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Master Chef 2

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cinni:
They oopsed big time last night here and started showing the finale. They got as far as to introduce the final 2. Won't post it here as to not spoil all the hard work here. PM me if you want to know.

cinni

apskip:
MC2, Semifinals

Only Adrien, Jennifer and Christian remained. Ramsay summarized past performance by stating that Jennifer had won 3, Adrien 2 and Christian 1 Mystery Box Challenges. It was time for another Mystery Box Challenge except that the contents were revealed to be a whole chicken. Each had 60 minutes to wow the judges, whose expectations were incredibly high. Jennifer decided on bacon-wrapped chicken, jalapeno w/ onions, apple/bacon stuffing and potatoes. Adrien went with braised thighs, squash puree herbs and asparagus on rice. Christian had bacon wrapped chicken in French onion sauce w/ carrot puree, peas, purple cauliflower, sage, rosemary and thyme. Christian had asked during cooking time if he could get a small amount of flour from Jennifer. She declined, saying she needed it for her fresh pasta.

The judges decided that Jennifer’s dish was the weakest and Adrien’s the winner. That gave him the usual big advantage for the Elimination Test. All 3 were brought into the back area and show Joe Bastianich’s favorite ingredients, which were octopus, veal and mushrooms. Christian expected to get octopus as he is a seafood chef. What he did not know is that Adrien, picking first, had experience from a young age cooking octopus. Christian also was surprised when, after he picked veal and forced Jennifer to use mushrooms, she explained that she had grown up near Kennett Square PA, the mushroom capital of the world. There was 10 minutes to shop in the pantry and then 90 minutes to cook.  Here were their dishes:

Christian – mashed potatoes, vegetable medley, braised veal shanks that had to be finished in a pressure cooker
Adrien – octopus in black bean/ black garlic puree, rice, chilis, watercress
Jennifer – mushrooms and egg yolk over 3 fresh-made ravioli (a switch from her original choice of pappardelle)

Suzy got the winning line of the episode was “the 1980s want their dish back” in reference to Christian’s choices. Joe replated Christian’s dish for him, declaring it improved. Ramsay said to both Christian and Adrien that theirs were not their best dish. To Jennifer they said really well done. The first pick of the judges to advance was Adrien. The second was Jennifer, which meant Christian was eliminated. He was defiant and nasty to the end.

apskip:
MC2 Finale

It came down to Adrien versus Jennifer. The voiceover announcer called it as 3 dishes, 2 hours and 1 winner. They had 10 minutes to load up shopping carts of whatever they thought they might need. They could return for kitchen equipment but not for ingredients.

The dishes created were:
Jennifer appetizer – pan-seared scallop w/ egg, creamed corn, English pea puree
Adrien appetizer – prawns w/ jicama, microgreens, salsa

Jennifer entrée – quail w/ jalapeno, stuffing, creamy potatoes
Adrien entrée – pan-seared short ribs, mole, chipotle, cauliflower/parsnip puree, rainbow chard

Jennifer dessert – moscato braised pears, poached apples, crème anglaise, mascarpone, lemon zest
Adrien dessert – flourless chocolate torte w/ blood orange and passion fruit sauces, mole, powdered cocoa

So that was it. Each dish was explained and the judges had some comments. Perhaps the most telling were Ramsay stating that he could not taste the prawns in Adrien’s appetizer and that Adrien’s cake was too dry. He and Joe both chided Jennifer for not removing the abductor muscle from a scallop.  My inference from the commentary was that Jennifer was a clear winner of the appetizer course, they were in a positive dead heat for the entrée course and they both underperformed on the dessert course to negate each other there. That would make Jennifer the winner if I was correct.

I was. Jennifer did win the $250,000 and the title, plus no doubt the opportunity during the next year to travel as a spokesperson like Master Chef 1 winner Whitney Miller. She really earned it, as my impression was the competition was much stiffer in MC2.

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