Twisting the Night Away.

Sometimes Top Chef is a comedy. A subtle convoluted comedy, but a comedy none the less. What? You weren't chuckling? Perhaps you missed some of the more ephemeral twists that occurred during this episode. Like the Quickfire.Or should I say the Quickfire's Sponsor, Cookstr.com? We'll get to them in a minute but first consider the actual challenge. Create a dish incorporating three keywords that we're going to give you by a totally impartial and random spinning of this slot machine.
I am really beginning to hate the descriptive word challenges. For instance how to you twist the following words into a winning dish: Stressed, Umami, Latin - Adventurous, Nutty, American - Blue, Cheesy, Middle Eastern? Better yet, how the hell do you judge the dish and it's adherence to their descriptors? But let's face it, it wasn't really about the food, it was really about the best way to pimp Cookstr.com. Why Cookstr? I know that's what I thought. Lord knows I've surfed some foodie/recipe sites and blogs but frankly I thought they were pimping a recipe site I occasionally hit in my many searches. Imagine my surprise when I actually went there to check them out and found this...
Why Padma, what are you doing here? Yes that's right, it's a site for you to surf 24 pages of cookbook authors. One of which is Padma. Only three months old and going for the big Pimp of Top Chef. A little late to the party kids but then again when one of your partners is Bravo...

...is it really pimping or just kissing your cousin? Now that we know that the whole point of the Quickfire was to promote Cookstr as the website "to help the at home cook to find the perfect recipe for every occasion" with the use of Keywords, how did our chefs do with this task? It seems everyone jumped ship when it came to using the words like stressed, adventurous and tired and just tried to make the best dish possible with the other two words. That seems to have been a wise move since Guest Judge Tyler Florence totally ignored judging their dishes on the strength of their word use and just talked flavor profiles instead. Kevin takes the win with his Stressed, Hot N' Spicy, Asian dish of Char Grilled Pork with Daikon and Vietnamese Herb Salad.Not only does he win with another pig dish but in yet another twist he gets to choose between $15,000 or immunity. Being one of the top four chefs and feeling massively confident about his chances, Kevin smartly takes the golden chip.
Still, I couldn't let go of giving Cookstr a run for it's money. What would happen if I plugged in the word pimpage they so proudly sponsored? Did they actually think ahead? Is their highly touted search engine ready for a Top Chef Crack Monkey like me?Ohhhh, not even close. Not one recipe AND it blows the whole premise of finding that one special recipe for every occasion. Funny, funny stuff. Maybe this year Top Chef will finally win that coveted Emmy...for a comedy series.