Lia won! Since the first episode I’d harbored a hunch and wish that this low-key young woman—far more grad-student than sous-chef—would distinguish herself in the kitchen, and I’d been stunned by her poor performance in last week’s lighten-up-a-classic challenge. (Frankly, I’d been stunned by the whole group’s seeming cluelessness at a task that is the basis of Cooking Light and Eating Well magazines, as well as a standard element of virtually every newspaper food section. Well, when your only food-magazine subscription is Gastronomica, this is what happens.)
Lia wowed the judges in the elimination challenge with her olive-oil poached shrimp, the best third of the winning shrimp course. Brian’s shrimp was also praised, while Hung’s was judged the weakest.( Hung also flunked the quick-fire challenge, where his cocktail was dissed by mixologist/judge Jamie Walker. Hung’s reaction? “I’m thinking to myself that he [Walker] was confused.” Apparently Walker knows as much about bartending as Alfred Portale does about cooking.)
Going into the elimination challenge, Team Tuna was the underdog, a perfect storm of dysfunction: Casey, improbably, had earned immunity and thus it was up to her stocky, belligerent team mates—who also happen to dislike one another—to battle it out. Much as the judges (and, one assumes, the producers) were expecting a disaster, neither Howie’s nor Joey’s dish was terrible and judge Tom fell back on criticizing them for not tasting Casey’s ill-conceived and underseasoned contribution.
Dessert turned out to be the real disaster. Once again, Top Chef viewers were reminded that cooking without a recipe is much much easier than baking without one. My colleague Sylvia Carter used to regularly wow us with her ability to whip up a batch of muffins or biscuits or cookies without so much as glancing at a recipe. But even Sylvia didn’t try to make cakes blind. Unfortunately Camille did, and her pineapple upside-down cake earned her the boot.
Perhaps the boot should have been directed at Dale since he was the one who had insisted that the meal needed dessert. This struck me as a fairly selfless act since even if the contestants as a whole had been criticized by the judges for not providing one, no individual or team would have suffered. Dale seemed to be professing an obeisance to some culinary Natural Law that trumped his own desire to win. So I’m glad he got to stay.
As with Lia, Camille hadn’t really registered until this week. Casey also came to the fore with her French toast bar snack and her Jennifer-Aniston-like obsession with touching her hair.
My favorite line of the show, however, was uttered by Jamie Walker, who bore the extraordinary title of “Global Master Mixologist for Bombay Sapphire Gin.” “With Bombay Sapphire,” he intoned, “what you have is ten uniquely vapor-infused botanicals. For that reason you have a wonderful platform to create a whole plethora of cocktails.”
Tonight’s vocabulary lesson
Gastrique: gas-TREEK. A syrupy, sweet-and-sour sauce made by reducing sugar and vinegar. Usually contains fruit as well.
Sumac: SOO-mack. A Middle Eastern spice made from the ground berries of the sumac bush. The tangy reddish-brown powder is used frequently in salads or sprinkled on yogurt.
Ceviche: se-VEETCH-eh. A Latin-American preparation in which raw fish is marinated in seasoned citrus juice. The acid in the juice “cooks” the fish, turning it opaque and making it firmer in texture.