This was my favorite episode of the season because of the elimination challenge. It served a good purpose, but I think it also required the chefs to demonstrate teaching and leadership skills that they almost certainly have to display in their restaurants anyway. It turned out that those weren’t factors in the ultimate decision, but they could have been, and I think that it’s one way to set Masters apart from regular Top Chef.

* Quickfire: Blind cooking with a mystery teammate, a holdover from Season 3. Kerry points out that, based on the previous season, “it pays to be nice” to your teammate. Each chef must create identical dishes with his/her teammate, and will be judged on how similar they look and how they taste.

* The mystery teammates are Ruth, Francis, and Jimmy Sunshine. Ruth uses a bizarre generic European accent in an 80-year-old’s voice to try to fake Kerry out. James uses fake Southern-ish accent – but then actually turns out to be the best listener of the three.

* Chefs in this challenge nearly always assume too much skill or knowledge on the part of the partner, but here the mystery partners were clearly playing dumb too, which I assume was the producers’ direction.

* I find the shouting within this challenge really annoying. Chris is actually the quietest of the three, which I would not have predicted.

* Chefs are all shocked at the reveal. Chris calls it “fucking hysterical” and their laughter was pretty infectious.

* Chris/James did prawns with sauteed celery, thyme, pine nuts, and chili threads. Curtis can’t decide which he likes more, to which James says “shut the fuck up.” This whole quickfire showed a far different side of James’ personality – the most human and likeable he’s been over the two seasons I’ve watched. He was genuinely stoked at the positive results.

* Lorena/Francis: Swiss Chard with sauteed chicken, bacon, onions, shallots, stock, touch of cream, and parmesan. Lorena wanted to serve this over pasta, but the pasta wasn’t ready in time. I thought this sounded simple yet delicious – I’m going to try this over pasta tonight using some of the bacon I smoked myself and a little reserved fat. (There’s no bacon in the online recipe.) The dishes tasted the same, but Curtis dings them for serving a sauce without something to put it on.

* Kerry/Ruth: Sauteed chicken, chard, bacon, parmesan, and rosemary cream. Ruth used way more chicken on her plate, which is part of that “playing dumb” bit I mentioned earlier. Curtis says Ruth’s chicken might be slightly better cooked!

* Winner: Chris, so $5K more for the Michael J. Fox Foundation and a total of $41K so far.

* Elimination challenge: Working with two Southwest Career and Technical Academy students who have taken culinary arts classes, each chef must create a dish … but they can only direct their student-chefs and can’t touch the food to be served. The students first prepare dishes for the chefs to taste and the chefs have to reinterpret the dishes to be “masters-level.”

* Chris says he has/had a learning disability but doesn’t say what it is. It does seem like a lot of great chefs were poor students in school for one reason or another, yet excelled once they discovered they had a passion for food.

* Lorena’s kids made lasagna and she says she feels limited by that dish – but why not deconstruct it somehow so she’s not bound by the shape and format? Anything with a starch, tomatoes, and cheese would have worked. Even just another pasta dish, but one that’s not so homey.

* Kerry is appalled that his students haven’t seen The Godfather. The movie did come out over 20 years before they were born.

* Chris keeps his kids with him during shopping so that he’s still educating them, which is awesome. It looks like both of the other chefs are doing some of this as well, so perhaps the editors just focused on Chris in the final cut.

* Chris shows the kids the basics of butchering the pork loin, but they can’t use the meat he cuts. Please tell me that food wasn’t discarded. His kids are so nervous that they break a bottle of cider vinegar. Opa.

* Kerry’s got his team roasting bones to make “brown jus,” which I assume is a stock he’s going to have them reduce. He says this is restaurant-level cooking, which turns out to be key – he’s really pushing his kids both in efficiency and in the quality of the food they’re producing, exceeding what Chris and Lorena are doing.

* One of Chris’ students will be the first in his family to graduate from high school, and says he grew up in poverty, eating same thing every night. One of Lorena’s students has Type 2 diabetes. I hope the producers do this challenge again in the future.

* Chris is concerned that they’re plating too soon, saying he won’t be happy if he goes home for “teaching kids to be fast.” But why dress the salad and plate with five minutes to go? If the meat is done early, that’s one thing, but you can dress the salad and plate it inside of sixty seconds. That was never fully explained.

* Judges’ table: Same trio from the quickfire. Guests include staff from the Southwest Career and Technical Academy plus some family members of the students.

* Team Chris: Pork loin with hazelnut and sage brown butter, apples, and watercress. They reimagined a basic pork tenderloin dish. Ruth says her paillard is beautifully cooked. Francis says the sauce is perfect. Emilio’s (single) mom starts crying.

* Team Lorena: Lasagna with three meats and a parmesan crema, along with a baby arugula salad and raspberry vinaigrette. The pasta is served in a skillet. Francis likes the goat cheese in the lasagna, but overall this seems like the least ambitious dish.

* Team Kerry: Florentine-inspired chicken with orzo and asparagus ragout. Kerry raves about the kids he worked with. Ruth is very impressed by the dish. James says it’s the best creamed spinach he’s ever had. It’s funny how sophisticated the finished plate is, since Kerry was so underwhelmed by the chicken florentine that he had to reimagine for the final product.

* Judging: Ruth asks Lorena if she thought about asking them to vary from straight-up lasagna, which would have been my first question, and Curtis seems skeptical that Lorena would really serve it in a restaurant. Chris says his kids were so efficient that they plated five minutes early and James comments on the soggy salad. Kerry seems to be the only chef getting no criticism, and he wins the $10K.

* Ruth hammers Lorena after chefs leave – says it was good home-cooking, not fine dining. James disagrees. Francis then makes a pretty spurious argument about the ‘experience’ of bringing people together in that lasagna. Then it seemed like three of the four, Ruth being the exception, were fabricating an argument against Chris to give the sense that this decision was closer than it actually was.

* Lorena is eliminated and doesn’t seem surprised. She earned $27,500 for Alliance for a Healthier Generation. Chris is visibly relieved – as was I, since I really wanted to see him in the finals. As much as I’d tab Chris the favorite, Kerry seems to have really hit his stride over the last three episodes, so maybe he just needed to adjust to the show’s format and, now that he’s done so, his skills are showing through.

Is it just me, or is this show kind of limping to the finish? Perhaps it’s the lack of urgency from chefs playing for charity rather than for personal gain or career advancement. I’m not seeing the tension I would expect on Top Chef: Original Recipe.

* Quickfire: The chefs are paired up, Chris and Patricia vs Kerry and Lorena, and must work in tandem with one chef in the pantry and one on the hot line – but with neither chef able to cross to the other side of the kitchen. So that means the chef working pantry must rely on the chef at the stove to fire his/her dish correctly.

* Intelligentsia coffee makes its appearance in the pantry, which is only notable because I made my first visit to one of their shops this morning. The espresso was outstanding, smooth yet with plenty of character – I guess by smooth what I really mean is that the flavor wasn’t interrupted by unwanted bitter notes. I was very impressed and am grateful to reader Stan, who works for Intelligentsia, for hooking me up and joining me for coffee.

* Pretty sure I heard Awful Chris ask Patricia, “do you want water in the salt?” I believe Thomas Keller would approve of that phrasing.

* Patricia was once Chris’ boss, so the two are working very seamlessly and without conflict. Kerry and Lorena aren’t communicating as well, and Lorena ends up frustrated that Kerry blows her dish off to make sure his is cooked correctly. This, it turns out, is also a function of scoring – the judging is based on a single dish, not on a team’s output of two dishes together.

* Patricia, working pantry, chooses to make a tempura-fried tuna dish that cooks for only two minutes, to make it easier for Chris (and, I presume, herself).

* Lorena is making a tom-a-teeeeeeyo sauce. She’s pretty clearly playing that accent up for the camera. It’s like watching Dora. Anyway, her salmon dish ends up incomplete when the rice is never plated, which is apparently Kerry’s fault but I’m not sure why.

* Guest judge: Johnny Avello, who runs a sports book in Vegas that also takes bets on entertainment events, including Top Chef. 

* Chris’ dish: Berber style duck with dates, pine nuts, and mint. Curtis and Johnny both thought Chris could have rendered more fat; Chris chafes at the suggestion, but I’m with the judges here – render more of that fat out so the finished product is mostly crispy skin and duck meat. Duck fat is a glorious cooking medium but you don’t really want a mouthful of it in its solid state.

* Patricia makes a nori and wasabi-crusted tuna with ginger and scallion vinaigrette. I’m guessing this was expertly made but not adventurous enough.

* Kerry: Farfalle with shrimp and a yellow tomato fondue that was “tangy,” so I must have missed an ingredient in the sauce, something like goat cheese or creme fraiche. This was boxed, dried pasta, which is fine for home use but not really what I expect on Top Chef.

* Lorena: seared salmon filet over salsa verde (with tom-a-teeeeeeyos) and an arugula/cherry tomato salad. Johnny says it’s “just salmon.” I don’t see how white rice on the side was going to rescue this dish.

* Kerry’s pasta dish wins, even though Lorena’s dish flopped, and the two split the $5K prize. That’s a bizarre way to judge a team challenge. 

* Elimination challenge: Like Awful Chris, I’d never heard of Diner en blanc before this show. It’s a pop-up dinner party where guests all dress in white and bring the tables, chairs, linens, and so on. The all-white getups push this over the line from cool to pretentious. 

* This dinner party will include 300 guests in the plaza at the Venetian. Each chef will have to serve a three course packable meal to be eaten “picnic style” (yet with silverware and plates, which is rather fancy for a picnic), and each chef is responsible for feeding 75 attendees.

* Lorena going to make a spicy jalapeño chocolate mousse, because, you know, she’s from Latin America, which she might have mentioned before.

* Kerry says he got inspiration for his cold cauliflower soup from Hillary Clinton, who uses it in place of cream. I may have heard this wrong too because that sentence makes zero sense to me. I don’t even get the whole mashed cauliflower in lieu of mashed potatoes thing. You’ll never get the texture right without loading it up with fat and cooking the cauliflower to death (also known as “English-style”). So why not just use potatoes?

* Chris and Patricia are still cooperating, which really pisses off Lorena. Who cares? Shut up and go cash another check from Taco Bell.

* Awful Chris is making a terrine with pork belly and chicken livers, which makes some sense because it’s a dish designed to be eaten cold. But forcemeats are apparently very fussy dishes (I’ve never made one, since no one else in my house would eat it) and Chris even acknowledges the risk involved in rushing one and slicing it before it can chill and set fully.

* Chris pushes Kerry to get his stuff on the cart in time, which Kerry later credits him for doing during judging. I have no objection to seeing cooperation among the chefs, but I think that’s why this show feels so much less dramatic than the regular version.

* Lorena’a three items: huancaina style potato salad with aji amarillo and cilantro; jerk chicken salad with mango and caramelized pine nuts; spicy chocolate mousse with berries and whipped cream. The mousse became too thick and stiff overnight and the chicken salad gets lukewarm reviews. That potato salad does sound like a showstopper and is easily the best-reviewed item in her boxes.

* Patricia tries to do a Silk Road-inspired trio: daikon, edamame, and radish salad with whitebait; Uighur-spiced bison with chili jam; sumac-dusted flatbread with curried cauliflower and red chief lentils. The flatbread grew stale overnight and there are mixed reviews on the bison, with comments that the spice in the jam overwhelmed the meat. James says her dishes were too busy, required too much assembly, and that he wants his binky.

* Awful Chris: swordfish conserva (or confit – he uses both terms) with green beans, tomatoes,and olives; marinated wild mushrooms with toasted pine nuts; pork and chicken liver pâté with hazelnuts and truffles and carrots cooked in … Did he say hay? Everyone raves about the terrine, with the Diner en blanc founder saying it’s one of the best he’s ever eaten. Swordfish may have been slightly overcooked – that fish is so lean it dries out really quickly. I haven’t eaten it in ages because it’s been overfished and can contain more mercury than most other species. So hooray for us destroying the planet.

* Kerry’s French accent sucks. His dishes: cauliflower soup with saffron coulis; green bean and orzo salad with fresh mozzarella and pesto; grilled chicken and kielbasa with peppers and paprika pepper coulis. This sounds the least interesting to me of all the picnics, certainly the least experimental, with two dishes that I could easily recreate at home. Francis, meanwhile, says Kerry swung for the fences. He grilled chicken. That’s not even the right field fence at Yankee Stadium.

* “Robin Leach TV personality” is really its own punch line. 

* Judging: Kerry gets tons of praise, especially that the three dishes worked in a progression. Lorena’s chicken salad was too sweet, her mousse got too thick overnight, the potatoes were great but there was too much sweetness overall. Chris gets raves for the terrine, with Ruth pointing out the sea-forest-land theme across the three dishes. (Chris never says whether that was deliberate.) Ruth didn’t love the chili jam and bison together cold in Patricia’s dish, and overall it sounds like she prepared items that would have been better served hot.

* Awful Chris wins again, another $10K, which I think brings him to $36K total for the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

* James calls Patricia’s salad a “mouthful of bitterness,” and I suppose he would know what that’s like.

* Patricia is eliminated. It’s Understandable, as she didn’t make food that could survive sitting overnight. Chris has to be an overwhelming favorite as the next two best chefs are now gone, although next week’s challenge appears to involve cooking with kids, which seems like a big random variable to include.

I’ve got a family wedding to attend this weekend, so I’m not chatting today or appearing on the podcast. I will probably post here once or twice as my schedule permits, and you might spot me on Twitter. This week’s recap is a little brief, in part because I’m on the move, but also because it turned out to be less dramatic than I anticipated, probably because they crammed in four head-to-head battles in the elimination challenge.

* Quickfire: preppin’ weapon time. The chefs must separate 18 eggs, grate two pounds of Parmiggiano-Reggiano, and portion five 7.5-8.5 ounce filets from a beef tenderloin without using a scale. The first two to finish get to cook using their prepped ingredients. Chris is stoked. Lorena is not. The three chefs who don’t advance become the judges.

* Chris attacks the beef first, but Kerry notices Chris’ steaks are small – and sure enough, one is under 7.5 ounces and Chris is eliminated from the quickfire. Patricia is also out with three steaks under the minimum size. How reasonable is it to expect a chef to be able to hit that narrow weight window without a scale? I honestly don’t know the answer to that.

* There’s cross-contamination everywhere. Chefs touching the raw meat and then the Parmiggiano makes me want to bleach my television.

* Hand-grating two pounds of cheese sounds excruciating. This is what food processors are for.

* Takashi passes. Kerry just barely passes. Lorena doesn’t get to finish and is enfadada.

* The two advancing chefs get fifteen minutes to cook. Kerry makes a parmiggiano-crusted filet, pounding them by hand; his pan isn’t hot enough and they start to stick. He serves them with wilted arugula and sage brown butter; Lorena thinks they’re perfectly cooked even though Kerry thought he’d overdone one side.

* Takashi sautéed his beef with a sunny-side up egg and Provençal vegetables. The other chefs are all amazed he could prep and cook potatoes in fifteen minutes. He also gets credit for cooking the meat in time for it to rest so it doesn’t bleed all over the plate when cut, but the chefs all agree his yolk wasn’t runny enough.

* Kerry wins, so (in my view) the weakest remaining chef gets immunity. Coming into this episode, I would have ranked them Chris, Patricia, Takashi, Lorena, Kerry, top to bottom.

* Elimination challenge: Sugar Ray Leonard, a celebrity whom the chefs actually recognize (as opposed to pretending to recognize one for the cameras). On a more serious note, it’s nice to see a retired boxer who still has his faculties – he was mentioned in A Naked Singularity, which includes digressions on a famous boxer who ended up with early dementia – although I can’t believe he’s 56 years old and looks 35.

* Kerry’s immunity means he doesn’t cook in this challenge at all as the other chefs go head to head. Patricia calls him a “bum” for getting to skip the challenge entirely. I thought she was kidding until she told him to “get a job.”

* Round one: Chris faces Takashi, Lorena faces Patricia, which reveals that Lorena is still rather hacked off about last week’s tiff. Patricia wants to fight Chris in the final round.

* Sugar Ray rocks the purple shirt at judges’ table. Maybe James was smart enough to ask for some sartorial advice.

* The other guest judge is Jane Goldman, who founded chow.com, one of the most useful food sites around. Their “You’re Doing It All Wrong” videos are always fun even if I don’t intend to ever cook the dish described, and while I don’t like the tone of most of the restaurant discussions on their message boards, the recommendations I’ve found there are generally rock solid.

* Chris and Takashi’s secret ingredient is bacon. Or is it just pork belly, which would be uncured? Takashi mentions emphasizing the sweetness and saltiness of the bacon, so perhaps it’s cured and unsmoked? These things make a big difference and we should have had more explanation.

* Chris makes an extra everything because Takashi is always so perfect. This turns out to be pretty significant – he has to borrow another egg from Takashi, but then later gives Takashi his extra piece of bacon because somehow Takashi (maybe forgetting that there was an extra judge this time?) ended up a piece short. Chris says he wants to win on merit, not technicalities, which I fully respect while recognizing that this would probably never happen on the regular Top Chef. It’s easier to be altruistic when you’re already among the top people in your profession.

* Chris’ dish is his take on bacon and eggs, with a “cal-mex” twist, including a corn and julienned jalapeño slaw and a wedge of avocado. Everyone says his eggs are cooked perfectly, while Sugar Ray praises Chris’ hand speed – which I thought was a pretty good insight, something a chef might not necessarily notice but a man who lived (and could have died) by hand speed would pick up on immediately.

* Takashi makes a bacon steak with caramelized figs, dried apricots, dates, orange, and fennel salad, Kerry loves the mushrooms, which somehow weren’t mentioned in the original description; I can’t believe how many things Takashi managed to cook in twenty minutes on that small station. Despite that, Chris wins and advances to the finals.

* Lorena talks about putting Patricia in her place. Their secret ingredient is also bacon.

* Patricia, who cuts her vegetables like she’s meditating with them, snipes at Lorena’s loud cutting technique; I agree, as Lorena’s method, which involves lifting the entire knife from the board and hacking quickly at the vegetables, is dangerous. I cut the way Patricia does, balancing one part of the knife on the board and rocking it to cut. Patricia finishes early and starts cleaning up her station, which might be showing off for someone else but seems to just be Patricia’s personality.

* Patricia makes a “BLT,” a bacon, leek, and tomato salad, served slightly warm. Jane loves balance of the favors, James says the leek reduction is “piercingly sour,” Kerry says it really reminded him of a BLT, and Sugar ray says it was amazing. After the judging I felt like I still had no clue what it tasted like.

* Lorena makes a potato and bacon chowder with corn and bacon soffrito. Jane says the bacon got a little lost, but loved the texture and creaminess.

* Winner: Lorena. How did she win by deemphasizing the main ingredient? Either Jane’s comment was an isolated opinion, or the criteria changed. Bacon should be the star if it’s the secret ingredient … or even if it’s not. So my bottom two ranked chefs (ranked from my living room) are both guaranteed to advance, while chefs #2 and #3 have to fight to avoid elimination.

* Finals: Chris and Lorena get sugar as their secret ingredient. This is a huge disadvantage for meat-guy Chris, who makes a zabaglione with summer fruit. Zabaglione is a sweet warm custard of eggs, sugar, and usually Marsala wine, typically served with berries. It’s cooked slowly over a double boiler and the chef must whisk it constantly to avoid having any part of the eggs scramble because it stayed in contact with the hot bowl too long.

* Lorena backs into a three-item dish, making a flourless chocolate cake that doesn’t seem to be cooking fast enough, so she makes a dulce de leche sauce and serves it with caramelized walnuts and seared (and thus also caramelized) pineapple. Patricia and Takashi think making the chocolate cake was foolhardy, but they end up cooking correctly so Lorena serves everything.

* Chris’ dish gets dinged for a touch too much salt, but really, Lorena won this because she made three things and they were all very good. That’s $10K for her charity.

* Patricia and Takashi battle to avoid elimination. Secret ingredient: chicken livers. Patricia makes a warm asparagus salad with chicken liver and prosciutto, James complains – really, his voice can’t merely criticize, but always complains, almost whining – that his liver was undercooked, while Jane says it was perfect and Krista liked the clean pure favors of the dish.

* Takashi sears his livers and serves them with crispy prosciutto strips and pickled red cabbage. Jane praises the combination of textures and the aesthetic appeal of the dish.

* Patricia wins, so Takashi ends up eliminated. Takashi had already won $20K for his charity, so while I would have preferred to see Kerry go, it was a pretty successful run for him. Chris points out that Takashi cooks “better French food than the Frenchies.” I still say Chris and Patricia make the finals, but with Takashi gone I’ll go with Lorena over Kerry for the third spot.

Today’s Klawchat transcript is up. Still waiting on that blog post I mentioned on the podcast.

This episode might have had the worst first half and best second half of the season for me, although I had the rare personal connection to the elimination challenge to increase its appeal to me.

* Quickfire: Make an ‘aphrodisiac’ dish. Guest judge is something named Dita Von Teese and the winner gets $5k and immunity. This challenge seems designed to embarrass multiple people involved.

* Really, Art, no one cares about your dreams, and no one thinks you’re psychic because you dreamed about chocolate.

* Patricia referring to “hoochie mama outfits” in her obviously-scripted description of who Dita Von Teese is – are we really supposed to think she’s up on the biggest celebrities in the burlesque scene – was another highlight in a season of classic chef quotes, followed later by her “bend over, baby!” during judging.

* Blenders are hitting the floor all over this place. I haven’t seen this much shattered glass since I watched the first season of Breaking Bad.

* Art makes floating islands (large meringues floating in a pool of chocolate sauce) and starts tossing around bad jokes about breasts. Also, did you know he’s gay?

* Lorena keeps talking about sexy. She brings the sexy, she puts the sexy in her food, she has all the sexy on the plate, even Prince thinks she says “sexy” too much.

* Awful Chris makes seared foie gras with fig and champagne sauce. Of course he does. And of course it’s awesome.

* Seriously chefs, Von Teese is just not that hot. I had no idea who she was before this show – apparently she was briefly married to Marilyn Manson, which says a lot right there – but found her mostly sad. The forced double (or sometimes single) entendres, the pouty expressions, the fake breasts … I don’t know what happened to that woman when she was younger, but the whole act screamed “bad self-esteem” to me. Meanwhile, Curtis, who is wearing more makeup than Von Teese is, can’t stop blushing and ends up completely tongue-tied.

* The bottom two: Art’s, which looked like a mess but also suffered because von Teese doesn’t like chocolate that much (so why was it offered as a star ingredient?); and Lorena’s, which von Teese loved but said wasn’t sexy, sort of like The Black Album.

* Favorites: Kerry’s seared tuna with uni, soy, and aromatics, because uni are gonads or something; and Takashi’s chilled oyster with sea urchin and yuzu truffle vinaigrette, which was “slippery and sexy and adventurous.” Takashi wins for a dish that apparently had the texture of a vagina. That’s basically what they said, right?

* Elimination challenge: Out comes Saipan Chutima, chef/owner of perhaps the best Thai restaurant in the United States, Lotus of Siam, which I’ve visited three times and reviewed here. The chefs are asked to put their own spins on classic Thai dishes and will work as one team to open a restaurant in the TC kitchens, each producing one dish while collaborating on service. They’ll dine at Lotus of Siam to prepare.

* The chefs all seem to agree that this challenge is a bit ridiculous between the cuisine and the time to open a place; I don’t doubt the validity of their complaint, but since they’re not cooking live bugs this year, I think they kind of got off easy.

* One dish comes out with pork blood, so Awful Chris proposes to Saipan on the spot, ignoring the fact that her daughter Penny is the attractive one. Meanwhile, Lorena is studying the dishes like a scientist, poking and prodding; if someone had put a live ingredient on one of her plates to move when she poked it, she might have hit the ceiling.

* They go shopping in two stores and once again can’t coordinate to save their lives. Too many alphas. Awful Chris probably shouldn’t be the translator, either.

* Patricia is full of quips this week, saying to Art after he tosses a whole bird at her, “Come on, that was a girl’s throw!” She’s making seared duck breast with masaman curry, grilled eggplant, and green pineapple, then later decides to tear Lorena a new one for using half of the twelve burners. Assuming that was as out of nowhere as it seemed on TV, Lorena had a right to be pretty hacked off at Patricia for that one.

* Meanwhile, Kerry turns expediting into rocket science, mumbling about a fake ticket and confusing the hell out of the chefs working the line. When Awful Chris eventually takes over so Kerry can cook his own dish, he starts expediting like he means it.

* Lorena offers her take on tom kha gai with a pisco chicken soup with galangal, coconut, lime, and cilantro – the judges mostly loved it aside from the garnish, which Grubby Alan said wasn’t edible, and a later complaint that Lorena didn’t poach her chicken in the flavored broth, which seems like a more serious error to me.

* Takashi does a yellow curry with crispy fried noodles. Penny loved the flavors, while Saipan, who suddenly looks like someone just offered her a plate of rotten onions, is unimpressed. Perhaps asking chefs to make versions of Saipan’s dishes for Saipan wasn’t such a hot idea.

* Next course: Awful Chris does his take on beef larb, making a tartare version with 21-day aged sirloin and using most of the same ingredients in larb. Francis particularly liked it, although he felt the flavors were a little understated, to which Awful Chris responds that he wanted the beef flavor to come through most strongly. Saipan is unimpressed and says her two-year-old grandson puts better larb in his diaper.

* Art kind of ignores the challenge, which I’m sure is okay because did you know he lost a lot of weight? His cashew-crusted chicken and crispy rice salad with lemongrass-lime vinaigrette gets mehs all around. Apparently he didn’t grind the nuts enough and I’ll just let that one sit there for you all.

* Final course: Kerry is cooking too slowly, so Patricia ends up tossing the dishes she’d prepared for the judges’ table and firing new duck breasts so theirs will be ready at close to the same time. Unfortunately, she undercooks the new breasts, and James even sends his back to ask for a new one. Meanwhile, Kerry gets high marks for his braised pork belly with mustard greens, Thai spices, and a taro root purée, for which even Saipan offers a grunt of praise.

* Afterwards, Patricia smokes Kerry with a sarcastic “thank you,” and he genuinely feels bad about the whole thing. I think Patricia’s response to stress or anger is to let it all out at once, after which she feels better because the emotion is gone – but she’s oblivious to the effect that her lashing out has on the people around her, which can be lasting. Her dish gets some of the lowest marks of all during judging.

* Aside: The service might have been a little slow, but did anyone else think the comments from the diners on the slowness of the service felt forced, or even scripted? If you’re getting a free meal from these chefs, are you really complaining that your entrees are taking twenty minutes to arrive?

* Back to judging, James seems to make the most salient point of all, that the signature flavors of Thai cuisine (let alone the northern Thai cuisine of Lotus of Siam) were missing. I think he was about to say the chefs’ output was as authentic as the Thai Chicken Wrap at Panera, but Saipan brandished her Kom Kom vegetable knife and put an end to his comments.

* Top dishes: Chris and Kerry. Chris was more adventurous in concept than Kerry and wins the $10K for the Michael J. Fox Foundation, bringing his winnings to $26K total. Kerry does get praise from Curtis for turning taro, one of Curtis’ least favorite ingredients on the planet, into something not just edible but pleasant.

* Bottom: Lorena, Patricia, and Art. Art’s was kind of bland and boring, so he’s tearing up again (drink). Lorena went for presentation but not function, and the photo of her dish, with a whole red chili pepper on top, is a little odd to look at. Patricia’s curry wasn’t intensely flavored, and of course, she botched the duck.

* Patricia hesitates to say why her duck was off, although she’s trying desperately to telegraph to the judges that someone else made her screw up. Curtis then aggressively pushes Patricia to throw whoever it is under the bus. She looks at Kerry and more or less guilts him into confessing, so credit to him for owning up to it when, ultimately, she made the choice to serve it when she knew it wasn’t done (which she admitted to Kerry post-judging).

* Elimination: Art. It’ll make for a less interesting kitchen, and perhaps less interesting recaps; he certainly led all the chefs in personality this season. He seems quite understanding and wasn’t thrilled with his dish; I wonder if fatigue plus exasperation at a challenge so far from his comfort zone did him in. Of course, at this point they’re whacking a good chef every week. I kind of hope his prediction that he and new BFF Lorena open a restaurant together comes true. I’d go.

* I’m still looking at Chris, Patricia, and Takashi for the final three, although I fear Patricia is fading.

Today’s Klawchat transcript is up, and I wrote up the Under Armour All-American game for the draft blog.

* Quickfire: Cook for the Indigo Girls, who look old. The B-52s were a weird enough choice, but why the Indigo Girls? They’re judging a group of the best chefs in the country? The challenge is to prepare two related dishes, one with meat, and one vegetarian, with $5K and immunity on the line.

* Takashi tells an interesting story about lacking a fridge in his house while growing up, so they’d get tofu from the “tofu guy” coming by the house. That seems like such an incredible anachronism today … and yet something that we’ve lost too, that kind of contact with our food sources, and the idea of cooking food that was just picked or butchered or in the case of tofu lightly processed.

* Awful Chris, usually the most off the wall of everyone, goes pretty straightforward with a beef bordelaise and a portobello version, both with the same sides. That feels a little like a punt to me – the same dish twice with only one ingredient change? I get substituting portobello – which is just an overgrown cremini and, to my palate, a fairly bland mushroom – for beef, but the mushroom requires different treatment and works with different flavors than the steak does.

* Kerry’s chicken with olives and herb flan with olives looked as boring as hell. Is there a less interesting protein in the kitchen than chicken? I try to cook it as infrequently as possible because unless you marinate it for hours, chicken breast has marginally more flavor than wallpaper paste.

* We get what I think is our first outright failure of the season when Patricia tries to play Beat the Time … and loses, failing to get her broth into her pho bowls in time for judging. At least they allowed her to serve the broth after judging, although I don’t see why, on Masters, they couldn’t just allow her to finish plating after the time while disqualifying her from consideration for the prize?

* Art mentions that he’s from the south. Drink.

* Anyway, the three favorites are Art’s, Takashi’s, and Lorena’s. Art makes two pot pies and his vegetarian version, wild mushroom and arugula with a “Parmesan” and cheddar crust, looked and sounded way better than the regular chicken version with a cheddar biscuit crust, which sounded like something you’d get at Cracker Barrel. My one quibble with Art’s vegetarian version is that it lacks protein, so it’s kind of weak for a main course. I do make pot pies in the winter and usually add some kind of legume, like lima beans, to balance the nutritional content. Lorena goes with arepa dumpling soup with queso and a chicken salad arepa – again with the chicken, but still, arepas rock. Takashi wins with two agedashi tofu (deep-fried tofu cubes) dishes, one with pork and ginger, the other with eggplant and other veg. Obviously I didn’t taste any of these, but I can’t imagine a fried tofu dish coming close to an arepa or a pot pie for pure satisfaction. That’s $15K for Takashi and am-munity per Curtis.

* Elimination challenge: Playmate Holly Madison is having a cocktail pool party and wants a brunch buffet, but with canapé sized dishes and no garlic or onions. Why don’t we just get her views on vaccines too? Chefs have two hours to cook plus an hour to plate the next day.

* Art mentions that he’s gay. Drink.

* Art and Awful Chris are bickering. Drink.

* Thierry is struggling with temperature on the flat top. Note to future Top Chef contestants: Bring an infrared thermometer. I don’t care if you have to smuggle the thing into the kitchen in your underwear. You will be glad you had it.

* To the food. Art makes a turkey burger on a biscuit with a garlic chutney. Holly identifies the garlic as ginger before Curtis sets her straight, so I guess a box of rocks is actually smarter than a pair of cans. Judges love it.

* Thierry makes a croque-madame with bechamel and tomato vodka shooter. Judges can’t figure out how to eat it. The sauce is visibly congealed, almost like melted cheese, and the bread is slightly burned. This was just a poor choice by Thierry – he thought “brunch” but didn’t consider execution. A croque-madame is a croque monsieur with a fried egg on top; he seems to have made a croque-monsieur with a bechamel that he has thickened with eggs, and it’s just a fiasco. That sounds really heavy and disgusting to me, just weight upon weight with no bright flavors.

* Kerry makes a corn and crab fritter with red pepper coulis. Krista’s was slightly underseasoned and slightly overdone, but I do think he had the right brunch vibe with those ingredients.

* Lorena says she “put all the sexy (she has) in this dish.” I’ll take two, then. She makes buñuelos, fried dough balls filled with cheese that I thought were more of a Christmas/New Year’s dish, with fresh berry compote and white chocolate and vanilla sauce. James raves about the custardy texture inside the crisp outer shell. Sounds like Sexychef knows her frying.

* Patricia is massacring her braised pork shoulder and says she can never get “that two handed chopping thing” down. She’s calling this barbecue, which it’s not – there’s no smoke involved. Her pulled pork on toast is a mess; James says the sauce is boring and dull, and the judges all agree the bun was toasted too far in advance and tastes stale. Holly loves the meat. I have no other comment.

* Awful Chris serves a skewer with watermelon, “tuna bacon,” tomatoes, and pistachios, plus some unidentified citrus zest visible on the screen. It’s the most complex dish so far in terms of concept and ingredients. Holly gives it props for being relatively healthful. The criticisms here and at judges’ table strike me as very nitpicky. The flavors may have been slightly unbalanced, but there’s nothing actually wrong with the dish in execution or in the combination of elements.

* Takashi makes a sheep’s milk yogurt panna cotta with fresh berry compote and almonds. One of the guests doesn’t know what a panna cotta is, but knows that the fruit is in a compote. All righty then.

* Art mentions the weight loss. Drink.

* James is undressing and/or ogling the various (apparently waxed?) young men around the pool. Had Curtis done the same with some of the ladies, this would have been offensive, right? I don’t care what team you play for; let’s just treat everyone equally.

* Judges’ table: The favorite dishes are from Takashi, Art, Lorena, and Kerry. Apparently Holly said off camera (or pre-editing) that she liked Art’s dish even with the garlic. The biggest raves seem to be for Lorena’s and she wins $10K for the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, giving her $15K so far.

* The bottom three are Thierry, Patricia, and Chris. Thierry’s sauce thickened after leaving the kitchen and the toast was burned. James says pulled pork (Patricia’s) should be fine and feathery in texture, but I disagree – that’s Carolina-style and I find it unpleasant and stringy. Properly smoked meat should still have some of its meaty characteristics yet can be served in larger chunks because the meat itself is tender from the long, slow smoking process. Awful Chris’ dish didn’t resonate with the audience, and the exhibitionist said it was overspiced. Was the challenge to please the non-discriminating pool crowd or the judges? Krista points out that his dish had soft and chewy textures but no crunchy element, which is the only really legitimate criticism I hear on this.

* Elimination: Thierry leaves. I thought Patricia would go based on the comments, but I also think she has a better chance to win the whole thing, so I’m glad she stayed. Thierry’s concept just wasn’t right for the setting. He says, “The chef in the hat is leaving” while acknowledging that he “was totally on the wrong planet” with trying to make a croque-whatever for outdoor, small-bite service.

Thursday’s Klawchat transcript is up, and I wrote a column looking at hypothetical ballots for the five awards on which I’m not voting this year.

* Quickfire: Make a salad in eight minutes. I like this – making good salads is hard, much more than just throwing a bunch of leaves in a bowl. The prize is $5,000 and immunity.

* Patricia avoids the mad rush to the giant salad bar – and am I wrong to look at that and assume that it is covered with germs! – and focuses on the dressing first, going for the best-quality oils and vinegars in the pantry. One, I just generally think she’s really smart, more methodical than most chefs I’ve seen on any iteration of Top Chef. And two, this is the opposite of how most people, even most non-high-end restaurants, think about salads, right? If you make your own, you spend more time picking out the vegetables than you do considering the dressing. We’re lucky to live near an olive grove that presses its own high-quality oil, the Queen Creek Olive Mill, and I always have a bottle of their EVOO in the house, which means I don’t buy prefab dressings any more. Three parts EVOO, 1 part fresh lemon juice, a dash of Dijon mustard (for flavor and emulsifaction), salt and pepper to taste, and you’ve got a dressing to blow away anything that comes in a bottle for $5.

* Awful Chris says that despite being a meat guy, he spends more on produce than anything else at his restaurant.

* The B-52s are guest judges, which would be incredibly cool if this was 1988. Apparently it’s well-known that they’re vegetarians, but that wasn’t exactly the first thing I thought of when I saw them come out on stage. Fred Schneider seems extremely negative, a possible side effect of the producers raising him from the dead for this challenge. He’s also wearing sunglasses inside; he should have just popped his collar for the full effect.

* The three top dishes were Kerry’s salade rousse with yogurt dressing, Chapeau Guy’s blueberry salad with beets and baby arugula, and Lorena’s grilled cauliflower – the only dish that involved a cooked ingredient. They also seemed to like Patricia’s chopped salad with yuzu vinaigrette, largely for including those cheap crunchy Asian noodles. Lorena wins the $5K for her charity, Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which makes perfect sense for a woman who has sold her soul to Taco Bell.

* Please tell Curtis the word is not “AM-munity.”

* I don’t know what was the more shocking revelation of this episode: That Art has lost over 100 pounds in the last two years, or that he’s gay. Really, I can’t believe he kept this stuff from us for this entire season. I have a sneaking suspicion he’s also from the South but is still in denial about it.

* Also, I seriously hope Clark doesn’t prepare ingredients in the same bowl he used to cut his own hair.

* Elimination challenge: The Chairwoman of the Hualapai Tribal Council has invited the chefs to use eight ingredients native to their land and significant in their tribe’s culinary traditions in four dishes cooked outside by the rim of the Grand Canyon. The view is spectacular, as it’s such a grand … canyon.

* As it turns out, most of the ingredients are pretty straightforward, with only two real exceptions – prickly pear and banana yucca, which is actually a fruit rather than a root vegetable. I’ve never cooked with either, but I’ve had prickly pear in a number of things, including lemonade at the aforementioned Olive Mill (I recommend it half-and-half with their iced tea, a “Prickly Palmer” if you will … or if you won’t), and it brings both great flavor and color.

* The chefs are paired up at random into teams of two, each using one protein and one vegetable: Prickly pear with quail, banana yucca with venison, squash with rabbit, and corn with beef. They get two hours to cook and the meal will be served family style.

* Takashi is apparently afraid of heights, and then has to go in a helicopter and walk out on a glass-bottomed viewing walkway over the Canyon. Get thee some Xanax, Takashi.

* Anyone else notice from the helicopter shots how low Lake Mead is? The level of conservation awareness out here in Arizona is absolutely embarrassing. Drought or no drought, we live in a fucking desert. Stop putting grass on your damn lawns, people.

* It starts raining as they cook, although it never quite got to the level of pouring, and I wasn’t sure if the rain was causing issues with their grills or if the issue was wind, which is kind of a chronic thing all over Arizona as far as I can tell. Awful Chris repurposes his grill to create hot cooking surfaces with cast-iron planchas, then allows other chefs to use them as well, which is how you know you’re watching Masters. In the regular edition, one chef would have brained another with one of those surfaces, and on Desserts they’d still be arguing over who put out the fire.

* Chapeau Guy, working with Takashi, ends up pitting and stuffing the banana yucca, then breading and deep-frying them. It turns out he was also supposed to peel them, but I’m not sure how he would have known that ahead of time, since he’d never so much as heard of the ingredient before.

* Clark and Kerry disagree over presentation, and Clark just backs down. That nearly always foreshadows the chef getting eliminated.

* Serving: Art and Lorena go first and take so long to explain their dish that Lake Mead’s level dropped another two feet by the time they say what’s on the plates – quail with prickly pear sauce and slaw, corn dressing, peaches, and mint. They also basted the quail with the sauce while it cooked but didn’t butterfly or otherwise break it down to make it easier to eat. I love quail but it is a ton of work to get the meat off that little skeleton. Anyway, the quail also wasn’t cooked evenly, which seems to be a bigger problem.

* Kerry and Clark serve a beef filet with a raw sage pistou, grilled corn, bacon, tomatoes, and chili. Their beef is grey, as they never got their grill hot enough to sear it, so it looks boiled and gets none of the flavors that come from the Maillard reactions (what happens when you expose proteins to high heat, often mislabeled “caramelization”). Hualapai cooking doesn’t include much chili, but the tribe members at the table seem to enjoy its inclusion. However, every item on the dish is soft, so there’s no texture contrast, and this sounds really unadventurous overall. It’s steak and corn.

* Takashi and Chapeau Guy serve grilled venison and fried banana yucca cake with braised figs. This seems to get the highest marks and I thought sounded the best of the four dishes – if I saw all four on a menu, I’d probably order this one. Francis Lam compliments the mixture of textures in this dish, and the sugar in the figs makes up for the bitterness of the banana yucca skin.

* Patricia and Awful Chris serve “rabbit loin and its bits” with acorn squash and red berry and piñon agrodolce. They used the entire animal, which appeals to me as my own philosophy of the ethics of eating meat has evolved over the years – in particular, that there’s some obligation to eat more of the parts of any animal you consume than we typically do in this country. That’s been an adventure for me as someone who did not grow up eating things like marrow or gribiche, and I admit I still struggle a little with some organ meats (heart in particular due to its texture), but I’ve made the choice to change my eating habits.

* How is Aunt Inez, the oldest of the Hualapai at the dinner table, eating all this food with one tooth?

* Judges’ table: Curtis, Ruth, James, and Francis are all trying to outdo themselves with profound statements on the setting, the tribe’s traditions, the spiritual feeling of the meal, threatening to turn the whole thing into an Insufferable Feast.

* Judges’ table: Patricia/Awful Chris and Takashi/Chapeau Guy are on top. Chris and Patricia seemed to get the spirit of the challenge more, especially by using the entire rabbit, but Takashi and Chapeau Guy win and split the $10,000 prize. Thierry remarks that he won with an ingredient he’d never used before, of which he seems rightfully proud.

* Elimination: Lorena’s cole slaw wasn’t great but everyone loved the prickly pear sauce. Art split some quail but eventually chose to serve them whole because he didn’t want to lose the presentation. Kerry said getting a sear on the beef was hard. Their sage pistou got raves, but the second sauce, a compound butter with berries, separated on the plate. Clark made a corn ragout to “honor the cuisine of the region, “ then says he didn’t want to ruin the dish by making something that competed with Kerry’s beef, but that’s just a flaw in conception – the two didn’t work together to build a cohesive offering. Clark ends up eliminated, so the great tragedy they tried to show us last week of Mark’s separation from his partner lasted just a few days. Clark’s charity, Outright Lewiston, which helps LGBT kids in the community where his and Mark’s restaurant is, receives a donation as well.

* I think Patricia and Awful Chris are pretty clearly the top two chefs here, and have been from the start, with Takashi probably third. I’d be surprised if the winner isn’t one of the first two.

Through three episodes of this season of Top Chef Masters, I feel like they’ve toned down some of the absurdity of the previous season, at least in terms of the challenges. The “twists” in this episode weren’t outlandish – they forced the chefs to think differently, or maybe push themselves into an area where they were less comfortable, but there was nothing this week that screamed “gimmick” to me.

* Quickfire: Use at least one of the proteins (fish and shellfish) on display … without heat. In other words, a crudo challenge. Chris jokes that Takashi, as an expert in sushi and sashim, had an advantage. The prize is $5000 plus immunity, and the chefs have just 20 minutes since they’re not cooking. The guest judge was Brian Boitano, spurring the question of what he would do.

* Love Kerry’s charity, City Harvest, which takes leftover food from restaurants to food pantries – the quantity of food we waste in this country, neither given to people who need it nor composted, is appalling.

* One thing I didn’t follow: Was the lobster raw? I have eaten raw shellfish, but I can’t say I’m crazy about it, and growing up on Long Island where pollution kept warnings about eating raw oysters in the news on a regular basis has instilled a fairly strong fear of raw shellfish in me.

* Art’s avocado soup looked disgusting, like discolored mashed potatoes, or, well, baby vomit. The color also reminded me of the appliance set my parents had in the late 1970s, with a linoleum floor to match. That ain’t comin’ back in style any time soon.

* After some initial panic, it looked like the chefs actually enjoyed this challenge; why wouldn’t they, since nearly every high-end restaurant offers some sort of raw fish preparation on its menu?

* Patricia praised Boitano as the chefs watched the judging for his intelligent commentary about their food, and I’d agree. This almost makes up for the fact that he is one of the most boring figure skaters who has ever put on blades.

* Thierry’s gooey duck … excuse me, geoduck earns demerits for a briny/salty flavor. I have no other comment than “gooey duck.”

* Boitano’s idea of awarding medals when he names the top three was a little corny, but at least he can sell a joke properly rather than beating into the ground (which Curtis threatened to do, repeatedly). Bronze went to Mark’s maine lobster with heirloom tomato salad. Silver went to Chris’ one-bite mackerel fra diavolo. Gold went to Takashi for aji sashimi with daikon and apple, a fish Brian had never tried before. Takashi’s charity is American Red Cross disaster relief, and he’s sending his winnings to their rebuilding efforts in Japan. Given how one tragedy is displaced from the headlines by the next one, I think most of us are probably guilty of forgetting how much cleanup and reconstruction remains for the areas of Japan affected by last year’s earthquake and tsunami.

(Aside: I was in Long Beach earlier this week for the very modest 4.4 earthquake that had its epicenter in Yorba Linda. I’ve been through two or three lesser earthquakes before, but you have never seen me move as I did when this one hit, from the bed to the window to see exactly how much I needed to panic.)

* Elimination challenge: Teppanyaki. The chefs seem … displeased, but really, did they expect something easy? At least they’re not cooking with their right wrists strapped to their left ankles, which was an actual challenge in season 3 and succeeded in taking out four chefs in one episode.

* Takashi has never cooked on a teppan, then says it looks easy but isn’t easy at all, so you can try to figure out how he knows it’s not easy. As it turns out, none of the nine has cooked on a teppan before. The diners include four former competitors on Top Chef Masters.

* Teams are selected at random. Chris and Art end up on the same team – and the producers pop champagne corks. Prize is $10,000.

* Thierry interrupting his grocery shopping to get an in-store massage has to be a top five all-time Top Chef moment, right? He didn’t even show a shred of remorse afterwards.

* No one knows the grill temperature, which becomes a recurring problem throughout the episode. No one uses an infrared thermometer? That’s not snark – even I own one. I feel like Alton Brown watched this and just shook his head in disgust, while explaining to his daughter how to make an infrared thermometer from a clothes hanger and a television remote.

* Oh, God, does James Oseland have no mirrors in his house? Was that a gingham necktie? Did he strangle a schoolboy and steal part of his school uniform? Seriously, you’re supposed to be a food expert. Dress the part, be the part, motherfucker.

* Krista Simmons is replaced this week by Francis Lam. Never heard of him.

* To the dishes, most of which looked really good. Mark made Scallops and bok choy and pickled mushrooms with dipping sauce. Immediately evident that didn’t challenge himself. The dish looked very simple, and the judges weren’t wowed. You know right away he’s in trouble.

* Kerry made a Korean dish, shrimp with eggplant and herb salad and gochujang sauce (made with chili and red bean paste). Ruth’s shrimp was overcooked, also a bad sign.

* Lorena: Fried rice with kaffir/orange zest infused chicken, cilantro, and a sauce of soy, guava, and orange juice. It’s very colorful, but it’s fried rice – is that likely to win anything on Top Chef? Her guava starts to burn because the center of the teppan is very hot, and no one on this team tasted their food for salt, so all three dishes were under-seasoned.

* Team two starts with Takashi, who made Calamari with okonomiyake, a savory Japanese pancake (first place I had one? Epcot), along with a sweet soy sauce. Takashi struggles with time, so Patricia jumps in to help, telling the diners “I’m not really here.” Takashi knew when preparing the batter that he had the wrong kind of flour, and the diners comment right away that the texture was off.

* Clark struggles with grill temperature as well, making lobster with orange-soy vinaigrette, a dish that spurs disagreement among the diners over how well it was cooked.

* Patricia makes kalbi in a lettuce wrap with her own gochujang. Mary Sue thought the meat needed more marinade, but in general this earned high marks, especially for her lettuce wrap, which only makes me think “P.F. Chang’s.”

* Team three: Chris is bossing Art around in the kitchen; I don’t think the editors are responsible for this. Thierry just mocks them (“Hey, girls…”), which is really all he can do, but also, he was Zen because he’d just had a massage, man.

* The interesting bit here is that this team avoided Asian flavors entirely. Art makes cheese grits cakes with two tomato-based dressings, marinated grilled shrimp, and a watermelon salad. The cakes aren’t staying together – but with polenta those messy ones can be great because they brown more, since you’ve increased the surface area. Art is also the first one to put on a real show, pouring some Jack Daniels over the shrimp and lighting it.

* Chris gets some eye-rolls from the judges for the way he browbeats Art – but I think Art played the victim a little here too. Chris’ dish is a take on clam chowder, although I don’t think I heard much about this after he said “seared pork belly in duck fat.” Skip the soup and serve that, pal. Art misplaces Chris’ mandoline and Chris loses it to the point where Thierry even seems shocked.

* Thierry makes crepes, then struggles with the hot grill and uneven temperatures across the surface. I think crepes were a good idea, but several of the chefs approached it like it was a traditional flat-top, which it’s clearly not (among other things, that would risk burning the diners). He finessed the uneven cooking with his charm, or maybe just the accent, and really I can deal with an overcooked crepe when it’s served with flambeed pears, almond cream, and pear butter.

* Judges’ table: Team three, Art/Chris/Thierry wins. They seem shocked, but they didn’t know anything about the other teams’ troubles. Winning chef is Art, making a nice comeback from last week’s fallen cake. He won points for the flambe – and $10K for Common Threads, a charity that teaches low-income kids to cook and understand nutrition. That feels like a great cause that might struggle to raise funds because it’s not sexy and its goals seem modest, even though modest goals are better because you can actually achieve them.

* Elimination: Team one, Mark/Kerry/Lorena. Lorena calls the teppan “the plancha,” which is either funny or a little playing for the judges.” Ruth says the whole team’s food was under-seasoned. Francis says Kerry’s flavors didn’t come together. Mark’s dish was indeed too safe. Lorena gets praised for working the teppan, but Ruth saw some of the food burn, and hers was also underseasoned.

* Mark goes home – dish was not ambitious, and the flavors didn’t click. He seems to understand that he took a risk by not taking a risk. Equality Maine gets a donation. The cameras keep showing Clark as Mark says his goodbyes. I’m sure he was upset, but it’s not like they broke up. They’ll be apart for what, a few days? It’s not half as tragic as the fact that they can’t legally marry. Let’s focus here.

* Final three prediction: Chris and Patricia seem way ahead of the others, at least in terms of working within the confines of the challenges. Takashi is probably the next most skilled, but the judges seem to really like Lorena’s way of utilizing Latin flavors in unexpected places, so I’ll give her the edge.

Today’s Klawchat transcript was pretty prospect-heavy. Today’s podcast has me and Dave Schoenfield talking about the Angels/Rangers game, Mike Olt, and sophomore slumps, among other topics.

* No Quickfire this week, as the entire show is built around an elimination challenge that involves catering the wedding of a couple who’ve had both tragedy – the death of the groom’s sister/maid of honor in a car accident – and horrible luck – their planned venue “disappearing” with some of their deposit. The chefs look genuinely nervous about the challenge of putting together an entire wedding menu in one day, which raises the question: With real-life consequences involved for the bride and groom, why not give the chefs more time than normal to ensure a better result?

* The bride wants a “many-tiered cake,” which made me wonder if the producers encouraged the couple to be demanding, or at least max out their demands, to the chefs. I don’t think that’s unfair at all, but if I were in that groom’s shoes, I’d probably be so thrilled that these phenomenal chefs were catering my wedding (presumably at no cost to me) I’d be saying “whatever you want to do is fine with me.”

* Some of the chefs’ stories of their own weddings were pretty funny – Chris Cosentino cooking the food for his own wedding, which probably should have had led to him being committed, or Thierry saying he had to have a croquembouche at his wedding because that’s the dish that made his wife first fall in love with him.

* You couldn’t do this challenge on regular Top Chef because it requires so much cooperation between erstwhile competitors. To their credit, there’s barely a whiff of competition either at the grocery store or in the kitchen: chefs are moving all over the place to help each other get their dishes done and plated. It was kind of amazing to see chefs at this level receiving orders barked by their peers and executing them without complaint or hesitation.

Half full cart, with most of the crab , left at seafood counter. How does that happen? Kerry doesn’t blame anyone but himself, though

* Ah, Art. After more sniping with Chris, Art is really coming off as a prima donna; Chris voices patience in the confessional shots, but in the kitchen he’s more confrontational with Art, who probably had it coming but seems to get more sour the more that Chris pushes him. Meanwhile, Curtis says Art was “gutsy” to volunteer to do the cake, while Art has to tell us fifty times that he did the cake for Lady Gaga’s birthday party.

* Speaking of Curtis, his one-off shots talking to the camera are useless. He’s not informative; he’s recapping what we just saw, but with an accent.

* After yesterday’s absurd “eat fried chicken if you don’t believe in the 14th Amendment” event, the timing of Mark’s comments about marriage equality – he and Clark have been together for 25 years, but can’t get married in Maine because heterosexual marriages would spontaneously combust from Portland to Presque Isle – couldn’t have been more perfect. Mark’s charity is Equality Maine, which campaigns for equal rights for Maine’s LGBT community.

* As for Clark, don’t move his cheese.

* Really, James? That’s the best jacket you could find for a wedding? Goodwill wouldn’t accept that blazer if you tried to donate it to them.

* The chefs provide five small dishes for the cocktail hour. Thierry makes a Filipino blood soup (I believe that’s dinuguan). Clark does barbecued duck with sirloin Szechuan sauce in lettuce with Asian herbs. Kerry, who had panicked earlier when they left one of the grocery carts at the fish counter and left him with maybe half of the crab he expected to have, does a successful corn panna cotta with crab salad and grilled okra. Patricia does a one-bite canape of pickled mackerel, young coconut, herbs, and chilies, served on a spoon; Oseland later refers to it as a “ceviche,” so the pickling may have been rapid. Takashi’s dish looked the best, with braised pork belly that was a deep amber color, served with pickled daikon and a steamed bun, like a deconstructed baozi.

* For the mains, Debbie’s green papaya salad concept degenerated into a grilled lettuce dish that James said was one of the “weirder things” he’d ever eaten. Even as Kerry was grilling the greens, you could see on his face that he thought it was bizarre, and I know of no scientific validity to her argument that grilling them “adds acidity.” I’ve grilled radicchio, which makes it taste smoky but doesn’t add acid, and, more importantly, doesn’t make the thing any less bitter.

* Mark made a sesame-coated salmon that did not cook evenly, with the judges receiving raw fish but the bride getting a perfectly cooked one. Chris does a stunning banana leaf-braised pork with bitter greens and aioli and adobo sauces. In a related story, I need to get to San Francisco.

* Dessert: Art realized early on that his icing was too soft, foreshadowing eventual disaster that required him to dismantle and reconstruct the cake, only to have it leaning when he brought it out for service. But what I didn’t get about his “inside-out pineapple upside-down cake” was why he didn’t do anything to caramelize the pineapples first – that’s the best part of a pineapple upside-down cake, isn’t it? Grill them, fry them in a little butter, whatever, just get them to a nice golden brown. Lorena’s vanilla leche flan with toasted coconut gets kind of ignored in all the brouhaha over the slouching cake.

* Judges’ table: Takashi, Patricia, and Chris (again) are on top. Patricia wins with the one bite dish, another $10K for Heifer, up to $16K total. I didn’t see any surprises here.

* Elimination: Mark, Debbie, and Art. No surprises here either. Krista just starts rubbing it in to Art, talking about how important the cake is to a bride. What compassion – Art already looked like he wanted to die before that. Otherwise, the judges aren’t really responding to the chefs’ comments, which I understand given who’s standing there, but a little back-and-forth would be fine.

* I’ve been killing James so far, but his criticism of Debbie’s dish was great. He explained very specifically what a green papaya or mango salad should have, what elements and flavors make it great, and how her reconception fell short. We need more of that from him, and less of him looking like he’d rather be home playing with 37 of his 83 cats.

* Debbie is eliminated, which fits; of the bottom three, she was the only one with a bad concept and bad execution, where the other two primarily failed to execute.

Next week’s recap will probably be a day late, as I’m headed to the Area Code Games in Long Beach and may not see the show until early Friday.

New post for Insiders today with a scouting report on Danny Hultzen. I also broke down the Zack Greinke trade on Friday.

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I’ll say up front that I greatly prefer the regular version of Top Chef to what I saw of Top Chef Masters in season three, which included some fairly absurd challenges (cooking with live bugs?) and often felt, to me, disrespectful to chefs who by and large have already achieved substantial success in the field. The higher level of professionalism on Masters also means there’s less opportunity for snark, mostly because we don’t get the same silly drama behind the scenes. That said, I just made Mary Sue Milliken’s quinoa fritters again last night, so I’m going to watch this season of Masters if only because I’m hoping to learn something new.

As for the chefs … I don’t think I’ve eaten at any of their restaurants, although I’m familiar with Chris Cosentino and am dying to get to one of his places – I just haven’t been in San Francisco proper in five years. Cosentino does have a stand in LA’s new Umamicatessan, called PIGG, and I’m sure you can figure out what they serve.

To the episode:

* Quickfire: The blackjack setup, where two-chef teams were each dealt two ingredient cards and had to incorporate both into a single dish, was cheesy and took up way too much time. They should have let chefs double down, taking a third ingredient for double the prize money.

* Speaking of those ingredients … bologna? That’s back to disrespecting the chefs. There were eleven ingredients that would all have fit well on a haute cuisine menu, and then there was O-s-c-a-r. Also, I haven’t eaten bologna in thirty years. It’s what I imagine human flesh might taste like.

* Dry aged beef and whole catfish seems like the most challenging combination – the chefs have to work with two proteins, each of which should be the star of the dish, and as it turns out they have to break the fish down in the allotted time of 15 minutes.

* Clark Frasier complains that quinoa doesn’t go with langoustine. Quinoa goes with just about everything – it has little taste of its own but takes dressings, sauces, and aromatics really well. His team’s dish ends up a mess, looking like someone spat the candied/popped quinoa on the langoustine.

* Duck breast and peaches seemed like the best combo of ingredients – fruit sauces, chutneys, and gastriques all work so well with duck – but lost to the beef and catfish. We shouldn’t be shocked that Cosentino would be good with proteins, I suppose.

* Random thought: Do chefs like these worry that the editing will make them look like doofuses? We get complaints from chefs in just about every season that the editing required to squeeze the two challenges into 44 minutes often makes them look bad (or dumb, or mean), so does that also apply to these chefs? We already have Art Smith carping about Cosentino’s youth and inexperience, which I found incredibly catty – who cares how old a chef is if he can really cook? Does your food somehow taste better if you’re on the far side of 40? And does Art not remember the cocky-as-all-hell Michael Voltaggio?

* Elimination challenge: As twists go, these individual lottery tickets, with small awards or penalties (like losing 30 minutes of cooking time) are pretty harmless, nowhere near as bad as the team-wide tickets.

* Missy Robbins cut a deep cash into one of her little fingers on a mandolin and ends up leaving the show; she needed a skin graft and couldn’t wield a knife for one or two months.

* I love Thierry Rautureau discussing the BOOfay. Speaking of Thierry, he’s back for a second go-round; he appeared on season 2 of Masters under the previous format, where he failed to advance beyond the preliminary round.

* Art: “I cook for billionaires.” Does he have “Chef to the 1%” T-shirts for sale?

* The twists from those gold team-wide tickets: Each of the two teams’ assigned cuisines – one Mexican, one Indian – is revealed after their initial shopping trip. Team Mexican sends Art, who looked about as lost in the supermarket as I’d be in an auto-parts store, on the initial trip, while Team Indian chooses to make do with what they’ve got.

* The dishes … Patricia’s cornmeal pancake with chicken and beef adobo and peach and corn salsa sounded phenomenal; I wasn’t clear whether this was her concept, or her execution of Missy’s concept.

* Lorena’s ceviche ‘tigre de leche’ got mushy because she made it too soon. It amazes me that chefs at this level can make fundamental errors like that – is it the time pressure? I can’t imagine it’s the food knowledge. Anyway, Lorena’s probably the one chef you all know, because you see her face every time you drive by a Taco Bell.

* Clark’s dish – green beans with fried shallots and goat cheese – looked about as Indian as pasta alla carbonara, which, for a challenge in which his team was required to cook an Indian-themed buffet. Excuse me, BOO-fay. Team India scuffled almost across the board; Mark’s curried corn soup with curried flatbread was bland, and the judges made the filling in Takashi shrimp and salmon dumpling sound like spam mousse. The one dish that sounded most appealing here was Thierry’s masala salmon and beef shoulder with spiced mango couscous and lemon-peanut chutney, but that’s also not terribly Indian. (Unfortunately, the recipe omits the couscous, which was much more interesting to me than the proteins.)

* Judges’ table: Unfortunately, the insufferable James Oseland is back at judges’ table; he’s incredibly nitpicky, and even when he says he likes something he looks like someone just slipped a moldy onion under his nose. When your comments on dishes from chefs at this level are so skewed toward the negative, I have to seriously question your palate or your intent. And overall, I think the judges are much less insightful and entertaining than Tom, Hugh, Padma, and Gail. I understand the reluctance to lay into any of the chefs, given their resumes, but I also think the judges are so reserved that they fail to inform us enough about the dishes.

* Chris wins again for his “pork and beans” with pork belly, chorizo, and chickpeas, earning tepid applause from teammates Art and Kerry. That’s now $16K raised for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

* Team Indian gets scolded for missing the target by a subcontinent or two. Seems like they lost because they didn’t shop again or change their dishes enough, so apparently it’s better to send the village idiot back to the store than to send no one at all. Chef Sue Torres of Sueños in Manhattan is sent home for essentially having to cook a cuisine she wasn’t prepared to cook, having shopped for a Mexican dish and failed to adjust it enough after the challenge changed. That’s not a good way to send a lower-case top chef home, is it? I’m hoping future challenges push these chefs to be more innovative, not to leap over more obstacles.

* Final three prediction: I agree with Missy that Chris looks like the favorite. Thierry and Patricia (who did a dish and a half in the elimination challenge, and earned plaudits for both) also seemed strong, although to be fair I don’t think anyone stood out the way that Chris did.