Other Great Reality Shows > Other Reality TV Shows & News

Top Chef New York Season 5

<< < (20/73) > >>

marigold:

That was an interesting blog a 101 in cooking lessons helpful indeed

Interesting that Tom is asking this below:

"Ariane tried to do a take on an American dish, a lemon meringue pie, and do something modern. At least she had the idea, but it was poorly executed. She knew in advance that the dessert was too sweet. She could have added more lemon juice, even reducing it down so it would not be too liquid. She could have used lemon zest. Dessert goes out last; Ariane had the time to do something to fix the problem ... why didn't she?"

I think we can answer that one Ariane has a less than enthusiastic and who cares that’s what I’m serving attitude.

I could call it lazy and unmotivated and a clear reflection of her she has already given up.

I thought it was deserving enough for her to be sent back home, hopefully next week

Top Chef is not for her

apskip:
The Quickfire Challenge was to reinvent the American hot dog. The dishes were:

Stefan - Italian sausage on French bread w/ Wisconsin cheese and Irish tartar sauce
Hosea - pork hot dog w/roasted poblano peppers, jalapeno, smoked bacon, red wine vinegar
Fabio - Andouille sausage w/goat cheese, roasted bell peppers, dun-dried tomatoes
Eugene - maki roll hot dog w/pita bread, boursin cheese, red onions
Daniel - pork hot dog, fried onion, garlic powder, horseradish, mustard
Ariane - chicken sausage w/ bacon, celery seed, garlic, white pepper sauce
Jill - store-bought hot dog with chili, soy sauce, red wine vinegar
Radhika - kabob-style sausage, cucumbers, caramelized onions and tomatoes jam
Carla - lamb and pork sausage, sauerkraut, caramelized onions
Jamie - pork and beef sausage w/bacon, onions, cayenne pepper
 
The losers group was Stefan and Jill. Winners group was Jamie, Radhika and Fabio. I thought Radhika would win, but Fabio won.
 
Elimination Challenge
Teams were then told they had $2500 to create and then cook a new American cuisine lunch the following for 50 guests(who proved to be New York area wannabes who did not make the cut for Top Chef 5). The divided themselves up into teams of 5 as follows:
 
Appetizer - Jamie, Hosea, Leah, Fabio, Melissa
Entrée - Jill, Eugene, Stefan, Jeff, Alex
Dessert - Radhika, Daniel, Ariane, Richard, Carla
 
Dishes were:
Jamie - chilled corn soup w/hot chili oil and mint
Hosea - crab salad w/ citrus vanilla, grilled mango, avocadp
Leah - Yukon potatoes and seared scallops, chives, green peppercorns
Fabio - beef carpaccio w/arugula salad, parmesan, grilled lemons and spherical olives
Melissa - grilled avocado w/white peaches, nectarines, balsamic vinaigrette
Jill - ostrich egg quiche w/ rice-pecan crust, asparagus, aged cheese
Eugene - open meatloaf sandwich w/ciabatta bread, gouda fondue, portabella ragout
Stefan - pan-seared halibut w/ microgreens, ravioli, champagne oil and dill oil
Jeff - southern chicken, honey mustard, chorizo corn spoonbread
Alex - grilled pork over potatoes w/mushroom, tomato and red beet demi-glace
Radhika - avocado mousse w/ chocolate wontons and chocolate milk/Kahlua shot
Daniel - ricotta poundcake w/toasted pistachios, strawberry + lemon coulis
Ariane - lemon meringue martini with lots of sugar, vanilla cookie crunch and cherry surprise
Richard - sandwich of banana nut bread w/ peanut butter and banana brulee w/grape gelato
Carla - rustic apple tart w/ginger peach tea, apple cider reduction, cheddar cheese

Winners' group was Carla, Jamie and Fabio. Fabio won again, primary for his use of lemon and olives. Losers' group was Hosea, Ariane and Jill (her second loser gorup in the same episode). Hosea had what was probably some bad crabmeat but did his best to overcome that. Ariane did a super-sweeet martini that everyone hated and this was her second Elimination Challenge out of 2 in the losers' group. Jill did about everything wrong that you can as judges hated the concept of quiche as a "new American cuisinse" and hated her execeution of a bad concept. Jill wass eliminated. I expect Ariane will not be far behind her.
 

marigold:
An interview with Jill:

Top Chef Exit Interview: Jill Wanted To Make Dessert, Will Use Ostrich Eggs Again!

Following a botched hot dog Quickfire and an ostrich egg quiche that left her with, for lack of a better expression – egg on her face, 28-year-old Jill Snyder was sent packing her knives on last night's episode of Top Chef. On a call this morning, the Baltimore local opened up about her culinary choices, her dessert-making skills, and how much time the judges really take to deliberate while the chefs sweat it out in the aptly named “stew room.” Read on.

Why did you use an ingredient that you’d never used before?
Well I’ve used eggs before and I thought using an ostrich egg, which is a really cool ingrdeient and original, I thought it would separate me.

How did it feel getting kicked off so early?
Oh, it felt wonderful. Kidding. It was disappointing because it was so early. I don’t think there was a good representation of my cooking from those few episodes. But you know, it’s just a show. I’ve cooked for many more people than the judges, and people enjoy my cooking, so it’s OK.

Did you get a sense that if you’d been able to defend your dish a little better, you would have been able to stay in the competition longer?
Yes I do think that. As soon as I left the room I thought of good points about the dish. Like, ‘it’s a cooking show, I actually cooked something. I made rice which came out perfect. It was set up really nice.’ I thought the flavors went well together, it was asparagus, mushrooms and cheese, you find that a lot.

Have you tried working with an ostrich egg since then?
I’m going to. I wanted to wait until this came out. It’s a creative dish. I think people will like to try it.

Do you wish you’d had a dish that you could have completely stood behind?
Well I wanted to make a dessert. I do really well with dessert. I’ve won a lot of awards. Or I guess I could have - coming out of Baltimore – pulled together one of my lobster crab cakes. I guess it was just too risky trying to use that original of an ingredient.

You’ve made a lot of desserts. Why didn’t you go on the dessert team when you had that opportunity?
Originally I did. A lot of people wanted to do desserts. I should have stood my ground and done the dessert, but since I botched the hot dog one, I figured an entrée would give me a better chance to show off a larger dish, you know? I was doing more cooking, and this is a cooking show. I thought an entrée would show off some cooking skills, at least.

Surprising that so many people wanted to do dessert when in previous seasons people lament the dessert challenges.
Yeah I really wish I had done a dessert. I thought all of those desserts were really bad! I think I would have done really well if I’d been on that team. It’s all hindsight!

Ariane said she wasn’t comfortable doing desserts. Why did she wind up on that team and you on entrees?
Well we kind of went back and forth. Just with the pressure and time, you’ve got to think quick and make a decision. She was really
uncomfortable. Her dessert didn’t turn out very well. It’s hard to see that. Ugh.

When you were standing there on the chopping block did you think you were going to go? Or did you think Ariane was going to go?
I thought Ariane was going to go. It’s a cooking show. She didn’t really cook anything. Padma spit it out. I know a lot of people ate [my] dish. The dishes came back from the dining room and I know that people did eat it. I thought it was well received. I was surprised. They were like ‘oh Jill,’ and I was like ‘oh no!’

Why do you think you were kicked off? Do you think you were trying to be too risky?
I don’t know. I guess all the judge’s opinions were of who they thought could go further in the competition, and they thought Ariane would eventually do better than me? I don’t know. I guess I should have been more dramatic, you know, threw someone else under the bus. Maybe that would have helped my chances of staying a little more. It’s hard to think when they’re staring at you with the cameras. It just completely destroyed all my hope.

In your time there did get a sense of other contestants who will go far?
Well we all came into it not really knowing what to expect. A lot of people are more confident than others. That will help them get further. Fabio and Stefan have these great personalities and they’re really confident. They’ve worked all over the world cooking. They’ve got a good advantage.

You faced a lot of harsh criticism last night - that your dish looked like dog food, and it tasted like glue. First of all, how did you react to actually
seeing that for the first time? And second of all, did you have an opportunity to taste it before it went out?
Yeah it didn’t taste bad. It is egg, asparagus, mushrooms and cheese with a rice crust. It would be really hard to make those flavors taste bad together. I didn’t think they did. It’s a TV show. What are you gonna do.

You also caught some flak for not making a hot dog in the Quickfire. Would you have done that differently?
As far as that goes, they asked for a gourmet hot dog. In that amount of time I thought ‘how can I make a hot dog gourmet?’ So I thought I could make a little bite-sized version of hot dogs. Being original and creative with that, I thought they’d appreciate that. ‘Gourmet hot dog,’ I wasn’t picturing sausages in a bun. I didn’t see that as gourmet. How do you make a hot dog gourmet? By taking it out of its element. I put the Asian twist on it. I thought they’d at least give me some creativity points for that.

It also seems like what everyone else made more resembled sausage, not hot dogs. So for all the non-gourmands, what’s the difference?
That’s kind of what I was struggling with. I’ve made plenty of sausage before. I really didn’t know what they were looking for. If I decided to make sausage instead of hot dogs, I guess it would have gone better.

How long did you have to wait to find out if you’d gotten kicked off?
It takes a while. At least a couple of hours.

What are you doing during that time?
We’re in the stew room. Everyone is just talking about what they did and what they think is going to happen. Or they just try to change the subject. We try to keep ourselves occupied. It’s brutal to wait that long though.

With Thanksgiving coming up, do you have any tips or recommendations for how to make dinner great, and easy?
Thanksgiving dinner is so exciting. If you’re not going to have many people over, you should do a turkey breast instead of a whole turkey. You can marinate it, you can brine it. You can get a lot more flavor out of just using the breast. I’ve done stuffing before and put it in muffin tins and then just baked it, so you wind up with individual servings of stuffing. Last year I made a pumpkin soup which I served while everything else was cooking. The easiest is just to have everyone make a dish and come together. Thanksgiving is always fun.

Link: http://thebiz.fancast.com/2008/11/top_chef_exit_interview_jill_w.html

marigold:
An interview with Jill:

Ousted Chef Jill Snyder Stands By Her Ostrich Eggs

The contestants on Top Chef got a taste of New York last night. But for one chef, Jill Snyder, she learned the Big Apple can bite back. During the Quickfire Challenge, Snyder’s sushi-inspired hot dog was an East-meets-West disappointment. Then for the next challenge–cooking an all-American lunch for fifty New York chefs who auditioned for season five–Snyder again landed in the bottom along with Ariane Duarte and Hosea Rosenberg. In the end, the judges sent Snyder packing for her ostrich egg quiche that they deemed tasted “like glue.” Snyder spoke to PEOPLE about her “bold” ostrich-egg quiche–and answered our burning questions. –Emmet Sullivan

Do you feel the judges too harsh on you on the Quickfire Challenge?
Obviously I misunderstood exactly what they wanted from there. I knew we were going to get some sort of New York-y challenge. I didn’t get that they wanted us to make a sausage, so I kind of went outside of the box. I did a seasoned hot dog sushi roll. I thought it was interesting. They wanted a gourmet hot dog, and my twist on gourmet was to make some sort of dim sum, something easy to pick up. I was going the neat, gourmet route.

Are you still happy you went with the ostrich egg quiche?
I still think it was a very creative, interesting dish–way more creative than anything else that anybody else put up. Obviously I can’t be that happy since I got voted off. I was going for originality. I’ve never seen ostrich egg on any menu ever. I’ve worked with it before, but at the same time, I’ve very rarely seen anybody else work with one. So using an original, bold, creative ingredient I thought I would score some points there.

What did you think of the other dishes from the chefs?
I had originally wanted to be on the dessert side, so I was really shocked that they didn’t give the dessert people more criticism. I was not impressed by any of the desserts, and I do pastries very well. I was disappointed I didn’t end up in that category for that challenge.

Looking back, what would you have done differently?
I would have tried harder to make a dessert that I know would have impressed everyone. By the same hand, at the time, I really thought that was going to be original and really creative, and there’s some skill to making a quiche. The crust was a rice crust, and you’ve seen in the past episodes that nobody can cook rice right. The rice was cooked perfectly. There’s skill involved in that.

What do you think of Ariane staying but you packing up your knives?
It was really surprising. When we were standing at the judges’ table, they said hers was so bad they spit it out. I knew all of my dishes came back empty. We got to see if people ate your dish or not when the servers brought the plates back, and all of mine were scraped clean. So I knew nobody spit it out. I was feeling confident after seeing that. I guess they wanted me to argue more, but it’s really hard to argue your point after standing in front of them as they rip apart your entire dish and then say, “Oh, defend yourself.”

So who’s your favorite to win now?
I like Eugene’s take on everything, so I’m pulling for Eugene.

Our Top Chef 5 Burning Questions

Describe your Top Chef experience in one word.
Anxiety.

What is in your refrigerator right now?
Leftover champagne and beer from a party last night.

Name one food you cannot stand.
Bananas.

Pick your favorite fast food restaurant.
Chick-fil-A. I don’t eat fast food very often but if I do, a regular Chick-fil-A sandwich is my first choice.

Best thing about cooking in New York?
It’s so inspiring and the energy there is great.

Link: http://tvwatch.people.com/2008/11/20/ousted-chef-jill-snyder-stands-by-her-ostrich-eggs/

marigold:
An interesting article:

Top Chef 5: Conference Call with Jill Snyder

On last night's episode of Top Chef 5, cheftestant Jill Snyder made an Asian-inspired hot dog and an ostrich egg quiche, but the judges found that her actual food didn't match up to her high concepts, and she was sent home.

We spoke with the chef today to get her take on the competition, the judges, and whether or not she'll ever attempt to cook with an ostrich egg again.

Like many of the viewers, Jill says she was a little surprised that it was her, not Ariane, who was sent home last night. Besides Padma Lakshmi spitting out Ariane's dessert, Jill pointed out that this is a cooking competition, and the dessert didn't really include cooking skill. Jill says that despite the “dog food” and “glue” comments made about her dish, her plates came back with the food eaten, so she feels it must have been a little more palatable than that. She also noted that her quiche contained cheese, asparagus and mushrooms, ingredients that commonly go together, so she doesn't buy the idea that the flavors were off.

Good points, and I asked Jill if she thought she would have had a better chance at staying had she been able to articulate this kind of defense in the judging room, since part of the judges' comments centered on her inability to outline her point of view. Jill's answering was a laughing and emphatic yes. It appears she had one of those classic and frustrating instances of thinking of all the right points only after the confrontation is over.

It turns out that making an entrée was actually not Jill's first choice. She would have preferred to be on the dessert team, but there were apparently too many chefs trying to get on that course. She moved to entrees, thinking the complexity of that might help undo some of the bad impression made by her hot dog dim sum in the Quickfire.

This was surprising to hear, considering the way that most Top Chef chefs have avoided desserts on previous seasons. It was also surprising to me, as I thought I'd heard Ariane commenting during the show that she wasn't very familiar with desserts. I asked Jill how Ariane wound up on the dessert team if – as it appeared – there was a battle to get there and she didn't seem too comfortable with that course. Jill seemed to think that was just part of the rushed flurry of competition.

If she could do it over again, she would either try a dessert or make a dish like lobster crab cakes that harkens to her current city, Baltimore. Despite the bad luck she had with them in the competition, she hasn't sworn off ostrich eggs and would like to try to cook with them again in the future.

She also explained some of her thinking with her Quickfire dish. She notes that she was a little unsure as to whether or not making a homemade sausage would fit the bill for a hot dog challenge. She knows how to make sausage, but thought the judges would be critical if she made something that didn't have the finely ground texture of an actual hot dog. She also thought that her dish was more in line with the concept of a “gourmet” hot dog, thinking that a hot dog or sausage on a bun slathered with toppings is not a gourmet presentation.

As to the behind the scenes in the competition, she thinks that Stefan and Fabio have the self-confidence to go far, and some other chefs' lack of confidence could be their undoing. She found the judges intimidating, but notes that's to be expected when you are in front of people who are famous for being critical.

Jill said she has been warned by former Top Chef contestants like Richard Blais to avoid reading the blogs about the show, but figures you can't take things too seriously, and so has been looking at the coverage a bit. She probably wouldn't do a reality show again, she said, but, possibly thinking of that meandering defense, she wouldn't mind being in front of the cameras again if it were a scripted show.

She hadn't seem to yet venture out to see how her loss is being received, but thinks overall, her time on Top Chef will be good for the food scene in Baltimore, and hopes it's help the town gain some additional exposure for its food scene.

Link: http://www.buddytv.com/articles/top-chef/top-chef-5-conference-call-wit-24690.aspx

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page