Some admin stuff first…

* I have a new post up for Insiders, ranking the top 20 prospects by expected 2013 impact. The ranking incorporates my best educated guesses at playing time, based on what I’ve been told by team sources, although injuries could obviously change that. And I did a brief Klawchat, abbreviated so I could take my wife to lunch for Valentine’s Day.

* I’ve updated the Arizona spring training dining guide with a few places I forgot to mention.

* alt-J’s An Awesome Wave, the Mercury Prize-winning album about which I’ve been raving since late October, is now just $2.99 on amazon through that link. I reviewed the album in October, and you can listen to it on Spotify if you’d like to test-drive it first.

—

Josh’s wife is now a week overdue. I just can’t fathom being in Alaska while my wife was in labor in not-Alaska. She’d be furious with me and, for once, she’d be right.

* Before the quickfire, the three chefs have to fly in a helicopter for about 15 minutes to get to the challenge site – and Brooke’s very real anxiety kicks in almost immediately. She’s in tears, somehow gets herself on the chopper, and spends much of the ride with her eyes closed and clinging to Josh (who gets major points for both helping her and for not patronizing her for her fear). I’m fortunate that my anxiety has never taken that stark a form, but I understand how strong that reaction is, and that it’s not just mental at that point but is physical. Eventually she does recover enough to look out the windows and get absorbed in the views, although I thought that might trigger another round of panic for her.

* Sheldon, meanwhile, thinks this is awesome: “I would die for some good reefer!” You and Tim Beckham, my man.

* They land on Norris Glacier, which appears to be near Mendenhall Lake and Glacier just northeast of Juneau. They’re at a camp where dogsled racers are training for the Iditarod. The quickfire: make a dish using ingredients and equipment found in the camp. It looks like there’s at least a decent supply of fish on hand, but the kitchen is tiny, there are no electrical appliances, and the burners are small and not very powerful.

* I know you’re shocked, but Josh is doing breakfast again – corn cakes with eggs and smoked salmon. He doesn’t have time to fry the eggs and keep them warm when he brings them to the outdoor table, so he scrambles them, which means his plate looks and feels like mush.

* I like that the sled dogs have little dog huts to protect them from the wind.

* Brooke’s pan cools down immediately when she adds the fish, which she says may have to do with the altitude, although I also wonder what material the pan was and how long it would hold the heat (I need a physicist’s opinion here). She made a pan-roasted halibut with lemon zest, smoked sea salt, red currant-beet vinaigrette, and a panzanella with walnuts and crunchy croutons. Despite the pan problems, her halibut has a nice brown sear on the outside.

* Tom’s reaction to Josh’s scrambled eggs – “Really?” – was pretty telling.

* Sheldon does a seared halibut with a chicken broth-tomato sauce, sesame bok choy, and pickled radish. His halibut doesn’t look seared like Brooke’s, but Tom said it was cooked perfectly, instead criticizing the sauce as too salty and very one-note. That turns out to be foreshadowing.

* Brooke wins, no surprise there. Her only real competition at this point is still hanging out in Last Chance Kitchen. That’s her third Quickfire win and seventh win overall.

* So Padma drives the trio back to Juneau after the helicopter ride down, which leads to Sheldon mocking Padma’s driving, saying she’s probably been chauffeured everywhere. A little casual misogyny, maybe?

* Elimination challenge: Cook dinner for the Governor of Alaska and his wife at the Governor’s Mansion. The guest judge is Roy Choi of the Kogi Korean BBQ food trucks (which popularized the Korean taco) and A-Frame.

* Roy and Emeril cook lunch for the group, during which Roy tells about how he was a real stoner into his early 20s, and one day, while high on his couch, he had the Food Network on and saw Emeril braising short ribs in red wine, at which point “Emeril popped out of the TV and slapped [him] across the face” (must have been some good weed), after which Roy started researching culinary schools and turned his life around. That moment felt genuine – I don’t think Emeril knew the story was coming, either.

* Josh asks Emeril one of my favorite culinary-philosophy questions: sugar or no sugar in cornbread. Emeril says no sugar. This is why we like Emeril despite all the “BAM!” stuff. Cornbread with sugar is corn cake.

* The challenge: make a dish that represents the moment when you knew you wanted to be a chef. Brooke says she knew it from age four, so I assume she’s making pureed green beans and Cheerios.

* Josh gets the call from his wife – her water broke, she’s crying on the phone, he’s upset, wife tells him, “if you are still competing you just need to win,” and now he’s crying. Two things: I was surprised that even his wife didn’t know that he was still in the competition, and this reminds me of something I learned when my daughter was born, that only about 10% of pregnant women have their water break before they get to the hospital. Of course, my wife’s water did break, at 5:45 am on a Friday, five weeks before the due date, after which she helped and I had to be peeled off the ceiling.

* Sheldon is making a snapper dish as an homage to Hawai’ian chef Sam Choy (who made an infamous clam flan on Iron Chef America). Tom cautions him not to start cooking the fish too soon, which seems to get into Sheldon’s head … but more on that in a moment.

* Josh’s “moment” was the first time he tasted foie gras, saying its delicate liver flavor changed how he thought about food. He’s making a torchon, foie gras that is soaked, lightly cured and marinated in white wine or brandy, briefly poached, and then wrapped tightly in a towel or parchment paper to dry and chill overnight in a cool place, a process that takes several days but that Josh will try to do overnight. Best of luck.

* Brooke talks about watching Julia Child as a kid and how her mom cooked dinner every night, so she’s making her mom’s braised chicken but is also adding quail to show who she’s evolved into as a chef. Quail has to be high on the list of things chefs screw up regularly on Top Chef.

* Brooke has a lot more ink than I realized, which I bring up because of the debate last week over whether she’s real-life cute or just Top Chef cute. I think she’s real-life cute, for what it’s worth.

* Josh’s wife calls again, obviously in pain and possibly high on medications, crying, “I just want you to be here, I love you, I have to go.” Good luck recovering from that phone call. Anyway, the baby’s born, yata yata yata, back to the kitchen everyone.

* I’m kind of disappointed that Sarah Palin is no longer the governor of Alaska, because maybe she could shoot another caribou for the chefs to cook while asking them to refudiate veganism or something.

* Sheldon starts to cook his fish with 20 minutes to go, but discovers his broth over-reduced and is too salty. He’s hinting that Tom’s comments got in his head, but why the hell wasn’t he checking the broth while he waited to cook the fish? If it’s reducing too fast, take it off the heat, or add some water? Am I missing something?

* He plates first, serving a pan-roasted rockfish, spot prawns, baby vegetables, and some of the dashi (broth) he used to cook the fish. The prawns are great and slightly sweet. Roy loves the concept of the dish. And everyone says it’s too salty. Whoops.

* Wolfgang’s father used to tell him that he’d be good for nothing, which seems to be a common theme among professional chefs – and when Wolfgang became a chef, his father said cooking was for women. Sounds like the damn Father of the Year.

* Moving along rapidly … Brooke serves braised chicken with crispy skin, grilled quail, carrot barley (she cooked the barley in the carrot juice), pickled baby turnips, and mushrooms with pearl onions. Wolfgang says his quail was a little overcooked, an angle I think was played up from here on out through editing to make it look like she didn’t absolutely nail this dish start to finish. Roy says she was “a prodigy in LA” when she first got started. I think her unassuming demeanor masks how extremely skilled she is.

* Josh’s torchon isn’t set up sufficiently and moves it to the freezer. You can hear his death rattle.

* He serves foie three ways: the torchon, foie pan seared on corn purée, and profiteroles with foie mousse. Roy loved the flavors, Gail liked the profiteroles, but the torchon wasn’t set. Tom says you just can’t do it, even if you’re as good as Tom Colicchio. (He may not have phrased it that way.) The Governor says the dish had too little texture contrast, so already he sounds smarter than his predecessor.

* Judges’ Table: Josh says he “wanted to go balls to the wall,” but Tom questions “short-cutting” the torchon and hammers Josh on his core concept. Brooke’s had great flavors, looked simple but was “like origami” according to Roy, and we hear that the quail a little overcooked. Sheldon’s fish cooked perfectly, but he botched the broth. Wolfgang says the fish and prawns were beautifully cooked “like you were the best chef in the world,” so how could Sheldon fail to taste the broth before plating?

* Brooke wins, again. If it weren’t for Last Chance Kitchen, this would be the least dramatic finish for Top Chef in ages.

* Josh is eliminated. I thought Sheldon made the bigger error here, the third week in a row he had a glaring mistake in the elimination challenge and stuck around; Josh used an ingredient he didn’t fully understand (per both Tom and Wolfgang), but it seems like the remainder of his fish was strong. Have they saved Sheldon a little too often?

* LCK: Make Tom a great plate of food. Lizzie wins save-a-chef, so it’s her versus both Kristen and Josh. They get 30 minutes to cook and can use anything in the craft LA kitchen. Josh goes for venison as his protein, claiming he’s “curing” it (impossible in 30 minutes) but really just using a coriander-heavy rub with kale and shaved raw carrot. Lizzie goes for black cod, cooking it with black pepper and vinegar, plus spaetzle and savoy cabbage. Kristen grabs semolina flour to make fresh pasta. Nearly certain she has new tattoos on her arm. She makes caraway orecchiette, with pea tendrils, citrus, brown butter, pomegranate seeds, and fresh herbs. There’s a lot of handwork required to make that shape, although I think that’s part of her strategy – impress the judges by accomplishing tasks they know are arduous or difficult in a short time period. Josh’s venison looks raw, kind of purplish, and sure enough it was cold in the center, so he’s sent home immediately. The winner between Kristen and Lizzie is … to be announced next week, on the show.

* Rankings: Kristen, Brooke, Lizzie, Sheldon. I’ve just lost confidence in Sheldon’s ability to execute in the bigger challenges. The finale really needs to be Kristen versus Brooke in some form; they have nine of the fourteen elimination challenge wins, and they’ve been by far the most impressive contestants this year, blowing just about everyone else out of the water. I know Tom insists the judging is always strictly about the food, but you know Bravo is loving the Kristen storyline, and they figure ratings will be highest if those two women are in the finale.

First, the links to the organizational top tens, with comments, 2013 impact guys, and sleepers.

• AL East
• AL Central
• AL West
• NL East
• NL Central
• NL West

I also did another Klawchat today, and the Baseball Today podcast finale is up as well. Thanks for listening for the last two years.

—

So Sheldon thinks Stefan was the front-runner until he was eliminated, but I have a hard time thinking Sheldon or anyone really believed that. Brooke has been cleaning up, especially with Kristen gone, and there’s no way the other chefs in the house haven’t noticed that. As the group arrives in Juneau – the only US state capital with no roads leading in/out of town, and the only one to border another country – Sheldon says he should put extra underwear on to “keep the package nice and warm.” Somehow this is less creepy coming from Sheldon than it did from Stefan. Still creepy, just less creepy. Slightly.

* Quickfire: Sean Brock of Husk is in the house! The chefs must cook at Tracy’s King Crab Shack, “Juneau’s #1 culinary destination” according to Padma, who doesn’t strike me as standard crab-shack clientele. The challenge is to create a dish highlighting Alaskan crab. Brock loves it with a little bit of lemon and dipped in butter. He says that’s too boring for Top Chef, but he’s right – good crab needs very little help to taste great. It’s the candy of the animal protein world.

* Lizzie makes a crab frittata with cherry tomato, garlic oil, and fried capers (drained, not soaked, so it came out very briny). I also feel like that’s a little 1970s brunchy for Top Chef. Brooke does a crab toast, trying to be as delicate as possible with the flavor of the meat, and serves it with a compound butter made from dungeness crab and the Alaskan king crab shells. She tops it with a sweet corn and leek salad for what was easily the best-looking of the four dishes. Josh butter-poaches his crab and serves it with bacon and succotash, saying his food is similar to Sean Brock’s. Along those lines, I think my writing is similar to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s. Sheldon makes “miso” with crab innards and two kinds of crab, then uses pine needles to smoke his asparagus. I didn’t realize this was possible, since you can’t smoke using pine wood (or any other softwood) because of resins that can turn toxic when burned.

* Lizzie’s frittata was overcooked and the capers overpowered the crab. Josh served succotash to “a succotash snob,” his bacon overpowered the crab, and the butter sauce broke, after Josh said he thought he had this “in the bag.” Sheldon’s was simple and interesting, per Sean, between the faux-miso and the pine needle-smoking. Brooke’s looked too easy, and Sean says he didn’t want to like it, but it was flat-out delicious. Sheldon wins thanks to his ingenuity and use of the whole crab, grabbing a $5K prize but no immunity.

* Elimination challenge: Cook a dish with salmon and sourdough for guests at the Gold Creek Salmon Bake. Why wasn’t I told about this tradition sooner? /moves to Juneau

* The chefs each get a large tub of a 31-year-old sourdough starter. This reminds me of Gus toting around his ten-year-old sourdough biscuit starter in Lonesome Dove and hating when he has to leave it behind. The chefs make their bread doughs the night before, working them by hand, which is probably bizarre for them since they would all have large Hobart stand mixers in their restaurant kitchens for making large batches. The real problem here, though, is that if you screw this up, there’s no recovery the next morning.

* Looks like they’re doing a warm rise in the kitchen rather than a cold rise overnight in the fridge, which produces more flavor. Or they’re doing two rises and the editing faked me out. It’s not that hard to do that to me.

* Sheldon’s self-description “I’m just a kid that plays the ukulele, came from a small town in Hawaii, started out as a dishwasher.” Also, Scott Brown drives a truck.

* The chefs get their salmon straight off the boat, packed in ice, still intact, with king, sockeye, and chum, at the very least, all available. Given the chefs’ tendency to cook salmon medium-rare if not rare, I’m a little concerned about the anisakis simplex parasite, which loves salmon and can cause some pretty nasty GI reactions as well as triggering anaphylaxis in some people. Other than that, it’s great.

* Sheldon decides to make pea soup for the first time ever even though it’s not his style – why do that? Why take this risk on a dish that, if executed perfectly, will still just be pea soup?

* Josh’s wife is already dilated while he’s working in the kitchen. My wife would have castrated me if I’d tried to travel when she was 8 months pregnant, let alone 9, which she never reached anyway since my daughter came five weeks early. Seriously, though, go home.

* The color of this salmon is absolutely insane – if you like fish, especially cooking it, you’ve got to be going insane with jealousy as you watch this. Lizzie, meanwhile, is doing a beet glaze, which is all about color, not flavor, so she’s going to take this gorgeous red fish and dye it magenta.

* Tom questions Brooke’s decision to poach the fish to order. Searing and holding really risks overcooking it though, and poaching can be quick if you can hold the liquid’s temp. I get this, plus Brooke executes almost every time out. Mostly Tom just likes to freak the front-runners out, I think.

* And we’re at the Gold Creek Salmon Bake. There are bears in the trees. Bears. In the trees. Why is no one concerned about this? Have they never heard of Timothy Treadwell?

* Hugh is back! And Sean sticks around for the elimination challenge, so why is Gail here with four serious chefs (those two, Tom, and Emeril) in the house? (That’s rhetorical, people. I know the answer – both answers, really.)

* To the dishes, starting with Brooke, who does a lightly poached sockeye in seafood broth with mustard-seed caviar and grilled dill sourdough. The broth is really nice with a good amount of acid, although Hugh says the mustard seeds looked weird when they broke down. She nailed the bread, with the dill tying in to the salmon. This reminds me of a place that used to be in central Arlington, Massachusetts, called Blue Plate Express, that did an unbelievable rosemary flatbread, grilled to order. I’ve never had anything quite like it – thicker than a fresh pita, but still clearly a flatbread.

* Sheldon makes a green tea and chive sourdough, then uses both chum and sockeye in his pea soup, which has a king crab, shrimp, and salmon bone base. Padma doesn’t like the green tea and chive together, and Emeril says the bread didn’t have any salt. Everyone says the salmon is too smoky. Sean is offended to see Sheldon mishandle (or manhandle?) the fish with his tongs. He likes the soup, but Hugh thought it was too thick, saying it reminded him of baby food: “Good baby, healthy baby, well-flavored baby.” Hugh, baby food doesn’t actually have babies in it. Some locals are acting like chum is an inferior fish and can’t believe Sheldon used it. Isn’t that the trend now, though – using less-glorified species that are more plentiful or sustainable, just like using the whole animal instead of just certain portions? That’s very much Sheldon’s ethic too.

* Emeril says when Katrina was coming, his chef brought the sourdough home, took it when he evacuated, fed it, and had it ready when they reopened three months later. That’s dedication.

* Josh does a roasted garlic and sourdough soup, sockeye salmon, and black olive croutons. The salmon is well cooked, the soup has a ton of flavor, but the two don’t go together very well, with the garlic overpowering the salmon. I’m just shocked that he didn’t serve it in a bowl made of bacon.

* Lizzie figures that with everyone else doing some kind of soup, she should do something not-soup, instead making sliders on sourdough rolls, with citrus- and beet-glazed salmon sliders with poppy seed butter and red onion and cucumber pickles. The bread is a clear winner, with huge marks from all judges and the locals, but the fish was bland.

* As the judges walk off, apparently into the forest to go foraging, a woman shouts, “Bye Emeril! I love you!” I can just assume they edited out what was hollered at Padma.

* The judging – Lizzie gets big praise for the roll’s crust and for hand-rolling them, and even for nicely cooked salmon, but it just wasn’t seasoned. She writes her own death warrant when she says she didn’t taste it all together, just tasting the components by themselves. I also thought she might have had too much roll vs filling, although if the filling wasn’t seasoned it wouldn’t have mattered. I love fish, but it needs salt just like every other protein does. Sheldon’s bread was just so-so, and the salmon was too smoky, but the fact that he used an ingredient (chum) that the locals typically feed to their dogs may have been his saving grace, even with too much smokiness in the fish itself. They rave about Brooke’s broth more than anything else in her dish. Sean was “crazy about that bread.” Yeast-raised flatbreads are awesome, really. Josh gets big praise from Emeril for bread soup and his use of garlic (shocker); Hugh says the salmon was awesome, but it got lost under the garlic. So Josh executed but the concept wasn’t there. This all seems pretty straightforward so far – Brooke is clearly going to win, and Lizzie or Sheldon will go home.

* Winner, both with judges and “nearly all the locals” the judges spoke with, is Brooke. Green Mountain Coffee is sending her and a guest to Costa Rica. This is her fourth elimination win and sixth win overall. She and Kristen have combined to win (or, in one case, share the crown) eight of the 13 elimination challenges. Besides those two, only Sheldon has multiple elimination wins (2).

* Now the interesting part, the debate over who goes home. Josh had “a balance issue” (per Tom), Lizzie’s was too bland (Tom) and too simple (Sean), while Sheldon didn’t do a great job with either of the key ingredients (Padma). In this discussion, Sheldon comes out the worst, with talk of bitterness in the fish.

* Lizzie ends up eliminated after all. Padma sounds upset as she tells Lizzie to hit the road. Lizzie cooked the least ambitious dish, and then she didn’t taste it, which had to offend the sensibilities of the chefs on the panel. We had a chance for an all-female final with her, Brooke, Kristen, but it wasn’t meant to be.

* Last Chance Kitchen: Both chefs make fish stews. Lizzie’s dish was so good Tom said she would have won the elimination challenge with it, but Kristen wins anyway, of course. Tom took just one bite of Kristen’s and seemed to be laughing to himself over how complex it was. Maybe Lizzie ran into a buzzsaw. I wonder if she’ll win the Save-a-chef contest against CJ now; she’s certainly more likeable and fared better in the main competition.

* New ranking: Kristen, Brooke, Sheldon, Josh. The only elimination that would surprise me next week would be Brooke. Josh seems weaker than Sheldon, but Sheldon’s had execution issues in the last two elimination challenges. Anything other than Kristen vs. Brooke in the finale would be a disappointment, though.