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Top Chef Chicago Season 4

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TexasLady:
Thanks for the recap and food descriptions. We appreciate your hard work and expertise.

I need to start over and watch all the episodes again because only a few of the chefs stand out for me at this point, however Richard does stand out. Wasn't there another chef that Boulud mentioned as having worked for him? It seems like whoever it was, was a short-termed apprentice.

rosesrred:
Sorry I don't watch Top Chef and I don't want to Hijack this thread - but did anyone see the skit Saturday Night Live did on this show it was hilarius.  Christopher Walken was the guest host  :funny:

apskip:

--- Quote from: TexasLady on April 07, 2008, 10:11:04 AM ---Thanks for the recap and food descriptions. We appreciate your hard work and expertise.

I need to start over and watch all the episodes again because only a few of the chefs stand out for me at this point, however Richard does stand out. Wasn't there another chef that Boulud mentioned as having worked for him? It seems like whoever it was, was a short-termed apprentice.



--- End quote ---

Yes, it was Ryan, who also worked for Rick Bayless so het gets around.

apskip:
Episode 5

Guest Judge is Ming Tsai, a proponent of East/West fusion cuisine and owner of the Blue Ginger restaurant in Boston.
Quickfire is the blindfolded tasting test, where chefs have 10 seconds to taste two samples one of which is more expensive of the same type of ingredient and identify which one of the pair is that.
Ingredients tested included Syrup, Bacon, Fish, Soy, Crab, Butter, Cheddar, Caviar, Pork, Olive Oil and Sake plus 4 others for a total of 15.
Results were totally objective for a change. Stephanie was on the bottom with 6.  Antonia, who had predicted that she would do really well at this, was the winner with 12 right and got immunity. Jennifer and Ryan got 11 right.

Elimination Challenge
TopChef 4 was invited to do the first course of the 2007 Meals on Wheels Chicago Celebrity Chef Ball. The cheftestants were providing 4 different versions of that first course. Knives were drawn to determine four teams of 3. They were:

Water - Richard, Mark, Andrew
Air - Jennifer, Nikki, Ryan
Earth - Antonia, Spike, Zoi
Fire - Dale, Stephanie, Lisa

Teams had 15 minutes to plan their mini-menu. Then they had $500 and 45 minutes to shop for ingredients. More than ever, it seemed that insufficient planning time resulted in more redos when they got to Whole Foods and could rethink exactly what might be possible. A number of changes in mini-menus were made there on the fly.

Team Water was going with a sous vide approach to cooking salmon, driven by Richard's high technology philosophy. Team Air stayed nice and simple, nothing risky. Team Earth had the handicap of the immune contestant Antonia, who could participate in enerything but should have deferred to Spike and Zoi on the menu decisions since all risk was on them. They chose to not do Spike's strenuous request for butternut squash soup and stuck to less complex flavors. Team Air finally went with Lisa's insistence that something Asian would be smart with Ming Tsai as a judge; they had initially considered duck breast but ended up with shrimp so it was all about how well they accompanied it and spiced it.

Final menus were:
Water - poached salmon, faux caviar, parsnips puree, watercress salad
Air - duck breast, herb salad, pomegranate, prosecco aperitif
Earth - beef carpaccio, mushroom salad, sunchoke aioli
Fire - shrimp, pickled chilis, deviled aioli, miso smoked bacon

The judges all agreed that Team Fire was the winner. The individual winner was Lisa for her ability to pull off the complex miso smoked bacon. Dale in an after-comment ridiculed the choice of bacon as the winning part, since he does not see the complexity in bacon; however, he hates Lisa so much that he will criticize anything she does. I'll bet Lisa doesn't thnk much of Dale either.

The judges also agreed that Team Earth and Team Water were the losers. They had diner response cards which they saved until the end. Tom Colicchio had made the predictive comment that Richard was showing a lot of overconfidence and was setting himself up for a fall. They criticized Richard for the scales in his salmon. He stated  that basically he was not aware of them, but that was not true since his teammates warned him just before serving, but at that point there was nothing he could do to fix it. Andrew was lambasted for using parnips at all; he defended himself but it didn't sound very convincing to me. Mark did faux caviar one time too many. Antonia was immune but she was criticized for playing such a strong role in the menu decisions. Spike certainly agreed with that, as he stated that she had vetoed his butternut squash soup. Ming said that would have been a perfect dish. Zoi had the mushroom salad and that was universally disliked(and more on it later). The seasoning on it was critical and there was little.

The judges conferred and agreed that the beef carpaccio menu was the more egregious(seconded by the diners), which let Richard, Andrew and Mark off the hook. It made the elmination between Zoi and Spike. I think it was close, but Zoi's mushroom salad in Tom's opinion should have been able to hold the totality together on the plate but missed by a mile. Zoi was eliminated.

Then Spike attacked Antonia. She defends by saying "stand by your dish", meaning if you really believe in it then insist that it is on the final menu. Dale gratuitously attacked Lisa. Did I make a mistake and somehow tune into Hell's Kitchen 4 all of a sudden by time warp?

TexasLady:
Heh on Top Chef becoming like Hell's Kitchen, it must have been pretty heated. Thanks Apskip for the recap. I forgot to watch last night but have it on the DVR but at least I know what the quick fire was and the results!  :tup:

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