Tag, You're It

WELCOME to the CHAMPIONS ROUND

Time to start ratcheting up the stress. How best to do that? Just a little thing called The Blindfold Tag Team Challenge.

It's a nasty little thing the producers came up with during the most recent season of Top Chef. It's brilliantly simple. Two teams of 4 chefs. Each team produces just one dish that they all have a hand in making. Except they each take a turn producing the dish. No one can speak and the chefs waiting their turn must be blindfolded so they cannot see what the current chef is doing. Each chef gets ten minutes with the dish keeping in mind what the strengths of the team are and what they can accomplish in their allotted time. I LOVE THIS CHALLENGE.

The chefs? Not so much. Why? Because little details or weaknesses that you could hide in other challenges suddenly leap out into the glare of the spotlight. Like say....

...claustrophobia. Yes the Obi Wan of the Kitchen suffers from paralyzing claustrophobia. And they made him the anchor of their team so that means he waits the longest under the dark, constrictive blindfold. I personally wanted a Jonathan Cam because I thought for sure he was going to faint into a crumpled heap.

So the race begins. Really the first chef on your team is the most important (despite what Marcus may think about the anchor being the most important) because they have the most time. Yes they only have ten minutes but if they want to use a protein that takes longer than ten minutes to cook they have the best opportunity to get it started. The Red team ( Tony, Carmen, Susur and Marcus) choose Tony to go first. The Blue Team (Susan, Jody, Rick and Jonathan) have Susan set their team up.

Not surprisingly they pick similar product out of their assigned refrigerators. Scallops and mussels are on both their menus with Tony also taking some bass. The time flies by. The next two chefs are Jody and Carmen.

Jody, who not only admits to watching Top Chef but can recite the strategy that Jen used for her stint at this challenge, starts whipping up a sauce. Carmen starts preparing the bass. Your time is up, in flies Susur and Rick.

Each starts putting their own spin on the dish, adding flavor and setting up the anchor so they can easily finish and plate. Meanwhile...

...Jonathan still hasn't reached his Happy Place. Finally Jonathan is freed from his phobic bonds. Obi Wan is back and calmly assessing the dish before him.

His team watches in awe. Waiting for the...The Look.

The ingredients are speaking to him, the Force is flowing through him and all is calm. The dish whispers "I'm lonely, cuddle me in butter" and Obi Wan hears it's cries of loneliness and seeks to calm it fennel bitterness. He is Obi Wan

Master of the Kitchen.

Jay Raynor is our only judge for the Quickfire (Kelly still being full from her Grilled Cheese sandwich Quickfire sampling back in Episode 2). What does he think of the two dishes?

The Red Team has produced a Prosciutto Pan Seared Sea Bass and a Truffle Spiced Shellfish Broth. All the seafood components seem to be perfectly cooked. The bass sits on a bed of prosciutto that might be a tad under cooked. Jay likes the "herbiness" of the dish but is confused by the two component aspect. Is it one dish or two?

The Blue Team has a Mussel and Scallop Stew with Orange and Fennel. Again, Jay compliments the cooking of the seafood. He's a bit taken aback by the bitterness of the fennel. Is it too much or just right? Did Obi Waxman add enough butter to balance the fennel? Jay's not saying.

The Red Team comes on strong with 4 stars.

But the Force is with the Blue Team as they squeak by with that extra half star. Thank you Obi Waxman.

Next Up: Wedding Wars, Master Style

Family Fuel

Having finished with our fruit salads, we now proceed to the Elimination Challenge of this episode. As Kelly first describes it, it sounds kinda fun, update and modernize a family meal. However real American family meals and real American families just aren't sexy enough so someone had the bright idea of feeding the cast and crew of the TV show Modern Family.

Really? Cooking for an American family in 2010 is best expressed by cooking for a 125 member cast and crew of a TV show shot in Hollywood? I know when my mom cooked for my family, she would have the toughest time getting me to come out of my air conditioned trailer to sit with my brother, the lighting grip, while the food was still hot. Can you say out of touch? So now we've taken something potentially interesting and turned it into a catering steam tray challenge and nothing about family at all. Must be time to go shopping.

On the bright side I'm beginning to get one of those chef crushes on Jody. Not only does she help chefs shorter than herself...

...but she also asks to taste the bacon she wants to buy!!

Whatta woman.

Why does this woman look so happy? Pork Belly my friends, pork belly. A giant slab of pork belly.

Back at the kitchen, we learn that Susur is still steaming from his disastrous Quickfire score. He puts a quick call into the wife to whine. Mrs. Susur will have none of it and immediately tells him to pull his head out of his ass and MOVE FORWARD!

Gotta love when the Chef of the Millennium gets good advice from home. Of course she's got 3 teen-aged boys so that might have a little something to do with it.

Ratcheting up the Sassy Kitchen Wench quotient is Jody again. She's trying to describe her frustration of cooking for 1 1/2 hours only to stop and start again the next day. Let's just say she feels like it's Cooking Interruptus.

You have to watch those gingers, they will surprise you.

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your STEAM-TRAYS

.

There you have it. Hollywood Family food. Feh. The cast mostly liked the food. Although there is a mystery. Debbie Gold kinda got screwed by one of her co-chefs who dropped her Pork Belly on the floor the night before thereby rendering it unusable. So what ever she had planned suddenly she had to switch into Plan B. We'll just call it The Ballad of the Lost Pork Belly. On top of that we have The Spoiler. Plenty of people caught it, even I caught it standing at the watch party. They (who ever produces the previews for the next week) included this in the preview commercial.

This preview ran before the final judging had happened on the show. So much for the drama of Judge's Table. It may seem picky to point this out but if you only knew just how tightly the reins are held on the many folks who participate in the money making bonanza that is the Top Chef franchise, you'd think something as simple as not flashing the winning chef before he's won would be a piece of cake. In the grand scheme of life it matters not a bit but it does seem very sloppy. And if I hadn't already been fired up about that, then there was this guy to work my last nerve.

I'm all for passion and confidence. Smug superiority is not exactly something that resonates with me. Rick apparently thought he had it in the bag during his first appearance at Judges Table. Even worse was his attitude in the stew room. He begins to lecture other chefs on the whole "Master Chef" title. Then he starts demonstrating his knife skills on a radish...

...again telling the other chefs "...you need to practice". Now I know what games the editors can play with a big pile of stew room video but it certainly seemed like Rick was setting that Top Chef Master mantle on his shoulders just a little prematurely. What Rick didn't realize is that Karma still had a hand to play and that hand was full of stars.

Not only did he win the last spot to the Champions Round he was a half a point away from a perfect 20 score and that last half star was in the diners score. The three critics gave him a perfect score of 15 stars.

Not exactly the scenario Chef Tramonto had envisioned.

Next up, Top Chef Masters Wedding Wars (a little Bridezilla anyone?)

Food Pornolicious

Meet the chefs competing for the last chance of making it to the next level of Top Chef Masters. From left to right we have Sunsur Lee, Debbie Gold, Rick Tramonto, Maria Hines, and Jody Adams.

It's a strange thing to be a blogger attending a public event which involves the subject in which you blog about. Strange things happen. Like wanting to tell the open bar trough drinkers to stop their loud chattering...don't you know the SHOW is on? While there was plenty of cheering for the hometown fav, there was a surprising cheer that erupted when the guest judge for the Quickfire was announced. What was even more surprising was that loud cheering and clapping came from me. (Note to self, if you want to be the fly on the wall, whooping and fist pumping is not the best way to be invisible).

That's right, a food photographer. Not just any food photographer. If you watched any of the past seasons of Top Chef from Miami on, you've seen his work.

This fish portrait is one of my most favorite food porn shots ever.

I love the way the tension in the curve of the body makes the viewer feel like the fish is alive and about to flop right out of the photo, I love the highlights glinting off the fish that repeat in the little puddles of water on the counter top. I'm amazed at how just a little sharp focus in the tail draws your eye down into that photo. What chef doesn't see that and not immediately start wanting to break that beautiful fish down and make an incredible dish with it? I am a huge fan of Stephen's work and I'm not ashamed to say his photography has had a definite influence on my own meager food porn efforts. If there was one Quickfire where the taste didn't fully blow out the rest of the judging criteria, this was it. The challenge was simple enough, make a fruit plate presentation.



Perfectly styled. Do the chefs listen to this? Do they think about the people they are serving the food to? Probably not because the twist to this challenge just sprang from Kelly's mouth and that it's a High Stakes Quickfire and the winner automatically moves on to the Champions Round. Dayumn. Let's hope we don't see anything like this class food porn.

A symphony of red and green textures and patterns and bloody clots of food.

Debbie's Deep Fried Pecan Stuffed Fig with Persimmon and Tangerine.
Looks a little monochromatic with the browns and yellows and the little dabs of herbs look lifeless.

Rick's Herb and Fruit Shooters.
The judges called it playful. It's not my style, too busy and I hate the inspirational cards. It's a food competition not a Hallmark commercial.

Jody's Fig & Walnut Tart with Pomegranate Syrup and Zabaglione
I like this plate, going from dark to light and a nice mix of color.

Susur's East Meets West Fruit Plate with Blackberry Ravioli and Thai Basil
WOW.
That is all.

Maria's Northwest Trio of Apple Soup, Grilled Fig & Berries with Berry Mousse

I thought for sure this was the winner. Simple tastes and visually opening that fig up to draw the eye to what you want them to taste first. However the second judge for this Quickfire and one of the few judges I find myself agreeing with most often, Gail Simmons, said she was confused why these elements were on the plate together. How that criticism is applied here but not on Rick's or Jody's plate leaves me scratching my head. In fact I totally misjudged the outcome. Maria only got 3 stars from the judges, ahead of only Susur's dish. The winner with 4 stars was...

Damn right she's got Jazz Hands, she's going to the Champions Round