized. He’s right, of course.

* Adam’s running commentary doesn’t spare George: “Did I hear glazed carrots? I didn’t realize this was a CIA cookbook from 1996.”

* George’s rabbit legs aren’t braising quickly enough, so he goes back for the loins because he can cook them in less than five minutes. Can you braise any meat in under 45 minutes? Duck legs aren’t big, and they take at least two hours to braise. Even though rabbit legs are smaller, the braising process involves very low temperatures (lower than what George was using on a burner) and long cooking times to dissolve collagen in tough cuts of meat where the muscles received more exercise while the animal was alive. The collagen forms gelatin, and its extraction allows the muscle fibers to separate more easily, producing a tender dish. If you let the braising liquid boil, you’ll let the proteins in the muscle unfold and relink with each other, which produces a tough, chewy result. I know you can’t braise anything in 45 minutes without using pressure; why don’t professional chefs know that?

* Katie serves a braised leg with a Moroccan tomato sauce. George serves his roasted loin sliced over barley risotto (although I could swear he said farro, not barley, while talking to the other chefs), glazed carrots, and a mustard jus. Jasper says the clearcut winner was George. Tom votes for George as well because his rabbit was perfectly cooked. That puts George back in the competition and sends Katie home.

* George sounds exactly the priest character on Gracepoint, which, by the way, we just finished last night. I thought it was spectacular, and now that Broadchurch is on Netflix I’ll go back and watch that too since the latter series is coming back for another season.

* Elimination challenge: The chefs will cater a tasting event for 75 Top Chef fans in the TC kitchen … except the four judges are doing the shopping, and the chefs won’t see the ingredients till tomorrow. Each chef is randomly assigned to one of the judges’ pantries via knife draw.

* Richard warns his two chefs, Adam and Doug, that “I hope you like the vitamin aisle.” Adam is displeased: “there’s going to be agar or some other playful molecular shit,” rhyming “agar” with “dagger.” Just because that’s what Blais buys doesn’t mean he has to use it all, right? Having just had a blood orange gelée at Blais’ Juniper & Ivy that I presume used agar-agar, I’m a big fan of the stuff.

* Blais goes bananas in Whole Foods, taking off with his cart and heading right through produce to the proteins, mocking the other judges for lollygagging over the produce, and saying that Padma probably doesn’t do her own grocery shopping, followed by footage of her struggling to carry two jackfruit into her cart. To be fair, those things are massive. The jackfruit, I mean.

* Richard buys lecithin, a potent emulsifier that’s found in egg yolks and soybeans, among other sources. What the heck do you do with pure lecithin? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a non-dessert recipe.

* Padma gets her revenge on Richard by stealing his cart from the checkout line, spilling (wasting, really) a big cooler of fish. They’re all a bunch of dorks, by the way. I can only imagine the relief at that Whole Foods every time the Top Chef crew leaves.

* Richard’s pantry ends up also including liquid nitrogen (of course) and Versawhip, a modified soy protein that can replace egg whites or gelatin to create highly stable foams. I assume you all have this stuff in your cupboard right now. Adam’s concerns seem to be at least a little bit legit, although Blais did give him and Doug plenty of normal ingredients to work with.

* Melissa is making shrimp scampi with a salad, which the other chefs are pointing to as too safe. Adam, meanwhile, is doing some weird technique (hint: foreshadowing) where he’s not cooking the shrimp but scalding the exterior with very hot oil. I know some folks love raw shrimp (ama ebi, sometimes called “sweet shrimp”), but I find the texture to be gross – slippery and chewy, but with the feeling of breaking all those cell walls and proteins up with your teeth when that process should be started with heat. The only time I’ve ever seen this hot-oil trick was on an episode of Iron Chef America maybe ten years ago, where Chef Morimoto used it to crisp salmon skin by pouring the hot oil repeatedly over the fish, not just once.

* Doug can’t describe Katsuji’s dish without laughing, but says it makes sense because “Katsuji’s batshit insane.” I’d like to see someone font Katsuji that way rather than giving the name of his restaurant.

* Gregory tears open the jackfruit and says it smells like bubblegum. So maybe all those years I wanted to retch up the pink liquid amoxicillin, I didn’t realize it was just jackfruit-flavored.

* Did you know that Katsuji came to this country with just $5 in his pocket? I can’t believe he hasn’t mentioned that before. Seems like he’d want everyone to know that.

* Padma enters the kitchen with vertical striped pants that make her legs look like they’re about ten feet long.

* Richard drops a “plethora” when describing his Whole Foods trip to fans. If he were on every week, we could have a Blais vocabulary drinking game – take a shot every time he drops a ten-dollar word on the show.

* The food … Katsuji (Gail’s pantry): Tunisian potato salad and harissa-poached shrimp, plus a white sangria on the side. It sounds amazing, actually, and I usually think Katsuji’s stuff just sounds weird. Richard says it could use more heat, although he may have been mocking Katsuji there.

* Gregory (Padma): Coconut milk and chicken in Madras curry with jackfruit relish. Padma seems to love it and says the smells were “so authentic.” It’s pretty audacious to make an Indian dish for Padma Lakshmi.

* Adam (Richard): Peppadew piperade with flash-marinated shrimp, mushroom conserva, herbs, and aioli. Gail says her shrimp was just a few seconds undercooked, but that seems to be overly kind based on what the other judges say later on.

* How great is that father who brought his daughter, maybe 11 or 12 years old, to the tasting event? She ended up with Blais’ autograph and Doug gave her his menu board to take home.

* Melissa (Gail): Sauteed shrimp with harissa yogurt, roasted figs, fennel, dill, mint, artichokes, and a shaved root vegetable salad. Richard says it’s not spicy enough, Gail has it as just barely too salty. Richard calls it safe, beautiful for a cafe, not bold enough for a competition. Also, hasn’t she made something like this before? It’s Top Chef, not Top Shrimp and Salad.

* Mei (Tom): Charred eggplant puree with black garlic, rack of lamb, scallion-ginger relish, and lamb jus. The flavors are good, but the lamb starts bleating when she cuts it, a real turnoff for the diners.

* Doug (Richard): Chorizo-marinated mussels with sweet pepper and cauliflower relish, lemon preserve, and bacon crumble.

* Padma says her pantry “had enough chilis to kill a village.” Are we talking a small village or a medium-sized one? Asking for a friend.

* George (Padma): Beef/lamb kabob with green lentils and cucumber-mint yogurt. Padma and Tom praise this effusively.

* Everyone loved George’s, and Gregory’s. Gregory’s vinegar/jackfruit relish wowed Richard and he praised Gregory for introducting a new ingredient to diners. Doug chose his ingredients well (and I think the implication is that Adam didn’t, using the same pantry) and his mussels were well-cooked.

* Mei’s lamb was too undercooked and was light on flavor. Adam used a “mind-boggling technique” on the shrimp per Richard, producing “squeaky,” “slimy” shrimp, adjectives you probably never want used to describe your food.

* George, Doug, and Gregory are the top three. The winner was Doug, so Portland is dominating this season so far: one or both of Doug and Gregory has won, individually or on a team, six of the eight elimination challenges and four of the seven quickfires.

* The bottom three: Mei, Adam, and Melissa. Mei’s eggplant puree and salad were beautiful, but the lamb wasn’t cooked enough. She says she realizes now that she should have taken it off the rack to cook it. Adam says he knows the technique was risky, but Tom says beyond the shrimp being undercooked, the piperade was underseasoned. Padma asks Melissa an obvious (in hindsight) question: If she was cooking shrimp to order, so what did she do with the two and a half hours of prep time? “Knife work” is a weak answer, and I can’t remember anyone winning Top Chef based on knife work.

* Adam is eliminated. That wasn’t my guess at all – I assumed it would be Melissa for playing it safe, rather than Adam for taking a risk that didn’t work. He seems stunned too: “If you don’t love cooking enough to be an emotional mess on national television, put the knife down.” Seems like pretty sound career advice to me.

* Power ranking: Gregory, Doug, Mei, George, Katsuji, Melissa. Tough to say where George should fit, but the fact that he executed two dishes extremely well is at least a good sign. Mei slips one spot behind Doug, although I think the reason at this point is obvious.

* Last Chance Kitchen returns as well, with two episodes the first week. The first part features all the chefs eliminated before this episode, sans George, and they have to remake the dishes that sent them home. Joy, Rebecca, and James end up the top three of the seven eliminated chefs. Joy’s veal was slightly overrested, which knocks her out. Rebecca wins for her revised seared scallop dish, edging out James. Rebecca wasn’t on the show that long, but her boasting in the confessional interviews was unbearable.

* The second part pits Rebecca against Katie and Adam in taking dry and slimy ingredients, which is based on how Katie and Adam were eliminated, to make one appealing dish. Two chefs of the three will advance. One “slimy” ingredient is miso, which is crazy-high in the glutamates that produce umami (as are many fermented foods), so I’d imagine the chefs would want to grab that right away.

* Bacalao (dried salt cod) is also on the table; can you hydrate and desalinate it that quickly? I thought soaking it in milk was an overnight process.

* Adam makes a salt-baked oyster with pickled morels, nori, and white miso glaçage. Katie made morels stuffed with pancetta and mascarpone, with a tomatillo, cranberry, and pepita salad with miso vinaigrette. Rebecca made a warm octopus and confit potato salad, toasted pepitas, and pickled onions. Tom praises all three but says Adam’s was his favorite and Rebecca’s was his least favorite, so Katie and Adam advance, and Rebecca’s “you’re in my kitchen now” speeches fall flat again. Cook more, brag less.

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