Sorry my recap is a little late, but I had trouble finding a flat keyboard on which to type this.

* Stefan is moisturizing and cursing about his wrinkles. This isn’t creepy, I think. I may have also lost my appetite.

* Sheldon sharpens his knives every day, saying, “it’s what separates a good chef from a great chef in my opinion.” He may have been subtly threatening to slit the throats of his competitors, which is an alternative path to victory assuming you use the blood for black pudding.

* Quickfire: Testing knife skills, coincidentally. “Master bladesman” (that is, artisan knife-maker) Bob Kramer is the judge. His carbon-steel blades sell for $500 per inch, so John Holmes would have been worth a fortune.

* The challenge is a relay race involving three teams of three chefs each: turn dull knives razor sharp, then tourne 50 potatoes, then work against your ex-teammates to French racks of two rabbits, with immunity and a Bob Kramer blade at stake.

* Stefan says “I always wanted a $4000 knife. Who doesn’t?” I’m not sure I’d turn down a $4000 anything you offered me, even if I only intended to sell it on eBay the moment you turned around.

* If you cut yourself, you’re DQ’d. I’m going to laugh at this while pretending I didn’t put a 1/4” gash in my index finger two weeks ago while slicing ribbons of kale.

* As much as I love the show and recognize the importance of good knife skills and handling, watching chefs sharpen knives is not good television.

* Kristen gets mad that her teammate John called “check” before she was ready, but then HIS knife was the one to fail the test – making a clean slice through a sheet of paper. That’s about the closest we’ve come to seeing Kristen get mad or even irked about anything.

* Using a chef’s knife strikes me as dangerous, since it’s not a knife designed for precise cuts. There is such a thing as a tourne knife, also known as a bird’s beak knife, but a paring knife would also do the job. No one severs a finger here, although Josie does nick herself and is disqualified, which leads to her team losing by just two potatoes to another team that still has all three chefs.

* Am I the only one weirded out by a race involving knives? I’m fine with grading knife skills, but encouraging chefs to work faster with extremely sharp objects seems a little dicey, pun intended.

* The final challenge is to French two rabbits, which isn’t as deviant as it sounds and can even produce some serious flayrah. Frenching means trimming the meat and fat off the ends of rib bones or chops, typically with racks of pork or lamb, so that the bones are exposed like handles. The meat can then be cooked as a whole rack or broken down into ‘lollipop’ chops. If you’ve seen meat with little paper hats on the ends of the bones, you’ve seen a Frenched rack. Doing this on tiny rabbits with giant knives is like asking the infield coach to hit grounders to the shortstop by using a cricket bat. (I’ve never done this, but I’d reach for a boning knife for the job.) Josh ends up making a hash of his rabbit racks. Micah says Frenching the racks is a “very Zen moment” for him, and he wins pretty handily.

* Elimination challenge: Each chef is assigned a memorable moment from the previous seasons and has to cook a dish based on that moment while making it healthier than the original dish was. The winning dish will inspire future product placements and earn the winner a cool $15K. The guests at the dinner will be Top Chef “Superfans” who live in their mothers’ basements and dissect Top Chef using spreadsheets.

* The first moment they show has to be the most famous – Fabio’s comment that ‘it’s Top Chef, it’s not Top Scallops.’ We also Carla’s chicken pot pie screaming moment on Jimmy Fallon, which might have been the main reason she ended up on that daytime food/talk show she’s on.

* Another, er, classic moment: “I’m not your bitch, bitch.” Two offensive connotations in one five-word sentence!

* The chefs are then shown eating the product placement entrees from the microwave, which I’m sure thrilled them to no end. They also discuss the pea puree moment.

* John claims Anthony Bourdain based a character in the absolutely essential book Kitchen Confidential, Jimmy Sears, on him. It sounds like it’s true, but given John’s reputation and his showing these last two episodes, would it surprise anyone if Bourdain came out and said John was full of shit?

* Micah has Beverly and Heather’s duck breast from season 9, a moment memorable primarily for Heather throwing Beverly totally under the bus in front of judges, reducing Beverly to tears.

* Lizzie’s scallops don’t smell fresh, which is seriously bad news. What I missed was whether she smelled them when she bought them – a good fishmonger will allow you to sniff the fish you’re buying, since that’s an immediate clue if it’s not fresh. (Fresh fish or shellfish should smell of the sea, not “fishy,” which is actually the odor of fish that has already started to degrade.)

* We’ve got a murderer’s row of judges, including Wolfgang Puck, Wiley Dufresne, Jonathan Waxman, and Chris Cosentino. Wiley needs a haircut in the worst freaking way. Long hair on men is fine – not on me, since I think I’d look absolutely absurd like that – but straight, shoulder-length hair while it’s thinning on the top is like a deliberate attempt to look bad.

* John says risotto isn’t hard to cook, but has a bad track record on Top Chef, so he’s making it anyway. This is known in the business as “foreshadowing.” It also shows a delusional degree of self-confidence. No one else has been able to do this right, but I can.

* Service: Josie (whose moment came from S1) serves roast chicken with parsnip puree and steamed root vegetables. Stefan (S2) has a roasted red pepper soup with bacon and grilled cheese, which is about as healthful as a cup of trans fats. John (S3) does an umami risotto with dark meat chicken, salmon roe, burdock root, and a carrot puree emulsion to simulate the color of sea urchin. Josie’s chicken skin isn’t crispy, and the dish isn’t exciting. Stefan’s grilled cheese is greasy but tasty. John’s risotto is not cooked consistently, with some grains overcooked, some undercooked. Of this group, I expected both Josie and John to end up on the bottom, more so Josie because her dish wasn’t that good and it was boring as heck.

* Sheldon (S4) serves beef carpaccio with poi aioli, mizuna (Japanese mustard green) and mushroom salad, and a silken tofu foam. Lizzie (S5) has seared scallops with a roasted fennel and orange salad. Josh (S6) does a soy-glazed pork tenderloin, cashew puree, heirloom peaches, and thai basil. Josh cooked the pork really well, grasped the “healthier” portion of the challenge, and his smoked cashews and peaches get praise from Wiley. Sheldon’s beef is not eye appealing, and his tofu had no flavor. Lizzie’s scallop quality is “dubious,” per Wolfgang Puck, and there’s no discussion of anything else. My immediate reaction was that she was toast. You can’t serve ‘off’ seafood and survive. In a restaurant, you’d send that stuff to the compost bin.

* Brooke (S7) serves hot-smoked salmon with forbidden black rice, pea and parsnip puree. Kristen (S8, Carla’s chicken pot pie) does a poached chicken breast with carrot puree and a garlic/tofu/soy milk emulsion, emphasizing that it’s dairy- and gluten-free. Micah (S9) does duck breast with miso polenta, sriracha jelly, and pickled cherries. Micah’s duck is cooked well; Waxman hates miso with polenta, but Tom likes the cherries. Kristen’s dish is light with a lot of flavor and earns praise for her rethinking (almost a deconstruction) of pot pie, although Chris’ dish doesn’t have enough sauce. Brooke’s was nicely cooked throughout with a good smoky flavor and that’s about all anyone says about it.

* The judges bring out five of the nine chefs. Josh, Brooke, and Kristen are on top, with John and Lizzie on bottom. Brooke’s salmon was perfectly cooked and lightly smoked. Kristen’s was homey without homey presentation. Josh finally nailed a pork dish and the judges say his flavors were really well done. Unanimous winner – the chef who took Top Chef history into account and elevated the moment to a healthy dish – is girl-on-fire Kristen, who has won three of the seven elimination challenges where the judges named at least one winner, plus one Quickfire. This seemed to be a clear win for concept, as all three chefs executed but Kristen was the one who was by far the most creative in her reimagining of the original dish and who did the most to reduce its fat and caloric content.

* John’s risotto was improperly cooked, after which he makes an excuse about the pots in the kitchen not being “flat” enough while saying it’s not an excuse or a copout. It absolutely is an excuse, and a copout, and a failure to take responsibility: If he’d tasted the risotto as he went, he would have known it wasn’t cooking evenly and he would have adapted. Josh then throws him under the bus, which would bother me if John hadn’t thrown Stefan under the bus in an earlier episode for using frozen fish. John’s money quote here (it gets better) was “Equipment was an issue.” Even weasels cringed at that wording.

* Lizzie admits “the scallops must have been old,” at which Tom appears ready to pounce on her only to have Wolfgang interrupt. I think in most episodes, this would have been Lizzie’s death warrant, but this week the bottom two chefs will cook against each other in a challenge based on this season’s memorable moment: the spicy dill pickles where CJ and Tyler made a burger that got them both eliminated. Josh is mocking John in the back room, asking if he can find a pan flat enough to cook a burger in?

* John makes a harissa lamb burger, which sounds to me like we’re moving in the other direction, making something unhealthy because it’ll taste better and win the challenge. Lizzie, relieved that she gets to cook again, gets ground chicken, saying it’s tricky to make it juicy.

* John used all of Lizzie’s fresh dill after she said he could use some, but then says he’s a good guy because he shared the pickles. Lizzie wants to “beat his bum,” which also isn’t as deviant as it sounds.

* John serves a lamb burger with fried egg and a spicy pickle, tomato, and pomegranate salad. Aioli of dill and cream cheese. Wolfgang’s burger isn’t moist enough, and Chris questions how adding an egg makes sense on a dish intended to be healthier. Lizzie makes a chicken burger with a goat cheese ricotta cream and a dill pickle roasted red pepper salad. The white meat is moist and flavorful, and the only criticism is Chris saying he “just wanted a whiff of salt.” Chris, Wolfgang, and Tom all pick Lizzie to stay, so John goes. He’s “not bitter, but this is bullshit.”

* John, in the confessional, is still talking about having all the pickles. All your pickles are belong to John. You have no chance to survive, make your time. Had he hoarded the pickles, isn’t it more likely that the chefs would have axed him on principle?

* LCK: This wasn’t much of a fight, with the chefs allowed to do whatever they want but forced to cook in cheap vessels found at nearby yard sales. John rushes for pans, while CJ focuses on ingredients. John goes heavy in his dish, CJ went lighter, and CJ was the pretty clear winner, only issue was using too much chili oil but his flavor profile was more unusual. John’s choice of lobster and foie gras seemed a little cliché, like the lamb burger with a fried egg – he was pandering a little to the judges. John’s comments during and after LCK are a 180 from his comments during the main show. When adversity strikes, his personality flaws really show through. He hates taking responsibility for mistakes, and is quick to blame others, or even inanimate objects, when he’s ultimately at fault. You can win Top Chef with that attitude as long as you never screw up, but John ran out of steam three episodes ago and never bounced back.

* Top three: Kristen remains the clear leader, with Brooke in a somewhat distant second. I had John making it to the finals, but he’s out, so I’ll restore Micah to the top three in his stead. Josie remains the bottom chef, and I think the format saved her from another bottom-three performance this week.

So the drama is building, leaving viewers to decide which chef is less of an obnoxious ass between Stefan (who can actually cook a little) and Josie (who spends more time making up cutesy names for her dishes than tasting the food). Meanwhile, Kristen, who is the ’27 Yankees in this group, allows herself to sound slightly confident in the confessional. After Humble Paul in season 9 Bravo must be dying for a contender with some arrogance to him/her to show up at some point.

(Speaking of season 9, it’s $9.99 for the full season in SD on amazon Instant Video right now, which is way below what past seasons cost the last time I checked.)

* Morning quickfire: Chefs must drive to Bow, Washington – did you know they were driving Toyotas? I’m surprised half the chefs didn’t die in some horrible accident involving their Camrys en route – and harvest fresh oysters for the challenge. The chefs are actually very fired up, putting on waders, eating oysters as they harvest them. I grew up on Long Island (sorry, I’ve mentioned this before) during a time when raw oysters were contaminated by God-knows-what and we were told every day in the news that it would kill us if we so much as looked at a local oyster, so I still shudder a little as I see this. I know they’re a chef’s favorite, but a little voice in my brain tells me they’re poison.

* Josie sinks into the mud, calling attention to herself yet again. Micah, who helps rescue her, reveals that his father was a pastor and he grew up kosher, so he didn’t eat shellfish until he was an adult. I didn’t realize that there were Christian sects that obeyed kosher rules.

* John grew up on the east end of Long Island. I knew I liked that guy for some reason, but he clearly grew up when local shellfish was safe to eat.

* Bart went to cooking school at 12. At 12 I was in 8th grade and worrying about high school and playing cheap video games on a Commodore 64. I wasn’t planning my future career.

* The actual challenge: Prepare oysters on the half shell for Emeril, without being distracted by Padma looking gorgeous. Half the chefs must do a hot preparation, the other half must do a cold prep. $5000 prize. 25 minutes to cook.

* The chefs have to grab one of the red (hot) or blue (cold) aprons to pick which kind of dish they’re preparing, which is always weird – are we testing cooking skills here, or reflexes? What if at some point they had a chef with a disability? Am I overthinking this as usual? Anyway, the red aprons go first, which surprised me because chefs always seem to want to do raw oyster preparations on Top Chef and not cooking the oysters would save some time.

* Micah says cooking for Emeril is like Moses meeting God. I’m going to go “argument by false analogy” on that one, since Emeril, while obviously talented, falls a bit short of Omnipotent Deity for me.

* Stefan smoking oysters in a Ziploc bag might be the most interesting thing anyone did, followed by Lizzie using red currants, which made me imagine oysters with grape jelly.

* Josie says she’s making “Spanish roc-a-fella.” Enough with the fucking names already. And then her sauce broke in the pan, which is God’s – or Emeril’s – revenge for the fact that she wasted brain waves on coming up with a bullshit name for her dish. As it turns out, her chorizo-cilantro cream sauce might have been delicious if it hadn’t broken and hadn’t blown the oyster off the plate.

* Bottom: Bart, whose champagne-butter reduction was too rich, losing the champagne and masking the oyster. Josie, for obvious reason. John, whose oysters poached in garlic butter with Swiss chard and a Parmiggiano-garlic foam had “no pop.” Also worth mentioning that Josh and Brooke both ended up with a little shell in their oysters.

* Top: Lizzie, who took a chance with the currants and succeeded, even to Padma’s surprise. Micah, also risky piling spices on the oyster, but they “popped” according to Emeril. Brooke, whose salsa verde had all kinds of beautiful flavors that didn’t take away from the oyster. Winner: Micah finally comes through for me, slightly justifying my optimism about him earlier in the season.

* Elimination challenge: Cooking for “one of the hottest sports teams in Seattle” – the Sonics! I mean, a roller derby team. There’s really such a thing as roller derby? And people go to the matches? That’s the second-weirdest sports thing I’ve heard this week.

* Chefs divide into teams of two to cook the food for the league’s wrap party, which I assume is held in the basement of a Chuck-E-Cheese. Stefan grabs Kristen, by what body part I’m not sure. The dishes must be inspired by the unbelievably lame nicknames of the five rollergirls in the room, like “Tempura Tantrum.” I’m sure someone was up all night coming up with that. They don’t want “fussy food” but not “concession food” either, which is a surprisingly constructive remark.

* Josie was a pro football player. Whatever you think of women’s football (non-lingerie division), it’s better than roller derby.

* So the chefs go to a match and the other nine get mad at Josie for being loud and obnoxious in the one public place where it is acceptable and even encouraged to be loud and obnoxious. Sorry, guys, I’m with Josie for once. Get off your asses and scream a little.

* After the game, the guys are talking shit about Josie at the apartment while she’s lying on the couch in the next room. An “I can hear you” would have sufficed but she goes apeshit, including the line, “This tree right here, you don’t want to bark up,” which was either Confucius or Sun-Tzu, I always mix those two guys up. Then she says Micah is “hiding in a closet,” so apparently she’s convinced he’s gay (and was she saying that she is too?). Josh’s deadpan “what just happened?” might be the line of the year so far.

* Lizzie says “I still have scars on my knees” from roller skating when she was younger. With all the dogs in the room, no one comments on this? This song came to mind, certainly.

* Josie, teamed with Bart, wants to go aggressive with the spice. Bart definitely has a different concept of “bold” and doesn’t want to overspice. This is like a matter/anti-matter thing where the entire Top Chef kitchen collapses into a singularity at the end of the show.

* Sheldon/Josh are doing tempura-fried dessert; Sheldon says the batter should be like a pancake batter, “lumpy as shit.” Good to know.

* Kristen points out that when Stefan was 14 in 1986, she was 3. Doesn’t seem to mind him hitting on her every episode, though.

* Bart/Josie do a makeshift grill of cooling rack over a foil roasting pan with coals in it. Nice strong direct heat. I might try that by resting the pan on fire bricks in the grill, which would get the food closer to the heat than I could otherwise get.

* Hugh gives Padma the roller-derby nickname “Padma Smacks-me.” I have no real comment for this.

* The dishes are judged by Padma, Tom, Hugh, Emeril, and the girl your dish was named after, which is about as strong and tough a group of judges as we’ve had.

* Tasting time, starting with Brooke/John: Thai beef with lobster jasmine rice and Thai cole slaw. Hugh likes the building flavors and the kick of acid in the slaw.

* Josie/Bart: Teriyaki steak, forbidden rice with beet blood, and a green papaya salad. Hugh thinks it’s a little “unique crappy.” Tom questions skewering the meat since it can’t be properly seared. The rice is overcooked and looks like a liquified brick. Padma asks why they buried black rice in red liquid. This seems like a fail all around.

* Micah/Lizzie: Crab-stuffed whole jalapeno pepper (fried) with avocado crema and onion and pepper relish. The judges are surprised that they love it. Crispy, great flavors. The rollergirl likes that they rethought a “party food favorite,” which was a pretty insightful comment too.

* Stefan/Kristen: “Chicken inside-out” for their rollergirl’s nickname, Eddie Shredder. Corn puree under chicken liver with a port wine reduction under phyllo dough under a sunny-side up egg. Tom says it’s a dish of missed opportunities. Emeril’s egg was slightly overdone but the corn puree and liver were perfect. This seems a little unadventurous to me.

* Josh/Sheldon: Tempura yuzu curd with shiso, fresno chili, sweet potato, and vanilla sauces (“tantrums”) smeared on the place for the diner to run the tempura through. The judges agree that it was a great idea, the sauces were great, but the tempura wasn’t fried enough. Emeril thinks the small fryer couldn’t hold temperature, which should have occurred to Sheldon (who says he does tempura every night in his restaurant) before they started. So I ask this all the time: Where are the damn thermometers? Were they not frying with a thermometer in the oil at all times?

* Stefan is right, for once: Padma is hot. He says he bought season 9 just to watch her in snippets. She was hottest post-baby in (I think) season 7.

* Judges’ table: Top teams are John/Brooke and Micah/Lizzie, no surprise on either one. Brooke/John’s lobster was cooked perfectly, as was the meat. Micah/Lizzie’s pepper was hot and delicious but the heat didn’t overpower the crab. Brooke and John are the winners, third win (quickfire or elimination) for John, and third for Brooke as well. I think they won for the more adventurous concept, with roughly equivalent execution. Micah and Lizzie reinvented a dish, but Brooke and John invented one.

* John says in the confessional that winning was great, but “it would have been sweeter if I’d won it alone.” Really? Who says that? That’s about as gracious as a sledgehammer to the forehead.

* Bottom: No surprises here either as it’s Josh/Sheldon and Josie/Bart. Josh/Sheldon had a good concept but blew the main element, underfrying the tempura. Bart/Josie had problems throughout the dish, and it’s clear one of them will go home. Tom kills them for underseasoning the rice, saying, “If something is properly seasoned, and something is bland, you put it together, you end up with bland.” Hugh calls the rice portion of the plate “beet espuma syrup on top of boring porridge.” Put that on your menu and smoke it.

* Josh does the second-dumbest thing you can do at judges’ table – the dumbest is refusing to accept responsibility for your dish – by asking why a competing dish was on the top. Tom gives a great explanation of the stuffed jalapeno being not concession food conceptually, after which Padma gives a perfectly concise follow-up on their execution.

* Josie says in confessional that she doesn’t “want to go home for someone else’s mistakes,” ignoring how the judges didn’t like anything she cooked in the dish either.

* Bart goes home. It should have been Josie, although I didn’t see Bart potentially winning the whole thing either – he’s a charming guy and I’m sure he makes a great waffle, but his dishes never stood out in the least. Bart says that “Josie talks to the judges and puts on the Josie Show,” except that I’d rather watch Heil Honey, I’m Home! than The Josie Show and somehow The Josie Show never gets cancelled.

* LCK: So another rollergirl comes through Last Chance Kitchen and CJ blatantly watches her ass as she goes by, saying the skater’s buttocks “were amazing, like two Parma hams.” You can think this stuff – I’ve thought worse, certainly – but good grief, man, the red light means the camera is on.

* Anyway, the challenge is to take chicken breast, which is bland and boring, and make it delicious. I thought leaving the skin on the meat was a gift, because rendered and crisped it’s a poor man’s duck skin (crispy with hints of sweetness from caramelized carbohydrates), but CJ removes the skin and never uses it. Bart goes bold, seasoning heavily, using paprika and either cumin or turmeric, then crushing speculoos (the Dutch cinnamon cookie sold here under the Biscoff brand) and sprinkling the dust on the top. CJ wins, even though his dish was less complex, less adventurous, and far less attractive on the plate. Tom dings Bart for going too bold, saying the flavors would have been great for venison, but the challenge was to go bold. I know flavor is king here, but it seems like Bart’s concept better met the challenge, and again, it looked way better on the plate.

* Top three: Kristen still blowing away the field, followed by John and Brooke, same as last week. I’d like to see another good week from Micah before moving him back into consideration ahead of Lizzie, who’s been very steady, occasionally on top but rarely below par. Josie is still on the bottom for me, with Josh at #8.

Time to review another product placement-packed edition of Top Chef!

* Quickfire: Season four winner Stephanie Izard of Chicago’s Girl and the Goat is here as a guest judge. Every ingredient in the pantry is covered in Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil. I hope they recycled all of that metal, because otherwise this whole challenge is just a big environmental disaster. Once you unwrap an item, you must use it. There are also no cooking vessels available – you must cook in the foil itself, and that stuff can’t be recycled. Immunity’s at stake. Ecological concerns aside, is this challenge really that different from giving each chef a sealed box of ingredients and telling them they must use everything in it?

* Kristen decides to make a sponge cake and we see her whisking eggs in a bowl she made of foil. Danyele says making a cake in this challenge is “the ballsiest shit” she’s ever heard of. That’s also a pretty good indication that Kristen will win the challenge, isn’t it? Ballsy tends to win on this show.

* Bart shapes a bowl on his head, which seems a bit unsanitary, and also made a strainer, which makes him MacGyver in this crowd.

* Chefs can’t sear anything because foil doesn’t conduct heat well enough, and we get a shot of one foil “pot” leaking off the edge of the flat-top. This can’t be the advert that Reynolds was hoping it would be. As an aside, I don’t go through that much foil in the kitchen, but I do use a lot of another Reynolds product – parchment paper, especially to keep pizza dough from sticking to my wooden pizza peel.

* Sheldon smokes scallops. I can’t even think of a time I saw smoked scallops on a menu, and I’ve certainly never eaten them. Wouldn’t a protein that lean fare somewhat poorly in a smoker?

* The bottom three: Brooke, whose dish was under seasoned and who got a nasty reaction from Padma during tasting for her use of raw onions; Micah, whose lamb was still wandering around looking for Mary; and Josh, whose dish was “uninspired.” Is it just me, or is Josh looking pretty overmatched the last 3-4 episodes? You can’t talk that tough and not bring the goods.

* We get a top six first, with Sheldon, Kristen, Josie, Stefan, Danyele, and Bart, of which the actual top three are Danyele, Kristen, and Sheldon. Winner is Kristen, of course, since she took the biggest risks, had a number of different elements, and seems to cook with tremendous precision. She needs to stop acting so surprised when she wins – she’s practically the Paul Qui of this group. And I can’t imagine that Bravo would be upset to have a former model win the season.

* Elimination challenge: Stephanie’s sticking around as guest judge, which seems like a great idea the show should use more often. The challenge involves cooking with fresh berries in head-to-head battles, other than Kristen, who cooks alone because she has immunity. The other top chefs from the quickfire pick their opponents. Sheldon picks Micah, Danyele picks Josh, Stefan picks John T, Josie picks Lizzie, and Bart gets Brooke. No one seems to really be picking for competitive reasons except maybe Josie, and even then, neither Lizzie nor Brooks seems like a pushover.

* Of the berries, the one I’d least want would be gooseberries, which Stefan and John draw. Gooseberries are powerfully tart and a real pain in the ass to clean and trim. Kristen gets tayberries, the one berry here I haven’t tried; it’s a sweet cross between a raspberry and a blackberry, but, per Wikipedia, can’t be machine harvested so it’s rarely grown commercially. I bet it makes an unbelievable pie, though. The whole episode reminds me of the time my wife and I went to Alaska and spotted salmonberries growing wild on the side of a road – but we didn’t touch them because I didn’t know what they were or if they were safe to eat. (They are.)

* Stefan buys flash-frozen tuna, saying it’s the “highest-quality fish in the store.” That might be true at some markets, but Whole Foods typically sells high-end sushi-grade tuna at the fish counter. Also, fish really suffers in the defrosting process, losing texture as the ice crystals melt. I almost never use frozen fish at home; if I can’t get it fresh, I don’t get it at all. John razzes Stefan for it, but then tattles to Tom about Stefan using frozen fish, which is just bush-league. There’s no un-hearing that – Tom had to taste that food with the notion that the fish was previously frozen already in his brain. John’s lame excuse is that he was mad that the tuna wasn’t sustainable. Hey, I’m all about sustainable product, but just admit you threw the guy under the bus already.

* The “kitchen” is an outdoor setup on the farm where the party (with 150 guests) will be held, and it’s chaos, with too little room for eleven chefs to set up. Danyele, not the most assertive chef in the group, has to get loud and pushy just to get counter space. Of course, I don’t know if there wasn’t enough space or if one or two chefs were taking up too much room, but I’d rather not see chefs suffer because they couldn’t find flour or get enough room to work. Bart is struggling to find a blender, and ends up cursing out John, who’s hanging on to a blender but might not have used it yet … again, why not have 11 blenders available?

* Up pulls a tractor with freshly picked berries. How do I get one of those to stop by my house?

* Kristen tells her backstory – she was born in Seoul but abandoned by her mom, and at four months moved to Michigan to be adopted by an American family. That means three chefs of these eleven were adopted. I can’t imagine growing up and dealing with that feeling of abandonment, rightly or wrongly. Kristen talks about taking the $10K prize for this challenge, should she win it, and going to Korea for the first time to see where she’s from.

* Micah’s daughters are named Sage and Saffron. I want to mock this but those names really aren’t that odd.

* Tasting time. Danyele: chicken ping nut terrine with blueberry mostarda on a crostada. No bueno. The bread slices are too thick and crunchy, the terrine is rubbery, and it’s all underseasoned. She looks totally lost in her own head at this point. Josh: savory goat cheese mousse with blueberry compote, plus a little Serrano ham and cracker crust. Judges say this one doesn’t have enough crunch, but that’s the only real comment, so it seems like Josh will win this one by default.

* Josie: A “rock’n raspberry roll” that she’s rolling to order while she babbles like a leaky faucet to distract guests from the fact that she’s woefully unprepared. The roll has sockeye salmon, Dungeness crab, and a raspberry aioli. Gail says there’s not enough raspberry. Tom says there’s too much style, not enough substance. If he’d added “too much blather” he would have nailed it. Lizzie: steamed cabbage roll with heritage pig and bacon stuffing, fresh raspberry, and raspberry liqueur. Padma loves it right off the bat. Tom says it’s just a little under seasoned. We’re not getting much of Stephanie’s commentary, unfortunately. I’d value her contributions over Gail’s, certainly.

* Sheldon: ahi poke, strawberries, sweet chili sauce, and strawberry purée, all in a summer roll. There’s also a radish in there that sells Stephanie. Micah: strawberry-marinated fried chicken with a strawberry and pepper bacon buttermilk biscuit. The fried chicken seems fine, but everyone hates the biscuit, which looks dry on camera and apparently was also dense and mealy.

* John: white gazpacho with chorizo and gooseberry jelly. The whole dish is overpowered by the chorizo, and one guest says it reminds him of “cheeseburger soup.” That’s probably not a compliment. Stefan: tuna crudo with Asian vinaigrette with gooseberries and more gooseberries on the dish itself. Gail doesn’t taste the berries enough, but as with Josh, this looks like a win for Stefan by default.

* Brooke: spicy smoked chocolate pudding with blackberry tapioca and salty graham cracker crumble and earl grey marshmallows. At this point in the show it seems like this is the top-rated dish, with everyone loving the concept, the execution, the use of the berries, and the nod to s’mores. Bart: blackberry soup with salmon and rhubarb yogurt. Tom loves soup, hates the salmon. Stephanie says the salmon is superfluous.

* Kristen: Matcha goat milk custard with tayberry jam, cornmeal sable, and olive-oil macerated tayberries. There are a ton of flavors going on in this dish. She just seems to be conceptually way ahead of anyone else in the competition, and she executes more consistently than anyone else.

* Stefan telling John to “suck it hard” in the stew room. All class, that guy.

* Judges table: John, Josie, Bart, Micah, Danyele lost their matchups in the eyes of the guests and the judges. Micah acknowledged that Sheldon’s food “popped.” His biscuit was dense and chewy, and for a guy with evident skills he is failing to execute at an alarming rate here. Josie gets ripped for “doing a demo” and makes more excuses, which seems to be her core competence. Gail says her flavors were muddled. Tom says it was too heavy with aioli. It didn’t look or sound appealing, and she made guests wait way too long for it. Bart’s salmon had terrible texture. Danyele said she heard people eating the crostada. Tom says she gets her halfway through a great concept but can’t finish it. John saw gooseberries, thought grapes, went gazpacho, then makes excuses about crazy kitchen and says he’s not making excuses. I’ve defended John to this point but he came off horribly in this episode. Perhaps he behaves when things are going well, but when adversity strikes he reverts to juvenile responses.

* Tom says the winners all worked better with the product than the losers. The winner is girl-on-fire Kristen, who can now go to Korea and perhaps eliminate “Gangnam Style” at the source. Stefan plants one on her cheek. Subtle.

* The judges joke about Josie’s dish looking like Pepto Bismol, but end up sending Danyele packing. She’s been on the bottom most of the competition, but Josie’s act is way more tired to me as a viewer, and I’ll miss Danyele’s hair.

* Then we get some drama as Josie goes all over Stefan in the stew room with what appears to be no provocation other than him starting a separation conversation that was too loud for her liking (but wasn’t about her). That’s pressure getting to someone, and that someone handling it poorly. Stefan isn’t the reason Josie’s been on the bottom. Own your mistakes.

* LCK: Make a sandwich in twenty minutes. Danyele goes way too simple, CJ goes over the top, and CJ wins. People do not learn: Simple almost never wins on Top Chef, because the judges nearly always favor a great concept done reasonably well over a fair concept done perfectly. And that’s how they should judge the dishes. That said, I’d rather eat Danyele’s sandwich – and she even takes one of the sandwiches she made to go. I agree with her that avocado just makes any sandwich better; I put guacamole on burgers all the time, and I like her method of making it into a simple spread by mashing it with a little acid and salt. But again, that doesn’t win on TC.

* Revised top three: Kristen, then a big gap, then John and Brooke, with Lizzie and Sheldon rounding out the top five. Micah’s falling fast. Josie seems like she’s clearly the worst competitor left, followed by Josh.

I should be back on a regular Top Chef recap and chat schedule next week, and sticking to Thursdays for Top Chef recaps after that.

* Quickfire: The judge is Marilyn Hagerty, author of that awful Olive Garden review in the Grand Forks Herald last year that went viral (with, I think, some early help from me after a reader sent it my way). Now she has a book deal with Tony Bourdain. What on earth is someone who knows little to nothing about food – for God’s sake, people, she praised a restaurant that is the chain equivalent to Chef Boy-ar-dee – doing on Top Chef? Our one male cat knows more about fine food and he eats plastic wrappers off the floor.

* The challenge is to make a sweet and savory holiday dish based on your ethnic heritage, and you have to use Truvia to satisfy the marketing department. The stuff, which uses the natural sweetener stevia, is twice as sweet as sugar and has a bizarre aftertaste, not as bad as artificial sweeteners but not pleasant and definitely not an acceptable substitute for sugar. You want to cut calories? Eat less. Unless you have a blood-sugar issue, or are cooking for someone who has one, I wouldn’t recommend stevia – and even then I believe Truvia contains some sucrose.

* The twist: There’s one knife for everyone. Lizzie draws it, but leaves it on her cutting board while she heads for the pantry, so Josh grabs it – fair play as I see it, and he didn’t hog it for long. Why should the knife sit idle? And if she wanted to use it straight off she should have taken it with her. Meanwhile other chefs are cutting with scissors, graters, and so on. No one has a mandoline slicer? Or a pastry cutter?

* Danyele and John both reveal that they’re adopted; Danyele ends up making her mom’s post-Christmas bread pudding with leftover ham.

* Lizzie is from South Africa, so Christmas there is warm. She’s making bobotie, pronounced “buh-BOO-tee” apparently, which I’ve only had at the Boma restaurant at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge. Lizzie’s looks a little different, though.

* Micah is half black and half Mexican and refers to himself as “Mexigro or Blaxican.” I’m just going to stop this point right here before I get myself into trouble.

* Eliza says her mother called her “pleasantly chunky” when she was a kid. In a related story, Eliza’s mother was a fucking moron.

* I don’t know how much range Sheldon has, but even staying within food traditions from Hawai’i he gets to draw on a lot of Asian cultures, and his banana lumpia looked pretty amazing. So did Josie’s tamale with habanero masa and a papaya and mango salsa on the side. Neither made the top three, though.

* Hagerty, meanwhile, is very sweet, but is overmatched by the food here. The bottom two are Bart’s chicken and waffles dish, which she said had “too many things going on,” and Micah’s “taco” (actually a tamale, but that’s okay Marilyn because you’re old), which was dry.

* Top three: Josh’s jonnycakes, Stefan’s latkes with smoked salmon tartare, and Brooke’s apple crostada with cheddar cheese, which Padma called “homey.” Brooke wins, much to her surprise, since she felt she was playing it safe. Personally, I think cheddar cheese is unpleasant to begin with and would never in a million years pair it with apples, but most people think this is a good idea.

* Elimination challenge: Anna Faris and Burt Macklin, who apparently are married. I’d like to see Faris on a Parks and Rec episode where April spends 22 minutes mumbling threats of unspeakable violence against her. Also, Danyele is a Parks and Rec fan, so major props to her. The challenge is to cater their giant homecoming party and the winner gets a Prius. On a slightly related note, I just rented a Kia hybrid when I went to LA this week and was shocked at how smooth the ride was, and how quiet the engine was – quiet enough that I didn’t realize I’d started the car, pressed the button again, and of course turned it off in the process. I expected a much choppier ride but couldn’t tell when the engine was switching energy sources unless I checked the dashboard.

* Faris and Andy … er, Chris want Seattle-oriented food – wild salmon, Dungeness crab, wild game – and food that brings in their German and Norwegian heritage, meaning meat and potatoes dishes. Pratt says “lots of calories” is the way to go.

* I hate Anna’s hair, the color, the cut, all of it. And the dark brown eyebrows with platinum blonde hair just look odd to me.

* We interrupt this episode of Top Chef to bring you a not-totally-obvious Prius commercial.

* Josh says Stefan was “douchey” and “kind of an asshole” on his season. Cough cough, Josh.

* Kristen says she loves making fresh pasta. She’s my pick to win this whole thing. Meanwhile she and der Hundchefkoch are flirting again.

* To the food: Bart does a loin of elk with cherry and beer sauce and mushroom couscous. Padma likes the way he cooked the elk (a meat I’ve never tried). Brooke’s lamb-stuffed squid on black rice with coconut milk gets some odd looks but immediate raves. Chris loves it, Tom loves it, and guest judge Rick Moonen praises her for going for it with immunity. Sheldon does a braised Okinawan pork belly and seared scallop on rice congee, which also gets high marks. Stefan makes a German gulasch with fried marjoram dumplings and sour cream. I couldn’t tell if Chris was joking around about not really knowing what gulasch was – he was kind of making the Andy face but he might have been serious about never having a proper gulasch before.

* Kristen does a delice de bourgogne tortellini, with dried apricots and triple cream cheese. Rick says it’s a perfect single bite, and the dish looks like it’s delicately made with powerful flavors. Micah does briased pork ribs with celery root puree, grilled apples, and a celery leaf salad. He clearly screwed up the puree, adding cream to make it smoother and ending up with a gloppy mess. I like celeriac but it’s pretty fibrous and I would have cut it with potato to improve the finished product’s texture. Lizzie does a crusted wild salmon with roasted radish and beet salad, but the salmon isn’t seared or seasoned enough. Eliza’s elk ribeye with elk sausage polenta and spiced carrots is a dud. The judges say the meat’s not bad, but the rest of dish isn’t good and the carrots are nearly raw. The meat looked way undercooked to me – more blue than rare and not sliced consistently.

* Final group: Danyele’s pan-roasted boar chop and tomato bacon marmalade gave her trouble from the top. Chris, who says he always orders boar when it’s on the menu (how I feel about duck), doesn’t like the meat, although he says the marmalade is awesome. Tom says the meat is sliced too thin and I can already hear the judges’ table conversation coming. Josh does a roasted pork shoulder with grilled corn puree, succotash, and a fennel and apple salad. The pork isn’t seasoned and there’s a huge piece of meat on every plate. Chris says, “it might not be great, but there’s a lot of it,” reminding me of the old (20+ years old) saying about IBM: “It may be slow, but it’s hard to use.” Josie does a creamy polenta with Malbec-braised short ribs, crispy pork belly, sous vide cipollini, and figs. There’s not enough contrast for Rick. I just see a jumbled mess. John does a seafood chowder with cockles, Manila clams, mussels, sockeye salmon, and Dungeness crab, using a chowder base he learned when working for Rick (which he chose before knowing Rick was one of the judges, apparently). This gets enormous praise, including from Rick, who calls it a “hug from the ocean.” The salmon looked almost raw on TV, but he cooked it at 140 degrees (per the lengthy recipe) and that low temp plus the natural color of the sockeye is probably what gave it that appearance.

* The bottom dishes during the judges’ discussion (with Anna and Chris) were pretty clear: Micah, Eliza, Josie, Josh, and Danyele. Josie ends up escaping the actual judges table, though.

* Top dishes: Kristen, John, Brooke, and Sheldon. Brooke says she took a risk because she had immunity. Tom says to keep cooking this way. It is amazing how every season we see chefs play it safe even though safe never wins and often leads to midseason eliminations (if not sooner). Rick says John’s chowder was like soul food. Kristen says she loves to play cheese and dried fruit off each other, something I haven’t tried myself. Sheldon’s dish gets praise for being very autobiographical, and again, he’s showing off his range within his heritage, which could be why I’m underestimating him. The winner is Brooke, who seemed to have the most inventive dish other than perhaps Sheldon’s. John might have won if he hadn’t done something so traditional here.

* On to the bottom dishes: Micah’s celery root puree was too grainy and his ingredients all out of balance. He says the celeriac was fibrous, but isn’t it usually? Josh’s pork shoulder chunks were too and not seasoned enough. Eliza’s elk was unevenly cooked, the carrots weren’t cooked through, and they were dry in parts. Danyele’s hoppin john and relish were fantastic but the boar wasn’t good. She panicked when she saw it overcooking and curling on the flat-top and never recovered – Tom admonishes her not to second-guess herself.

* Eliminated: Eliza is eliminated, which makes sense given what we saw and were told. She also says she was fighting a cold, which might have affected how well she could taste her own food.

* LCK: Eliza vs CJ vs Tyler in a battle of pickles and carrots, the two ingredients that got these chefs eliminated. I thought Eliza would win for her paprika-seared scallops on carrot puree, but CJ wins instead, in part (I think) because he charred and roasted the pickles, which seemed to surprise Tom, along with his smoked trout.

* Top three: Still Kristen and John clearly ahead of the pack, but it’s hard for me to keep arguing in Micah’s favor when he’s ending up on the bottom more than he’s on the top. Sheldon and Brooke were both really impressive this week, and I could see Stefan hanging around until the final five or so. I’d probably put Sheldon third at this point, since his success spans more than just this most recent episode.