I was dreading this episode. The Paula Deen episode. They had been teasing her appearance since the beginning of the season. She seems to inspire either total devotion or absolute avoidance. You can put me in the avoidance camp. One reason was on total display during this episode. Equating traditional Southern cooking with frying everything. Paula didn't exactly help the cause by admitting that she deep fat fries everything she can get her hands on. Mac and cheese, lasagna and butter were her shining examples of her repertoire. Just because you can totally immerse a thing in hot liquid lard does not mean you should.
At some point I would imagine Paula put out good traditional food at her restaurants. However her installation at the Food Network has somehow morphed her into a cartoon character of her former self. Would you really want to trust your stomach to someone who came up with this recipe gem,
Cheesy Ham and Banana Casserole? Go ahead, click the link, if you dare. Cheese, ham, banana, bacon and.....wait for it....
potato chips? (Thanks to
Jillian Madison of Food Network Humor) People that's just wrong in so many ways. So, for whatever reasons the producers had in their skulls, Paula was invited to judge this episode. Let's all be thankful she wasn't asked to cook.
Which brings us to the Quickfire. Create a deep fried dish. That's all. However it's only a thirty minute challenge so there's not going to be any deep fried dishes that takes hours to make, it's quick, down and dirty. Now you would think the chefs with Southern backgrounds would have a leg up for this challenge. However Carla is sinking like a rock food-wise and Tiffany is a mystery at to why she's still here, and Blaise really isn't into Southern food. That leaves Dale, Antonia and Mike. Now, for reasons unknown, chefs lose their minds for the first half of the episode.
Exhibit A:
Here is Blaise back at the penthouse, explaining an original dish he thought up, called Chicken Oyster on a Halfshell, to Mike. Mike, despite everything else he is not, is a quick study. Seeing that Blaise is not making this recipe for this particular challenge, decides that it would be a perfect dish for Mike to make. Guess the Professor shouldn't have been so free with his lessons. This development cracks me up to no end. Mike's depth of douchiness is revealed to endless, Blaise gets bitten by his own ego by forgetting that this still isn't the coronation procession of Top Chef Richard Blaise. Why Blaise didn't make that recipe to begin with is baffling but he seems to be skipping down the path Marcel blazed with his unending foams. A liquid nitrogen frozen ball of coffee, lime flavored mayo deep fried does nothing for me. Can the dude cook without the tank? Not that any of that mattered because both boys got smoked by Antonia. Too bad Antonia got smoked by Antonia.
Exhibit B:
Here's the winning dish. Notice I said dish, singular. Apparently the rules we the viewers never hear about unless there's a major violation say that the chefs should make two servings of their dish. Antonia, having reached thus far in the competition, somehow forgot this. This truly sucks for her because it was Paula's favorite dish.
Doesn't matter because Antonia can't be considered for the win on that technicality. She loses the challenge and five thousand dollars. Even worse? The winner....
...Chef Law violator, Mike McDouche.
All I can say is watch your back Mike, still a lot of sharp knives left in the competition and Karma's known to have the sharpest knife of them all.
