Top Chef Seattle Finale Part 2 Recap

So this should be interesting. In my haste to get out of the house this morning, I misplaced the notes I took last night. That's right, we're essentially flying this thing without a pilot!

Good thing nothing really happened.

Oh, I know - it was the finale, and like some bad 70s sitcom, it was filmed before a live audience. But nothing happened, apart from a couple of montages and a whole lot of cooking.

When we join the show, finalists Kristen and Brooke have already been cooking for a while. Padma takes us aside to give us the scoop. The cheftestants need to cook five courses for 160 people including the judges and the nine previous Top Chef winners. They'll go head-to-head with each course, and the first chef to win three rounds is Top Chef. Course two must include scallops, and course four must include snapper. Both chefs have chosen to make a dessert for course five, should it get that far.

We then flashback to three hours prior, when Brooke and Kristen enter Kitchen Stadium. They're a bit flabbergasted to see an audience, so they obviously were not warned in advance. Each of the finalists has three hand-picked sous chefs waiting for them. Brooke has chosen Team California--CJ, Stefan, Kuniko--for whatever reason. Maybe to save Bravo airfare? Kristen, on the other hand, has chosen the sharpest knives in the box, namely the last three contestants to be eliminated from the competition--Mustache, Sheldon, and Lizzie. They have quick little meetings to explain their dishes to their sous and immediately start cooking.

We head back to the present and see that time is just about up for the first course. CJ is finishing up burning most of Brooke's crispy pig ear, and everyone is frantically plating. Time. is. up! and the judges get to eat.

The judges are Hugh, Emeril, Gail, Tom, and Padma. Despite being in Los Angeles, Wolfgang Puck's home base, he was not invited to the party. He was probably busy planning Oscar party food anyway.

Padma says something about cooking for 300 people. Earlier she told us 160. Clearly there aren't 300 plates on the tables, so she's either hitting the sauce pretty hard already, or has taken something that gives her double vision. Or maybe the producers told her to heighten the tension and this was the best she could come up with.*

Err....what happens next? Ah...tasting. The judges taste Kristen's chicken liver mousse with frisée and hazelnuts and Brooke's pig ear and chicory salad with 6-minute egg. (Thanks to the lovely Hugh Acheson for providing descriptions of all of the show's dishes, especially since Bravo's internmonkeys had not put up any photos by 9am.) The ears are burnt on several dishes, but Padma's are perfectly cooked. The judges hem and haw and three of them choose Kristen's dish as their fave. Round One to Kristen.

Insert montage of Brooke's "journey" to the finale.

Back to the kitchen to cook scallops. Kristen is making a crudo of her gorgeous in-shell specimens, telling Sheldon to whip up a salt cure with lavender and citrus. Brooke gives hers a hard sear and serves it with 101 accompaniments including juniper, salt cod purée, romanesco, speck, black currant, and mustard seed vinaigrette. The judges taste and give the round to Brooke.

Kristen gets a "memories" montage, too.

Round three is a pot luck round, and Kristen whips up a bit of crispy bone marrow with celery root puree, mushrooms, and bitter greens. Drool. Brooke is still bitter over her fuck-up with fried chicken six months ago and decides to redeem herself with chicken wings coated in vadouvan (an India-by-way-of-France curry-ish spice blend) served with "Sumac Yogurt-Tahini & Pickled Kohlrabi Fattoush." The judges get why she's made the wings, but not really, and Tom's not feeling the side dishes. Kristen wins the round, despite Padma's bitching that her dish was cold.

Round four must include snapper. Brooke has had lots of good luck with her oddball surf-and-turf creations, like the lamb-stuffed squid and frog leg and mussels combo from early episodes, so she throws another one out there - pork cheek and snapper with collard greens slaw and sorrel purée. Kristen goes much simpler with her dish, serving her fish with a portion of uni, little gem lettuce, and a shellfish nage. High-end chefs tend to be a sucker for sea urchin, so this was a good decision on her part.

Then we get a barrage of commercials. Kristen leads the battle two challenges to one. If she wins this round, she is Top Chef. It's 10:56 pm when we get back to the program and it's not a supersized episode. Hmm....

Cheesy game show-style drama lights come on in the studio as Padma quizzes the judges about their favorite dish. I find myself thinking, "final answer?" after each of them pretends to hem and haw over their decision before picking Kristen.

Kristen is Top Chef!

I would have really enjoyed seeing the battle come down to the dessert course. Imagine that - a dessert being the difference between winning $125,000 and not winning $125,000. Of course, that's par for the course on Top Chef: Just Desserts, but on Top Chef: Savory, desserts tend to be the kiss of death. Tom clarifies on his blog that the chefs were simply required to make five dishes. None of them had to be a dessert.

So another season of Top Chef is over, thank sweet baby Jesus. I hope the three of you have enjoyed my recaps. :)

*Gail Simmons says that there were 300 guests present, but only 160 of them were served food. Seems a bit unfair, no?

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Top Chef Seattle Finale Part 1 Recap

After this week, there's only one more new episode of Top Chef Seattle. Can I get an "amen" up in here?! It's not that I haven't enjoyed this season (I haven't), it's just that it seems like it's gone on for.  so.  l o n g. That said, this season hasn't seemed as unbearably long as last season because we haven't had any of the same uncomfortable bitchery. This year's group--the Josie-haters notwithstanding--seemed to actually like each other. Still - no reason for seventeen weeks of this stuff. Especially when the final episodes need to be padded to fit an hour.

This week's padding has Sheldon and Brooke going home to their respective, ah, homes. It's six months since Seattle and Sheldon is a minor superstar back in Hawai'i. He's posing for photos and kissing babies and all of that nonsense. He's also completed a stage at a fancy restaurant, because he knows Brooke hangs with fancy chefs and she's his chief competition.

Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, Brooke is back in her restaurants, dealing with paperwork and hanging with Roy Choi (whom we already know) and Sang Yoon of Father's Office. (A restaurant, not an actual office. They have a cute Web site, btw).

Eventually, Sheldon joins Brooke in LA and they travel together by Toyota Sponsormobile to the local outpost of Tom Colicchio's Craft, where the competition began for several of the cheftestants (and ended just as abruptly for others). Tom is there, along with Padma, Hugh, and Emeril, and they give the cheftestants the bad news: there's one other contestant, someone who happened to beat the pants off the rest of the competition in Last Chance Kitchen...

...cue montage...

Kuniko. Carla. CJ - times six. Kristen beats CJ. Kristen beats everyone else, including Lizzie, who was the winner of the "Save a Chef" contest. Kristen steps out from behind a curtain and Brooke and Sheldon groan. Kristen's gonna be tough to beat.

Then Tom delivers even worse news. Dinner service at Craft starts in three hours and the three of them will be providing the grub. Each cheftestant is responsible for one app, one entrée, and one dessert. And they're off to the walk-ins, choosing proteins and quickly planning their dishes.

Sheldon goes for spot prawns and quail, the latter of which Brooke thinks is very unlike Sheldon. She's not really sure what she wants to do. Maybe short ribs. Sweetbreads for the app. Both rather difficult to do perfectly in three hours because sweetbreads usually require several steps (soaking, cleaning, parboiling, pressing, frying) and short ribs need a slow braise. Kristen wants to start with a chestnut soup, followed by tuna. They're all saving worrying about dessert for later.

Brooke seems scattered; she's burning batch after batch of pistachios. Sheldon tells us he wants to show us the "new" Sheldon; now that he has some fancypants restaurant training under his belt, he wants to make something that's new to him. That doesn't bode well. Kristen realizes she's prone to over-thinking her food and wants to keep it simple this time.

Soon enough time is up and Tom is in the kitchen to expedite. And he's a real cranky bossypants in that position. He makes the chefs as nervous as if this were the first time they had ever worked the line, and both Sheldon and Kristen DO work the line at their current jobs. In between fits of crank, Tom tastes all of the dishes.

Meanwhile out at the judges' table (not to be confused with Judges' Table), Hugh, Emeril, and Padma are joined by John Besh and Martin Yan. The first courses come out. They all seem to enjoy Sheldon's spot prawns in broth. Kristen's chestnut velouté is nice, but the duck rillettes are rich and the whole thing might need some acid. Brooke's sweetbreads are nicely crispy, but Hugh thinks they could be "cleaner" and sliced more thickly. Hugh actually has a lot of complaints about just about everything.

Brooke's shortribs are successful. Kristen's tuna is nicely cooked but the lemon curd on the plate is too bitter for Padma's delicate sensibilities. And Sheldon's quail with pine nut sauce leaves the judges with a WTF look on their faces. Where were Sheldon's usual Filipino flavorings?

Finally, while Brooke's brown butter cake was tasty and moist, the other cheftestant's chocolate concoctions were both misses, particularly Sheldon's raw fennel with white chocolate. It could have been a good idea - Tom seemed to think so initially - but the execution was flawed.

While Brooke worried that she would be out this week, it was clear that all three of her dishes were good enough to get her a pass to the final finale. So it was down to Kristen and Sheldon, both of whom played it pretty safe, according to Hugh.

Yan and Besh are dismissed and the others adjourn to Judges' Table.

They don't like the "new" Sheldon, which was pretty apparent during the meal. So they send him back home to Hawai'i. This leaves Brooke and Kristen to battle it out in some hot girl-on-girl chef action, guaranteeing that Top Chef will FINALLY have another female winner, the first since Stephanie Izard in season 4.

Next week: the chefs battle in front of a live audience. I'm providing the laugh track.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Top Chef Seattle Episode 15 Recap

This week, the three remaining cheftestants rise and shine to find a message from Padma, urging them to dress warmly and to meet her somewhere near the top of a mountain. They get into a Toyota Sponsormobile and drive for a piece, then get into a helicopter. Brooke freaks out and doesn't want to go. She not only hates boats, but she also hates helicopters. Eventually, after some tears and a couple of Xanax, she hops aboard and puts a death grip on the boys' arms as they fly over some gorgeous Alaska scenery. They urge her to unclench her eyes and look around, and, after peeing herself a little, she gradually enjoys the rest of the trip.

Once on the ground, they find dog sleds waiting to take them to yet another snowy destination. Thankfully, Brooke doesn't seem to have an irrational fear of dogs or dog sleds. Sheldon remarks that he wishes he had some really good reefer. If I were him, I'd ask Padma. Finally, they reach Padma and Tom on Norris Glacier. They are at an Iditarod-training camp, and there are dozens of dogs, each tied to his or her own mini-igloo. The cheftestants' final Quickfire Challenge of the competition is to kill and cook a dog and make a coat from its pelt create a dish using whatever happens to be in the camp's mess tents.

Though it would seem that a mess tent in Alaska would be full of cans of Dinty Moore and MRE-type rations, there's a surprising assortment of fresh fruit, like watermelon. After grabbing their ingredients, the three convene in the kitchen, which Mustache calls "super tiny." Well, it's about twice as large as my home kitchen, so I don't know about that.

Brooke and Sheldon both cook halibut, and Mustache makes...wait for it...breakfast. Brooke jokingly says it's all he knows how to make, and she's not really wrong. Padma and Tom taste the dishes with the aid of some sunburned dog sled racers who are probably only in their early 20s now but after a few more months of sun-on-snow glare will look twice their age. They decide that the cheftestants can cook for them any time, but like Brooke's halibut with panzanella salad the best.

They get back on the helicopter, this time with Padma. Then the four of them and their cameraman squeeze into the Toyota Sponsormobile, with Padma at the wheel. She drives them back to their house, where Emeril and LA chef Roy Choi have taken over the kitchen. Roy, a Food & Wine best new chef, rose to fame with his fleet of Kogi Korean BBQ Food trucks. He tells the chefs that before he got into cooking full time, he was a real "scumbag." But one day, while being a scumbag, doing scumbag things like hanging out on the couch, watching Emeril Live! he happened to catch an episode in which Emeril cooks short ribs. It was a lightbulb moment, and right after that, Choi looked into culinary schools.

Emeril's got to feel a bit powerful this season. First Micah likens him to Moses, and now Roy Choi reveals he's an apostle.

Over a lunch of braised short ribs with Korean flavors, plus rice AND cornbread, Padma announces that the Elimination Challenge involves each of the three cheftestants' own "a-ha! moments." They will have to create a dish that represents the moment they decided to become a chef, and they'll be serving their meals to a panel of judges including the current governor of Alaska and his first lady (plus Emeril, Roy, Gail, and Wolfie).

But first - mild drama. Mustache's wife is going into labor. She calls him every few hours to make him feel guilty for not being around for the birth of their first child. He's verklempt, but he also wants to win.

The next day, the three do some prep work for their dishes. Brooke says she's known she's wanted to be a chef since she was four, so she's having trouble conceptualizing a dish around the diet of a typical four-year-old - chicken fingers and ketchup sandwiches. Sheldon was inspired by tubby Hawaiian chef, Sam Choy, who happens to be a friend of Emeril. And Mustache was inspired by his first taste of foie gras. He tells Tom that he had been a wrestler, always concerned about his weight, and once found himself reading a copy of Food & Wine while riding an exercise bike in a sauna. Guess he couldn't have been reading Gourmet or Bon Appetit or Sauveur, since Food & Wine is one of Top Chef's sponsors....

While all this is happening, Mustache's wife gives birth. She Skypes him later from the hospital, to further rub in the guilt of not being there when his kid is born. She insists it wasn't so bad and that she might want to do it again later. Maybe when Mustache is competing on the next season of Top Chef All-Stars, or filming a reality special on the art of mustache waxing, along with current Project Runway designer Daniel Esquivel.

The next day, they head to the Governor's mansion to finish cooking. Mustache keeps asking Brooke what she's cooking, and she keeps answering, "I don't know yet." And she's only partly lying. Eventually she decided on making braised chicken, inspired by her mama, but also grilled quail and an assortment of other accompaniments. Sheldon is keeping it Asian and makes a Chinese-style pan-roasted rockfish with spot prawns. Mustache makes foie gras three ways - a torchon, a mousse piped into a profiterole, and seared.

Brooke serves first, and except for an overcooked quail breast, her dish is layered with delicious flavors. Mustache has problems with his torchon because one can't be made successfully in a couple of hours; it needs time to poach and cool properly. Gail makes faces at her portion of the crumbly, undercooked liver. However, all three components of his dish are delicious, particularly the apricot with the seared foie. Finally, Sheldon's seafood is perfectly cooked, but his broth has reduced too much and is salty as hell.

Bet you never knew hell was salty.

Only two chefs are moving to the finale in Los Angeles, and it's pretty clear that despite some tough quail, Brooke is one of them. But is oversalted broth or overambitious and undercooked foie a more egregious error?

Mustache tells us that he wants to win and anything less is failure. Needless to say, he's a failure, because he doesn't move on. But there's always Last Chance Kitchen!

Next week - the winner of Last Chance Kitchen joins Brooke and Sheldon in the finale. I'll save you watching LCK - Lizzie, who won Save a Chef over CJ, battles Mustache and Kristen. Mustache is eliminated, and the winner is...

...I don't know. They're saving it for next week. Bastards.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Top Chef Seattle Episode 14 Recap

We're getting down to the wire here on Top Chef Seattle - only about eight six four episodes to go. God, really? Do we have to sit through another four episodes? Let's do the math:

This episode, 14: final four - 1 eliminee = final three
Episode 15: final three - 1 eliminee = final two + Last Chance Kitchen winner = final three
Episode 16: final three - 1 eliminee = final two + Save a Chef winner = final three
Episode 17: final three - 1 eliminee = final two
Episode 18: finale

I could be wrong, but I'm probably not. Last year we had 18 episodes and were forced to watch Beverly and the other cheftestants compete in Olympic-like events, for the sheer ridiculousness of it. What nonsense will we be subjected to this time? Stay tuned. Or not. If you're smart, you'll give up now.

This week the cheftestants - Mustache, Sheldon, Brooke, and Lizzie - start the show off by lamenting the loss of dear, sweet, kind, thumb-like Stefan. They miss his good heart, or something like that. Surely he paid them to compliment him after he left.

The four are forced to walk the plank in Juneau, Alaska, where it is cold. They find Padma, shivering in a fuzzy vest and turtleneck, with a chef named Sean Brock, whom the network has flown nearly 4,000 miles from Charleston, SC to the southernmost part of Alaska. For what reason, we'll never know. I suppose there aren't any notable chefs in that area of the US, but certainly Canada could have lent them one from British Columbia?

In any case, the cheftestants have to make a dish using local crab at a joint called Tracy's King Crab Shack. Alaska produces 76 million pounds of crab annually, so the chefs have plenty of raw material to choose from.

After thirty minutes, Brooke presents her crab toast, Lizzie her crab frittata, Sheldon his miso soup with pine-smoked asparagus (a trick he picked up from the Noma cookbook), and Mustache his succotash with bacon. Lizzie's frittata had too many flavors other than crab, and Mustache should know not to make succotash for a low country cook who thinks his own is the best. Padma and Sean did like Brooke's toast, but they especially liked Sheldon's soup, made with crab guts. Mmm...crab guts. He gets the win and a check for $5,000.

Next, the chefs have to use still more seafood. And make bread. While salmon and sourdough seems an unlikely pairing, that's apparently what the locals eat. When they get to the charming little cottage where they will be staying during the Juneau leg of the journey, they find vats of 31-year-old sourdough starter left for them by a local baker. They immediately set to making their bread for the next day.

When they sit down to wait for their dough to rise, Brooke notices that Mustache has somehow gotten hold of a verboten cell phone. His wife is in labor and the network kindly allows him to keep tabs on the proceedings. Plus, it could make good drama for the show if the baby is born with three heads.

The next day, they have to "shop" for their fish. They suit up in hip waders and head to the dock where a fishing boat is bringing in a haul of freshly caught chum, king, sockeye, and other salmon varieties. The chefs choose their fish and gut them right then and there. Lizzie, whose father has died recently, has flashbacks to her childhood and fishing and gutting with her dad. She gets teary and tells us he would be so proud of her. And at that point we realize she must be going home this week.

Later, the final four are cooking up their dishes at a place called Gold Creek Salmon Bake, which is an outdoor venue. Guess the locals are used to the cold, but Padma is wearing a hat and mittens when she shows up. She looks uncomfortable with the fact that she can't wear anything leather or low cut in this episode.

The judges this time are Sean Brock, Hugh, Emeril, and Gail. As they take their seats, they talk about bears being in the vicinity. Tom jokes that bears are a part of his fan base. The others look blankly at him, clearly not getting the joke.

Brooke presents her dish first. She's made soup, as have two of her competition. She serves poached sockeye salmon in a seafood broth with mustard seed caviar and dill sourdough for dipping. The dish gets raves - the fish is nicely cooked, the broth is delicious, and the dill in the bread was a nice touch.

Sheldon's bread, made with green tea and chives, causes Padma to make a face. She loves tea and chives, but not together and not in bread. But his pea soup is delicious. The salmon, not so much. He's smoked it, and while parts of it are well cooked, other parts have too much char and too much bitter smoke flavor. Plus, he's used chum, which as Padma notes, is used as dog food by the locals.

Mustache has prepared a roasted garlic sourdough soup with sockeye salmon and olive croutons. Emeril loves the soup, of course, but Tom thinks it's too garlicky and overwhelms the salmon, which is perfectly cooked. They all like the idea of the olive croutons.

Finally, Lizzie presents her sourdough rolls filled with citrus-and-beet-glazed salmon. The rolls are great, perfectly crusty and wonderful. But the salmon has little or no flavor. Tom wonders why she didn't marinate it before cooking, rather than glaze it, and where is the seasoning?

The judges finish eating and canvas the other 200 diners at the Salmon Bake to find out whose dish was most popular. Later, at Judges' Table, the four cheftestants hear the verdict while rain is pouring down around them. It's certainly scenic, but I'm betting it's cold and damp and the judging probably went pretty quickly that evening.

Brooke gets the win because her dish was close to perfect. Lizzie's dish was too simple to have been so bland, and she gets sent to face Kristen in Last Chance Kitchen.

Next week: helicopters! dog sleds! lots of non-cooking stuff! The Governor of Alaska! (I'm betting Sarah Palin wishes she were still in that position, so she'd have another chance to extend her fifteen minutes by whoring herself and her family on yet another reality show.)

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Top Chef Seattle Episode 13 Recap

With this episode, Top Chef Seattle is now no longer Top Chef Seattle- it's Top Chef Celebrity Cruise Endorsement! Woo hoo! The five remaining cheftestants - Brooke, Lizzie, Stefan, Sheldon, and Mustache - pack their bags, find some coats, and clamber aboard a ginormous ship that will presumably take them to Alaska. That is, if they don't have to walk the plank first.

Brooke doesn't like boats. She doesn't explain exactly why. She says she has to get over it though because she fears passing her phobia on to her kid. But isn't that what parents are for? To make their kids neurotic? She indulges in a series of umbrella drinks with her compadres and keeps a box of Dramamine handy, just in case drinking on a boat is a bad idea. Ahem.

Padma shows up to spoil the fun and she's brought Top Chef Masters' host Curtis Stone with her. He's got a really terrible hair cut, which at least distracts me from his scary face. Speaking of hair, Padma's looks pretty shitty, too.

They tell the chefs to stop drinking, because they're going to be heading to the kitchen to prepare food for the ship's "Welcome Aboard" party. Each of them has to make one bite of food for two hundred people, and that one bite has to feature the scrumptuosity of ...iceberg lettuce.

Cute. Cruise ship. Iceberg lettuce. Don't make me explain it to you. Just imagine Celine Dion singing "My Heart Will Go On." Hey, it can't get any worse than it already is, right?

Actually, yes it can. This is a "super-sized" episode. "Stupor-sized," is more like it. Just for that, I'm going to make this recap as short as possible.

The cheftestants suit up and head to the ship's kitchen, which is huge and all-electric. A Padma voice-over tells the chefs not to fear - all of their Anolon cookware has been removed from the Top Chef Landlubber Kitchen and dumped onto the boat for them. Can't let a sponsor get unmentioned!

Rather than Padma and Curtis going around from chef to chef to taste their Quickfire dishes, the chefs have to bring their dishes to the judges. Stefan quips that the kitchen is twelve minutes away, so I hope nobody was expecting warm food.

Curtis seemed to love every bite, from from Mustache's elevated wedge salad (with bacon) to Sheldon's lettuce wrap with pickled lettuce core. Sheldon's was most interesting, had the best texture, and he gets the win.

Padma then tells the cheftestants to go play and explore the boat. Immediately Sheldon and Lizzie go for manicures while Brooke, Stefan, and Mustache go drinking. This interlude with the manicure is such a damn time waster. Lizzie meets someone else from South Africa, they gab, it has nothing to do with the show. Mustache tells us that it's his baby's due date, but he knows nothing. And Stefan says he lost his virginity on a cruise ship. I thought the story was that he lost his virginity to a babysitter when he was a pre-teen? Is anything he says true?

The whole segment is a huge waste of my time, and it cements my decision to stop watching Top Chef after this season.

More time wasting: the five eat dinner at Qsine, one of the ship's restaurants. They eat food served bizarrely in a dresser drawer, which seems too twee and gimmicky. And twee and gimmicky turns out to be the Elimination Challenge. Padma and her new sidekick Curtis show up and give the cheftestants indigestion by informing them they'll be cooking dinner at Qsine, doing something clever and cutesy with the old standard, surf and turf, and using some of Qsine's cutesy serving vessels.

Because Sheldon won the Quickfire, he gets the advantage of choosing his proteins from the ship's store first, and the other chefs cannot use either of them. After running around in the walk-in, he takes filet and lobster, the two most obvious and boring choices. Brooke takes frog's legs and mussels. Stefan pork belly and eel. Mustache bacon and scallops. And Lizzie grabs the suckling pig and still more scallops.

At this point, I've ceased paying attention to the show. All I gather is that Mustache wants to make pasta with his scallops by mixing them with gelatin and egg white, but he's obviously never watched Iron Chef. He spreads his scallop goo onto a sheet pan and puts it in the fridge, thinking it will set up. What he needed to do was put the goo in a pastry bag and pipe it into boiling water. Predictably, his method doesn't work, so he decides to "scramble" the scallop as if it were all egg, because he's running out of time and is desperate.

Brooke is the first to serve her dish to the panel: Curtis; Hugh Acheson; three Celebrity employees including Julie, Your Cruise Director, the chef, and a suit; Padma; and Tom. They find her combination of frog's legs and mussels to be innovative and delicious, but her pappadum accompaniment is greasy.

Stefan made pork belly with a super-crunchy top layer. He likes it that way. Mustache keeps trying to steal pieces of it, so he apparently likes it that way. I know I like it that way. Even Curtis likes it that way. But Tom doesn't like it that way. And if Tom isn't pleased, well.... The judges feel that the eel in Stefan's parsnip and eel ravioli is overshadowed by the parsnip. I can't even imagine the combination.

Mustache's scallop scramble is surprisingly tasty, especially when topped with his non-crunchy pork belly and bacon. The flavors are punchy and innovative.

Sheldon, who has the two most boring ingredients, makes the most boring dish. His Korean bbq beef with kimchi is tasty, but his tempura lobster is as soggy as his tempura custard in the roller derby challenge and Lizzie's tempura lobster from the sushi Quickfire. Tempura anything just isn't a good idea on Top Chef, so let's put it on the list with risotto, shall we?

Finally, Lizzie presents a cabbage roll that didn't get enough time in the steamer. The undercooked cabbage popped open when cut, and the delicate scallops inside were overpowered by the pork. But Curtis was impressed that she made a whole suckling pig, even though we know she just lopped off a leg and used that.

And blah blah more time wasting with the judges talking around the table about what dishes they liked and who should win even though we just heard them talk about it. And then they bring out the cheftestants and do the same thing in front of them. It's obvious that Brooke gets the win on originality alone, despite her greasy crackers, and she does. She also wins a 7 night Caribbean cruise, which you know she's going to give to someone else. Lizzie and Mustache are safe, so it comes down to Sheldon's soggy tempura and Stefan's crunchy skin. Personally, I think the tempura was a bigger sin, but Tom didn't like Stefan's dish so Stefan goes home. Well, he doesn't go home - they're on a boat. I guess he gets locked in the hoosegow for the remainder of the trip.

Meanwhile, while this is all going on, the Save a Chef voting has been raging between CJ and Josie and the results are very close - 94% for CJ, 6% for Josie.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Top Chef Seattle Episode 12 Recap

This week's episode was much less drama-filled than last week's, which is a good thing, because I'm barely hanging in with watching this show anymore.

The six remaining cheftestants are in their condo, eating and smoking and whatnot. Stefan is already referring to Kristen as the "ex-wife," (wonder who is on his radar now?) and he predicts she'll be back after Last Chance Kitchen. Josie tries to get some sympathy out of Lizzie by crying over what she realizes was an unfair elimination the day before. Boo hoo. Lizzie just leaves the room as quickly as possible.

They head to the Product Placement Kitchen and find Padma standing there with a little Japanese dude. Stefan tells us that's Katsuya Uechi, a sushi master so famous, Stef's wetting his pants just thinking about it. Padma tells the cheftestants that they will have to make sushi for the master, and now all of them are wetting their pants and Stefan is pooping. Why is he freaking out so much? Did he screw Katsuya's wife or something?

So the chefs get to slicing and dicing. Katsuya basically tells them to "keep it simple, stupid," but in Japanese, and most of the competitors completely ignore him. Mustache says there's not much sushi in Oklahoma, and I suppose we could believe him, but there's TONS of sushi in Baltimore - not exactly a hotbed of Japanese immigrants - so I think he's making an excuse. He makes an omelette with bacon and puts it on rice and calls it sushi. Katsuya calls it "greasy." Lizzie decides to get away from making a sushi dish at all and puts raw fish in a hot broth with tempura on the side. The broth and fish thing is a no-no and the tempura is soggy. Bwomp bwomp. Brooke, however, says she has sushi for lunch about three times a week, which means she's probably suffering from mercury poisoning at this point. She makes a simple octopus sushi that Katsuya calls "crean." And finally, freaking-out Stefan manages to "pull something out of his butt," (mm - appetizing!) and wows the sushi master with his yellowtail and shiitake combo.

There's no more immunity in the competition, so Stefan has to make do with $5,000.

Padma shoos Katsuya out and brings in another Asian chef - profane semi-genius David Chang, of the Momofuku restaurant empire in New York and now Toronto. With him is Tom Colicchio, who brags to the cheftestants that he rented a really swell house in Seattle and has invited all sorts of cool and hip celebrity chefs to hang with him in his off time. He name drops Emeril, and Wolfgang Puck, and Michele Bernstein and we're not so impressed. And then he mentions Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, and we're still not so impressed, as we recently watched them lose an Iron Chef America battle (rerun). Has Seattle has lost its magic already? None of these chefs represent the Seattle area, but are from LA, NY, and Miami.

Anyhoo, Tom wants to hire the cheftestants as caterers for a little shindig he's throwing that evening. And he wants fried chicken, dammit.

So the chefs make fried chicken. Sort of. Lizzie says while growing up in South Africa, she wanted her mom to buy one of those big buckets of fried chicken, but she never would. Instead, she made her kids eat boneless skinless chicken breasts. Honestly, that's torture. Stefan is somewhat excited about the prospect of playing with breasts and thighs, but rather than doing fried chicken, he makes chicken cordon bleu, which is fried, but is not fried chicken. Josie, on the other hand, is completely convinced she's got this battle in the bag because she's making real southern fried chicken with a buttermilk marinade full of genuine southern ingredients like Sriracha.

After a period of prep, the cheftestants head to Tom's house using the wonder of the GPS provided by whatever Toyota product they're riding in this week. Once there, they have one hour to cook their chix and get them served.

There's not a lot of kitchen space, but the producers have thoughtfully set up fryolaters in the back yard. Josie is having issues with one of them, so begs to borrow Lizzie's when she's done. Lizzie is a nice gal and says yes. I guess she hasn't had any personal issues with Josie yet in the competition; I'm sure Mustache wouldn't have been as accommodating.

The cheffy guests arrive and sit themselves at a long table in the back yard. Padma is already stoned out of her gourd. She calls Tom, "Tommy," and suggests that Emeril and Wolfie are a "power couple," just because one of them pulled the chair out for the other. The wine is flowing pretty freely through the whole dinner, as this is the Terlato wine challenge. The lucky winner of the fried chicken battle gets a year's worth of Terlato wines. That's 365 bottles, according to Padma. Maybe she can drink that much wine in a month year, but 12 bottles would probably be sufficient for me.

The cheftestants present their dishes three at a time. First we see Josie, Sheldon, and Lizzie. Lizzie's non fried-chicken fried chicken is moist and crispy, and they all swoon over the salad she serves on the side. And they drink some wine. And then comes Josie's chicken, which is oily and has "flobby" skin, according to Wolfgang. And they have some more wine before finally tasting Sheldon's, which he's made two ways. He lost a few pieces to overly hot oil, so not everyone gets to taste his Momofuku-style wings, but that doesn't matter because Tom has commandeered the plate and has eaten all of them. And they drink some wine. Because, of course, wine is a natural accompaniment to fried chicken.

Wolfgang is so potted, at one point he holds up a naked chicken leg bone and exhorts everyone to "look at his bone." Padma giggles and looks. They drink.

The next round of chicken comes from Brooke, Mustache, and Stefan. Dotolo and Shook ask Brooke if she recognizes them. She doesn't, and they tell her they both applied to be line cooks in one of her restaurants but she turned them down. Probably because she felt that two grown men who do everything together - including apply for jobs - is weird. Now she wishes she had hired them in case that gives her an edge. She needed an edge, because her boneless skinless breasts were overcooked and unpleasant. Wolfgang said she shouldn't be on Top Chef. She should barely be on The Apprentice. Burn! And they drink!

Mustache smoked his chicken before frying and topping it with traditional-ish Buffalo-style accouterments. The judges loved it, and then they drank more wine. Finally, the mocked Stefan for making such an old fashioned dish as cordon bleu. And it wasn't even good cordon bleu. But it went really well with the wine.

The judges are so drunk, they can't possibly do any judging that night, so they send the cheftestants home while they sleep it off. The next day, we see Stefan calling his mom, who has Parkinson's disease. He gets a little weepy, but we know by now that calling one's loved ones is no longer a clue that the chef is being sent home. We know he's safe.

Later, in the stew, Padma comes in with an icebag on her head and blearily calls for Mustache, Lizzie, and Sheldon. They've made the best chicken. While they adore Lizzie's and Sheldon's, Mustache's is the best of the bunch and they give him a lifetime supply of mediocre wine.

Stefan, Josie, and Brooke then come out for their scolding. They once again mock Stefan for his cordon bleu, and he says they don't eat fried chicken in Germany. Wolfgang then insists that one of the most famous dishes of his hometown in Austria is fried chicken. I guess KFC is not only in South Africa, huh?  Brooke really seems to be on the chopping block because they can't find anything nice to say about her dish. But it's Josie who's done the worst and finally, FINALLY gets sent home.

And the angels sing and Mustache rejoices that Josie and her laugh are out of the picture.

Next week: the final five board a cruise ship to Alaska.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Top Chef Seattle Episode 11 Recap

I'm not sure how much longer I can do this. I went to bed angry after watching this week's Top Chef. The producer manipulation of the Restaurant Wars scenario was so blatant, as was keeping Josie in the competition for yet another week. The winner of "Last Chance Kitchen" is pretty obvious, because Kristen will win this competition (or come very close). And why the fuck was the episode fifteen minutes longer than usual? Supersized eps are BORING, not dramatic. I don't need to lose even more precious sleep time because the network wants to milk more advertising money out of Healthy Choice, Toyota, and Canada Dry. grrrr

::::taking a walk around the block to calm down::::

So. Restaurant Wars.

The cheftestants plan their menus and head to the venue, the Georgetown Ballroom, which just happens to be a kitchen-less establishment. Instead, there's a large patio space and an area that can be used as the two separate restaurants. So not only do the cheftestants have to buy groceries and decor, but also kitchen equipment. How wise is it to put a kitchen outdoors in a city that has rain for much of the year? Guess that just means more drama! or not, since it seemed to be a nice day.

As we learned last week, Sheldon's restaurant is called Urbano, and it will be serving modern Filipino food. Because of his charm and wit, Stefan is in charge of the front of the house. Actually, it's because he has not only restaurant experience, but also Restaurant Wars experience. That seems like a mistake to me, but since the food is Sheldon's, he can't be taken out of the kitchen, and Mustache is a bit hot-headed for the job. Not saying that Stefan isn't hot-headed....

Kristen's restaurant is called Atelier Kwan, and her team is going to serve classic French cuisine made modern. It's an ambitious project, especially with Josie on her team. You can smell the clusterfuck brewing like a cheap cup of acrid coffee from the opening minutes of the episode.

And the minutes in the middle too. And the end.

After shopping and whatnot and the restaurants are set up, Josie tells Kristen she's going to get started on the stock for her bouillabaisse. A bit later, Kristen asks how the stock is going and Josie says she hasn't started yet. Still later, we find that Josie is going to finish other prep work and leave the stock for the next day. Kristen starts a slow boil of her own.

Over on Sheldon's side of the world, everything seems to be running smoothly. It would have been interesting to see the dynamic if Micah were still around. Would he have been helpful, or would his ego have gotten in the way? Would it have caused him to float up into the sky like a hot air balloon?

The next day, Josie is taking her sweet time with her stock. Kristen's inner control freak is really freaking out, and she's having a hard time letting Josie deal with her own dish.

Brooke (who is also working front of the house) and Lizzie are getting their dishes done without any drama. And Sheldon's team is still drama-free, despite Stefan up front.

And then the guests start arriving. The judges - including Danny Meyer, Emeril, and Gail - hit Atelier Kwan right away. Kristen has decided that the kitchen will plate everything a la minute, which makes things slow right off the bat. It doesn't help when the waitstaff mixes up orders and dishes need to be refired.

Lizzie's take on charcuterie comes out first, and it's a big hit. She's used rabbit, but instead of making rillettes or paté, she's made a soup, adding pickled turnips and beets for a nice acid bite. Josie's bouillabaisse comes next. Originally, the plan had been to thicken the stock with leaf gelatin, but since she was taking so fucking long, Kristen told her to thicken the stock with cream, instead. And even though it was Josie's dish, Kristen insisted it should be plated in a particular way. The judges found the various seafood items to be either over- or under-cooked, and the sauce practically non-existent. The third course was Kristen's boeuf bourguignon. Guess the girl didn't watch past seasons of Top Chef, otherwise she'd have known that if she calls a dish boeuf bourguignon, it had better be boeuf bourguignon. Tom especially hates things that are not named properly. Where was the wine in the dish? Otherwise, it was well cooked and tasty, but the judges have to hate. The next course is a cheese course from Brooke that mostly works. And finally, a dessert from Kristen, which she calls a macaron, when it's clearly cake. Indignation and bile rise again in the throats of the judges who hastily retreat to the other restaurant. How. Dare. She!

Meanwhile, at Urbano, Stefan is having a hard time getting rid of lingering customers. There's a gaggle of people at the door, and he's long given up plying them with alcohol. And you just know this is a producer set-up. All of the guests have been invited by either Bravo or Magical Elves, and there's no reason on God's green earth why they wouldn't get up and leave after eating unless the producers told them to linger. And lingering makes Stefan look bad, because the man has no patience. Eventually he gets a table freed for the judges, but Tom, et. al., notice the line of potential patrons not being liquored-up and become disgruntled.

Thankfully the food at Urbano is good. Really good. From Stefan's initial raw fish dish to Sheldon's adobo to Mustache's take on halo halo, the judges can't find fault. Except with Stefan and his service, which was so bad, he didn't even bother to come to the table and explain the third dish. This makes Padma make sour faces and roll her eyes, and Tom look even more cranky and constipated than usual.

After dinner, Padma wants to send Stefan to jail without passing go or collecting $100, but the judges also hated Josie's dish. They adjourn to Judges' Table to deliberate. Everyone stands judgment and after some whining and bitching from the judges, Sheldon's restaurant is declared the winner, and Sheldon gets a new Toyota with a trunk full of melted Healthy Choice entrees and warm Canada Dry ginger ale.

Sheldon's team goes back to stew, and Kristen and Josie are read the riot act over the bouillabaisse. Rather than throwing Josie under the bus for her slow-poke sauce-making, Kristen falls on her sword. It's her fault that someone else's dish tasted like shit, and also that she called two dishes something they weren't. TWO DISHES. That's practically grounds for beheading in Top Chefland. And rather than kicking off someone who has barely been hanging on for the run of the show, the judges send Kristen home. Stefan is verklempt, and he tells her he loves her.

::::collective eyeroll::::

But Kristen wins "Last Chance Kitchen," so she'll likely be back in a couple of weeks, along with whomever wins the "Save a Chef" thing.

Honestly, this show is such bullshit. And I am so sick and tired of those stupid Healthy Choice commercials. If the judges want something to complain about, they should try eating that flavorless garbage.

Next week: I have no idea. I was too blinded by rage to watch the preview.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Top Chef Seattle Episode 10 Recap

As this week's episode begins, we find that Mustache is not at all sorry that TMHCiD was booted off the island last week. And neither are we. But Stefan, on the other hand, misses the guy, probably because now, without him around, he's the oldest person in the cast. Just keep globbing on that moisturizer, Stefan, and you'll be fine.

The chefs file into the Top Chef Healthy Choice Amazon Toyota kitchen to find that it has become the Top Chef Healthy Choice Amazon Canada Dry kitchen for a day. Wolfgang Puck is on hand to judge the Quickfire Challenge, which is to use fresh ginger in a tasty dish. With only fifteen short minutes to cook, the chefs scramble, some actually using the ginger ale in their dishes (thankfully, that element wasn't a requirement).

Apart from Sheldon, who made a boring stir fry with skirt steak that elicited the comment "it tastes like pedestrian Chinese food" from Wolfie, the cheftestants were pretty creative. Brooke, who used her fifteen minutes to whip up some Vietnamese caramel sauce for squid, won the challenge and immunity from elimination in the next challenge...which is...

Restaurant Wars!

But not.

It's Pre-Restaurant Wars!

Each cheftestant is tasked with coming up with his or her own restaurant concept and a single dish with which to represent it. They will create 200 portions of this dish and serve it to participants at a foodie event called Bite of Seattle. The two best concepts and dishes will go on to head up the Restaurant Wars teams. But then one chef will be eliminated, making for lopsided teams.

Big shot New York restaurateur Danny Meyer, of the Union Square Hospitality Group, is the guest judge for this contest. Did you know that he was once Tom Colicchio's boss? Did you care? Me neither. But still, Meyer is a hot shot, and a pretty good-looking guy. And rich. Padma giggled a lot around him. Guess it's about time for another baby daddy, before she gets too ancient.

Three of the chefs choose to do their shopping at Uwajimaya, a well-stocked Asian food store that I wish we had here in Maryland. Love that place. The rest of the chefs go to someplace not Whole Foods. And then they head back to the kitchen to do the prep work for their dishes. Because it's a lot of work, they get help from four former cheftestants who will act as their sous chefs: Chrissy, Eliza, Carla, and Kuniko. I swear, this is the most quiet that Carla has ever been, surprising since Stefan grabs her to work with him. Micah, who is doing a raw food concept, is clever enough to assign fish butchery to Kuniko, who does a lovely job of meticulously cutting four types of fish into sashimi. Sheldon takes advantage of fellow Filipino Chrissy and excitedly tells her that he's making "gobble gobble whatzit." Perhaps I should have written it down, but it's apparently sour tamarind soup. Sinigang maybe?

Tom comes in to be nosy and questions the chefs on their concepts and dishes. Mustache is doing a neighborhood restaurant and calling it Bistro George after his late dad. He's not making pork this time - wise decision. Lizzie was entranced by travel through Northern Italy and is making what she calls "farmhouse kitchen Italian." Stefan is doing Thai by way of Germany, which doesn't seem to make sense at all, but that's Stefan. Brooke has chosen to make non-Kosher Jewish food, and Kristen is doing contemporary French. Josie's honoring her Miami upbringing by celebrating Cuba.

The next day happens to be Sheldon's 30th birthday, and we find out that he's already cranked out three daughters. He's hoping to get his hands on one of those bonus 10K prizes that come with winning this challenge, because he's already got too many mouths to feed back in Hawaii, and that Spam shit is getting expensive. And he might need a new hat. But you know - birthday curse. Of course, Stefan celebrated his 40th birthday a few weeks back and he's still around. Even if he hasn't done squat as far as cooking winning dishes is concerned.

The cheftestants head to the event venue and prepare their stations. Each has a little chalkboard introducing their restaurant concept. Everyone seems to be set up but Josie once again is having trouble getting her food done on time. Apparently her mouth and hands have trouble operating at the same time, and her mouth seems always to be moving.

The judges show up to eat, Danny Meyer and Gail Simmons among them. They hit Mustache's table first and grab a bowl of his seared ribeye with cauliflower. They also visit Lizzie for a taste of her canederli (an Italian knodel, or bread dumpling) with fonduta and crispy speck. Mustache's is delicious and nicely cooked, but I think Danny Meyer said something about the meat needing seasoning. Lizzie's dish sounded terrific, but apparently was leaden and uncooked in the middle, and her fonduta resembled a slice of American cheese draped over the top. Ouch!

Sheldon served up his sour soup and the judges loved it's elegance and authenticity. Stefan's Thai by way of Munich concept, however, was disjointed and the two dishes he served - Thai soup and a mango lollipop - showed no German influence.

Micah's raw fish and veggie salad was pretty, but Tom was not impressed that he had all of the fish cut in advance the day before and not to order. He saw no soul in the dish. Meanwhile, Kristen hit all of the right notes with her onsen-style egg. An onsen is a Japanese hot spring, so I'm not sure what that all has to do with French cuisine, but the judges were utterly enchanted.

And then there's Josie, who gabbed and cooked while Tom and the gang waited and waited for their food. Her puerco asado was hard and dry and inedible. Gail felt the same way about Brooke's matzoh ball, calling it an offense to her people. But overall the judges enjoyed the other aspects of her non-Jewish Jewish food. I thought it seemed odd that Brooke spoke about her concept like it was new. Like she had never heard of fellow Californian Ilan Hall's popular LA restaurant, The Gorbals, where he puts bacon on his matzoh balls.

After eating, the judges do a quick pow-wow at the table and mention that they are not happy with Stefan, Micah, or Josie. Then they go to the Judges Table set and bring Kristen, Sheldon, and Mustache out. Padma announces that they are the top toques for this challenge, and Danny Meyer tells Kristen and Sheldon that they will be heading up the teams for Restaurant Wars. Tom tells them they have to pick their team from the people left in the stew room, but remember that one of them will be going home. Mustache seems put out that he didn't win, but hey, at least he wasn't on the bottom for massacring pork again.

Back in the stew, Kristen and Sheldon pick teams and it ends up being boys vs. girls, much to Stefan's chagrin. Then Padma comes back in for Micah, Lizzie, and Josie, and Kristen suddenly feels like she may be screwed. Fortunately for her, it was Micah's dish, which Tom did not believe came from the heart, that was the worst of the three. And Sheldon's team is down a member already.

Next week: Restaurant Wars! Stefan is front of the house! Judges are belittled! Josie is pissed at something! This will be fun!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Top Chef Seattle Episode 9 Recap

This week's Top Chef starts out with scenes of the cheftestants in the morning: one makes the bed; Stefan slathers moisturizer on his thumb face; Sheldon takes a dump sharpens his knives. He says that super sharp knives are what separates great chefs from good chefs, or something like that. I'm just a scrub, because my knives are as dull as doorknobs. And they're cheap - when they get dull, I just buy new knives.

Good thing Sheldon is so obsessive about his instruments, because the Quickfire Challenge involves exactly that - sharp knives. Master bladesmith Bob Kramer is on hand to judge this contest in three parts. The first part involves sharpening a knife until it can slice through paper. The second part is to tournée a bunch of taters. The third is to dissect a pair of bunny rabbits. But first, Kramer demonstrates why his knives sell for $500 per inch by slicing up some heavy sisal rope. The cheftestants get hard-ons and gasp appreciatively.

The nine cheftestants are put into three teams of three by the luck of the draw (from the knife block, appropriately) and have at it when Padma gives the signal. Padma, by the way, is wearing a very summery ensemble of black long-sleeve turtleneck and velvet pants. Is it no longer June?

The green team of Stefan, Brooke, and Lizzie think they have finished first, but it turns out that Brooke's knife is still dull. They resharpen and TMHCiD calls "check" for his Red team. Kristen is irritated at his less-than-team-player behavior (but surely can't be surprised) because she is sure her knife isn't yet sharp, but it is. TMHCiD's, however, is not. In the battle of Karma vs Ego, Karma always wins. The Blue team of Sheldon, Micah, and the Mustache has a chance to catch up and successfully slice. And then, after a few more minutes, TMHCiD does sharpen his blade enough to slice through the piece of "Top Chef" branded paper and the round is over. The Green team is DQ'd. Womp womp.

Tournée-ing potatoes - cutting them into seven-sided football shapes - is a real snooze, and apparently somewhat difficult to do with a 10" chef's knife. TMHCiD much prefers a paring knife, not that anyone cares. Red team's Josie cuts herself, so she's DQ'd and her team is left with only two people to shape the required amount of carbohydrate bombs. Predictably, the Blue team catches up and wins and goes on to slice and dice cute woodland creatures. The rabbits are so small, the chef's knife seems more of a burden than an asset, but Micah manages to do the job and wins not only immunity from elimination but also one of Bob Kramer's expensive knives.

Bob is shooed away before he hurts someone with those things and Padma introduces the Elimination Challenge, which this week involves two corporate sponsors. Using the Kindle Fires (because Internet juggernaut Amazon needs advertisement) nearby, the cheftestants will watch a memorable scene from one of the previous nine seasons. They will use that scene as an inspiration to create a healthy version of the dish in question, and the winning dish will be bastardized into a future Healthy Choice Café Steamer. I think "Café Steamer" is such an unfortunate name. To me it sounds like a euphemism for something someone would leave in a toilet at Starbucks. (And wouldn't local Seattle business Starbucks make a better sponsor?)

The chefs check out their assigned Kindles and watch amusing scenes like "Pea Puree-gate" from season 7, and Carla Hall's coo-coo chicken pot pie performance on Jimmy Fallon. Josie decides she wants to say, "I'm not your bitch, bitch" over and over, which makes the Mustache wish *he* had won that sharp knife earlier. He gets to do something with Michael Voltaggio's pork belly dish from season 6, which makes him nervous. Two failed pork challenges later, Mustache really doesn't want to deal with that protein, but he pretends to be pleased yet again at a chance for redemption. And, I hate to say it (no I don't), but Mustache is no Michael Voltaggio. Hell, few cheftestants since season 6 have come even close.

The chefs have 2.5 hours to get the job done before serving their food to a gaggle of Top Chef "super fans" and the judges. The kitchen is small, so three cheftestants cook at a time, in order of season, which means the cheftestants working from seasons 1, 2, and 3 go first. TMHCiD happens to be stuck with a season 3 risotto dish. Anyone else think this is a welcome fix?

This week's judges include Top Chef Master Chris Cosentino and two Master competitors, Jonathan Waxman and Wylie Dufresne, plus Wolfgang Puck. Puck is supposed to be a regular judge this season, but has been pretty scarce.

I take terrible notes these days so couldn't tell you what Josie made except that it was unexciting. Stefan's soup and grilled cheese sandwich a la season 2's Betty Fraser was good (the soup) but greasy (the sandwich). And TMHCiD's risotto was both over- and under-cooked. How did he manage that? And why didn't Wolfgang stomp into the kitchen to demonstrate how to make a proper risotto like he did while judging the Next Food Network Star a couple years back? You know he wanted to.

Mustache redeems himself nicely with his well-cooked pork tenderloin, but Sheldon's carpaccio dish is ugly. Lizzie was stuck with the unpleasant Jamie Lauren from season 5, best known for 1) her love of scallops; 2) hatred of celery; 3) the way she turned on Stefan. Lizzie's scallops smelled when she took them out of the package but used them anyway, much to the judges' consternation. Bad idea.

Finally, safe Micah cooked a nice duck breast. Kristen wowed the judges with her deconstructed pot pie with tofu gravy. And Brooke dazzled (ok, maybe dazzled is too strong a word) with a very nice roasted salmon filet.

Padma dismisses Jonathan Waxman and Wylie Dufresne but takes Chris Cosentino back with her to Judges' Table. She enters the stew room to summon TMHCiD, Mustache, Kristen, Lizzie, and Brooke. That's confusing, since it's clear that TMHCiD and Lizzie are on the bottom, and Kristen and Brooke are on the top. Why are top and bottom called out at the same time? And where does the Mustache come in? Turns out he's fine - he pleased the judges with his pork this time and is safe. Cosentino says the judges unanimously chose Kristen's pot pie dish as the winner, which makes three Elimination Challenge victories for her at this point, and another $15,000 for her wallet (and Stefan's g-string). Plus she gets to have her dish bastardized into a Healthy Choice entrée. All they need to do is add a bit of sadness.

As for TMHCiD and Lizzie - they are indeed on the bottom. His risotto has both mushy and hard bits, which he blames on the lack of any flat-bottomed pots in the kitchen. Mustache pipes up and says he had no problems with the pots and pans, which chaps TMHCiD's ass. Ha. Lizzie's dish just stunk. But instead of sending one home at this point, Padma pulls out another Kindle Fire with a clip from season 10. This season's memorable moment (so they say) is CJ being sent home for making that execrable burger with spicy artisan pickles. The challenge is to recreate the burger in a healthy way, so back to the kitchen for 45 minutes.

TMHCiD whips up a lamb burger with an egg on top and an aioli containing cream cheese. Oh yes, so healthy. Lizzie takes the challenge to heart and makes a burger of ground chicken breast with a pickle salad. She almost didn't get the pickle salad because TMHCiD decided to play games. He used all but one small sprig of the dill she pulled from the pantry, and then threatened to keep the entire jar of pickles. He was confident that he could have made a plain boring beef patty and served it to the judges with the jar of pickles under his arm, because if Lizzie had no pickles, she wouldn't win. Unfortunately for him, she did have pickles and she did win because her burger was moister and more flavorful. And not full of fat.

Buh-bye, TMHCiD. Don't let the door hit your wrinkled old ass on the way out.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Top Chef Seattle Episode 8 Recap

This week on Top Chef....

The cheftestants find a note from Padma in their condo. She directs them to "harvest" the ingredients for the Quickfire Challenge and bring them to the Healthy Choice Kitchen where she and Emeril will be waiting. So they pile into Toyotas - first oohing and ahhing over the ugly things - and head to Taylor's Shellfish Farms.

Micah was the son of a preacher man, and he tells us he grew up Kosher - no shellfish. And now he's pulling them directly off the shoals and popping them into his mouth, as are all of the other chefs. Doesn't get any fresher than that! Josie, who at the end of last week's show was seen getting on the nerves of Stefan (and everyone else), gets caught in some quicksand. Most of the chefs are happy to leave her to sink and disappear, but kind-hearted Micah (who's not really all that kind-hearted - he probably sees it as some sort of merit badge situation) rushes to her aid, along with Stefan, who despite being a douche most of the time, can't really bear to see anything with a vagina go unassisted.

Eventually, the chefs have gathered pounds and pounds of bivalves and head back to the kitchen with them. Emeril is indeed waiting, and he instructs the cheftestants to make either a cold or hot oyster dish for him and Padma to slurp up after 25 minutes time.

Micah - who gets a lot of screen time this week - tells us that he grew up watching Emeril and cooking for him is a bit like what it must have been for Moses meeting God. Aww. Except Micah probably considers Emeril to be Moses....

Time's up and tasting begins. One can't help but think that Emeril and Padma will be pretty horny after eating all of those briny critters. And then one dismisses that idea because it's completely ick.

Speaking of ick, Emeril's not particularly fond of Bart's, Josie's, or TMHCiD's dishes, but he enjoys Lizzie's, Brooke's, and especially Micah's fried oysters. Micah gets the win and a $5,000 bonus, and admirably does not make any references to parting the Red Sea or receiving the Ten Commandments.

Pads wastes no time introducing the Elimination Challenge. She instructs the cheftestants to pair up because they'll be cooking for one of the most exciting sports teams in Seattle. No, not Russell Wilson and the currently-hot Seahawks, nor baseball's Mariners, but a group of lesbians who call themselves the Rat City roller girls. Yes, folks, roller derby has survived the 70s disco era and for no good reason still exists today. It's apparently a great way for tough women to beat on each other while wearing roller skates and hot pants. Brooke says roller derby is like an ultra-violent Ice Capades. But without the sequins, feathers, and Johnny Weir.

Five of the girls on the team have food-related names that are supposed to inspire the pairs of chefs to create dishes for the team's final match after party. These tough chicks, with names like Teriyaki Terror and Jalapeno Business (which I don't quite get - it doesn't sound anything like "none of your," but whatever; the sport is not logical) tell the cheftestants that they want food that isn't fussy, but isn't concession food either.

Before getting to work, the cheftestants are forced to attend a match. Battle? Fight? Hoe down? Whatever it's called when the girls put on their skates and beat on each other. Josie, a fellow lesbian and "athlete all her life," is really into it and she gets louder than usual while cheering on the madness. Her competitors all find her obnoxious and move away down the aisle to avoid her. As they sit quietly and wish for something more fun to happen - Moses meets God, or maybe Josie cheers so hard she flings herself over the balcony onto the ice - she hurls insults at them, calling them "boring," and saying that being there with them was like being there with her parents. Ouch. (Not really. I wouldn't be insulted at all. I'm sure her parents are lovely people. Unless they're just like her.)

Later, at the condo (which has to be sponsored by some product, I just haven't figured it out yet - Pledge maybe? Windex? La-Z-Boy?) the group grouses about Josie. She goes off on them as a whole before singling out Micah, basically calling him a closeted gay man. Guess she forgot that he didn't let her sink in the sand earlier in the day. Maybe he should have.

For this challenge, she's paired with Bart, who says he's a team player and isn't going to let her bother him because Belgians are civilized. Personally, I'm not feeling particularly civilized when Josie starts talking about allowing her Mexican/Filipino/Italian heritage to inform her ability to make teriyaki sauce. That ain't teriyaki sauce, babe.

The other four teams comprise TMHCiD and Brooke, Stefan and Kristin (of course), Lizzie and Micah, and Sheldon and Mustache. They're all getting along just fine when the party starts and the judges arrive to eat. Emeril, Padma, Hugh, and Tom start with TMHCiD and Brooke's table. They're cooking for a skater named Kutta Rump, and they've made a Thai-inspired beef dish with lobster rice and a tart slaw. Their dish is bold and spicy and there are no complaints from the judges. They move on to Josie and Bart's Teriyaki Terror, which they decide is instead, "Teriyaki Terrible." The steak skewers were cooked awkwardly, their forbidden rice was overcooked, and the beet puree on top was underseasoned. Miss Terror herself, who joined them for the tasting, called the dish "unique." Hugh translates this to mean "unique crappy" rather than "unique good."

For Jalapeno Business, Lizzie and Micah made fancy jalapeno poppers filled with crab. Ms Business likens it to "elevated party food," and the general consensus among the judges is that the dish is quite tasty. Stefan and Kristen made something they called "inside out chicken" with corn puree, chicken liver, and eggs. It's a bit much, concept-wise, but good enough to keep them safe for the episode. Finally, Sheldon and Mustache produced a tempura-coated yuzu custard for a chick who calls herself Tempura Tantrum. The custards were meant to be eaten with several dipping sauces to cause a "tantrum in the mouth." Tom threw a tantrum all right, since the custards were soggy city. Nice idea, bad execution.

After at least the seventieth Toyota Camry commercial of the episode, we see the cheftestants in the stew room. Padma comes in to retrieve TMHCiD, Brooke, Micah, and Lizzie, the top toques this week. The judges waste no time in giving the win to the team of TMHCiD and Brooke. It's TMHCiD's first win despite three trips to the top, and rather than be thankful that he finally lucked out, he complains that he'd prefer to win solo. Guess he never considered that he might not have been good enough to win solo?

Anyhoo...Sheldon and Mustache and Bart and Josie are brought out as the bottom teams. The former are complimented on their concept, so it's fairly obvious that they are safe. But Mustache, who has a bug up his butt about Lizzie and Micah's jalapeno popper, decides he needs to question the judges' choice for putting that particular dish on top. He realizes this makes him seem like CJ during the artisan pickle fiasco that got him and Tyler eliminated, but asks anyway. Tom explains to Mustache kindly, like a grandfather explaining something to a slow child, that the jalapeno popper in question was well-prepared and delicious, therefore his question was invalid. He was entirely too nice about it. I would rather have Hugh just tell Mustache that his custard on a stick sucked and be done with it.

While I start getting excited that obnoxious Josie might be leaving this week, Bart confesses that he not only made the meat portion of their dish, but also the overcooked rice and underseasoned beet puree. Josie only made the sauce, which apparently wasn't bad enough to even mention. So Bart goes home for lack of seasoning. Nice guys always finish last. Civilized ones at least.

Next week - the cheftestants visit old challenges from prior seasons.

Posted on Minxeats.com.