Complex Frank and Beans and Too Much Pea
Complex Frank and Beans and Too Much Pea by Roxanne McDonald
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Egos are not so much the issue this week (yet); instead, the biggest concern is how to handle revitalizing hot dogs and beans. |
First the morning blahs and blabs: one chef is not a morning person, another is recounting the past, and several are in their own sleepy-leave-me-alone worlds.
Then the Quickfire: guest judge (or one of them) will be Chef Alfred Portale, a superhero chef, writer of books, and owner of something bar and grill in NYC. The challenge is to make an amazing dish (disappointing description/prompt, really)
out of the fresh shellfish variety they each scoop mounds of from a massive saltwater tank. Thirty minutes, ordered selection process…, you know the drill.
I won’t go through every single who did what and who said what during the grab and grab, but will say Micah started right in yakking about “conk” (which I guess is how you pronounce it when you’re a high sniff end chef, though the shell collectors back home always said conch, enunciating the ch sound…oh, well).
She keeps asking others if they are using the conk—maybe just so she can say the word conk repeatedly.
And, oh, one other pointed moment: Hung scoops so aggressively that someone yells out for him to save some for the rest of them, and then is so rambunctious as he wings the netful out and over the edge that he splashes Padma and flings a crayfish onto the floor…which he just shrugs at and walks away from. Somebody speaks up, and he asks what they want him to do. And Lia says, “Clean up after yourself; that’s what I want you to do.”
This is evidently something that puts Lia on edge and that by lecturing gives Lia an edge, and it is also something of the true challenge for Hung: to keep calm enough to merit that praise he has gotten so far.
The real part of the challenge for most of them, though, is only having 30 minutes to not only cook something amazing but to clean the stuff—which in any other setting would take at least 30 minutes alone. Several let us know this is a huge problem.
And I love the contradictions. This week’s winner is when just-flung Hung describes his disgust at everybody throwing around the wine…. Okayyyy.
Let’s get to the noshing:
CJ- pan-roasted fruits, shaved cauliflower, and saffron/paprika vinaigrette over a mélange of shellfish
Casey- scallops, mussels, and cockles over linguini, with cilantro bread and truffle butter (in 30 minutes???!!!)
Tre- poached shellfish, with summer corn and grilled leek compote
Sara N.- ? seafood medley in a shell
Micha- conch salad with sky juice
Brian- “3 Rivers” (rivers? You mean seas? Or maybe that’s the wine) scallops, clams, mussels, and crayfish (sorry, crawfish) sautéed in butterne, butter, garlic, chives, and wine; oyster mignonette; conch toast
Lia has a trio- raw bay scallop with lemon zest; cockles in tomato; capellini with crayfish butter
Sara M.- cornmeal-crusted conch in citrus butter; mango and cilantro mignonette
Camille- crayfish and mussels in hibiscus tea-flavored sauce; tarragon-encrusted mussels
Hung-“East/West”: scallops, mussels, with croutons
Dale- spicy Italian sausage and scallops in tomato sauce, topped with a sunny egg
Howie- ceviche of conch with scallops, crawfish, and mussels, with crispy plantain chips and greens.
Least impressive for Chef Alfred are Micha’s (which was too sparing on the CONK! All that chatter…); Camille’s (which was wrecked by the overpowering tea flavor); and Tre’s (which also had too little shellfish…and too much corn).
Most impressive are Howie’s and CJ’s, and, the winner’s, Brian’s—which Chef Alfred describes as simple but smart; a progression from raw to cooked; thoughtful and well-presented…a complete presentation.
This of course exempts Brian from elimination, and lends to an overly confident risk-taking on his part…as we shall soon see. (He tells us in interview that he will not take this as a time to relax, and will, instead, keep giving them big, bad, bold dishes. If that’s not foreshadowing….)
Bad for You Foods Must Be Re-invented
This is the introduction to the elimination challenge—wherein the chefs have 75 bucks, 30 minutes to shop, prep time, and one hour to cook on location (to serve seniors at the Miami Health Lodge), a traditional, much loved dish that is not all that healthy or appealing to these guys, anyway. The bad-for-you dishes are laid out, and each gets to choose one…this time in reverse order from the order they chose shellfish.
Here are the choices (which several have turned their refined nose/palates up at) and the revamps (or what Padma has prompted to be updates of the old-fashioned versions—which during cooking time, do not impress Tom Colicchio):
Sara M. turns Chicken ala King into baked chicken kabobs with pureed mushroom sauce and couscous, with a watercress salad.
Lia turns franks and beans into grilled chicken sausage with Dijon lentils, onions, and citrus carrots. She didn’t make the sausage from scratch, and three hours to screw around on what? Not the lentils, which the judges find undercooked and which CJ points out to her as being al dente when they shouldn’t be. The judges are really disappointed, even pissed that she has wasted so much time on…this.
Dale turns chicken and dumplings into chicken perogis stuffed with mashed potatoes, broccoli, horseradish, and celery. But the potatoes are not even real. Oh, gross: even though I live on all these “before” meal dealies, I cannot stomach instant potatoes—so chemically tasting, usually.
Hung turns fried chicken and macaroni and cheese into skinless baked chicken in yogurt that he spends forever describing as having a thin chip of skin (?), and plain old pasta and veggies.
Sara N. re-vamped fish and chips, making instead panko topped snapper with a mélange of pine nuts, currants, lentils, and roasted beets.
Micha reinvents meatloaf and mashed potatoes with 95% ground sirloin sausage with garlic, roasted tomato. Sounds and looks decent, but then Micha pisses off the judges by serving it with a side of insult…saying something about “you Americans” and “your love for ketchup”. Who knows if this has tarnished the halo effect one could have if one serves with a humble smile, but the judges call it everything from “dry” to “crunchy” (?) to “terrible”.
Brian reinvents stuffed cabbage with lobster rolls, shrimp rolls, and lobster broth, to boot, which makes the judges hackles rise that though he is immune from elimination he took a “healthy” prompt and turned it out—using high-cholesterol lobster! Humph.
Camille turns tacos out, making beef and chili salsa and spicy tuna, tomato, and apple tacos. Eh. This might be one of the dishes that prompts Colicchio to remark that they took the challenge way too literally?
Casey trurns out sloppy joes…making more sloppy joes but with rib eye steak with a butter pickle and apricot compote. No bun.
CJ recreates the tuna casserole by making a dish of green–(spinach?) pasta in a yogurt and flaxseed sauce, a dish which he molds, but which falls apart and looks as bad as the judges suggest it tastes.
Joey, who is unusually quiet for the mouth guy he showed to be in episode one, turned lasagna into lasagna…but with chicken and turkey sausage instead of beef, and eggplant and mushroom filler.
Tre re-vamps chicken cordon bleu by stuffing the chicken with bluefoot chanterelles and asparagus and using a parsnip sauce, all of which has the judges saying is not the worst thing today.
Howie recreates pork chops and applesauce (neither of which I thought were all that “bad” to begin with) by making fennel-crusted pork chop served with apple cider and ginger reduction…which the guests call “exceptional” and “superb”. Howie is redeeming himself already!
Dale and Howie are called in as the top two chefs, and Chef Alfred announces Howie is the winner: he gets three books and an invitation to work for a stint with the pro in NYC.
Micah, CJ, Lia, Brian, and Sara M. are called in as the bottom five. Brian is befuddled, but is called in just to get warned not to do that again—and besides, his dish was a muddied presentation that is a pea green that makes I think Ted (? The “Queer Eye for Straight Guy” chef) say there is way too much “pea”!; Sara is told her chicken ala king was all flavors with no connection to the original; Lia wanted a realistic meal for those coming from work who wanted no cooking (uh, yuh; nice try at saving yourself); and Michah had the lowest score with the guests and inspired Colicchio to ask if she would eat that ___.
Micah, who never would eat that or the original, is sent packing her knives.
Whew.
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