Top Chef


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Top Chef Recap: Episode 5 – Dame Mas Chocolate

This week’s Top Chef started out with a shocking order from Ms. Lakshmi that would have gotten her kicked off this blog for cheating. The CHEFtestants had to work with frozen pie crusts. Oh the horrors. After they got over being placed in such a demeaning situation, the quickfire provided the perfect opportunity for Joey to cement his dominance over Howie as the fattest, most obnoxious guy, by pretending to have no pastry training and then whipping out some pretty amazing looking alcohol-infused fruit tarts.

For the elimination challenge, Bravo embarked on their most tenuous attempt at corporate synergy yet, having the chefs cook Latin food for the cast of a Telemundo telenovela called Dame Chocolate, which, judging from these fantastic opening credits, makes Sabado Gigante look like it is written by Cervantes.

[youtube RJqZUS6h-4s]

Oh, PS: I’m pretty proud of the fact that I figured out how to put video on this blog, so that’s the only reason I made you watch that clip.

Back to the food after the jump.

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Top Chef Recap: Episode 4 – I Know It Was You Semifreddo. You Broke My Heart.

padma

Man, it has been a long two weeks without Padma and company, since someone had to throw a birthday party last Wednesday. Thanks a lot, America. My b-day was Thursday but did you see me trying to cancel The Office? Nooooooo. We passed the time by updating you with news of the official PadRush split and watching just a bit of the unbearable The Next Food Network Star (Come on now, like they don’t just air anyone who shows up on their doorstep.)

The quickfire challenge was basically a not-so-thinly-veiled ad for Bombay Sapphire, so we won’t spend much time there. Casey, until now only noticed for being the hottest contestant, oh excuse me – CHEFtestant – went crazy and made Foie Gras French Toast, which was just weird enough for the judges.

She won her immunity, and then in what turned out to be a team challenge, got paired with the two fat guys who like to argue a lot. This of course pissed Casey off so she just threw some tuna on top of plain noodles in the hopes that it would get one of these idiots kicked off.

It almost worked, but the judges reserved their real fury for the dessert team, who decided to try some fancy shit even though none of them know the first thing about baking. This provided the opening for snotty judge Tom Colicchio to spout perhaps his most pretentious food line yet: “Taking a panacotta and putting it in the freezer does not make it a semifreddo.” Well, Duh! Didn’t everybody learn that in kindergarten? So they give the boot to Camille, for her role in this disaster, and for committing the reality show sin of not talking enough.

Photo courtesy of Bravo.

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Top Chef Recap: Episode 3 – Death by Meatloaf

This week Top Chef went all apple pie ‘n’ mom on us and made the theme of the show “American classics.” The chefs had to work with classic American comfort foods like sloppy joes, fried chicken and tacos (I imagine Tom Tancredo will be staging a protest against TC, insisting that tacos are not all-american). The chefs had to update these classic dishes to make them both upscale and healthy. The result was a smorgasbord of disaster, with many tasteless, disappointed glares from Padma. CJ took the healthy idea way too far and made some sort of flaxseed-wheat grass-hemp oil-left coast abomination. But the challenge proved most difficult for our foreign friends, who seemed both disgusted and confused by our greasy, lard-soaked traditions. Jamaican chef Sara M. just said screw it and instead of updating Chicken a la King, she made Chicken kebabs over couscous. But it was snobby South African chef Micah who was left in tears when the judges did everything but spit her meatloaf and mashed potatoes back in her face. Maybe she should have just made bunny chow.

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Top Chef Recap: Episode 2 – Blind Dates

For those of you still unaware, Top Chef Recap is a weekly column here at ES and an excuse for us to run pictures of Bollywood porn star Padma Lakshmi.

This week’s quickfire was a vague challenge centered around citrus fruits, with most chefs opting for the luscious-looking blood oranges. The only thing of note is that Micah made some kind of nasty pudding-soup concoction, lost, and then cried for the rest of the episode. Hung won, and his shameless gloating makes him so happy it’s almost endearing.

The elimination challenge was a gourmet BBQ, won by Brian, who had the balls to make seafood sausages, which sounds like a course worthy of school lunch, but actually looked, and apparently tasted, pretty great.

Despite her Sanjaya-style haircut, Sandee just wasn’t cut out for reality TV, and the judges freaked out on her when she screwed up unscrewupable lobster by pairing it with dates (seriously) and poaching it when she was supposed to be BBQing. So Sandee gets the boot, even though Joey thought “gourmet” includes chicken drumsticks and was acting like a total a-hole.

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Top Chef Recap: Episode 1 – Amuse Douche

The third season of everyone’s favorite gourmet for gonzos cooking show has hit the air, and thus the occasion for endless simmer’s first weekly column (yeah, yeah, we’ll get it up on the right days and weeks when we launch).

The chefs are in Miami, where they started out cooking in Gianni Versace’s mansion, which is kinda creepy, because, um – wasn’t he murdered there? Anyway, for the first quickfire challenge, they each had to take generic cocktail party fare and turn it into an amuse-bouche, which apparently translates as “a mouth amuser,” and basically means really fucking fancy cocktail party fare.

It was clear from the start that poor Southern hick Clay would be amusing us for only the first episode, despite the fact that he “likes to cook food that tastes good” and believed some sort of blue-state/red-state calculus meant being from Dixie had it all wrapped up for him. Also, I just learned what an amuse-bouche is, but I could have already told you a fruit salad is not one. The only other character who stood out from the crowd was Hung, a 29-year-old sous chef from Vegas and this season’s laughably unrealistic supervillain.

The main challenge was a surf-and-turf made from out-there ingredients like rattlesnake and kangaroo. The coolest-looking dishes were actually the ones made from sea urchin. Anybody ever cooked with that? My interest is piqued.

If you need more of a TC fix, or just can’t stop thinking about the cold, dissaproving stare of Mrs. Salman Rushdie, Bravo has not one, but TWELVE blogs about Top Chef. Wow, not even I’m that bored.

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