Match Play

It's all a bit hazy but when we last saw our chefs, they were getting ready for Team Tennis Dish Match Play. They tried very, very hard to shoehorn in a connection to the US Open by pretending that the dishes the chefs made would be something tennis players would be comfortable eating before a big match. The real reason for a challenge at the US Open?


Padma gets to wear shorts. Actually I liked the competition part of this challenge. Two teams trying to match up head to head with each other.

Team Orange includes Carla, Mike, Richard, Dale, Fabio, Antonia, and Marcel.

Team Yellow counts Tiffani, Tiffany, Angelo, Asshat, Jamie, Casey, and Tre. The teams seem well matched, both have strengths and weaknesses. However Asshat doesn't like the team he's on.

(And by allies what he really means is the seafood family of proteins.)

He should worry because if you win your head to head match up, you're not up for elimination even if your team loses. I like this a lot because it's about making the best tasting food, not about someone else on your team screwing up a sauce or overcooking something. You cook the best dish you can then you should be safe. Neither team seems to get this, instead focusing on the tennis aspect of the challenge. Carla is asked what's she doing and it sounds like she's got a strong soup dish, very much in her style of cooking. Dale sort of poo poos her soup, discounting the dish as not being upscale enough for the US Open crowd. Carla, still sporting bad advice burn scars, puts on her best "Politely Listen but Ignore" face and makes what she wants anyway. On the other team, they think they have a strategy of putting their weakest dish against the strongest dish, making the assumption that 1) Richard will have the strongest dish and 2) he will go first. Their Plan B?


They don't really have a Plan B. Doesn't stop them from shopping and cooking though and revealing way too much about themselves.


No, Antonia, that does not count. What does count in most people's minds is a second helping of gnocchi from Fabio. This doesn't bug me so much, he's making a whole wheat gnocchi which is a challenge, he's going head to head and if anything, he's going to redeem the reputation of the poor gnocchi on Top Chef. If I remember correctly Howie of Season 3 rode that pork pony quite a ways before he was auffed. Now during the three hour prep, we see Angelo get smacked with a slimy fish curve ball. Seems he didn't ask to check all the mackerel Whole Foods gave him. If he had he would have seen the fish was slimy and a bit off.


He makes a wise decision and chooses not to use them but he still has to come up with some protein. He tries sweet talking a piece of salmon out of Tre (who has immunity) but Tre's not having any of it and suggests Angelo try Tiffany and her tuna. Tiffany, who had a whole season of Angelo, wisely shares some of her protein and Angelo is off and running with a new dish. Not off and running with the dishes they planned are Asshat and Jamie. Jamie, in another episode of What I Forgot From Cooking School, fails chickpea cooking 101. Asshat does no better with his shrimp. This isn't Bocuse d'Or cooking folks, this is shrimp and chickpeas. Too late, time to hit the courts.

Both teams prepare for the first match up. Team Yellow is expecting Blaise and putting their worst dish up which at this point is Jamie and her hard luck chick peas. But surprise, it's Fabio first for the Orange Team. This completely throws the Yellow Team for a loop. They try and stick to their original strategy of sending the weakest but Jamie refuses. Yeah, it only works if everyone agrees. Instead Casey steps up to the plate (or in this case, net) and chooses to go head to head with Fabio. Head to head, with Fabio making gnocchi a second time, I would have picked Casey to win this match up. However I would have been wrong. A tennis player I've never heard of before loved the gnocchi, Padma thought Casey's dish was too heavy and Tom, never having had a good whole wheat gnocchi, is amazed that a good one can be made. The other two judges don't even get to vote since it's already 3 for Fabio, who of course is ecstatic with Italian gnocchi joy. But the joy is short lived. The Orange Team had planned to send Marcel second and he's even halfway into plating when Dale insists he go second to save his dying dumplings. For the Yellow Team, Big Red jumps into the second slot.


Two strong fish dishes but Tiff takes the point with her black bass (too bad her dish isn't in the recipe section of Bravo's website because I want to go there) and shows some excitement of her own.


Back to even. Finally Marcel gets to compete but now he's competing against Angelo, a much stronger opponent than say Tiffany or Asshat. Angelo puts up a very simple bite of sashimi tuna with a yuzu gelée and a camphor froth (what, we don't call it foam anymore??) while Marcel brings it strong with couscous, pomegranate and yellow fin tuna but finishes it with cream and butter. It's the cream that sinks Marcel's dish and gives the win to Angelo. Two points in a row, the Yellow Team looks like they have momentum. The next match-up features Tiffany vs. Antonia which is should be a very evenly matched round. Tiffany has more tuna and Antonia puts up scallop. The judging is so close, two for each chef leaving Chef Tom with the deciding vote which goes to....


Antonia. Again, back to even. Finally it's Richard's turn at the net and Team Yellow decides to put up Asshat. I'm not sure why they didn't put up Tre but there it is. Now it's at this point that Angelo and Tiffani probably taste Asshat's dish and realize that yes, that shrimp is not going to win against Blaise. Adding any possible flavor is his only hope and that hope might lie in yuzu gelée. Asshat says nothing in the moment, things are moving too quickly and suddenly he's before the judges with his shrimp and tamarind soup against Richard with his lamb and yogurt dish. The judges don't seem to find the proteins in either dish too appealing, the guest judge calling the shrimp too bland and the lamb too gamey. In the end, Richard's tabbouleh saves him and Asshat's shrimp dooms him. Team Orange is ahead and Team Yellow has to go with Tre because there's no way Jamie's undercooked chickpeas are going to beat anybody. But in a bizarre turn of events, Tre has Angelo cook his fish. Why he doesn't cook his own damn fish is a mystery. On Team Orange's side, Mike is reverting back to his piggish self, so sure Carla is going to lose that he starts talking about firing up his dish. Of course Karma is going to kick Mike in his big fat mouth. In another close match, Carla takes the final point with her spicy groundnut soup.

With her good luck orange bandage no less. Everyone on the Orange Team is safe from elimination and in a wonderful Karmic turn...


Carla wins a five day/four night trip to Italy and a big-assed bottle of wine for having the best dish. Let's just hope it's not this...

(Not photoshopped, a real wine, I'm not drinking it, you drink it)

Team Yellow is left to gripe about lost opportunities. Asshat bemoans Angelo's involvement in his dish never seeing the forest of badly cooked shrimp for the trees. Not just one round of shrimp, two. He thinks Angelo tried to sabotage him but again, you had Tiffani and Angelo, two chefs with very strong palates, each that won their round, trying to save his dish. Seeing that strategy fail, he moved to Jamie. Again I must point out that Jamie is under no obligation to throw herself under the bus, especially for Asshat. If he had just cooked his shrimp right, he'd still be in the game. Turns out that his dish wasn't even the judges least favorite, that unhappy development belonged to Tre. Asshat's luck with timely Immunity left his lucky fingers and all that's left is to walk out those double doors again.

The Curious Case of Jamie Lauren

Here we are, we've just finished Episode 4 and I think we're seeing the revolution of the Top Chef Game Player. I'm beginning to think Jamie Lauren is brilliant.

Sure she cut herself and took the advice of the medic and went to the hospital to have her finger stitched up. Did she cut herself on purpose? Certainly no one can believe that but I also don't believe Jamie went to the hospital in order to duck her responsibilities of the team dish. Like it or not, they won't auff a chef because they hurt themselves. Would have others done differently, geez yeah, we had a whole parade of war stories but make no mistake about it, Jamie is her own woman and seems to know what's best for her. It's not like she's refused to cook every dish, she just missed out on helping with Jen's dish and she undercooked her chick peas for Match Play.


If you should be pissed anyone for the Yellow Team losing it should be at Asshat. They so depended on his so called strategy instead of calmly assessing out their best match ups head to head. Who is your best chef, match them with their best chef and down the line. Stupid thing was Asshat could have taken Blaise if his shrimp had even been halfway decent. Let's also not forget that Jamie is under no obligation to do what anyone says, it's still a competition and knowing her dish wasn't up to snuff and refusing to put it out there kept her in the game. Was she supposed to throw herself under the bus for Asshat?? That alone makes me like her. Even better?

Getting Richard Blaise all agitated. His little exchange with Jamie was telling. He asks her about what her "story" is which is a reference regarding how each chef gets a story line developed about them whether they like it or not. Villian, underdog, hero, one to beat, and so on. Blaise seems to think that Jamie's story is how Jamie's not cooking which is bullshit. She's cooking at this point it's just not in the top or bottom. Solidly in the middle. What about Blaise's story? He's not exactly blowing away the competition. Episode One he was one fourth of a Chicago Sausage Quickfire win. Episode Two he was one third of a win with Banana Parfait. Episode Three he is again a fourth of a win for the Quickfire with a Crispy Lambchop. That's it. When it comes down to just Blaise and his dish, no wins. If he's as good as he certainly thinks he is, shouldn't he have at least a single dish win? All I know is that Jamie seems to be the Teflon Chef, getting under Blaise's skin and helping Asshat out the door. Which means it's all good at Blogging Basement Central.

Quick Doesn't Always Mean Best

Because this is Top Chef All Stars, The Season of Redemption, it was only natural that there would be a Quickfire that featured team food preparation. You knew it, I knew and Casey especially knew it. I'm sure as soon as she signed up for this season she started chopping onions in anticipation. I think I even heard a rumor she was Meryl Streep's stunt onion chopping double in Julie/Julia.


I think we can safely assume she was more than ready for this particular Quickfire. A great Quickfire too. It takes the original Mise En Place Relay Race and ramps up the competitive nature and stress even more. Deceptively simple, four teams of four, prepping three ingredients, whole heads of garlic into four cups of chopped garlic, trim down fifteen artichokes, and french a whole lotta racks of lamb. But that's not the end and finally, they figured out how to keep all the teams in play. Once one team is done with all three ingredients and hits the red button, the countdown clock starts winding down from fifteen minutes. The quickest team off the ingredients now has the entire time to make a dish using the three ingredients. The remaining three teams will have whatever time is left once they finish their prep work. All four team members can participate on all the prep work to get it done. Best tasting dish wins the challenge and $5000 for each member of the team.

If I had to predict which team would have been the fastest off the prep just by team makeup I think I would have gone with the Blue Team. Asshat knows meat and is pretty quick on prep and Tre also looks like he wields a mean meat prepping knife. However Tre shares a little secret...

...which doesn't look good for the Blue Team. He could have taken some lessons from Marcel who is whipping through his lamb with his hammering technique.


Is he using a sharpening steel to do that? Whatever it is, he's right, it's cleaning the meat away from the bone much quicker and cleaner then the other methods we're seeing. Not that it matters right now because the first task that gets done is the garlic by the Fabio and the Green Team. This sends all the other teams into a panic. Except for Tiffani who for some reason decides to use a mandolin to slice her garlic. Slowly and methodically.

Definitely a wtf moment in Blogging Basement Central. It doesn't help that the Green Team just got done with their lamb followed closely by the Red Team completing their garlic task. That leaves the White Team and the Blue Team having yet completed anything. It gets worse for them because now the Green Team is having their last task checked and racing to hit the big red button.

Which means the fifteen minute countdown to dish completion has now begun. The knives start flying for the other three teams as they race to complete their prep work. Still it has to be good prep work as Asshat finds out the hard way...

...when guest judge David Chang rejects his garlic as not being cut small enough. Finally the Blue Team gets done with twelve minutes to go. Actually enough time to put some heat to the meat. Red Team clocks in at ten minutes. The White Team struggles to finally finish with eight minutes and thirty eight seconds. The last two teams realize that raw meat is their only choice and both choose to serve lamb carpaccio. The last eight minutes whip by in a frenzy of cooking and ideas. Now it's time to taste the dishes.

Green Team who had the most time comes up fried lamb with a bizarre colored sauce.

The Blue Team with a pan seared lamb and artichokes cooked three ways.

The Red Team's lamb carpaccio with large flakes of cheese.

The White Team and lamb carpaccio number two.

The low teams on the totem pole? Green and Red. This leaves Angelo confused.

How can this be, the Green Time had the most time but turns out their herb additions blew out the other flavors. Which is also what happened on the Red Team with their cheese addition. The White Team and the Blue Team turn out the be the top two, even though White slapped something together with less than nine minutes. Who wins the big wad of cash?

The Blue Team....except Richard can't wait to explain how he was the leader of the winning effort. (I see a big, sparkly necklace in Richard's future.)

A is for...

...animated, agitated, alert, AWESOME!

...is also for...

The Letter A has been brought to you by the Karmic Kitchen

The Asshat Man Cometh

A little bird whispered in my digital ear this past Sunday. "Watch Iron Chef" I wasn't sure why but the Bird has never steered me wrong. Iron Chef usually isn't on my TV watching radar screen, it just doesn't interest me like the drama and passion of Top Chef does. Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware of the fame whore aspects of both shows it's just that Alton Brown annoys the hell out of me and there's really no surprise that secret ingredient is 9 times out of 10 made into ice cream whether it be mangoes or bone marrow. So I wondered what the little bird was trying to tell me? My jaw dropped as I realized who the challenger was. Yes, it was someone who wanted to called by only one name much like Prince or Madonna but that one name he goes by here at the Karmic Kitchen is...Hard to believe but Spike Mendelsohn was the night's challenger of Battle Prosciutto against Micheal Symon. And that, my little Top Chef Crack Monkeys, is when Iron Chef America became dead to me. They've had some kick ass challenger's in the past (José Andrés, Traci Des Jardins, Homaro Cantu, not to mention a whole raft of chefs who either guest judge on Top Chef or compete on Top Chef Masters) but this has to be a new low point. He wasn't even a finalist in his season of Top Chef Chicago. So why Iron Chef America? Can an Asshat change? Would he become the Frozen Scallop Comeback King? Has time taught him to leave his Asshatery ways behind?

Survey Says............

NO! All he's learned how to do is to add pieces of Flair to his asshat. (Note to Spike, you've still a ways to go to get to your 15 pieces...). Still maybe Asshat would surprise us with his food? Maybe a prosciutto soup?

Maraschino cherry prosciutto soup? Or maybe something with truffles?Chef Symon loves the idea of fresh truffles.......but Asshat's use of the canned truffles leaves Iron Chef Symon a bit incredulous.

Despite an hour worth of time and two sous chefs, Asshat's main focus seems to be a play on this classic ham preparation.
Yeah, I'm not impressed either. "Sweet on Sweet" is how one judge described it leaving me to believe that Asshat is still pretty much all ass and not much else going on with his palate or imagination. He didn't even attempt a dessert. I won't go into details because all you need to know is that Chef Symon SMOKED Spike right out of Kitchen Stadium.Sadder still was that score came from 3 unknown, first timer judges. As a casual observer of Iron Chef America I know that scoring is usually close, a spread of maybe two or three points. At the most maybe 5. But TEN? The only thing that would have made this moment even more warm and fuzzy (and watchable) for me was if Jeffrey Steingarten had been judging. If anyone could put an Asshat in his place, it would be Jeffrey. But maybe it's all right, maybe the Food Network is where Spike belongs...perhaps helping Paula Deen massage two pounds of butter into every crack and crevice of every dish she makes...or maybe assisting Sandra Lee with her tablescapes. While the title Top Chef or Iron Chef may never grace Spike's culinary resume, he will always be able to fly his Asshat flag proudly where ever he goes. Just let it be on a channel not in my cable package.

You Say Ballotine and I say Terrine

I was wondering, way back during Episode 4, what sort of amazing challenges were in store for the chefs who reached the final five of the competition. You see, Episode 4 was the Daniel Boulud, snails, Joël Robuchon, and classical French sauces episode. A great episode to be sure but I wondered why this great episode happened so early in the season. Now we know why. Bocuse d'Or.
First, a bit of history on the Bocuse d'Or. It's a culinary competition pitting the best of the world's chefs using classical French Cuisine. The competition is not that old, the first was held in 1987. The event is held every two years in Lyons, France. France has won the Bocuse six times, Norway four times, Luxembourg and Sweden have won one each. Americans have not even sniffed a Bronze Bocuse, only coming as close as sixth. A team consists of two chefs, a lead chef and an assistant chef who must be under the age of 22 at the time of competition. They have five and a half hours to prepare their two dishes, meat and fish, in front of a live audience. It's about precision, technique, presentation and taste. It is not for the faint of culinary heart.

Back at the condo, our chefs prepare themselves for their last Quickfire in Vegas. Eli reveals that he's playing to win...not so much for himself but for Richard Blaise. For some reason, Eli believes that Season Four's title of Top Chef was unjustly taken from Richard, going so far as to quote the great movie line from the Princess Bride, "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.". What Eli doesn't seem to realize is that Richard choked during the big game. This can only mean one thing (Dun-Dun-Dunnnnnn) Loser's edit. Still it's not all doom and gloom because Jennifer gives us a Condo parting gift...

...Tank Top Tease!!! (thanks to whoever was following Jen around with the camera)

Our chefs arrive at the kitchen to find Padma wearing her tallest black heels.Because there's nothing a beautiful woman loves more than towering at least a full head over a short man.Standing in Padma's slim shade is Gavin Kaysen, the Rodney Dangerfield of the Culinary World. He was in the 2007 Bocuse D'or but had the misfortune of having a French dishwasher mistakenly eat two of his side dishes and ended up placing 14th. Again in 2007, as a contestant on The Next Iron Chef, he was eliminated for having an under seasoned dish but did not reveal until later that his food had been improperly stored by the tech crew, resulting in it soaking in an ice bath and leaching out all it's flavor. Will Gavin find respect and a little love from Top Chef?Maybe. Padma certainly looks like she's about to tuck him into her pocket. Gavin goes on to describe the chicken Ballotine he made in 2007, leaving out the part about the French Dishwasher's Snack (the name of my next cookbook or band, I can't decide) and how it's a protein, inside a protein, inside another protein. So the Quickfire is to make a version of Gavin's dish, a Ballotine, in ninety minutes. Immediately, the Asshat Voltaggio veers off the track into doing exactly what he wants to do, totally ignoring the whole spirit of the episode which is about fundamentals and precision.BRILLIANT! Jennifer, who needs a win desperately, begins to worry me when she starts to sound like the Ghost of Robin past by explaining that she's never made a ballotine before but at least chooses to make a ballotine from seafood which is in her comfort zone. Apparently Michael has already crowned himself Top Chef and has skipped ahead and also made himself a Judge.BRILLIANT! Finally the ninety minutes is up and the Protein-fest begins.Eli, who I doubt has made a ballotine before, makes a good choice of Scotch Egg. No one spits it out.Michael's Poultry Terrine Chicken with Turkey & Bacon Mousseline is up next.Jennifer finally finds her mojo again with a beautiful Calamari Steak, Scallops, Salmon, Shiitake, Shiso with Rice Noodle Salad which earns a warm "Welcome back." comment from Padma.
Bryan gives us a beautiful Rack of Lamb & Merguez Sausage Wrapped in Caul Fat. He also has sauces of carrot, curry yogurt, roasted pepper coulis and date and fig puree.Kevin sticks to his Juggernaut strategy of drawing on his deep Southern heritage and reinvents Cormeal-Fried Fillet of Catfish with Scallop & Shrimp.Now for the long and the short of all the dishes. Kevin gets a little grief for having dry catfish but it's Michael's terrine that gets called out for being (drumroll please....) a terrine and not a ballotine.BRILLIANT! Maybe the accumulated tattoo ink in his body is causing Michael a bit of short term memory loss....
Of course the winner is the one person Michael claimed had nothing left to show.No immunity or gold big money chip but she does receive an extra 30 minutes she can use for the Elimination Challenge. If we're lucky, she'll model that tank top again.

Up next: Mini Bocuse