Top Chef Masters had more than one change in their line up this week,as chef John Rivera Sedler needed to leave the competition due to an emergency(hope it's not too serious)and last week's eliminated contender Hugh Acheson came back to take his place.
For their Quickfire Challenge,the chefs made a meatball dish and they literally had to crank it out,as part of the requirement here was to choose and grind their own proteins. The special guest judge for this round was Kelis,she of the Milkshake song,who happens to be a trained chef.
Kelis certainly had plenty of thoughts about the vast variety of meatballs she tasted-I swear Floyd Cardoz was ready to throw down over her insistence that his meatball sandwich was too salty because she didn't eat the bread.
I'm with Kelis on this one;bread or no bread,if the meat's extra salty,that's going to stand out on your taste buds regardless-but she could only pick one to win. The victory and five grand for his charity went to John Currence,for his Vietnamese style chicken meatball.
The Elimination challenge had the chefs using a fondue pot to select which classic dish from the sixties they were going to make for a party hosted by Mad Men alumna Christina Hendricks and her actor husband Geoffrey Arend.
Each chef had to make an appetizer sized version of both traditional and updated takes on such dishes as beef Wellington,grasshopper pie and chicken a la king.
Some of the dishes were unfamiliar to the chefs,such as ambrosia salad which Floyd wound up with. Turns out that ambrosia salad is basically canned fruit mixed with marshmallows and cream,not the most creative concoction out there.
However,Floyd managed to put out a decent rendering of the dish but his modern improvement upon it(based on a mousse his wife loves to make)went over like gangbusters. It was good enough to land him in Top Three contention for this round.
Joining him was John Currence and his version of oysters Rockefeller which had horseradish creme fraiche along side collards and bacon. One of the other guests actually asked Christina which one was supposed to be the original,which caused a bit of good natured teasing at the table.
The winner chosen was Mary Sue Milkien,who made her new version of deviled eggs in a Japanese style using umeboshi and mustard miso mayonnaise. While it didn't exactly hit anyone's palate as "deviled egg",the tasty creativity was well appreciated.
Landing in the Bottom Three was Suvir Saran's over sized and overdone veal Oscar and Alessandro Stratta's take on bread pudding. This was a dish that he had no experience with and the judges found his chai spiced custard version to be drowning in sauce.
The one who had to go,however,was Sue Zemanick. Her duck la orange wasn't fully plated before service and the dishes that did go out were missing a couple of components which could have boosted the flavor profile.
Sue spent a lot of her time helping others out in the kitchen(which was pretty small)but at the expense of neglecting her own meal. The goodwill she showed did at least leave a favorable impression as she departed. Next week,the chefs will have to cook with critters,bugs that is-should be something to see indeed!
The teams on The Amazing Race:Unfinished Business stayed in India a little longer,taking a flight out to Varanasi where the Ganges river is. For a moment there,it looked as if Jet and Cord were going to be way beyond since they booked their tickets at an airline that arrived about an hour later than everyone else.
They were able to get ahead,however,due to another team's taking a long time to complete the Roadblock which was to find six sadus(holy men)in the marketplace and receive pieces of a puzzle to read to a seventh sadu for their next clue.
Ron chose to go off on the Roadblock and chose to walk much farther than he needed to in order to find the sadus. That extra long romp of his gave the cowboys plenty of time to catch up and ultimately caused him and Christina to be sent home yet again. Since Ron was even crankier than the last time he was on with his daughter,I'm not too sorry to see him go:
The theme was Movie Night on American Idol and the tunes were the usual batch of film related numbers with the real surprise being the theme song from the cult classic Heavy Metal. James Durbin chose wisely there,in my opinion,and his take was more interesting than Casey's overly praised "Nature Boy",which Simon Cowell in his day would have called self indulgent.
Speaking of self indulgence,we have another Sanjaya award to present this week and the best of the worst was Haley. Her less than sultry rendition of Blondie's "Call Me" made me want to put her on hold. Sorry,sweetie,but it takes more than thigh high boots and a mini dress to make this song sizzle:
DON'T CALL ME AT ANY TIME
THE RIGHT NUMBER TO DIAL
RANDOM NOTES:
GAME OF THRONES: Granted,most of you don't need another reminder from me about this show but it is starting up this Sunday on HBO and another one couldn't hurt.
I'm nearly finished with the first book in the series but that won't stop me from indulging in the deadly delights of such a promising saga at all and hopefully that will be same for those already devoted fans and new ones to come:
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