Rachael vs. Guy Celebrity Cook-off Season 2 Finale

Sorry I never got around to recapping episode 5 of this season of Rachael vs. Guy, but the Super Bowl took priority, as did the launch party for our new book, Food Lovers' Guide to Baltimore. Plus nobody reads these recaps, right? Which is why I'm going to be (relatively) brief here.

Last week, Rachael's team of three battled Guy's team of one in a food truck challenge. Despite missing about a third of his customers because he was working alone, Dean was moved on to the finale. With three members left in the other team, and only one finale spot open, Rachael and Guy did a non-blind taste test. The ended up rewarding the other finale spot to Carnie because they knew neither Kathy's hummus nor Hiney's mad skillz with hamburgers and hot dogs could win the competition.

For this final challenge, Carnie and Dean head to a mansion in Beverly Hills where they will be messing up a perfectly lovely kitchen cooking a three course meal for eleven people. They'll be using what Guy calls a "mystery kitchen," meaning they won't know what foods will be stocked, so they have to be able to plan on their feet. They'll have 30 minutes to make an appetizer, 40 minutes for an entree, and 20 for a dessert.

Now this is where the Food Network could have made things interesting. They could have stocked the fridge with calves' liver, tongue, and herring, and the pantry with nothing but lentils and canned pizza sauce. But nooo...there's a nice assortment of popular proteins and everything else needed to make a tasty meal or two.

And they're off! Carnie immediate decides she wants to make a tuna dip, which sounds like the grossest thing in the world. I mean, that's what our cat's breath usually smells like. Carnie's in full panic mode (when is she not?) and can't find the canned tuna in the pantry. Meanwhile, Dean is Mr Ambitious. He wants to make seared scallops, but in their pre-meal powwow, Guy put lobster in his head. When he finds both in the fridge, he uses both, along with about twenty-three other components. Apparently he thinks he's on the Next Iron Chef.

Rachael and Guy come in for a visit and take pity on the two celebs by giving them sous chefs to work with in the form of old friends. Suddenly, with her friend's help, Carnie calms down enough to locate the tuna and can now make her slop dish. Dean uses his friend to make some of the 1,000 different elements of his overly-complicated plate.

Outside, the guests are assembling and find their seats at a table arranged under an arbor that is covered with what appears to be wisteria. But it can't possibly be real wisteria because there would also be thousands of bees swarming the area. I type this as someone who once lived with a wisteria-covered, bee-infested arbor. Anyhoo, apart from Rachael and Guy, these guests are bigwigs in the food industry and include Suzanne Goin and her husband David Lentz, Nancy Silverton, Jet Tila, Michael Cimarusti, and Brad Miller. I'm sure you're able to look these guys up, right? Also dining with them are the directors of Carnie's and Dean's charities, and comedian Kathy Griffin who looks like she gave up eating but claims to actually like food.

Predictably, Dean's dish has too many elements like mango gastrique and butter-poached lobster. Most of the chefs try to be nice about it, but David Lentz and Brad Miller both decide to piss in Dean's cornflakes. Former Top Chef Masters competitor Michael Cimarusti, however, is a nice guy and says that the way Dean scored his scallops before searing them was new to him and a great idea. Liar.

Surprisingly, the chefs seem to enjoy Carnie's cat food surprise tuna dip, but do complain that the texture is a bit runny and there's entirely too much of it on the plate. I think a tablespoon would have been too much.

For the second course, Dean is overdoing it yet again by wrapping petit filets with flank steak and serving it with smashed red potatoes and a thousand other fiddly components. Carnie at first wants to make a simple chicken piccata, but switches gears and produces something slightly more complex: an herb pesto-coated pasta with tequila lime shrimp.

The guests admire Dean's creativity and think he clearly spends a lot of time reading cookbooks. Burn! His flavors are great but the dish as a whole is disjointed. David Lentz and Brad Miller say something unkind. Most of them (apart from Lentz and Miller) then say nice things about Carnie's dish - the pasta is well cooked, the pesto is tasty, etc. It's hard to tell who's winning here.

Finally, the celebs come out with their desserts. Carnie has made apple fritters and served them with ice cream and whipped cream. They are delicious, perfect, and simple. Dean has made grilled pound cake with macerated berries, caramel sauce, and syllabub and you know that he thinks he's going to win because he knows what "macerated" and "syllabub" mean. His dish again has too much going on, and most of the guests agree that the syllabub has too much alcohol in it, but his effort is impressive.

After dinner, the guests fill out comment cards with questions about most and least favorite dishes and who they think should win the challenge. Later, Rachael and Guy read the results to the celebs, who have been reunited with members of their family and friends. Except for Dean's wife, Tori Spelling, who is presumably too good to show up for something on the Food Network. Her proxy, a woman holding what looks to be Dean's youngest child, is much better-looking.

So who wins? Aww...you don't really care, do you? It's Dean, who we've known all along to be the winner, since he's the only celeb with actual cooking aspirations. He gets $50,000 for his charity. Carnie is a winner too, since the Food Network generously awards $10,000 to her charity as well.

Do you think there will be a third season? Stay tuned. Or not.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Rachael vs. Guy Celebrity Cook-Off 2.5 Recap

Hey - sorry for not having a Rachael vs. Guy recap up yet. We watched the Super Bowl on Sunday (of course - GO RAVENS!) and as of last evening, the episode was not available OnDemand. We have a full Tuesday night viewing schedule, so who knows if we'll get to watching and recapping episode 5 at all.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Rachael Vs. Guy Celebrity Cook-off 2.4 Recap

I've got to say - this week's challenge on Rachael vs. Guy is possibly my biggest nightmare: cooking for a child's party. I couldn't deal with all of those high-pitched voices, whining about whether the chicken fingers are "awesome" enough or if there was enough glitter on the cupcakes. Gah!

But Dean - Dean loves it. He's trying to market himself as the "Gourmet Dad," and thinks throwing a party for beings who are content with eating crushed chicken bones and Dimethylpolysiloxane as long as it's formed into a McNugget is a "real culinary situation." His teammate, Johnny, on the other hand, is terrified. He's pretty sure that kids don't like him, and I'll bet you anything that his effeminate manner got him seriously bullied as a child.

So. There are two kids, a girl named after Will Smith's son, Jaden, and a boy, whose name I didn't write down, so I'm going to call him, "Boy." They are pretending to have birthdays so the celebritynoncheftestants can defrost stuff "cook" for them. Since Team Rachael won last week, they get the "advantage" of choosing whether they'd rather work with Jaden or Boy, and Kathy and Carnie choose Jaden. Hiney Warts basically doesn't get a vote because the women on his team know he just wants to throw the football around with the male child and that ain't happening on their watch.

In addition to the usual menu-planning session, the celebs get 10 minutes with their kid. Jaden seems to like everything the celebs suggest, including hummus, which makes Kathy happy. The boy is a bit more picky and basically only likes chicken fingers and pizza.

The kids get shooed away like the whiny annoyances that they are and the teams commence to cooking. On Team Rachael's side of the world, Carnie is doing Sloppy Joes, which she's renamed "Sloppy Jadens." (Cute! No...not really. More like...Unimaginative!) Kathy is doing hummus, guacamole, and salsa with dippers, and Hiney is once again doing something extremely simple - quesadillas.

He's also making cupcakes, the idea of which thrills him to deaf! Kathy is making s'mores rice krispy treats, and despite knowing that Jaden looooves cheesecake, Carnie is making raspberry bars, mostly because she's got the recipe memorized.

Over on Team Guy, Dean is making cheese pizzas from scratch onto which the kids will add the toppings of their choice. Johnny is making chicken fingers, because he's only allowed to cook poultry on this show. Come on - make him make a damn pork chop! It won't kill him. Or maybe it will. He's also making cupcakes, which he's never done before. Dean is pulling out the stops and making rice krispy treats. Not just your ordinary treats, mind you - he's freezing them with liquid nitrogen so when the kids eat them, steam will come billowing out of their mouths. Also maybe they will freeze shut, which might afford the adults a few moments of silence.

Kathy's synapses are not firing on all cylinders yet again this week. Her krispy bars have basically three ingredients, and she keeps mixing them in the wrong order. Butter...krispies...marshmallow, right? NO! Um...butter...krispies...marshmallow? Wrong again! Errr....butter...krispies...aw fuck! Finally, she puts the marshmallows in with the butter and gets it done. Meanwhile, she's run out of time to make everything else on her list, as per her usual. Get rid of her.

Johnny is having issues with his dish, since he never ever ever EVER fries anything because any fat in his diet would ruin his girlish figure. Oh boo, hoo. Bet famed East German gold medal skater Katarina Witt never said such a thing. Johnny's also never made cake frosting (because it's full of FAT!), so Dean comes to his rescue and makes it for him. Dean is a bit resentful that he has to carry his team, even though he is the "Gourmet Dad," and reminds us of that fact repeatedly.

So the kids arrive and I turn down the volume. Johnny's wearing two dunce-cap birthday hats and one lovely child tells him he looks like the devil. Which is true, if the devil has one pink horn and one yellow horn and wears lipstick and sequins. Hiney is a bit intimidated that he's the only boy on his side of the park and, to fit in, allows the little girls to paint his fingernails. He and Johnny should have switched teams before this challenge.

Rachael and Guy arrive and bring with them a pint-sized celebrity guest - Rico Rodriguez from "Modern Family." The kids all pretend to know who he is.

We see Rachael's team serve their food first, and Jaden seems mostly happy with everything. The consensus is that the Sloppy Jadens are nothing special, Kathy's hummus is "mouthwatering," and Hiney's quesadilla is OMGood. Kathy's s'mores are, predictably, "awesome," as are Hiney's cupcakes. Carnie's "rad-berry" bars, however, are not kid friendly enough.

Switch to Boy's party, where Dean's pizza is super awesome, but Johnny's chicken fingers are unevenly cooked and decidedly un-awesome. One smart-ass kid even claims that after eating the chicken he wants to throw up.  I hope his mother is really proud of him. The kids don't much like Johnny's cupcakes, either, but Dean's "dragon's breath" krispy treats steal the show. He makes a big production out of plunging the treats into liquid nitrogen, but I notice that nobody warns the kids not to touch the super-cold stuff. No "don't stick your tongue on the outside of the canister," warnings. Hmm.

After the kids are picked up by their parents, the celebrities face judgement. The kids all filled out comment cards and were predictably cruel. Everyone loved Dean's treats and Hiney's quesadilla, but hated Johnny's Chicken and Carnie's raspberry bars, saying that "boogers taste better." The teams end up tied this week, so Johnny can face Carnie in the Blind Tasting. They have to make something with hot dogs in ten minutes.

Johnny doesn't eat hot dogs, of course, but he tells us he's got plenty of experience with sausage. Of course. He makes a sausage sandwich with fried onions. Carnie is a hot dog gal from way back and makes one with bacon and cheese, a ketchup and onion sauce to go with, and some homemade potato chips.

Rachael wisely cuts the sandwiches in half because after sharing straws with Guy last week and finding a stray pubic hair, she wisely doesn't want to put anything he's had in his mouth in her mouth. They are torn between the sausage sandwich and the hot dog, but ultimately choose the hot dog because, well, it was a hot dog challenge.

Johnny goes home, and Team Guy is down to one man. Yes, yes, we know, Dean the fucking Gourmet Dad!

Next week: The celebs get their own food trucks! LDP makes an appearance!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Rachael vs Guy Celebrity Cook-Off 2.3 Recap

I'm sorry the recap is late this week, but there's a very good reason for that. Rather than flip the channel to Food Network at 9pm on Sunday, we Minxes preferred to watch the Baltimore Ravens humiliate the New England Patriots right out of Super Bowl contention. GO RAVENS!

About 24 hours after the episode aired, we watched it OnDemand. Turns out we didn't miss much. The Food Network agrees - they didn't bother to put up photos from the episode until late Tuesday morning, and the videos are not loading. They need to get new intern-monkeys.

In any case, this week's challenge was meant to test the celebritynoncheftestants adaptability by making them short order cooks. Teams Rachael and Guy find themselves at Mel's Drive-in, a greasy spoon in Hollyweird. Wouldn't a road trip to Mel's Diner in Milwaukee have been more fun? That is, if they could travel back in time to the Happy Days era. They could serve burgers and fries to Fonzie and the gang. Instead, we have to watch them serve regular LA nobodies desperately wanting to be somebodies. Meanwhile, the Fonz is selling reverse mortgages.

Hiney Warts thinks this challenge is perfectly reasonable because of the Guy factor. "All his shows is about triple Ds," he tells us. That's the grade I'd give Guy, too. A "D."

There are three celebs left per team, and there are three classic diner meals they have to prepare: a tuna melt; a chicken club; and a cheeseburger. Because Rachy's team won last week, they have the advantage of choosing the sandwiches for their adversaries on Team Guy. They assign the chicken club to Johnny, the burger to Chilli, and the tuna melt to Dean.

The teams go off to their respective trailers for some strategery. Johnny, who is wearing a spangled silver jacket and short shorts, plans to work the front of the house and be "real gay." Can you imagine how gay he can be when he actually tries? The mind boggles. Before being assigned the chicken club, he had planned to get away from using his favorite protein. And that would be...chicken. So to switch things up, he decides to do something super-radical and use something never before seen in a club sandwich. That's right - turkey. And he's going to make it "real gay."

Dean isn't all that thrilled with the idea of a tuna melt. He wants to switch his up by using olive oil instead of mayo, but Guy tells him he's used up all of the olive oil in his hair that morning. Chilli, who is turning into a real whiner in the kitchen, says she don't grill, honey, so she don't know how she's going to make a burger. Guy proceeds to tell her to make a ball of meat, smash it on the grill, and then use a dome spritzed with water to melt the cheese. Easy peasy. Chilli almost falls off her chair trying to process the technique.

Over on Team Rachael's side, she's advising her squad to stick with traditional diner chow, and not to "gourmet it up." But then she's fine when Carnie starts babbling about the amazing tuna salad she makes with tons of herbs and stuff. And then she tells Hiney to add chorizo or bacon to his cheese burger. Then there's Kathy, who's volunteered to work the front of the house. She's not putting any meat in her chicken club, no sirree. Rachael then suggests that she do a double-decker grilled cheese sandwich with seitan bacon. Fresh herbs, chorizo, and seitan are definitely traditional diner foods.

Team Guy gets the kitchen first, with one hour of prep time before 45 random folks come in to eat. Funny how these celebs pretend to like to cook, but only Dean seems to know how to do anything. He's not team captain, but he gets pulled into Johnny's and Chilli's dramas and has to teach them how to use the food processor and whatnot.

Guy comes in to sniff and sneer, and he gives Johnny some advice on how to cook his turkey. Johnny is ever-so-thankful because, as he says, Guy is a "professional." Yes. Guy is a professional. A professional douche. With a sunburn over a spray tan.

Prep time is over and Johnny puts his spangly jacket back on so he can wow the crowd with gayness. He sashays and wiggles and everyone seems to love it. But it doesn't distract anyone from the bad food. Dean's run out of cheese for his tuna melts, and the diners notice. Johnny's bread is not toasted enough, but that's not his fault. He's generating plenty of flames in the dining room. Chilli's freaking out over the complicated burger technique (ball, smash, steam with dome) and working very s l o w l y. The customers are getting cranky, so Johnny ups the gay/distraction quotient by putting on roller blades and skating around both inside and outside. Eventually, the burgers get done with some help by Dean but they're bland and un-special.

Next, Team Rachael takes the stage. Carnie is alternately freaking out and singing happily.

Kathy is making fifteen different components for her grilled cheese club, but the seitan bacon won't be one of them. She thinks it tastes bitter, but Rachael thinks she needs to include it for the crunch. Hiney has never even heard of chorizo, so he's putting bacon in his bacon cheeseburger. But first - he needs to learn how to use a food processor. Honestly, people, it's not that difficult. Put the food in. Push a button. Whirr. Carnie gives him instructions and Hiney is amazed that he's lived so long without using this machine. I'm just amazed he's lived so long.

Kathy goes out to entertain the guests but she's no Johnny Weir. She doesn't even have a sparkly jacket. Being a "vegetarian chef," while an amusing enough concept, just doesn't cut the mustard.

Carnie put her money where her mouth is with her tuna melt. And she probably put one of those tuna melts where her mouth is, too. She claimed that she made delicious tuna salad, and the judges and customers agreed. Her sandwich had great texture and, unlike Dean's, plenty of cheese. Hiney's burger, too, won raves, but he couldn't move quite fast enough to keep up with the orders. And this man was a wide receiver, someone who presumably had to think on his feet while both running and catching the ball.

Kathy's cheese clubs weren't making it out of the kitchen at all because Carnie was too busy singing and beating people with baguettes, completely forgetting that she was supposed to make Kathy's dish, too. When Carnie realizes her mistake, she curses Kathy's use of fifty-three different components, and Kathy comes back to help. Eventually her sammies come out, but it's pretty much a consensus that they needed bacon. Even seitan bacon.

Later, at Judges Table, Rachael and Guy tell them that Carnie's tuna melt beat Dean's, Hiney's burger beat Chilli's, and Johnny's double whammy of real gay service and tasty food beat out Kathy's dull service and bacon-less sandwich.

The customers chose Team Rachael as the winners, so that means the bottom two on Team Guy have to participate in the Blind Tasting Challenge. This would be Dean and Chilli, who are tasked with making a delicious milkshake in five minutes.

There are tons of mix-ins available, but Dean goes "adult" with his orange creamsicle shake with Grand Marnier and boozy Twinkie garnish. And I don't mean he got Johnny liquored up and put him on the edge of the glass.

Chilli tells us she's a mommy so wants to make a shake her son would like. I could have sworn she said her son's name was "Tron," and when I looked it up, I saw that it was, indeed, Tron. I guess there are worse things than being named after a bad 80s movie about video games. Just ask Atari Bigby of the San Diego Chargers.

Both Chilli's chocolate cookie shake and Dean's orange shake are tasty, but the boozed-up Twinkie obviously win's the hearts of Rachael and Guy, because Chilli is sent home. Just as well, as she was getting on my nerves. They all are, actually. Where's LDP when you need him?

Next week: my idea of hell. A kid's party.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Rachael vs Guy Celebrity Cook-off 2.2 Recap

I love that this show goes by so fast - there are only six celebrities left at the end of this episode! So much less-painful than Top Chef and Project Runway, which seem to drag on for half a year. Or longer. Granted, this is Rachel vs. Guy, and watching the two of them for six weeks straight is somewhat of a challenge for me--I usually want to throw a brick at the TV when I see their faces. But somehow I can deal with it for this show. I know. I think there's something wrong with me, too.

This week, everybody is carted off to the Underwood Family Farms, where, presumably, the famed Underwood Deviled Ham Spread is made. You know, that's a completely underutilized culinary product. Probably because it tastes just awful. But I'd love to see the celebrities have to make a dish using that stuff. Unfortunately, they get off much easier - members of Team Rachael and Team Guy have to cook both a main dish and a side using some of the lovely vegetables grown on the farm. Too easy.

Guy's team won last week, so they get an advantage in this challenge. The celebrities get proteins, and Team Douche gets to choose theirs first. Corny takes the portobello mushrooms, since she's a "vegetarian chef." Only in your mind, honey. You ain't no chef. Dean takes the lamb chops, Chilli takes salmon, and finally, Johnny chooses chicken breasts. Because, girl, he's all about the breasts. But only if they're on a chicken.

Rachel's team is stuck with what's left. Kathy, who also considers herself a "chef" takes the eggplant, Hiney takes the flank steak, and Carnie is stuck with pork chops, which she definitely did not want to deal with. The mocking "oink oink" noises that followed her around most of her life are probably too much for the poor dear to handle. BTW, her outfit this week is much more flattering than the one she wore last week. She actually doesn't seem much bigger than Rachael, but I guess that's really not saying much, is it?

Next, the teams go off into their respective corners and plan their menus. Over on Team Rachael's side, she thinks Hiney should branch out and make a chimichurri sauce for his flank steak, and he's all "wtf is that, bitch?"

Then the fun begins - the chefs get little wagons and maps of the vast farm and run around trying to find the ingredients they will need for their dishes. Which, by the way, they will be serving to 25 farm workers in addition to Rachael and Guy.

Chilli and Hiney are most definitely *not* farm people. She's tiptoeing around so as not to get dirt in her skimpy sandals or bugs in her teeth, and Hiney is squeezing his nostrils shut with his fingers because the place reeks of animals. He's fine with the stench of loss and dispair in a post-game Steelers' locker room, but he can't deal with the natural smells of chicken shit and cow manure. Wimp.

After gathering their veggies and herbs, the celebrities are assigned a series of grills on which they must prepare their foods. Carnie's all, "I prep food to be grilled. I do not grill." Guess grilling's a man's job, eh, Carnie? Sexist, much?

As we've seen in just about every other cooking-related reality show, grills and campfires aren't always the best way to cook an entire meal. If the fire's not working, water doesn't boil and veggies don't get cooked. Dean's fingerling potatoes, which are in a huge pot of water, aren't even bubbling, and Guy advises him to slice up some Russets and take another approach. Dean calls this, "changing horses mid-stream," which sounds like a mixed metaphor if I ever heard one. Or maybe it's a water polo reference?

Over on Kathy's station, she seems to be in a trance because it takes her most of the hour to slice, salt, and rest her sliced eggplant. She realizes she's not even started her side dish, and with only a handful of moments to spare, she's slicing fennel and mixing it with canned garbanzo beans. Gag.

Meanwhile, Hiney decides to defy Rachael and make a teriyaki sauce for his meat. Chilli is taking Guy's suggestion to grill her salmon on planks, but it doesn't seem that she's soaked them first because her grill is on fire. Whoops!

Quickly, their hour of cooking fun is up and the farm hands have been seated and are ready to feast. Team Rachael presents first. Carnie has made something she calls "Sassy BBQ Top Chops" with potato salad on the side. Her chops are perfectly cooked, but the potatoes in the salad are not. The BBQ sauce is a bit sweet, but the salad's seasoning is spot on. Hiney's teriyaki grilled flank steak with grilled vegetables "yin yang," get pretty good reviews. His steak is perfectly cooked, and Rachael doesn't mind that he didn't make chimichurri. Kathy's struggled to make what she calls eggplant "farm" esan with a fennel salad. Oddly enough, everyone preferred her thrown-together salad to the slightly undercooked eggplant.

Team Guy's team's turn: Corny's stuffed mushroom is underwhelming and undercooked. Johnny's chicken "marbles" wrapped in prosciutto are salty but nicely cooked, and his "water" salad of cucumber, tomato, and watermelon with feta is tasty. Guy says he doesn't give himself enough credit for his culinary talent. Johnny, I mean. Guy gives himself too much credit. Chilli's raw honey apricot cedar planked salmon has a delicious glaze, but the fish itself is a bit overcooked. And Dean's lamb chop with strawberry mint sauce and steakhouse potatoes are sorely lacking in seasoning. Apparently "changing horses mid-stream" left him all wet.

The farm workers get to choose the winning team, and believe it or not, despite Team Guy looking pretty good, it's Team Rachael. Can't eliminate someone from a team that's only got three people on it, can we? I predict Team Guy will win next week. The bottom two on Team Guy are bland Dean and boring Corny, and appropriately enough, they have to cook something with corn in the Blind Tasting challenge.

Corny is making a veggie salad. She slathers some corn with butter and grills them in the husk, which causes them to catch fire. She also wisely boils a batch, just in case the whole butter on the grill thing was a stupid idea. Dean's clueless but he sees eggs in the pantry and decides a corn omelette would be a good idea.

By the time they're finished cooking, it's dark outside, and we can see that Guy's badly sunburned. Guess neither his spray tan from last week nor the hair gel that dripped onto his face during the course of the day offered protection from the elements. His face is red and he's got big white spots where his sunglasses had been, making him look like some crazed punk rock panda.

Rach and Guy taste both Corny's corn salad and Dean's corn omelette while Dean and Corny tell us how much they need to win this thing. Corny, because she's supporting an animal charity, and Dean because his lovely wife would be pissed at him. Off on the side, Chilli and Johnny are hanging onto each other like two orphaned monkeys, which is both cute and pathetic at the same time.

The winner is announced, and it's Dean. And the Socialite vegetarian "chef" goes back home to her  house full of small dogs and Mick Jagger posters.

Next week: Diners, Douchebags, and Celebrities!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Rachael vs Guy Celebrity Cook-Off 2.1 Recap

As much as I dislike both Rachael Ray and Guy Fieri, I got a big kick out of the first season of Rachel vs Guy Celebrity Cook-Off. So much so, I'm watching it again this year and recapping it so you don't have to subject yourself to it. I know - my generosity knows no bounds.

This year, the "celebrity" cooktestants are of a somewhat higher caliber than last time, and we meet them all in a fake red carpet scenario. You know, to add a taste of Hollywood. After all, this season was filmed in Guy's stomping ground of Flavor Town Los Angeles rather than New York. After the multiple bad reviews of Guy's Times Square trough fatty feeding facility restaurant, he's afraid to even get near the city.

First there's Dean McDermott, famous for leaving his wife and son to screw around with and later marry Tori Spelling (who's famous for being Aaron Spelling's daughter, and maybe for being on Beverly Hills 90210). They've now cranked out four kids together so far, and it's one of those situations where you can't say you hope they look like the mother OR the father. Then there's Rozonda Ocelean Thomas, better know as Chilli, from the popular 90s singing group, TLC. Another singer in the group is Carnie Wilson, from that 90s trio of famous musicians' offspring, Wilson Phillips. Carnie tells us she's a good cook. She's also apparently a good eater. The gal has had weight issues for years, and despite losing 150 lbs after gastric bypass surgery and posing nude for Playboy in 2003, her weight is back up. Hey - she's only human. However, she should fire her stylist for putting her in that hideous horizontally-striped muumuu.

Former Pittsburgh Steeler, Dancing With the Stars champ, and media whore extraordinaire Hiney Warts is also on the show. And if you object to my calling him "Hiney Warts" instead of his actual name, then perhaps you shouldn't be reading the blog of a Baltimore Ravens fan. Just sayin'. Then there's Cornelia Guest, a self-proclaimed socialite, which is how they pronounce "whore" in polite society. She's a vegan, and will only be cooking vegan dishes for the competition. I predict she'll be gone early in the run. Another contestant who will be cooking primarily vegetarian/vegan dishes is Kathy Najimy, whose daughter is a vegan. She's been quite chubby in the past, but I've always thought she was as cute as heck. Another cutie is Johnny Weir, the flamboyantly talented figure skater who tells us that he cooks at home for his adorable husband and son (their dog). And last--and certainly least--is Gilbert Gottfried, the comedian best known for his annoying voice, which he lent to Disney as Iago the parrot in Aladdin and to insurance company Aflac as the duck mascot--until he got fired in 2011 after his rude Tweets about the Japan earthquake. Mr Minx took one look at him and said, "he'll be the first one off the show." Considering the man almost never opens his eyes, and can't possibly see anything in the kitchen, I'm betting he's right about that.

So the celebs gather in what appears to be an abandoned restaurant to await the grand entrance of Rachael and Guy. They emerge from the second floor landing and swan down a split staircase while the celebs pretend to be excited. Rachael looks like she's completely given up on trying to slim down, as her keister is formidable. And Guy has apparently bought stock in a spray tan salon, because he's as orange as Michael Kors. It even looks as though the stuff has leached into his bottle blond hair and douche soul patch.

Their first line of duty is to pick teams:

Team Spray Tan: Dean, Chilli, Johnny, Cornelia
Team Keister: Kathy, Hiney, Carnie, Gilbert

I've decided that they all must have names that end in a "y" sound. Dean, Cornelia, and Gilbert will henceforth be known as Deany, Corny, and Gilby.

Rachael (Rachy?) and Guy then introduce this week's challenge: the teams have to provide a little dinner theater experience to 100 guests. Each person is responsible for one dish that will be part of a tasting plate, and a group dessert. And what's dinner "theater" without a little actual theater? (I'm guessing less chance of indigestion.) Each team has to put on a 3-minute skit, which shouldn't be too difficult for this pack of stage hogs.

The teams head off to their respective buses to plan their meals. Team Rachael seems a bit disorganized. After settling on "Pot Luck Party" as their theme, they seem confused as to who should cook what and why. Gilby is totally perplexed when he's told he has to cook a signature dish. What? I have to cook? Nothing comes to mind, and eventually he decides he's almost capable of making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Rachael suggests he elevate them with cinnamon sugar or something, anything.

Over on Guy's side, his team is far more organized. They're doing a Western theme and have their menu planned in no time flat. Then it's time to put on chef coats and head into the kitchen for two hours of cooking.

On Rachael's side, Carnie has her macaroni and cheese under control and is working on the team's dessert, a bread pudding. Her other teammates seem to be doing ok, except for Gilby, who is grilling his PB&Js after topping them with the cinnamon sugar. The sugar burns, producing rectangular charcoal briquets. He's not sure it's a bad thing, but Kathy advises him to throw them out and start over. Rachael suggests through gritted teeth that he put the sugar on after the sandwiches are cooked. Honestly - what is he doing in this competition?

On Mr Spray Tan's side, Johnny is seen overmixing his chicken breast-only meatballs. Guy thinks that he probably shouldn't make them so dense and that maybe they need a little fat. When he leaves, Johnny says he's going to ignore the advice and do things his way, which will probably come back and bite him on his firm little ass. Corny is working on Deany's dessert, a "deconstructed" s'more, and after cutting out a couple of portions, she realizes there's not enough dessert to go around. Deany goes into panic mode and starts cutting the leftovers into tiny, uneven, squares and puts four on each plate, hoping nobody will notice how crappy they look.

Time's up and the teams have to present their food. Team Guy goes out first with their "Wild Wild West of Flavors." Each celeb has donned some Western-esque garb and basically just introduces his or her dish. Chilli's in her element when she's on stage, acting sassy and waving a prop gun around entirely too close to her face. Doesn't she know she could knock an eye out with that thing?   And Johnny steals the show when he rips off his oversized plaid shirt to reveal a sparkly black corset. Deany is so taken with him, he dips Johnny and gives him a passionate smooch on the mouth. Look out, Tori. Johnny is much more attractive than you are. Much.

They serve their food. Deany's made a skirt steak with polenta that Rachael and Guy and two nobodies from Entertainment Weekly love. They are less enthusiastic about Corny's bland three bean veggie chili. Chilli has made something she cutely calls a "Chill"apia tostada, with spice-rubbed tilapia, and the judges rave. Finally, they taste Johnny's aptly-named "chicken tumbleweed" - chicken meatballs that are dry and dense and flavored with too much white truffle oil. Deany's dessert, which they've called "Less is S'more," tastes fine, but the portion sizes are all over the place.

Rachael's team is up next, and they act out their version of Cinderella, which they call, "Pot Luck Princess." Kathy has the idea that they should deliver the dialogue "backwards," but it just sounds like some consonants are being misplaced here and there. Gilby, wearing a feather boa and two different wigs, is at his best (that is - annoying). And Hiney (also in a wig) tells us that if any of his former team-mates caught him dressed as he was, they would "rag him to deaf." I don't know what they would do exactly to cause his hearing loss, but whatever it is, I want to watch.

Now the food: Kathy's vegan stuffed mushrooms are bland, and one guest calls it "the stereotypical example of what everyone thinks about vegetarian food"; Carnie's mac and cheese is called "awesome," which of course means absolutely nothing. Hiney's "Asian persuasian" wings are cooked well and crisp. Gilby let his team-mates down with his uninspired PB&J. The team dessert, Carnie's bread pudding, is both interesting and full of flavor.

Later, we see Rachael and Guy behind a Top Chef-style desk, pontificating about the food they just ate. They tell the celebs that Chilli's tilapia tostada was the favorite dish of the evening, according to the guests' comment cards. Overall, Guy's team is the winner, and will receive some sort of advantage in next week's challenge. This puts Rachael's team on the bottom, and the creators of the two worst dishes have to go head-to-head in a blind tasting elimination challenge.

Kathy's mushrooms were bland, but couldn't possibly have been as bad as Gilby's sandwich, which one diner said could have been made by his three-year-old. The two of them are sent back to the kitchen to make the ultimate midnight snack. Kathy immediately runs for the chick peas and tahini to make her mother's Lebanese hummus and pita crisps, because she likes to have gas when she goes to bed. Gilby, whose imagination is completely spent after the difficulties of the main challenge, decides to make something he's more comfortable with - a peanut butter and banana sandwich.

When Rachael and Guy see the dishes, they know exactly who made what. And while Gilby's sandwich was admittedly tasty, they couldn't allow him to compete for another week. That voice! So annoying!

Mr Minx is (as usual) right, and we're down one contestant. Seven to go.

Next week: the celebs have to harvest their own ingredients from a large garden. Hilarity ensues.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Rachael vs Guy Celebrity Cook-Off Episode 2 Recap

I got some good response to last week's recap, so I'm doing it again! Lucky you!

Last week, scrawny singer Aaron Carter got bumped because he didn't know a spatula from a spittoon. This week, it's someone else's turn to say bye bye. But first - the challenge.

Two of the Food Network's Most Annoying, Guy Fieri and Rachael Ray, meet with their now-lopsided teams (4 on Guy's, 3 on Rach's) to give them the next hurdle in the race to that $50,000 charitable donation from the Food Network. Oh, didn't I mention that last week? Each of the "celebrities" is playing for a charity and not to line their own pockets. This week's battle involves something near and dear to every chef and chef-wannabe's heart - desserts. Each team is responsible for four desserts in two hours, including the 3-man team, who must work together to produce the fourth dish.

Alyssa insists she's all about desserts, although I doubt she's ever ingested anything more dessert-like than a stick of sugarless gum. Lou Diamond Phillips (LDP henceforth) is in a tizzy and says he'd rather arm-wrestle Robert Irvine. (Producers are now frantically at work on the new Food Network series, Arm Wrestling: Impossible.)

Having to make a dessert is bad enough, but there's also a twist. One of each team's dishes must include a savory item. Rach picks horseradish for Guy's team, and Guy - ever the bastard - picks anchovy for Rach's team.

The two teams make plans. AKA they go back to their respective stew rooms and tear out their hair/wring their hands/sob quietly. Both Rach and Guy insist that the savory item would make a fabulous cannoli filling. The teams are dubious, but they barely have ideas of their own. Alyssa, the wanna-be pastry chef, insists that she's going to make profiteroles with a raspberry filling. Cheech is going to make poached pears and...wait for it...brownies!

Coolio intends to make a lemon pudding cake a la his grandma. And FatOne, without ideas of his own, gets stuck with making the wasabi cannolis. Over on Rach's team, LDP reluctantly declares he will make lemon curd-filled puff pastries with limoncello cream and a berry prosecco sauce. Summer is making spicy fudge (insert poop joke here). Taylor wants to do something with strawberries and Rach suggests shortcake with basil and balsamic. Finally, the anchovy cannoli falls to the whole team.

Suddenly, the show switches from Celebrity Cook-Off to Worst Cooks in America. Coolio starts off making his cake with a prepared batch of pudding, then wonders why his batter is weird and not cooking properly. (Because you're supposed to put dry pudding in the batter, not wet.)

Alyssa is whipping up what looks like pancake batter in a bowl, and I'm wondering if she's changed her mind about making profiteroles. Profiteroles are made from choux pastry, which is cooked. First one makes a rather doughy roux-like mixture, then beats in eggs. The end result is a thick, shiny paste. Meanwhile, Alyssa wonders why her dough is runny and starts adding flour to thicken it. She asks Coolio for guidance (!) and he suggests adding more butter. Eventually, she comes up with something that seems to please her, she puts it into a piping bag, and then glops it onto a baking sheet. It's pretty obvious that it's NOT choux pastry, but when Guy comes around, he lets her do her thing.

Meanwhile, LDP can't seem to get the right balance of tart and sweet in his lemon curd. He's also panicking that his puff pastry needs a lot of time to thaw and time is flying. Speaking of flying, Coolio is determined to complete his cake on time and cranks his oven up to 500F. This is all making me really nervous.

Eventually all of the mayhem is over and the celeb teams theatrically present their desserts to the judges before skedaddling to their stew rooms. The judges for this battle are thirteen pastry students from the Institute of Culinary Education, and they are beginning to wonder what they've gotten themselves into.

They are all amazingly polite, because nobody says, "this isn't a #%&@&* profiterole!" when fed Alyssa's flat hockey pucks. Instead, they merely claim to prefer raspberry filling without seeds. Honestly, these kids seem to really enjoy everything, including Coolio's pudding cake. And they love the anchovy cannoli.:::shudder:::

Later, after the students leave to get their stomachs pumped, Rach and Guy tell Taylor that her shortcake was the favorite dessert of the day. I'm impressed that she was able to conjure up a biscuit recipe that worked. Perhaps Taylor has a copy of the Joy of Cooking hidden in her ample cleavage? Her dish looks good, too. Then the winning team is announced - it's a tie! How convenient. Rather than picking the worst dish from each team, Guy and Rach decide that the team captains appointed earlier in the day - Alyssa and Summer - will do battle.

The theme for this week's 10 minute challenge is salads. Summer attempts to cook salmon but doesn't take into account the thickness of the filet - it won't cook in time. Alyssa goes with portobello mushrooms, and she makes a simple oil and vinegar dressing. When Rach and Guy do their blind taste test, they decide they can overlook Summer's undercooked salmon because the rest of the salad was pleasing both visually and in flavor, whereas Alyssa's was boring, particularly her dressing.

Thus Alyssa's undernourished ass is given the boot.

Next week: one-on-one battles and Chopped judges, including douchebag Scott Conant!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Rachael vs Guy Celebrity Cook-Off

Call me crazy, but I think this show might be a trainwreck worth recapping.

There are only eight contestants, each of which are "celebrities." In this day and age, that can mean anything, from Kardashians to talking dogs. Personally, I'd prefer talking dogs to just about any one of these people: Olympic gold medalist Summer Sanders; actor Lou Diamond Phillips; 'N Stync'er Joey FatOne; singer and plastic surgery freak Taylor Dayne; weirdo Coolio; and comedian Cheech Marin. Inexplicably, the competition also features two scrawny people who possibly suffer from eating disorders - Alyssa Campanella, current Miss USA, and a guy who I only know as someone vaguely associated with Paris Hilton, but I'm told he's a singer, Aaron Carter. These two are super skinny - you can't convince me that either of them takes nutrition orally. And Carter looks like a douchebag on top of it.

The show starts with each "celeb" wandering onto the set, oohing and aahing, according to the script. Cheech Marin is first, followed by 21-year-old Alyssa. I guarantee she has no freaking clue who Cheech is. She does know FatOne, who oozes in next. Dayne comes in, introducing herself as a very talented singer. Apparently she's quite modest, too. Coolio enters the room, and he's either got to pee or has an infection or something, because he keeps grabbing his crotch. I hope he washes his hands before starting to cook.

Finally, two of the three most obnoxious personalities on the Food Network walk in - Rachael Ray and Guy Fieri.

You know, I think if Paula Deen were there, too, I'd change the channel and be done with it. Rachael and Guy pretend to be impressed by the celebs and get to picking teams after a quick round of Rock Paper Scissors, as suggested by the always-mature, 40-something Guy Fieri. Guy wins and chooses nutjob Coolio first. You know Guy's thinking that by contrast he's going to come out looking absolutely elegant and sophisticated.

Team Guy is Coolio, Cheech, Alyssa, and FatOne
Team Rachel is Lou, Aaron, Summer, and Taylor

Taylor is obviously picked last because nobody wants to take the risk of having her lip implants explode and leak toxic chemicals into the food.

The challenge for this episode is to cater the first non-annual "Celebrity" Cook-Off Food "Festival," held in some remote place near Trenton, NJ. Each celeb is responsible for one food item that will feed 150 people. The teams go off to work out their menu, with the help of their "mentors," Rach and Guy. Basically Rach and Guy tell each team member what to do, except for Lou and Cheech, who already have dishes in mind. I predict that these two will be the last men standing, with Lou coming out the winner.

Anyhoo...Rachel gives her team the theme "Hot in the City," and Guy wants his to cook Mexican-ish food, with the theme, "Fiesta Loco." Sounds about right. In addition to food, each team has to provide entertainment to the crowd. The audience will then vote, and the team that is awarded the most tokens is the winner. The two worst performers from the losing team will have to duke it out in a separate challenge to determine who is going home.

During the 30 minutes of prep, we find that Aaron is a real moron. Rachel has assigned to him a pasta salad with Ranch dressing and grilled jalapenos that she insists will taste like jalapeno poppers. I'm not sure where the macaroni and Ranch dressing comes into play in a dish of jalapeno poppers, but she's the "expert" so I'll take her word for it. [eyeroll] Aaron is distressed when he discovers that he has to make the dressing from scratch - he doesn't even get to use the little package of Hidden Valley seasonings! So he mixes sour cream, bottled Thousand Island, some hot sauce, and who knows what else. Definitely saliva and tears. He's pretty sure the end result is awful, but he makes sure by giving Summer some to taste. She gags, and he wisely takes that as a clue to start over again.

The next day, the gang heads to a remote pier at the end of nowhere to finish cooking for their "Food Festival."

Guy and Rachel come around to make sure everything is ready and give pointers to their celebs. Guy suggests that FatOne might have too much seasoning rub on his shrimp, and that Alyssa's ice cream might stay colder if she filled chafing dishes with ice and packed her servings into them. FatOne listens, but Alyssa thinks she knows better. Rachael doesn't gag at Aaron's salad, but she seems to have a perpetual "eww" expression on her face the whole time she's inspecting her team. She tells Lou that his ribs smell awesome, but she looks skeptical. And perhaps a bit scared of him.

Not soon enough, time's up and the 150 "festival" attendees crowd into camera range and rush the tables to sample food. They all seem to adore Lou Diamond's "turbo" ribs, which he marinated in veggies and salsa, boiled in the marinade, then finished on the grill.

Cheech's beef machaca rolled in tortillas is also a big hit. Surprisingly, Coolio's tilapia and bean tacos are also well-received. Of course, Alyssa's ice cream has melted, but she passes her Mexican bananas foster off as a milkshake instead; Summer's corn does pretty well, as does FatOne's shrimp. But Aaron's salad is bland, and Taylor's gazpacho shots, conversely, are too spicy.

Just when you think it's over, there's "entertainment." First Aaron and Taylor "sing." He's completely awful - did he really have a professional career? - but the crowd is probably too drunk off the tequila in Alyssa's bananas foster to care. Team Guy is smarter, avoiding the song and dance and instead bringing out a pinata and giving away kisses from FatOne and Miss USA.

Eventually, the crowd is shooed away and Rach and Guy dole out the verdict. Lou's ribs were unanimously voted to be the best dish of the day. Guy then tells Cheech that his sliders were also very good. Only Cheech didn't make sliders - he made shredded beef wrapped in tortillas. Guy was apparently hitting Miss USA's tequila milkshakes a bit too hard.

While the voting was close - the winner and loser separated by 14 votes - Team Guy takes the victory. That means two from Team Rachael are on the chopping block. Summer's corn dish is safe, leaving bland Aaron and spicy Taylor to duke it out. Now, each of them must create a dish in 10 minutes using a "mystery menu item," which turns out to be shrimp. How boring! Wouldn't it have been more fun to see their reaction to raw squid? or Buddha's hand? or huitlacoche? Both decide to make boring shrimp/garlic/pasta dishes, which are then served to Guy and Rachael in a blind taste test. After hemming and hawing about how one dish needed more herbs and the other needed more something, they choose Taylor's dish as the winner and give Aaron the well-deserved boot.

Next week: dessert battle!

So...should I bother recapping for the next couple of weeks? The Food Network doesn't even seem to care about the show, since they don't have any recap videos up on their site. Do you care? Did anyone watch?

Posted by theminx on Minxeats.com.