We’re back! Top Chef season 13 has a two-night premiere this week, with part one airing last night and part two airing tonight. The season will have the chefs running all over California, starting in Los Angeles and eventually ending up in San Francisco. I’m a little disappointed that this season didn’t go somewhere new, though; it’s not like the LA/San Fran food scenes need the press.

Since you’re here, and possibly interested in food, may I also point you towards my 2015 gift guide for cooks and my latest cookbook recommendations?

This is a pretty strong group of contestants by their resumes; nearly every contestant is an executive chef, and only one is a sous chef (but at Buddakan NYC, a highly-regarded offshoot of a Philly mainstay).

* The self-intros are usually pretty awful, and we get one right out of the chute when Renée from Kansas City says “I’m the super sassy chef,” causing a lot of eyerolling in the crowd. Is it actually arrogance or just nerves that makes people say dumb things like that when introducing themselves? Hi, I’m Keith, I’m a sportswriter, nice to meet you all, I’m really excited to be here. It’s not that hard. Save the shtick for later.

* Grayson is back! She says she “mentally quit” during season 9 in Texas, when Paul Qui lapped the field anyway. I hope Eric Ripert comes back to pronounce her name “ghray-soh” again. (Speaking of season nine, runner-up Sarah Grueneberg’s new restaurant, Monteverde, just opened last month in Chicago, with house-made pastas and what seem to be reasonable prices for a high-end restaurant in that city.)

* Quickfire: we get two parts, starting with a mise en place race, where each chef gets to pick one task – turning four artichokes, prepping 45 stalks of asparagus, separating 20 eggs, supreming eight oranges, or breaking down five chickens – and must be among the first nine to finish to get to the second stage. I’d say the eggs or chickens would be the easiest. I’ve never turned artichokes but it just looks like a huge pain in the ass.

* Frances, the lone sous chef in the group, says they’re the “bitches” of the executive chefs, but “executive chefs take the credit.”

* Sassy Renée chooses chickens and finishes first; Wesley (executive chef at the Spence, Richard Blais’ old place in Atlanta) also chooses chickens and comes in second.

* Garret calls for a check (meaning he thinks he’s finished), but he has just 19 whole yolks, and can’t seem to get that last one out whole. I’ll defer to any sous chefs in the audience but I didn’t think breaking yolks was that huge of a problem; I usually waste more time trying to get those last few globs of albumin off the yolk instead.

* Anyway, that’s all pretty anticlimactic – mise en place is important but it’s not exactly riveting television – so let’s skip to part two. The nine chefs who advanced split into three teams of three, and each team has 30 minutes to create a dish, but each chef can only cook for ten minutes while the other chefs on the team are blindfolded and can’t communicate with each other. The winning team gets immunity for all three chefs.

* Frances confesses “that the last time I was blindfolded was the first time I met my wife,” so it appears that Grayson will be getting a run for her money in the ribald commentary department.

* Isaac reveals his superhero identity as “Cajun Man, Cajun Man 5000,” which is great, but in a team challenge, when you’re the first chef, should you be making such a narrow dish when two chefs have to follow you and you can’t tell them what you’re doing? Anyway, his nickname reminded me of the ingruous appearance of metal band Powerman 5000 on an episode of Beverly Hills 90210, something I thought I’d dreamed until finding it online maybe fifteen years after it happened.

* The red team is the designated disaster. Jeremy takes over for Jason, can’t figure out where Jason was going with the dish, and ends up putting chicken in the oven where Wesley can’t see or find it. Wesley ends up taking the now half-burned drumsticks that Jason had put on the grill, cutting off the raw halves, and finishing them himself.

* Amar, who hails from the DR, says people make fun of him for loving yellow mustard. I would too. That stuff is vile – it’s like mustard-flavored white vinegar. I have several other mustards in the house at all times but never yellow mustard. Even on the rare occasions when I eat a hot dog, it’s Gulden’s spicy brown over French’s yellow paste every day and twice on Sundays. (Scratch that. Twice on Sundays means heartburn into Monday.)

* The dishes … Green team, which was Carl, Grayson, and Isaac: breaded chicken breast with brown butter, asparagus, and mushroom sauce. Sounds very solid but kind of straightforward.

* Red team: grilled chicken leg with orange, anchovy, and potato. Padma this must be “an appetizer portion of the meal,” and Tom says it’s a “lot of anchovy,” which is never a good thing in any context. Besides, who would even think to serve a fraction of a chicken leg?

* Blue team, which was Renée, Amar, and Frances: sweet and sour chicken with marinated slaw. Padma likes the mint, and overall it seems like this was the most ambitious dish of the three, so they end up winning.

* Over the next three days the chefs will face two elimination challenges, which is how we’re getting two episodes in week one (fine by me). The first one comes at the Dine LA showcase, serving 200 VIP guests including local food critics and bloggers (Murray Chass among the latter, I presume). Chefs can cook whatever they want – “just make a standout dish that lets you shine,” which seems like a fairly clear direction to do go big or go home. The critics will vote on the top five and bottom five, from which the judges will pick the overall winner and loser. Emeril and Gail round out the judges.

* Grayson is at it already, planning to make pork and veal meatballs and saying “I’ve gotten raves about my balls.” I like the saucy humor too (pun intended), but only if the food backs it up.

* Frances is using bitter melon, Momordica charantia, a member of the gourd family and relative of squash, cucumbers, and watermelon, but the only member of the Momordica genus that we eat. As the common name indicates, and as Frances says, “duh, it’s bitter,” which I believe is due to the presence of triterpene saponins in the plant; saponins, which you’ve probably encountered on the exterior of quinoa seeds, are very bitter and provide the plant with a natural defense against predators. I’ve had it once and found the bitterness overwhelming; if I were working with it, I’d want to include a lot of salt, especially as a finishing flavor, to cover some of the receptors that might otherwise grab those bitter compounds. Frances says “for some who try it the first time, they think it’s poisonous,” and I can kind of see why.

* Amar is also making pork meatballs, like Grayson, but his will be spicy and it sounds like they’re non-traditional in just about every way.

* Wesley is blending tomatoes to make tomato water and you can see one of the stickers in the blender, which is kind of disgusting. His station is an absolute mess, which will not endear anyone to Tom, who believes cleanliness is next to codliness in the kitchen.

* Frances and Renee are fast friends after which Grayson points out a slight resemblance between Renee and Frances’ redheaded wife, which I guess would be much funnier if I had the picture to show you. That said, would this joke even have gone over so well ten years ago? Now we’ve got several openly gay, married chefs on the show and it’s unremarkable – as it should be, but I still take it as a good sign of a cultural shift. Their love lives are not our business.

* Garret fires a shot at former Top Chef All-Stars runner-up Mike Isabella, saying he’s “serving one of the worst bastardizations of kind of Italian food in the history of the world.”

* Philip is smoking something over dry grass he grabbed from the ground in the field where they’re serving. That’s weird, I guess, but I can’t say I shared the reaction of one of the other chefs (Marjorie?) who said it was disgusting. I mean, most of your food grows in dirt and, very likely, manure. Humans spent centuries cooking over burned dung. Food is not inherently clean, nor is “clean” quite what it was cracked up to be.

* Now, the many dishes, moving as quickly as I can … Cajun Man 5000: his grandmother’s shrimp and court-bouillon, pronounced “coobiyonh,” gaining good marks all around … Angelina: goat cheese croquette, smoked romesco, caramelized parsnip puree, and a touch of cider vinegar. Padma says there are “too many purees,” while Tom says his croquettes were not that crispy … Garret: Vietnamese chicken brodo, Emeril likes toasted garlic and noodles, but later Padma and Tom get awful versions of the same, with broken noodles and burned garlic chips … Renee: citrus marinated pork tenderloin atop soft polenta; Tom says both are a little underseasoned, and I don’t know why you’d pick the most plain cut of pig for something like this … Kwame, the man we all know and love: spicy romaine and mah haw (minced meat served on pineapple) with shrimp, pork, charred pineapple, and toasted peanuts, with a habanero foam … Amar: spicy sherry-glazed pork belly meatballs, celery root puree, with “everything spice” like you’d find on an everything bagel. This earned raves and I thought it sounded like the best or one of the best dishes, mostly because, you know, it’s pork belly.

* Karen: salmon and apple tartare, with pomegranate pickled cherries and walnuts; I’m not huge on salmon tartare, as raw salmon can carry a nasty parasite and you’d better be dead sure you’re getting the good stuff … Grayson: pork and veal meatballs with spicy tomato sauce, gremolata, and Parmiggiano; Padma is not impressed and Tom calls it “Jersey red sauce,” which is a mortal insult in my book … Carl: spiced carrot soup with turkish spices, garbanzo beans, almonds, and feta, which has great colors and gets high marks … Jeremy: oh, hey, a raw fish dish, never seen that on Top Chef before! He serves a crudo of pacific snapper with kombu gel, lime zest, and chiles; Tom and Padma both love it and say it was smart to go lighter … Wesley: potato salad with mustard, shrimp clams, and ocean herb broth. He tastes it with a spoon that goes back into the food, and now that is actually disgusting. Padma says “if you put a spoon in your mouth don’t put it in my food,” and I wouldn’t have been surprised if Tom had axed him right there, but they didn’t, mostly because they loved the dish itself.

* Philip: selection of different vegetables cooked in different ways, including three colors of cauliflower, all pickled; roasted radish; avocado mousse; red grape; puffed amaranth; and more. Emeril says it’s “new California cuisine,” while Gail justifiably mocks Philip’s man-bun … Giselle: vegan cauliflower almond soup, paired with prosciutto “which is not vegan,” so why call the soup vegan? Just say you thickened it with almond milk and leave it there … Marjorie: lamb tartare with smoked egg yolk and a shaved veg & herb salad; raw meat dishes are almost as cliché here as raw fish … Jason: poached heriloom chicken with salsa apicius (an ancient Roman recipe that probably used fermented small fish), toasted long pepper, caramelized honey, and fish sauce … Chad: tangerine aguachile (a Mexican ceviche) with scallop and shrimp cake, seasoned with ancho chili hash and a little bit of ground grasshopper (yep, that’s what he said … insects are the new black pepper, I guess) … Frances: mung bean soup with yuzu and pickled bitter melon.

* Isaac, Amar, Jeremy, Carl, and Kwame came out on top for critics; the bottom five were Angelina, Renee, Grayson, Garret, and Frances. Tom thought Chad should be on top, while Gail thought Jason should be, and none thought Kwame was really top 5. Tom’s least favorite was Garret, with the same for Padma, while Emeril says he got a different dish. Gail said Angelina’s was the weakest, calling it “forgettable.” Tom criticizes Grayson’s lack of ambition in a dish that was very New York (or, the horror, New Jersey) Italian restaurant.

* Judges’ table: Tom says everyone did really well, with nothing God-awful as they often get in the first elimination challenge. Amar, Jeremy, and Carl were the top three. Emeril tells Carl, “I felt like I was eating at your house,” which would probably have been an insult if he’d said it to Wesley. Tom says Jeremy’s was “predictable” (yes, it was) but a really really good version. Emeril liked Jeremy’s “organization,” after which Padma says, “There were others who should take note of that” while looking daggers at Wesley. Winner: Jeremy. Raw fish wins too often on this show. And if predictable can win here, why is Grayson on the bottom for predictability too?

* Bottom: Angelina, Garret, and Grayson. Angelina’s didn’t seem to push the envelope, while the parsnip didn’t make much sense. I think the execution was worse than they’re letting on here, based on the comments we saw earlier in the show. Padma and Tom loved Garret’s concept, but Garret says he failed to provide the “due vigilance” to make it consistent, which sounds like some xenophobic politician’s talking point on admitting refugees. Grayson’s dish wasn’t interesting, and Gail says it could have come from anyone. Grayson’s pissed off, somewhat justifiably so, although I’m not sure what saying “I’ll put sparkles on it” is supposed to earn her. When Emeril says, “I wanna cut through the bullshit, I expected more from you,” you have to listen, because in all the times we’ve seen him on this show, he’s never been an asshole to anyone. If he’s calling you out, it’s legit.

* Garret is eliminated. That’s rather surprising, but Tom says his dish was “the only one that was a real mistake.”

* Since we’re getting a second episode tonight, I’ll save the too-early rankings for after that show.

I’m in Florida for a little over 36 hours to see a few amateur players, including Louisville right-hander Kyle Funkhouser, who’ll pitch at the Phillies’ stadium on Friday afternoon. That killed my chat this week, although I’ll be back for one on Thursday. I’ll also have draft blog posts up on Friday and Saturday discussing what I saw in Florida. My chat with Colin Cowherd today on what WAR is and why we need it is available in mp3 form.

And now, the finale of Top Chef Season 12:

* Gregory says his end goal is to be the chef of “many different restaurant concepts.” Is that a typical goal? I guess it probably is now, the way the industry has changed over the last two decades, but I wonder if the previous generation of chefs had different goals when they entered the business. Mei’s comment is consistent with her statements the last few episodes – “I just want to show everybody that I chose the right career path” – as if she still needs some validation.

* The two chefs leave before dawn and end up getting in a hot air balloon. I hope the producers made sure neither was afraid of heights. They land in a field with Tom and Padma waiting. I’m not really sure what the point of this was other than some cool aerial shots of San Miguel de Allende.

* I don’t know what Padma was wearing around her neck there but they might want to check the pyramids to see if any of them were recently robbed.

* Elimination challenge: Make the best four-course meal of your life. In other words, it’s about the food, and only about the food.

* There’s a quick draft of sous-chefs. Gregory takes Doug, Mei takes Melissa, (her explanation: “duh!”), Gregory takes George, Mei takes Rebecca to help make a dessert. Five hours to cook. Mei serves first at Cent’Anni, after which Gregory will serve at the Restaurant at Sollano 16.

* Apropos of nothing, I do not understand Melissa’s personal style at all.

* Mei worked the pastry station at Bryan Voltaggio’s place to try to get some dessert experience. So she must have had some experience before, right? She couldn’t have dropped into that gig as a complete newbie.

* Gregory is (wisely, I think) trying to show he’s more than just a one-trick pony (I assume that’s a reference to his propensity to make curries), including a rather complex mole dish. Mei thinks he’s pushing himself in a different direction, so she says she has to show more flavor and technique to compete with him. I thought it was interesting that they shared their menus without any apparent reservations.

* Mei’s making duck. I’m shocked. But to be fair, she’s including huitlacoche and kimchi butter in this dish, so it’s not her usual duck dish.

* Did I hear this right from Mei to her sous-chefs when talking about making stock? “Drop them in the fryer – easiest way to roast bones.” Granted, that’s not something I’m about to try at home for fear of burning the house down, but the flavors must be incredible.

* She’s toasting yogurt and then using liquid nitrogen to create lime curd. I’d say she’s pushing herself just fine here. This dish almost sounds like she’s making it specifically to impress Richard Blais.

* Gregory is using green chorizo, which I admit I’d never heard of before this. Apparently it’s fatty pork mixed with chiles, spinach powder, and cilantro. That seems like the ideal sausage to use when play a practical joke on someone on St. Patrick’s Day. Bangers and mash with a surprise hit of capsaicin?

* He says mole isn’t traditionally served with (beef) short ribs. That seems like a pretty obvious combo though – and what he’s describing sounds a bit like a chile colorado, which can definitely be served with braised cuts of beef. His mole has 30 ingredients, so it’s a bit surprising he didn’t take Katsuji.

* The diners include Sean Brock, Traci des Jardins, Michael Cimarusti, and Gavin Kaysen, as well as Blais, Hugh, Gail, Tom, and Padma. Blais’ hair looks like he fell in a vat of Dippity Do. Not that that’s a bad thing, though.

* Gotta love the cover of Brock’s first cookbook, Heritage. You’re really not looking at what’s in his hands, are you?

* Mei’s first course is braised-then-fried octopus with fish sauce vinaigrette, avocado-coconut puree, and “some herbs.” She does love the fish sauce … I get it, it’s packed with umami, but if its flavor is too pronounced it goes all ice nine on the rest of the plate. Anyway, everyone loves this dish’s presentation and depth of flavors, including the basil-mint-cilantro herb combination, but the consensus is that the octopus was overcooked.

* Her second course is an allusion to the first dish she made on Top Chef, a congee, this one with carnitas, scallion purée, her own hot sauce, Japanese peanuts with lime spice, and an egg yolk. Everyone loves it. It’s a classic Asian comfort food item infused with Mexican flavors.

* Mei’s third course is the duck breast, which appears to be sear-roasted, with braised lettuce, kimchi jicama, and huitlacoche. Hugh loves the duck, but says he’s “not sold on the rendering of the fat,” which is kind of key given how awful a mouthful of solid duck fat feels. Tom says the dish has a “lot of interesting moments,” like the crunch of the jicama, but I think that’s a faint-praise comment from him. Blais says there’s too much kimchi relative to the more delicate flavor of the huitlacoche.

* We see her scramble to adjust her dessert at the last second after Rebecca informs her rather bluntly that it’s too sweet. There probably wasn’t room for subtlety at that point in the kitchen.

* That dessert is a strawberry-lime curd, with toasted yogurt, milk crumble with bee pollen, and a yogurt-lime ice. Blais and Hugh love the presentation. (Can we get a Vine of Hugh saying “Smoking!” in falsetto?) Tom, who’d earlier criticized Mei’s decision to make a dessert when she’s only a savory chef, says it’s the best dessert he’s ever had on Top Chef and happily retracts his earlier comments.

* So at this point it looks like Mei absolutely nailed two dishes (the congee and the dessert), did reasonably well on a third (the duck), and struggled with the fourth (the octopus). If Gregory nails three of four, he probably wins.

* Gregory’s first dish is a home run – he serves a grilled octopus with xoconostle, passion fruit, prickly pear, and cashew milk. Padma says it’s sublime. Tom says it’s a powerhouse. It certainly plays to the crowd here with the emphasis on local or traditional Mexican ingredients.

* His second course is a soup of shrimp broth with green chorizo, pickled nopales, and crispy shrimp heads. Sean Brock compares it (favorably, I think) to a bowl of gumbo. But the use of the whole shrimp heads, including their shells, gets a huge thumbs-down as Gail and Padma both end up saying the shell bits were too hard to swallow. I’ve had shrimp heads once, also fried, and wouldn’t go back for more for that exact reason. If he wanted to incorporate shrimp into the dish – he said he wanted to allude to the classic chorizo/shrimp pairing – this wasn’t the right way to do it.

* Now we see his own scramble, as Gregory realizes he forgot to add vinegar and sugar to carrot sauce in the beginning stages of cooking it. We didn’t see any of that part of the process, but how is that possible? Did someone take his eye off the dish? Did he have a checklist and miss that step, or lack any checklist at all? He tries to add some sugar and vinegar á la minute, then finds it’s too sweet, so he adds salt, which would just cover it all up.

* Third course: Striped bass with roasted carrots, radish, pineapple, tomatillo, and other vegetables. The sauce was indeed too sweet, exacerbated by the pineapple’s sweetness and insufficient acidity from other ingredients. Tomatillos don’t have much acid themselves; without lime to boost their flavor I find them really bland. Tom just crushes it, saying the dish was sweeter than Mei’s dessert.

* Gregory’s final course was his pièce de resistance: Braised short rib with red mole and agave sweet potato, with toasted pepitas on top of the beef. Everyone we hear praises how well the ribs are cooked. It’s a bit like pork belly – doing it well is hard, but if you do it well it’s automatic praise. Hugh says “this is spectacular, full- flavored, (with) long-lasting flavors.” Tom, who’s kind of the beef guru around these parts, is also raving about every bit, including the fried sweet potato skins.

* So that gives Gregory two home runs and two weak groundouts, I think. Just at this point, my gut impression was that Mei had won – each had two rousing successes, but her two lesser dishes were ahead of Gregory’s by a decent margin..

* Side note: How do the judges/diners eat all that in one night? I’d have been in “better get me a bucket” territory by the time the short rib showed up.

* Gregory says Top Chef was harder than getting sober. Okay, everyone, run to sign up for season thirteen!

* The Judges’ Table discussion goes pretty much as you’d expect given what we’ve already heard. Gregory’s soup didn’t come together, and he gets more criticism there than he or Mei receive for anything else. Mei executed much better across the board. Gregory’s fish dish was too sweet. Mei’s third dish (the duck) was good but her weakest, which was a mild surprise just given how much everyone killed her octopus. Gregory’s fourth dish gets 10s across the board, but Mei’s dessert does too. Blais says her dessert was “everything that was right in modern food,” while Tom ups his own grades on it by saying it was one of the best desserts he’s ever had in his life.

* Head to head: Tom gives dish one to Gregory; Blais says Mei’s octopus was the biggest technical flop of the night. Padma calls Gregory’s use of shrimp heads fatal mistake, Gail says the dish just did not work, while Mei’s congee was perfect, so dish two goes to Mei. The third course is the closest to a toss-up; Mei’s plate was too watery (which we didn’t hear earlier), but Tom still takes her duck over Gregory’s fish, saying the latter plate was just not about fish. The fourth was the strongest plate for each, but there’s a strong implication here that Mei’s was better. Padma says each had two flawless dishes, kind of a summary for anyone who just turned the show on with ten minutes to go, I guess.

* Blais says Gregory’s menu was more inspirational; Gail says Mei’s dishes were more successful. Inspirational – or aspirational – generally wins on Top Chef, including in the finale, but if you don’t execute enough of that vision you can’t win. Gregory might have fared better in some other seasons, or against other competitors, but Mei is one of the strongest technical chefs I can remember seeing on the show, so even a mediocre execution day for her is a great one for anyone else.

* Tom gives a little speech before Padma announces the winner, saying he “loves watching this young talent just emerging … you guys are the future.”

* The winner is … Mei, as expected. She did earn it with better execution, with only one flop (the overcooked octopus) of any sort. And she finally shows some emotion, crying and saying “holy shit” on repeat. But are her parents finally proud of her?

* Some final thoughts: Top Chef is kind of like the baseball draft; every year, we hear that it’s a down year, that the talent isn’t as good as last year’s, definitely not as good as five or ten years ago, and some years that turns out to be true – but not always. The 2015 MLB draft class is not a good one overall, for example. Top Chef’s season 11 crop was weak. But Season 12 turned out to be very strong. The final three chefs were all outstanding both in creativity and in execution, with a different balance for each of them but all seemingly capable of winning the competition. How many other seasons could Gregory have won, especially if he’d executed just a little bit better (e.g., cooking his carrot sauce right)? I think that despite some of the criticism lobbed at the show, some legitimate but more of it spurious, Top Chef continues to attract top-flight talent and to enjoy the support of a broad cross-section of the industry. This season was pleasantly light on drama, especially once Aaron, later arrested on a domestic violence charge, was eliminated, and I think the group as a whole, or at least the top half or so of them, was the strongest since the legendary season of the Voltaggios and Yukon Cornelius. As for how to “fix” the show, one I don’t think is broken in any significant way, the answer is quite simple: As long as they keep the focus on the food, there will be an audience eager to watch.

So, if you could change one thing about Top Chef for next season, what would it be? And do you think Mei was the right choice, even though Gregory outperformed her head to head for much of the season?

Sorry this is a bit late; ESPN’s annual baseball summit took place on Thursday, so I didn’t see the episode until last night.

* Mei’s beating herself up for nearly getting eliminated in the last challenge … but the judges loved the dish, and it isn’t clear that she was that close to elimination. She’s all, “Shit just got real,” but hasn’t the shit been real at least since Doug got bounced?

* Gregory says to Doug, “Dude you’re on fire.” That’s like the GM giving the manager the vote of confidence.

* The chefs travel to an organic farm in the town of Jalpa, in the southern part of the state of Zacatecas. The chefs start acting like kids in a candy store … that’s full of vegetables. The farm provides vegetables to the best restaurants in the city of San Miguel de Allende, and I can see why. Given how immaculate the produce looks, you might think this stuff was grown in a lab.

* Quickfire: Chocolate! Can’t go to Mexico without dropping some Theobroma cacao on this. The chefs have to make two dishes, one sweet and one savory, both featuring chocolate in one of its forms. The chefs have access to chocolate in multiple percentages, from quite dark (I assume unsweetened/100% was there, but didn’t see it), all the way to white chocolate (more on that later), cocoa powder, and cocoa butter. The chefs harvest their own produce. The winner gets first choice of sous chef for the elimination challenge. They only have 45 minutes for the whole challenge, including pickin’ time, which doesn’t seem like much – and they’re cooking outside, so a lot of chocolate applications (soufflé?) are out.

* Doug doesn’t do desserts, but knew he’d have to at some point. So maybe he should have worked on that before coming on the show? There are certainly a lot of basic dessert techniques that wouldn’t be hard for an experienced chef to learn in a few weeks of practice.

* Gregory goes for carrots and spice and dark chocolate for his dessert. I’m already fascinated.

* Mei is making something with duck. I’d criticize her for always cooking duck, but I’m simultaneously thinking how attractive a woman who knows infinite ways to cook duck is.

* Doug can’t just make a ganache, maybe on some kind of crumbled tart crust? Well, that’s basically what he does, melting chocolate into a bowl and serving it with a spoon. He really can’t make any desserts at all.

* Gregory can’t get his white chocolate to melt … because he grabbed cocoa butter, not white chocolate. Cocoa butter is pure fat, solid at room temperature, melting just below body temperature for that mouth-feel that we associate with good chocolate. White chocolate, however, is an emulsion of cocoa butter and butterfat (“milk fat”), with sugar and usually vanilla or vanillin added. It may contain milk solids, but can’t contain any liquids or the emulsion would seize. You can see why Gregory may have had some trouble with this.

* To the food … Mei made duck with bitter greens and chocolate mezcal, cooking it in a mixture of cocoa butter and duck fat; and for dessert she made chocolate yogurt with cocoa nibs and nasturtium (for pepperiness). She used 80% chocolate for the savory dish and 66% for the sweet. Both Padma and Enrique, the head of the farm at which they’re cooking, seem to like both dishes. I’m not sure about chocolate and yogurt, but I generally don’t like applications that pair chocolate with sour elements like citrus.

* Doug’s savory dish is seared hen leg stew with onions, tomatoes, bitter chocolate, and ancho chili; his sweet dish is melted chocoalte with chocolate mezcal and white chocolate cream. He didn’t cook the alcohol all the way out, and also, he served them melted chocolate in a bowl.

* Gregory made a seared lamb with a white chocolate/ancho chili sauce and a green chorizo vinaigrette; his dessert is baby carrots with turmeric, dark chocolate, ginger, and a hint of rosemary. That looks so un-dessert, but you can tell immediately that he nailed it from the judges’ reactions – plus it’s the creative/clever angle that usually wins on this show.

* Doug’s chicken was well-cooked, but the dessert was not “well balanced.” Also, he served melted chocolate in a bowl. Mei’s duck went very well with chocolate; Padma liked the crushed cocoa nibs in her dessert, an idea that might have elevated Doug’s melted-chocolate-in-a-bowl dessert. Gregory’s lamb was well cooked – you almost get the sense that Enrique expected someone to screw up their proteins – and Enrique enjoyed the sauce; he called the ginger and rosemary the “final best touch” to Gregory’s dessert.

* Gregory wins, of course. His dishes had the best balance and he made the best use of the chocolate. Enrique asks to use the dessert recipe at Jalpa. He seems genuinely blown away by it, which (if true) says something given who he likely works with in the local market.

* Elimination challenge: They’ll all collaborate on a six-course meal, two courses per chef. They’ll be given six traditional Mexican ingredients and each must take two to feature (one course per ingredient).

* Gregory takes George as his sous. Mei takes Melissa. Doug takes Katsuji. Melissa seems like the best choice of any eliminated chef because if we know one thing about her, it’s that she has great knife skills. (And I think she makes pretty good pasta; Sarah Grueneberg made it to the finals a few years ago in large part because her pasta was consistently plus, and Nina did something similar last season because of her ability to make perfect gnocchi.)

* The Mexican ingredients are guava, avocado, poblanos, huitlacoche, Mexican cheese, and escamoles. The last one, if you’re not familiar with it (and I wasn’t) are ant eggs – technically the larvae and pupae of giant black ants, a very expensive treat, one that Katsuji says packs a lot of umami. It can run $35-100/kg, according to the Slow Food Foundation’s page on them. Somehow, Doug ends up getting the shaft here – he doesn’t claim any ingredients, Gregory and Mei claim two each, and he ends up with cheese and escamoles, the two he wanted least. He’s pissed, justifiably so, but eventually rolls over and takes those two while Gregory gets the guava and poblanos while Mei gets the avocados and huitlacoche.

* Katsuji says he and Doug are “both sarcastic assholes.” Doug says he really just chose him because he speaks Spanish. I’m not sure why Doug keeps picking him.

* Gregory says he went all in on researching Mexican cuisine after Boston, which seems rather sharp. His mom made lots of stews when he was growing up. He’s at least part Haitian, and about all I know about Haitian cuisine is that it includes a lot of stewed and braised dishes.

* So, huitlacoche, less appealingly known as “corn smut,” is a black or grey fuzzy fungus that can be bitter but has a smoky profile, like a mushroom although technically not one (mushrooms grow in soil or on decaying organic matter like wood). It’s kind of gross-looking on the corn itself, but is usually cooked and used to fill tortas, tortillas, enchiladas, etc. One thing I can’t find out, and would love to know, is if you can brown huitlacoche as you would mushrooms, exposing it to high heat to caramelize some of that glucose.

* (Warning: tangent ahead) One of the major flavor compounds in huitlacoche (and lovage and fenugreek seed) is sotolon, a lactone (a type of cyclic ester, formula C6H8O3) that is formed spontaneously in the bodies of people with “maple syrup urine disease,” an organic acidemia more properly known as branched-chain ketoaciduria that occurs in approximately 1 in 180,000 births. The urine of people with this disease smells, as you might have guessed, like maple syrup, because of the presence of sotolon. I know about this because it is in the same family of diseases as 3-MCC, which my daughter inherited from me and which occurs in somewhere north of 1 in 50,000 births. While 3-MCC can often be largely benign, with modest symptoms like below-average muscle tone or development, MSUD can be very serious and must be managed with a special low-protein diet. Both diseases can be diagnosed via a simple mass spectrometry test that is administered free to newborns in most states. If you’re expecting, when the hospital asks if you want those tests, say yes. It could save your child’s life. (/tangent)

* Mei’s parents are kinda sorta supportive … but not really. She says they’ve never said they’re proud of her, and she wants to win so she’ll hear that. I think it matters more to her than she admits. Gregory’s the opposite – he says his parents are so happy to see him doing well after “seven years” of a “rough road” of drug abuse.

* Mei is just making guacamole for her avocado course? She calls it “guacamole with a twist” … which is still just guacamole, right? Adding xoconostle for acidity or tartness just swaps one tart element (lime) for another.

* Doug says the escamoles have a nutty taste, and he’s trying to serve them a bunch of different ways. He actually seems to like the flavors. I’m not sure I could get over the mental hurdle, though.

* Mei’s got Melissa making huitlacoche agnolotti, which makes a ton of sense – use them as you’d use mushrooms, and play to one of Melissa’s particular strengths. It’s not exactly experimental or creative, though.

* Gregory’s whole mien has changed. Mos Chef is back.

* The judges’ table has several major Mexican chefs, which is great on multiple levels – giving publicity to folks who would never get it here, exposing the audience here to new names and faces, and getting some real authorities to judge the food. Zarela Martinez’s memoir/cookbook Food from my Heart: Cuisines of Mexico Remembered and Reimagined is $2.99 for Kindle so I bought it while watching the episode. (The recipes are long – this is some serious start on Sunday morning for the big family dinner stuff.)

* Meanwhile, Chef Eduardo Palazuelos looks like he should be starring in a telenovela.

* First course – Gregory serves a chilled guava soup with bay scallops, habanero, roasted guava (whoa), shaved fresh guava, and fresh mint. Tom likes the way the heat builds. Blais says there’s a high level of difficulty to make a fruit soup as good as Gregory did. It also made sense as the opener, waking up the judges’ palates with something bright, cold, and tangy.

* Mei served a guacamole roll with xoconostle inside, radish, serrano, and fresh tortilla chips along the top. Padma thinks it’s a little too simple, just a refined guacamole. Bricio Dominguez, another local chef (who only comments in Spanish) wishes he’d tasted more xoconostle. Tom says there’s a lot more things you can do with avocado, which seems like the understatement of the episode.

* Doug first course is a tortilla español with escamoles and escamol aioli, with the eggs stewed slow with garlic and chilies, toasted with garlic, and made into the aioli. Blais loves the aioli concept, calling it brilliant. Eduardo doesn’t taste the escamoles enough; Tom says their texture ended up too similar to that of the potato. Bricio said with fine-tuning it could be a spectacular dish, which is a way of saying it wasn’t spectacular.

* Mei’s very happy with the agnolotti, but wouldn’t pureeing the fungus destroy its texture?

* The agnolotti are filled with huitlacoche and served in a roasted corn brodo with purslane. Zarela likes the roasted corn flavor; Tom does too. Eduardo thinks the huitlacoche came out bitter, but calls it an original dish, saying the broth was very interesting. Bricio would order it again. I’m a little confused – the description and visuals don’t match these comments very well, as it looks like tortellini in brodo, a standard Italian preparation, that just swapped huitlacoche in for the pasta filling. Maybe the broth was really just that special.

* We see a glimpse of Gregory adding more spices and “layers” to his stew shortly before service. That’s the kind of step he took more early in the season than late. His dish: a pork and poblano stew with tomatillos, grilled onion purée, and an escabeche-style pickle of carrots, poblanos, and shallots. Bricio adores itand gets a little verklempt. Blais loves the char, saying it “opens up more flavors.” Tom talks up the complexity of the dish. Gregory is clearly two for two here.

* Doug’s cheese course is built around a mesquite-smoked goat queso fresco with spiced honey, crispy squash chips, charred pickles, and a little chimichurri. Blais says a cheese course could be boring, but this isn’t. Enrique loves the combination with tomatillo.

* I’m glad they included Bricio’s comments with subtitles instead of editing him out. Guy had something to say.

* Padma thought the top two dishes were Gregory’s. Tom said the stew was the star of the show. Blais/Tom/Eduardo all say he belongs in the finale. This seems fairly clearcut – it’s Mei versus Doug for the last spot. Mei’s uncreative dishes and flop on the avocado seem like she should be sent home, but we have the advantage of … foreshadowing.

* Blais says the guacamole dish was “beautiful and uninspired.” Tom keeps calling it a missed opportunity, and don’t they send chefs home for that? Eduardo liked it, and he crushes Doug’s tortilla, saying the key ingredient (the little maggots) was missing both in the final dish’s flavor and texture.

* Padma and Tom loved Mei’s broth. Padma rates Doug’s cheese dish over Mei’s agnolotti. Eduardo backs her up on this one, while Tom would go agnolotti. I think we all know now that she loses any direct battle with Tom.

* Judges’ table: Blais/Tom rave about the guava soup. Eduardo says the pork and poblano stew took him back to his childhood years, that the amount of intensity and flavors were just outstanding. Gregory is the winner, easily, and goes to the finale, so all that early promise he showed this season has been fulfilled.

* Mei is crying already, and the judges have barely started talking about their dishes. Tom says other chefs loved the guacamole, but he wasn’t impressed. Eduardo thought the combo of the broth with the smoky flavor of the corn in her agnolotti dish worked well. He tells Doug that he lost the flavor of the escamoles in the tortilla. Tom says the tortilla was a “very good dish” – he says that a lot, now that I think about it – but there was just too much going on on that plate. Padma praises Doug for what he did accomplish with an ingredient he didn’t know well at all, which is sort of the “it’s not you it’s me” of Top Chef judging. Tom raves about Doug’s cheese course, calling it exciting, saying he did a great job with the flavors, and at this point, if you saw nothing but judges’ table, you’d think Mei was toast, right?

* Tom tries to give a pep talk. Padma says before they announce who’s packing his or her knives, that she “want(s) you both to take ownership of where you are right now.” On the one hand, it’s compassion in an era where most reality shows try to play up hostility and immaturity among the contestants. On the other hand, it’s a competition. The Royals had an amazing season in 2014. I doubt that knowledge makes up for game 7.

* Doug is eliminated. Hard to see this as anything but a penalty for having to cook with an ingredient he didn’t know (although his sous-chef did) and didn’t want or choose. Given the difficulty of the ingredients each chef had to work with, Mei should have gone home.

* I’ll take Gregory over Mei in next week’s finale. You?

The top 100 prospects ranking is up, in two parts, numbers 1 through 50 and numbers 51 through 100. My ranking of all 30 major league farm systems went up on Wednesday. All pieces are Insider. On Friday morning, my top ten prospects and full farm report will go up for each team. In total, you’ll get over 48,000 words of content – longer than Heart of Darkness and less creepy, too.

On to Top Chef … where the Last Chance Kitchen winner is (drumroll please) Doug. George loses again, unfortunately, but at least that ends the mini-controversy about him getting this far after jumping back in halfway through the season. Two of the season’s final four chefs are from Portland.

* The final four are in San Miguel de Allende, in the state of Guanajato, about 270 km northwest of Mexico City. The guest judge for this episode is Enrique Olvera, whose restaurant, Pujol in Mexico City, was named one of the world’s 50 best restaurants by some site or other and who can really take a list like that seriously? Really? Can anyone have ever properly sampled the world’s great restaurants to make such a list? I’m sure Olvera’s food is great, though. He’s written two books that appear to have vanished completely into the ether, but there’s another one coming soon from Phaidon Press, which also published the modestly-titled Mexico: The Cookbook, which includes contributions from Olvera. Anyway, it’s great to see a new face at judges’ table, and one from another country too.

* Quickfire: Create a dish that highlights the xoconostle, a fruit similar to a prickly pear but from a different cactus, prized by chefs for its tartness and frequently used in salsas. Olvera says the plant’s growing season is very short “so when we get it we eat it all the time.” Any of you ever had one? I don’t recall seeing them in Arizona, but I’m not sure I would have known what I was looking at if I had seen one in Pros Ranch Market.

* Mei can’t get the salmon she wanted because Melissa took it – again, what does that accomplish, making it a race for proteins? – so she chooses steak. She covers her steak in salt to sear it. I thought I was aggressive when seasoning meat, but apparently I’m about 50% short of the mark. She realizes she won’t have enough time to cook it through, so she calls an audible and makes a steak tataki, seared on the outside but effectively raw on the interior. I’ve had that with tuna, not really my favorite preparation, but never with steak.

* Melissa is making ceviche. Don’t be afraid to cook something, Melissa.

* Padma is sauntering around this public square in a white dress and heels. There’s no crowd of people staring at her? She looks like she might be starring in a shampoo commercial.

* Mei made a ribeye tataki with cactus salsa verde and xoconostle salsa. The meat’s a mess, in case you missed that foreshadowing. Doug made an all-vegetable xoconostle and tomatillo stew with roasted peppers and pepitas and purple cactus. Enrique likes that he made a vegetable-driven dish, saying that Mexican cuisine is mostly vegetables, despite what people (coughAmericanscough) might think it is. (I’ll be over here swimming in a tub of carnitas.) Melissa made a salmon ceviche with xoconostle, leche de tigre (which is what you marinate ceviche in – lime juice, sliced onion, chilies, salt, pepper, and of course the fish juices), guava, celery, shallots, and beets. She might use as many ingredients as Katsuji did. Gregory served shrimp with garlic, olive oil, two prickly pear sauces, and xoconostle relish.

* Gregory’s was the worst dish, as it was overpowered by the olive oil. Mei’s meat was not cooked correctly. Melissa’s leche de tigre was “refreshing.” I don’t get it – I like ceviche, but how much skill or creativity is required for that? Don’t you just chop and serve? Doug’s was mostly vegetables, which Enrique praises with “that’s the way we eat here most of our days,” and likes that you could really taste the xoconostle.

* “The winner is the one that takes risks in this life.” Is that about the quickfire, or just general advice? I like it. By the way, Doug wins and gets an advantage in the elimination challenge.

* Elimination challenge: Each chef randomly gets the address of a local artist – apparently San Miguel de Allende is the Portland of Mexico – and will meet with the artist, then design a dish inspired by the artist’s work, while the artist will in turn create a painting that will be on display during service. The chefs’ dishes must represent their artists’ work visually. This has “I was gonna use a condom, but I figured, when am I gonna get back to Haiti?” written all over it.

* The eliminated chefs are all there to serve as sous. Doug gets to pick his two first and takes Adam and Katsuji because he’s apparently building a new sitcom. (Katsuji’s deadpan “I don’t cook Mexican” got glossed over, but it was pretty sharp.) Melissa gets George and James, Mei gets Keriann and Rebecca, and Gregory gets Katie and Stacy.

* Mei says, modestly, “my dishes have been described as works of art.” No, Mei, the diners meant they thought Art Smith made your dishes. You know, works of Art.

* Melissa’s artist is a total space cadet. No, like, even more than that.

* They go shopping at Mega, which is absolutely enormous. Personally I prefer Femto. They keep it small and local.

* Doug is flustered by the store, saying “This is not Whole Foods… my spanish is poquito.” How do you work in a kitchen and not know Spanish? Doesn’t half the staff in every restaurant in the United States speak Spanish, including a lot of the people who do the truly hard, manual work? I don’t get how anyone who ever eats out could oppose immigration reform, but that’s another story.

* Mei is saying filet or PEE-lay instead of “piel,” although I’m not sure if that’s the right word or if it would be “pellejo,” which I think is the word for the skin of an animal. Piel might be human skin and this is just not that kind of competition.

* Gregory’s strip loin steaks are at least a little overcooked, although somehow after a rest they’re not overcooked and I must have missed something because that’s not how it usually works, right? Although I guess if scientists can unboil an egg, maybe you can uncook a steak too.

* Gregory’s artist and dish feature “dark, complex flavors.” Just how I like my women. Anyway, his dish is a grilled strip loin with an ancho chili and tamarind sauce, beets, cilantro purée, and a Valencia orange sauce. His artist’s painting has a lot of earth tones, with orange and green the only vibrant colors, both mirrored in the dish. Gail and Tom both love it.

* Doug is slightly apoplectic that he’s serving chili to Tom Colicchio in the Top Chef final four. Just embrace it, man.

* Gail’s dress is too tight. I can’t imagine the pressures women face when going on TV – their looks are scrutinized fifty or a hundred times more than the looks of their male counterparts – but this dress just did not fit, and it was a bad look.

* Doug’s dish is “Texas red,” a beanless chili made with brisket, tomatillo, and a masa cake, paralleling the structural nature of his artist’s painting. He braised the brisket slow. Gail says it’s earthy, has good acidity, and the cheese adds bite. Tom pauses, to give Doug angina, and then says he loves it.

* Melissa makes a “land and sea” dish with smoked eggplant ravioli, shrimp, chorizo, and cotija, and some beet juice to represent the artist’s graffiti. Padma loves the eggplant, saying it’s beautifully done. But this jumped out right away as the losing dish – there’s no cohesion here, and I wondered why all that stuff was on the same plate. The Cheesecake Factory will have this on page 63 of its menu by next Thursday.

* Mei made a snapper and bass crudo with a chicken skin crumble, soy gastrique, and radish pickles. Tom and Gail love the chicken skin, and who wouldn’t? It’s like savory candy when it’s done right. (If you have the skin from a roasted or otherwise cooked chicken, just run a paring knife over the inside to scrape it out so you’re just cooking the skin, then pan-fry it on both sides, no oil required.) I thought Mei’s dish was the most attractive, although that’s a subjective thing and I’m the last person to ask about art.

* The judges’ comments after the fact were pretty predictable, at least based on what the editors showed us already. Gregory’s sauce was complex and subtle. Padma says Mei’s dish wasn’t as wild as the artwork, but Tom thought the flavors were wild, and Gail loved the chicken skin like it was pepperoni sauce. The judges all liked the warm flavors of Doug’s chili, and Tom likes that inspiration outside the kitchen made him cook something different. Padma loved Melissa’s ravioli, which we knew, but Tom says some elements were there for shock/color and not for flavor, and he might as well have read her eulogy right there.

* Judges’ Table: Tom loves that the challenge got something more out of Doug, who Gail thought was very literal to the painting (I think that was a compliment). Gail likes that elements of Mei’s artist’s work were in the food, but that the food was still clearly Mei’s. They all wish the presentation had been wilder, but at that point, it would no longer have been Mei’s, right? Her plates are always immaculate. Padma wanted more envelope-pushing; Enrique says he liked the clean flavors, and how the dish was subtle but still playful. (I wish he’d spoken more. His English is fine, but I wonder if he was shy about speaking because it’s not his first language, or if we just lost a bunch of his comments in editing.) Padma loved Melissa’s ravioli, but wasn’t sure what the shrimp was doing there other than to add the pink color. (Pickled red onions could have done the same thing, and would have paired better with the eggplant, I think.) Tom thought it was playful but the chorizo was over-rendered, the only execution failure we’ve heard about. Enrique says Gregory’s dish repped his artist Artemio’s work very nicely, with powerful ingredients and strong flavors that stayed with you. Gail said the elements spoke to Artemio’s vision with the “marigold yellow” from the orange/ginger sauce (this judges’ table brought to you by Crayola).

* Gregory and Doug had the favorite dishes. Doug wins, and gets to take home the painting, which he’ll send to his mom the art teacher. Maybe Mos Chef got his groove back, too, now that everyone had a few weeks off. A competitive Gregory in the final two challenges would make this all much more entertaining.

* Melissa is eliminated. Tom says, “you did nothing wrong, you just came up against three dishes that were stronger.” That means the best three chefs from the early and middle parts of the season are the final three.

* Rankings: I don’t even know any more. I think Gregory, Mei, Doug, except Doug just won the Quickfire and elimination challenge straight out of winning LCK, and Mei’s been better later in the season than Gregory, so I got nothin’ except that I’m glad these are the final three and I’d at any of their restaurants in a heartbeat.

* Next week: Ant eggs? Really?

I’m not chatting this week to allow myself more time to write the top 100 prospects package.

Mei says correctly that Gregory would have gone home after the previous challenge if there’d been an elimination. Of course, the absence of an elimination threat may have affected each chef’s choices on what to cook, but I think her comments led the show to hammer home the point that Gregory, who lapped the field in the first half of this season, has slumped toward the finish.

* George’s comment before the quickfire, to the confessional: “I never in a million years would have made as far as I have.” Rosie Ruiz said the same thing, if I remember correctly.

* Wylie Dufresne, who just closed his restaurant WD-50 in Manhattan and still needs a haircut, is here for the final Quickfire. He’s a molecular gastronomy guy, so of course the challenge is about … beans. (And I thought Chicago was Beantown. Did Andy Dwyer lie to me?) The chefs can prepare any dish they want that features beans. Wiley says texture is the key to success with beans. Since they only have an hour, the chefs all go for the canned beans – I’ve pressure-cooked beans in less than an hour, but only for dishes where I’m going to mash or purée them.

* Did you know beans give you gas? I did not know that. I’m so glad George told us about that.

* Gregory says he rarely cooks with beans because they’re not common in Asian cooking. But they go well with pork and rice, both of which are kind of common in Asian cooking, so assuming he knows how to prepare them, this doesn’t seem like it should be an issue.

* Melissa says of Gregory, “you can’t really win Top Chef just making curries.” Yeah, but you can win with knife skills and vegetable dishes?

* Mei knows Wylie “loves eggs;” I believe he called himself an “egg slut” in a previous judging stint. She’s aerating beans in an iSi gun to make bean foam. It kind of looks like coarse butterscotch pudding.

* George made yigandes plaki, a Greek bean dish with a tomato-based sauce, using chickpeas, cumin, paprika, and pork tenderloin.

* Mei made black beans and corn with chipotle, bacon, a poached egg (pandering!), and pinto bean foam. Wylie comments on … the egg.

* Melissa made a seared pork tenderloin with bacon, butterbean puree, roast carrots, and fried chickpeas. Wylie points out that “beans are not really the focus” of the dish, which was kind of the point of the challenge.

* Gregory made navy beans with sake, ham, avocado, and carrot chips, using ginger, shallots, and serranos as aromatics. Padma loves to cook navy beans, but both she and Wylie note a bitter finish in his dish which could come from the sake, avocado (if it starts to cook), or shallots (if they burn). The avocado detracted from the dish as well; the beans were slightly overcooked, so that made for two soft textures without much contrast from other elements.

* Mei’s dish didn’t look appealing, but Wylie thought the textures and flavors worked really well, and he liked that she used the bean two ways. She wins the challenge, her first Quickfire win, and a trip to Napa. “Napa, here I come! I’m gonna get wasted.” Look, I’m not judging her, but you don’t really need to go to Napa to get hammered, and maybe that’s not the best way to soak up the Napa experience either?

* The final elimination challenge in Boston, before the show shifts to Mexico: Make a dish that’s innovative, pushing culinary boundaries. That’s why Wylie is here, I assume. That’s all the direction the chefs get, unfortunately, which is going to be a problem for the rest of the episode, because it isn’t even clear what the judges mean by “innovation” – and I’d say the judges themselves aren’t consistent about it. There’s a $10,000 prize, so there’s something on the line that means I’m not just arguing semantics here.

* George points out that innovation means failing, which means you probably won’t nail it the first time, so doing it just once doesn’t give you much chance to innovate.

* Their Whole Foods is out of pork belly, which ruins George’s plan for his dish. I’ve only bought it a few times, but I know that the various Whole Foods where I’ve shopped over the years have all been inconsistent about carrying it.

* The chefs are all interpreting “innovative” by using ingredients they don’t normally use. In this context, shouldn’t that term be about technique and presentation? It’s not like the judges haven’t had octopus (George) or chicken skin (Gregory) before – there probably isn’t an ingredient anywhere in Whole Foods that these judges haven’t eaten.

* Mei went to nursing school because it’s what her parents wanted, then dropped out to go to culinary school because it’s what she wanted, and her parents were pissed. Don’t you want your kid to be happy and successful and safe? What the hell is wrong with these parents?

* George making a green apple harissa with octopus, charring the tentacles and puréeing the heads for fritters. It’s definitely weird; I don’t know if I’d call that “innovative.” It’s just a poor word choice for the show; maybe it isn’t possible to innovate when you have three hours in total to cook your dish.

* Gregory stumbles when Tom and Wylie ask how he’s innovating. Even if you’re not innovating, you need to have a bullshit answer ready for this question, which you had to expect Tom to ask.

* They’re cooking and serving at Catalyst in Kendall Square, which is in Cambridge (across the river from Boston) close to MIT. The chef William Kovel doesn’t appear in this episode, but he’d previoulsy helmed the kitchen at Aujourd’hui at the Four Seasons, which was one of the top fine-dining restaurants in Boston before it closed in 2009.

* One of the guest diners is Dr. Michael Brenner of Harvard, who brings chefs in to speak to try to inspire people to want to learn about science. He’s a professor of engineering, applied math, and physics, and among his many research foci is the observing practical operation of evolution by examining the functions of two protein families – hemoglobin and voltage-gated sodium channels. So he’s reasonably bright.

* We get a little physical comedy in the kitchen, as the line is too narrow for all four chefs to cook and plate at once, leading to a lot of one-word shouts between them, including Mei’s galline refrain of “back!”

* The dishes … Gregory serves a pan-roasted salmon in tom kha broth with roasted tomatoes, crispy salmon skin, and crispy chicken skins. Padma says it’s delicious. Gail asks what’s innovative about the dish, and Gregory says it’s about playing with textures, so at least he was ready with an answer this time. Tom says he’s “having a hard time finding the innovation.”

* Mei shows no emotion when winning or losing anything. She says she suffers from “chronic bitch face.” See for yourself.

* Melissa serves a seared duck breast with farro, walnut miso, and pickled cherries. She says this was out of her “comfort zone.” That’s also not innovation; that’s just growing up. Everyone likes the dish, but other than her combination of walnuts and miso, no element receives any praise for innovation, and really, she just took two high-umami ingredients and stuck them together.

* George makes charred octopus and octopus head fritters with yellow split pea puree, green apple harissa, pickled mustard seeds, bacon chips, lentils, rhubarb, and God knows what else. It’s a complicated plate, but the bottom line is that he charred the octopus too far and it came out bitter. Poor George is sweating like mad as he gets the feedback. It’s a Mediterranean thing, George. I feel your pain.

* Mei’s dish was duck curry with vadouvan, coated with fish sauce caramel, served with lemongrass ginger and yuzu yogurt. She says tried to make it lighter than most curries. Tom smiles and says, “I like it but I don’t know how to describe it. As you eat it, it changes … it’s really complex.” If there’s any innovation anywhere here, I think this is it. Innovative or highly creative (as a proxy) dishes should confuse you and make you think or rethink what’s in front of you.

* Blais argues that Melissa’s dish was the best, with the walnut miso as the innovation, and that it had the best flavors. Gail says it was the least exciting, and Mei’s was the most creative and interesting. Wylie says Melissa’s duck and Mei’s curry together would be the winner, so he’s useless. Tom says George’s octopus was overcharred. He swung for the fences, but Gregory didn’t. Dr. Brenner says that he’d rather eat Gregory’s than George’s. So it’s Gregory’s execution without innovation versus George’s innovation (maybe) without execution.

* I love how the camera always shows the four judges at the table, trying so hard to look deadly serious before they tell the chefs who won or lost. Some are better than others; Gail’s serious face reminds me of Paddington’s cold dark stare, where no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t possibly look intimidating.

* Tom points out that there wasn’t a whole lot of innovating. Yeah, no shit. Maybe the chefs should have had two days to cook if the goal was to get real innovation – or maybe access to different equipment, such as devices not typically seen in the kitchen.

* Mei and Melissa made the two favorite dishes … and Melissa wins? What the hell was the innovation there? Well-executed but so what? Granted, it doesn’t affect the chefs’ advancement in any way – Mei also goes through to the finale – but the $10K ain’t nothing to sneeze at, and I have no idea at all how Melissa’s dish answered the challenge more than Mei’s did. Gail’s blog seems to say the same: Melissa won for execution, even though Mei’s dish was more innovative. So the main criterion for the dish wasn’t the main criterion in the final judging?

* George is eliminated. Failure to execute loses to failure to innovate – not that George innovated wildly, but I think he did more than Gregory did. That said, I’d rather see Gregory in the finals than George, based on their relative track records on the show.

* LCK: George vs. Doug. Doug gets to choose clams or octopus, and chooses clams. He uses a grilled pineapple butter, tomatillos, and onions, and says he grilled everything he could. George steamed his clams, them made a soup with a lot of aromatic vegetables and fruits as well as serrano chilies. Tom loves both dishes. As usual, we don’t find out the winner of LCK until we tune in next week.

* Rankings: Mei, Gregory, whoever wins LCK, Melissa. I’m a bit relieved to see Gregory execute this challenge’s dish well, as he’s been more stymied by failures of execution than creativity over the last few episodes, and him vs. Mei would be the ideal final two based on what we’ve seen from all of the chefs so far this season.

My take on the Evan Gattis trade is up for Insiders, and I held a slightly briefer-than-normal Klawchat today.

So, in the opener, did George just out Gregory? I have no idea if Gregory was open about his sexual orientation or not, but that was kind of out of nowhere. So, um, I hope that was okay. (EDIT: I missed Gregory’s comments earlier in the season on this, so I guess it was all fine.)

* Elimination challenge: Ashley Christensen from Raleigh! Love her stuff. Joule is my breakfast spot any time I’m in Raleigh. Beasley’s fried chicken is wonderful, and my one meal at Poole’s Diner was spectacular too. Anyway, there’s no quickfire, so I kind of buried the lede there because I got excited.

* The chefs head to Island Creek Oyster Farm in Duxbury to dredge for oysters, dig for clams, and forage for seaweed, after which they’ll get their choice of some other premium shellfish, about as fresh as it can possibly be. Each chef is responsible for one app and one entr&ee. The chefs get sous-chefs from back home – Melissa’s Mom, Gregory’s sister, George’s dad, Mei’s brother – and the sous have to make the appetizers without the chefs touching the food. On the bright side, there’s no elimination this week; the winner gets a bye to the final three, which will be held in Mexico.

* George’s dad owns a diner. Color me shocked.

* Melissa’s mom is an aerospace engineer, which is kind of awesome, since I don’t think you saw many women in her field when she likely first entered the workforce.

* Mei says her brother can’t cook and just hopes he just takes direction well. When she first found out that her brother (Harly) had to do all the cooking for the appetizer, she made a face my daughter makes that’s usually followed by some sort of howl.

* Right on cue, Harly tries to operate the crank to pull up the net with which they dredge the oysters (via a pulley), and snaps the handle clean off. Maybe that was rigged to come off before he even got on the boat?

* On the pier where the chefs get to choose their other shellfish is a giant bin of surf clams. If you’ve ever had true fried clam strips, then you’ve probably had surf clams, specifically the pseudopod (sometimes called its “tongue”), a long appendage that can be sliced thinly and fried, and is often followed by ice cream served with a shortbread cookie.

* George calls his dad Mr. Tony, and the guy talks like he’s right off the boat even though it sounds like he’s been in the U.S. for thirty or forty years. He sold his diner and invested the proceeds in George’s restaurant, which is Dad of the Year material in my book.

* Mei’s brother seems like a stoner. Nothing fazes him, even her insulting him right in front of the camera in the confessional.

* Not one “Glou-chester?” Come on. That’s like sport for locals up there. Wor-chester, glow-chester, Need-ham … it’s a minefield for people who believe English should be pronounced the way it’s written.

* Melissa’s mom says when Melissa was a kid there was “no sesame street, always cooking show, that’s not a normal child!” Granted, I watched Sesame Street, but I have no problem with this either.

* Meanwhile, Melissa reveals that her dad (her parents are divorced) has never come to any of her restaurants and won’t involve himself in her life – won’t accept that she’s gay or that she’s chosen cooking as a career. What kind of father does this to his child?

* Mei says she doesn’t have her parents’ approval either; it would be nice, but she doesn’t need it. Again, why wouldn’t they give it to her? It’s not like she’s cooking meth for a living.

* Melissa wrote out a long page of detailed instructions – but isn’t that what an engineer would want? That’s what my dad would want, and that’s generally how any instructions I get from him (e.g., directions to any place, even if I’ve been there before) look.

* Gregory not playing it safe, tons of umami rather than acids and herbs.

* Mr. Tony at least knows his way around the food. Melissa’s mom has made Chinese custards before. The siblings don’t have any real cooking experience, though, which may put Gregory and Mei at a slight disadvantage.

* Tom walks into the kitchen and right off says to Mei, “do you realize your brother is burning his mushrooms?” Maybe he knows Harly is useless with a knife.

* Mr. Tony is shucking oysters, which definitely isn’t something a novice cook would know how to do. (I’ve never done it, since my wife is allergic to shellfish and I don’t bring any mollusks in the house.)

* When it’s all said and done, though, Harly seems to be a quick study and picks up the pace, plating raw oysters on beds of salt as he prepares to serve.

* In come the diner-judges … and Blais is back! The table is replete with high-end/celebrity chefs – Adam Evans from the Optimist in Atlanta, Top Chef Masters participant (and purslane enthusiast) Kerry Heffernan, Ashley Christensen, and seafood maven Rick Moonen.

* Mei has Harly pouring sauce tableside, rather temeritous of her given how much she was crushing his ignorance about two hours previously.

* Rick praises Harly’s shucking of the oysters, so go figure.

* Harly’s appetizer is a raw oyster with soy-yuzu vinaigrette, radish, and I think seaweed. When asked to explain his technique, Harly explains in detail: “I had to grate a lot of stuff.” Katsuji immediately hires Harly to work in his restaurant.

* Mei’s entrée is surf clam and lobster in tomato-coconut broth with zucchini ribbons and seaweed. The surf clam is raw, the lobster cooked, and she gets raves all around, especially for the surf clam … but did she really do anything with it, or just pick the right ingredient?

* Gregory takes his eyes off his halibut while helping Jessica plate, and as a result the halibut overcooks just enough that he realizes it’s going to cost him points. Nothing you can do at that point but suck it up.

* Jessica’s starter is a tomato-watermelon soup with pickled cucumber and lightly sauteed shrimp. Blais says watermelon soup could go very wrong and end up like a smoothie, but this didn’t.

* Gregory’s halibut comes with oysters, mussels, and creamy dashi. Tom immediately seems unhappy. Kerry asks if Gregory is happy with how it’s cooked, which no judge ever asks when the item in question was cooked perfectly, so Gregory’s screwed.

* Melissa poaches her lobster in buerre monté, a form of butter that is liquified without losing the emulsion that would break down if you just melted the butter straight-out. You whisk chunks of butter into water that has just hit the boil and is then kept over low heat, creating a new emulsion, then adding more butter to reach the desired quantity. The buerre can be used as a poaching medium, as a medium for resting cooked meats, or a way to finish off a sauce. I think I first heard of it when reading about The French Laundry, because they use it all the time there.

* Mr. Tony’s appetizer is grilled oysters with razor clams and cucumbers. Rick Moonen says it needed a little more salt or brine, but he did like their texture.

* George’s entrée is butter-poached lobster with vadouvan spice, roasted sunchokes in brown butter, crispy sunchokes on the side, and micro-greens (which Tom says are totally superfluous …. it’s the modern watercress). Kerry loved the vadouvan coulis for the lobster.

* Melissa’s mom (Alice) is super serious about her dish – no one goofed off, but she definitely showed some grade-80 makeup here. Her starter is a chawanmushi (there’s a recipe for this in Ruhlman’s Egg) with shiitake mushrooms and clams, garnished with lobster and salmon roe, and with bonito flakes for smokiness. She tells the judges that she’ll never forget this day, cooking with her daughter.

* Melissa’s dish was butter-poached lobster with onion soubise, pea purée, fava beans, asparagus, fiddlehead ferns, and caramelized sunchokes. Ashley says it might be the best-cooked lobster she’s ever eaten. Tom says the vegetables are the stars of the dish.

* Kerry drops an “unctuous” when describing the custard. It’s not a compliment to man or food, but we seem to be getting it weekly on this show.

* Jessica’s dish was better than Gregory’s. That’s not a good sign for Mos Chef.

* Judges’ table: The standouts were Mei and Melissa, which isn’t surprising at all. Mei’s surf clams were “really special” according to Tom and the broth was one “we’ll all think about for a long time.” Melissa’s lobster was “perfectly done,” but it seems like the judges/diners were even more impressed by how good Alice’s chawanmushi came out.

* The winner is … Melissa. Alice is crying. Maybe you have to be a parent to get it, but there’s something about seeing a proud mom or dad getting emotional over their kid on TV that just … well, it’s a bit dusty in here. This was Melissa’s first elimination win, and while I still don’t think she’s the best chef on the show, she clearly nailed this challenge – maybe it played to her strengths, since she didn’t have to work with animal proteins.

* She says she hopes her dad will see this and finally be proud of her. I doubt it, though. He sounds like a real dickhead.

* LCK: Ugh. Doug and Adam must make a dish using Hidden Valley Ranch dressing using only the produce from a crudité platter (they can use other pantry items). How very ’70s. Doug wins despite overcooking a steak, as Adam’s crespelle didn’t use enough vegetables and his crepes were probably too thick. Also, ranch dressing is disgusting.

* Rankings: Well … Gregory, Mei, Doug, Melissa, George, but by definition Melissa is in the top three already, so I guess I’m really saying I think that any of the top three would beat her in the finale, even though they can’t all get there.

This week’s Klawchat transcript is up. Otherwise, I’m just plugging away on phone calls for the top 100 prospects package.

Five chefs left…

* Quickfire: Andy Cohen and his college roommate, Dave Ansel. Andy apparently smoked a lot of weed in college and ate a lot of late-night snacks. Ramen challenge.

* Instant noodles … and five students from Emerson walk in with grocery bags with stuff they found in their dorm rooms. This could be horrendous. No immunity, but there’s a $5K prize – we haven’t had enough of those cash prizes this year.

* I had a lot of detailed notes on this quickfire, but the whole thing is just gross. Gregory is scraping the toppings off an Uno’s pizza – the only thing worse than deep-dish pizza is bad chain deep-dish pizza – and that’s not even the bottom of the barrel. There are Doritos and Fritos and spam and I think I’m going to be sick.

* Winner: Melissa. Yet hers had no broth – it was like a mac and cheese with ramen, rather than a bowl of ramen in soup or stock – while Andy and Dave dinged Mei’s for lacking broth. I’m just glad this whole thing is over. I couldn’t have any less interest in seeing what talented professional chefs can do with highly processed foods as ingredients.

* Back to the stew room. The chefs watch a classic video of Julia Child cooking with Jacques Pepin, after which Jacques Pepin walks in with Padma and says, “I come with the wine and a beautiful woman.” It’s charming with a French accent but probably creepy without it.

* Elimination challenge: Take inspiration from Julia Child’s style and from some of her favorite dishes to “make a dish worthy of Julia’s legacy.” Oh, no big deal, then.

* Pepin discusses her tastes and personality with the chefs, saying that when he first met her he thought “she was a big woman with a terrible voice.” She hated grilled vegetables, which I find very odd since the application of high heat can bring out some of the natural sugars. She liked vegetables individually seasoned, rather than all lumped together in a single dish. Presentation never came at the expense of taste for her.

Julia Child brought French cuisine to the masses in the United States, she created the modern cooking show, and I think she was among the first people, maybe the first of all, to reemphasize the importance of cooking at home for yourself to Americans. But for all her influence, Julia Child was an early opponent of small-scale organic farming, siding with the Big Food-backed American Council on Science and Health, more recently in the news for its industry-fueled support for fracking. Child also backed genetically-modified foods and the use of irradiation to fight food-borne illnesses. She hated anything that reeked of scaremongering, but to the point where she seemed to be contrarian rather than strictly pro-science, declining to consider that some of that food-safety activism (e.g., opposing heavy use of pesticides) may be based on hard science too.

Anyway, it’s kind of awesome that someone of Pepin’s caliber would come on this show. I’m sure he was paid handsomely, but does he need that at this point, or is he just here for love of the game, so to speak?

* Gregory seems like a longtime Child fan, saying he watched her shows as a kid, watching her make cassoulets and braises with tons of sauce; he’s making coq au vin as his tribute dish, although that’s really a multi-day, many-hour process and I don’t envy him that task.

* Doug calls Jacques “peh-PEEN.” I mean, I know you don’t need to speak French to be a great chef, but he sounded like he was mispronouncing it on purpose. He’s roasting whole loaves of foie gras; I wasn’t aware Whole Foods even carried that much foie. By the way, cheers to the federal court that overturned California’s ridiculous ban on the sale of foie gras. Not only can it be produced humanely, but foie production isn’t a public-health issue like factory-farming practices used for cattle and poultry, such as prophylactic use of antibiotics.

* George is making osso buco (cross-cut veal shanks, braised and usually served with risotto), but is using a pressure cooker because he’s concerned the shanks won’t have enough time in the oven. We see undercooked braises all the time on Top Chef – didn’t Keriann make this mistake with short ribs this very season – so I’m glad to see someone actually break out the pressure cooker to deal with the artificial time constraints.

* Melissa gets all haughty and says Julia would never have touched a pressure cooker. Julia disliked their looks, but was open to using them if they could be shown to produce a better result (from Laura Shapiro’s biography, Julia Child: A Life). I prefer traditional braises too, in the oven or via a slow-cooker, but I also work at home and have no problem babysitting a braise all day. Most people don’t have that luxury, so if you want to braise something in a pressure cooker, go for it. If there’s a tiny loss of quality – and I’m not sure there is – it’s a reasonable price to pay for getting something on the table.

* Mei is making duck a l’orange, but giving it her own twist by using five-spice powder (usually star anise, cinnamon, cloves, Sichuan pepper, and fennel seeds) with the duck, which she’s preparing in the pressure cooker too.

* Jacques reaches right into Gregory’s pots to taste the sauces. Tom is impressed that he’s actually “doing a roux.” Isn’t that how you make coq au vin?

* Melissa’s short ribs aren’t braising as much as she wanted, so she’s hoping for them to finish via carryover. Maybe you wish you’d used the pressure cookers, eh?

* On day two, Gregory reheats his chicken, tastes it, but finds it overacidic and salty, so he has to add more broth and reseason because the flavors “exacerbated” overnight. Which leads me to a question for any food scientists in the crowd: Most chefs and food writers will tell you that braises improve after a rest overnight. But why? What’s happening off the heat (and in the fridge) to improve the taste or texture?

* Ugh, Dana Downer is in the house. On the bright side, Hugh is back! Joanne Chang, owner/chef at flour cafe, is here too. Did you know there’s a Flour cookbook? I might need to check that out.

* First up, Gregory’s coq au vin. He did a study abroad program and tells the table that his host mother in France made dishes like this. He serves his with glazed carrots, fava beans, and snap peas. It’s really well cooked, although it seems like some of the judges/diners wanted more sauce.

* Mei: duck a l’orange with turnip puree, orange puree, and glazed vegetable. Unlike Gregory’s, which was straight-up traditional, Mei’s dish was cooked in the spirit of classical French cooking but executed with a more modern style. Everyone raves, as they did with Gregory’s, perhaps a bit more so.

* Kind of wishing that Julia Child’s kitchen was still on display in Cambridge so the show could have visited it; it’s on display at the Smithsonian instead, donated by her in 2002.

* George: braised veal shanks with pomme puree, morels, glazed carrots, and asparagus. Dana likes that everything was cooked separately and combined later. Tom says the veal was a tad underseasoned, Barbara wanted a tad more butter, and it seems like George could have cooked the meat “20 minutes longer.”

* Melissa: red wine-braised short rib with brown butter polenta and jardiniere (a mixture of spring vegetables, often canned and/or pickled). Hugh asks, “what’s up with the deep charring?” and Tom says the sauce is a little bitter, two things that are likely connected. Had Melissa gone straight to the the pressure cooker, none of this would ever have happened. Dana was “expecting them to be more unctuous and juicy,” but unctuous (greasy or oily) isn’t a desirable quality in a short rib or in a person.

* Doug: whole roasted foie gras loaves with roasted peaches, sweet and sour onions, and hazelnuts. He seared the loaves and then roasted them, but they turned out overseared and undercooked, while they needed to rest further. Joanne says her end piece was perfectly cooked, but she seems to be the only one. Hugh sounds like he’s eulogizing the plate when he says, “it’s a good dish, just undercooked the foie, it’s a good dish.”

* Tom points out that the dishes that didn’t do so well were ones where the technique was wrong. Three chefs didn’t really execute their proteins, and two did. At this point, I thought it was pretty obvious who was going home – the chef who did the worst job of cooking his protein.

* Hugh is at Judges’ Table. Hugh should always be at Judges’ Table. His blog post this week was outstanding, as always, and includes a great baseball joke too.

* Gregory and Mei were the top two chefs. Gregory’s was straightforward, while Mei took inspiration but added her own twist. Mei wins and tears right up. I think it’s fitting that a female chef should win a Julia challenge, given the latter’s influence in the field. Gregory doesn’t seem the least bit upset by this, but he’s a pretty Zen guy overall.

* Hugh said Doug’s dish was the most ambitious and risk-taking of the five, but the interior was completely raw. Julia was all about mastering the art of French technique. I mean, she kind of wrote the book on that, right?

* Doug is eliminated. That’s a damn shame, but he had the worst dish and the worst execution. The group seems a lot more somber to lose him than, say, Katsuji.

* Rankings: Gregory, Mei, George, Melissa.

* LCK: When Tom says to Doug “you’re here because you undercooked your foie gras,” Katsuji snickers, and Doug says “you know what that is?” without missing a beat. The challenge is to use pork, beef, or goat liver, with just 20 minutes to cook it. Doug says goat liver is too gamy and sinewy, but Katsuji takes that because he’s cooked goat before. He says he doesn’t cook liver because it’s not kosher. (Not quite true – it can be kashered, but with liver it’s not a simple process, and requires broiling to remove the blood from the organ, which must happen with 72 hours of slaughter.) Rebecca says if you overcook liver it’s dry, disgusting, and tastes like “pennies.” I assume that’s why some recipes call for soaking livers before cooking – to remove that metallic taste. Tom says all three guys did well, but Katsuji’s liver wasn’t cleaned properly, leaving it tough and sinewy, so despite great flavors he is eliminated. Doug’s dish was the favorite, and I’ll take him to win LCK unless we get Gregory or Mei off the main ship in the next episode.