Previously on “Top Chef”: the Quickfire involved
product placement, which is annoying but preferable to having the product
placement in the Elimination challenge. Anyway, make something with coffee.
Shirley won with coffee crusted tenderloin. Then everyone was supposed to make
a dish they crave when they go “home”. The secret requirement today is “comfort
food”. Nick made gnudi, the same way he makes them for his kids, and he got
emotional about it. I think the judges remembered that because he won. Travis
made biscuits and gravy, with jam, which might have been good if the biscuits
were cooked. So he was sent home. (click for more)
On Last Chance Kitchen both Travis and Louis had
to make Asian dishes, to mock Travis and his “Captain Vietnam” cockiness from
previously. They both managed to do a really good job, but in the end Louis’s
tripe won. So Louis has held on so far.
Nina says Travis was her escape, they would just
talk about whatever, not competing. All her friends are gone. Now that there
are only eight of them, it’s not enough to just not screw up.
Questlove is here for the Quickfire. He says he
will go anywhere to try food. Today is a stop for…a marching band. Well maybe
just drums. Oh, because drumsticks. UGH. That is a lame tie-in. It’s almost as
bad as product placement. Almost. Whatever, anyway, drumsticks, and at least
they have things other than chicken. Winner gets immunity.
30 minutes. It’s first come, first serve, and in
the rush to not get stuck with giant turkey drumsticks a lot of things end up
on the floor. Like Shirley. Nick tells us how he’s such a great human being
that he helped Shirley instead of getting what he wanted and now he’s stuck
with quail. Because Shirley took the duck that he wanted. Don’t brag about what
a martyr you are, Nick. Stephanie got turkey which she dunks in the deep fryer
and then onto the grill. Nina is going spicy as if that is a shock to anyone.
Carrie took squab, and she is confident even though it will be easy to screw
up. Justin feeds Nick’s martyrdom about being a good person and getting stuck with
quail. He’s got a frog leg recipe, so he’s fine. The duck is overcooking. Brian
is making…chicken soup? With the drumstick meat? Also goose shrinks down when
you cook it. Carlos tries to cut the bones with a chef’s knife so they don’t
stick out so much. It doesn’t look very successful. Nick is kind of obnoxious
about Carlos and “self-taught” people. On the one hand, don’t be condescending.
On the other hand, if culinary school will teach you not to dent your knives on
cooked goose leg bones then I guess that’s good information.
Carrie: squab legs marinated in thyme, juniper,
and cocoa powder, with fig mostarda. Brian: chicken soup, chicken skin
crackling, with parsley and Thai basil. Shirley: crispy duck leg with Szechuan
chili salt and mint. Nina: jerked guinea hen charred with juniper berries and
scotch bonnet peppers. Stephanie: fried and grilled turkey leg with sriracha
and sour cream buttermilk dressing. Nick: twice fried quail legs with sesame
sauce rolled in gomaiso. The chyron says “quail eggs”, like, way to go Bravo.
You correctly spelled “gomaiso”, which is unhulled sesame seeds and salt, but
you couldn’t figure out “legs” vs. “eggs”. Justin: chicken drumettes with
smoked aioli, herb salad and sorghum vinaigrette. Carlos: fried goose leg with
cranberries and apple salad. Padma asks if he smashed the bones because she
just got a shard of bone. Oops.
Nick’s quail was too salty, which I’d like to
point out has nothing to do with getting quail instead of duck. Justin was not
creative enough. Goose was overcooked, plus Carlos didn’t need to smash the
bones. Clearly. High marks are Carrie (squab was cooked properly), Nina (also
cooked properly and not spicy), and Brian (the skin was still crunchy like a
drumstick). Carrie wins. Nina and Brian look pissed.
Elimination challenge: cook for freshman
orientation at LSU. Hee. They have to feed lunch to 500 freshmen at the dining
hall. The dining hall has all their supplies, which are the same supplies the
food service always uses. So no fancy Whole Foods things. Winner gets a car.
Giving the car away a little early, aren’t we? Tonight they’ll sleep in the
dorms, as if this is a hardship for 8 people who have been living 4 to a room
already for weeks.
As people are packing they talk about their
college days which is random. Shirley wants to win the car to give to her mom.
Brian is super excited about going to college and is babbling about keggers and
whatever. To be fair, he’s responding to what I am sure is a producer-prompted
question from Nick. But Shirley is realizing how annoying she must be when she
talks all the time. High fives for the two perky student tour guides. They seem
like every student tour guide ever. They get a tour, including to see the live
tiger they keep as a mascot. That tiger looks bored. Justin makes a “revenge of
the nerds” reference. They actually have to make their own beds, which is
hilarious, but they all get single rooms so it’s not like it’s so terrible.
Carrie doesn’t know how to make a bed.
Cooking time. As everyone runs around Nick says
they need to talk about stations before anyone touches anything. Eight
stations, eight chefs. They start hollering about who wants hot or cold
stations. Shirley immediately claims the station with the wide flattop grill.
Carrie doesn’t really want a cold station, but she recognizes she has immunity
so she just sort of shrugs it off. The chefs also have to call ingredients,
because there’s not really enough of any one thing for more than one person to
use. So if someone wants to use asparagus, there won’t be enough for anyone
else. Shirley is making fried rice. The drama begins when Carlos says he is
going to make some type of seafood that needs the plancha, the giant grill that
Shirley called. Shirley says she needs that for the fried rice. Someone offers
that other hot stations have grill space, but Carlos says it’s too hard to work
on. There’s a wood-burning oven, but he can’t use that either. Shirley
interviews that Carlos’s true personality just came out. I think Shirley may
have agreed to use the oven, but I think she should have stood her ground. She already
called it.
There is a terrible commercial for some kind of
sauce things starring Brooke and Josh. Josh’s mustache has gotten more
obnoxious. That’s what I got from that. I think it’s for those kits that have
two sauces, one to cook with and one to finish with? If so, this commercial is
better than those ones where Rocco and Carla Hall are children with terrifying
giant heads.
3 hours to cook. Nick says he marked his oven so
he could use it throughout service. Shirley did end up using the wood-burning oven,
so she’s changed her dish. Justin doesn’t want to “cook down” to people so he’s
making shrimp and asparagus and cauliflower. Stephanie wants to make pimento
grilled cheese and she’s having to use whatever random cheese she finds.
Tom time! Carlos tells Tom he’s going to cook his
fish on the flattop and then put it in the oven. So he does need an oven? He
didn’t mention that, I don’t think. Stupid. Shirley talks about her charred
tomatoes and does not say anything about Carlos. Nina is trying to make corn
puree, but they only have a regular-size cocktail blender. Not big enough for
500 people. Justin rolls his eyes at people’s boring food. Some food service
people show up to help serve. Nick fills his oven with plates, to keep them
warm, I guess. Doesn’t the dining hall have some other way to do that? I mean…I
would assume they don’t keep an oven set aside to warm plates. Unless they just
serve everything on cold plates; I guess that could be the situation.
As the freshmen show up there is a lot of running
around, especially for Nina, who is trying to fry chicken on the fly. Brian has
a huge line for food, while not one person wants Carrie’s broccoli. She says “It’s
not my fault kids are stupid and don’t eat their broccoli.” Sigh. Carlos
realizes that the oven is full of plates, and Nick couldn’t care less about
Carlos’s needs. Now he has to cook the fish all the way through on his plancha
that he got through whining, and it makes him behind. I know Nick said he
marked the oven, so either he didn’t do that very clearly or Carlos decided
that wasn’t important. Or possibly Carlos didn’t bother to check to see if
there was a free oven. Nick was jerky earlier but I’m going to side with him on
this one. Stephanie is trying to be consistent with her grilled cheese and
soup, and decides to just go ahead and put the sandwich in the bowl (propped up
on the side) because she figures everyone is going to dunk the sandwich anyway.
Gail and Emeril are here for judging. Shirley:
roast beef with potato puree and fire-roasted tomato relish. Nina: fried
chicken with sweet corn puree and pickled onions. Brian: shrimp cake and
spinach with chipotle aioli. Gail and Padma go sit with some students, next to
boys whom I’m sure were thrilled. The shrimp cake has big chunks which is good.
Shirley did a great job too, so good for her. Nick: roasted pork, parmesan
grits and bacon brown sugar gravy. Tom says it looks like cafeteria food but in
a good way. Nina’s chicken breading is falling off, and her puree is bland.
Nick’s food is also bland, but the gravy is OK.
Carrie: broccoli salad with herbed yogurt sauce
and pita bread. Justin: marinated gulf shrimp, cauliflower, asparagus, and
garlic puree. Justin’s dish tastes weird. Gail is bored with Carrie’s dish.
Stephanie: spicy tomato soup with grilled pimento cheese sandwich. Tom and
Emeril go over to Carlos’s station, but he is still grilling fish so he makes
them wait. The shot of them eating Stephanie’s dish as they stand at the
counter is funny. They’re just chilling, eating soup standing up and talking
about how he’s slow. Tom harasses him and says they’re hungry, to which Carlos
replies “They, ah…took my oven”. When asked by Tom he throws Nick under the
bus. Well that was quick. Nina hears him and is shocked at how ”fucked up” it
is that Carlos is saying Nick stole things. Carlos: seared tilapia with chile
ancho and Mexican coleslaw. After all that the fish is good. Stephanie’s
decision to put the sandwich in the soup has backfired because by the time
everyone got back to eat it, it was soggy and falling apart. Nina’s falling
behind too. Tom and Emeril go to Nick to stir shit up and tell him Carlos is
blaming him for stuff. Nick wonders aloud how an oven he’s been using all day
could be “stolen”. A good point.
Commercial interlude: Stephanie thinks she is secretly
a lunch lady. Then everyone talks about hairnets.
Nina thinks this was the hardest service.
Stephanie wants more wine. Nick brings up the oven, and Carlos rolls his eyes
as if this has been blown out of proportion. You brought this on yourself,
dude. Carlos’s defense? “I really need [sic] an oven.” Everyone else gangs up
on him and says Carlos should have communicated that then, which he didn’t do.
“But I didn’t say it in a mean way.” What? Insane. Nick lays it out: he used
the oven to roast pork, then to warm plates. When Carlos came and asked to use
it, he said no. Then Carlos told the judges that Nick “stole” the oven. This is
petty, Nick says. Carlos apologizes and says his intention was not to throw
Nick under the bus. Yes it was. Why else would you do that? I don’t buy his “I
didn’t mean it” excuse. The video comes on and the judges liked Brian, and
Shirley. Carlos gets nailed for taking too long, although the food was
delicious. Stephanie hears her sandwich fell apart, and she looks upset. Justin
had no seasoning, and Nina’s chicken fell apart. And there was a point where
people were not getting corn puree. The judges slam Carrie for coasting on her
immunity and making vegetables because she should be in the bottom. Oops.
Padma collects Shirley, Brian, and Carlos. Nick
says “Dammit” quietly, and they put in a shot of Carlos grinning in a “Sorry
dude” manner. Does that really go there? If so, don’t be an asshat. You’re not
going to win because you took too long to serve. At least I hope that is the
situation. Carlos only gets a small slap on the wrist for taking too long, as
the judges are more interested in telling him how the fish was cooked well and
the slaw was good. Brian had most students’ favorite dish. And somehow the
spinach really worked. Shirley manages to tell the judges no one wanted the
wood-burning oven, while not saying she got stuck with it or that Carlos stole
her station through whining. I hope Carlos takes notes. Her roasted tomato
relish was delicious and the meat was well cooked. The winner of the car is
Shirley. Awesome. She’s so excited she’s jumping up and down.
Stephanie, Nina, and Justin have to face the
music. Nina ran out of corn, and her server was serving chicken without waiting
for more corn puree so her dish was incomplete. Gail thinks the corn was the
worst part of the dish anyway, so the kids that only got chicken maybe got a
better dish. Stephanie put cottage cheese in her sandwiches, in her quest to
find whatever cheese she could. Plus the sandwich got soggy. Justin’s defense
consists of “If I had made something simple and boring I could have crushed it
but I did more work than everyone else.” Yeah…that argument doesn’t always
work. They do gently let him down instead of nailing him for acting like he’s better
than everyone. He was too “cheffy”.
Nina was inconsistent, and it’s a big deal that
she ran out of corn. As the judges talk they realize she made several batches
of varying quality. Justin’s food was consistently bland. Stephanie’s soup was
fine but they get upset over the sandwich. This is one of those situations
where if Stephanie had just said “grilled cheese sandwich” she might have been
better off. Tom expects sharp cheddar in his pimento cheese, which she couldn’t
find. Also she used cheeses that don’t melt.
Tom has one last chance to nail everyone for
their screw-ups and make school-related comments. Justin is sent home. Tom says
he cooked the worst dish, period. Justin says today proved he’s too stubborn to
compromise his ingredients. Or season anything, apparently.
Next time: more serving large groups, more Carlos
being unprepared. He needs a sushi knife, he asks Nick for one because he’s
insane (Nick is the last person who’s going to help him), Nick refuses, Carlos
is insulted. Duh, Carlos. Anyway, I think this episode is airing on New Year’s
Day and I will be out of town, so I probably won’t have it up for a day or two.
Last Chance Kitchen: Justin wants to take it out
on somebody. Sure. Louis is actually kind of surprised to see Justin “so early”.
Justin is still convinced he’s better than everyone. Tom informs Justin that
even though he is from here, he still failed at a lot of stuff. So he’ll have
to make dishes based on ingredients from Louis’s home of Northern California.
Louis will be using Louisiana ingredients. This seems unfair. Louis and
everyone else have been using local ingredients this whole time. They probably
studied up before coming out to be on the show. 30 minutes to cook. Louis ended
up with crawfish, squash, corn, okra…looks like rabbit. Justin has sardines,
quail, grapes, goat cheese. Crab. Nice. Louis knows he’s not shafted but he’d switch
with Justin any day. Michael babbles about salt poaching or something dumb. Then
he bugs Justin about why he got eliminated. Justin just says he didn’t get
eliminated for sardines. Louis is going old-school French. Louis seems to be
pretty on top of things. Justin reveals that he lived in California until he
was 21 so this challenge “twist” is dumb on all levels. Justin knows he might
have plated early. Louis is way behind and is still cooking in the last minute.
Justin: grilled sardine with roasted corn and sherry vinaigrette. He did not
use the crab or grapes in the box. Or avocado. Louis: redfish almandine with
corn puree and crawfish sauce. He ignored peaches and rabbit. Louis’s sauce was
delicious but a little spicy on the end. Justin got a good flavor from the grill
and crunch from the vegetables. If Tom had to find one flaw, it would be the sardine
was a little dry so Louis wins again. He is relieved because he thought Justin
would be his biggest competition and now things will be easier. Justin is
pissed because he thinks his sardine was perfect.
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