Misanthropaea

Thoughts on the Next Iron Chef 6

In Japan this week, finally, Chairman Mark tells the final four chefs that they must use Your Mommy – sorry, no, that’s ‘umami’ – which is Japanese for, roughly, ‘tasty.’  He says it means ‘deliciousness.’  So they must use their tasty deliciousness in their quest for ‘deliciousness.’ I get it. It’s all clear to me now.

Alton Brown drones on about the four basic tastes of sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, and how umami is now the fifth taste and blah, blah, blah, yeah, it’s all good eats – and how this flavour is best brought out by the use of soy sauce (which has nothing to do with this being sponsored by Kikkoman or anything – oh not, not at all).

The chefs are swept off to a time-honoured yakitori bar which, as you can see from the little blue explanatory box – just there – that yakitori is something to do with grilling on skewers over charcoal. I thought that was shish kabob. Here they will be using a mystical ingredient called ‘soy sauce’ which really isn’t all that mystical since we just got finished hearing about only just two seconds earlier. Perhaps we forgot in all the confusion.

And then Alton drones on about how soy sauce is made because apparently he has never done a Good Eats show about it and therefore now, in the middle of another programme, is really the best time for him to do so.

At the Temaemiso Yakitori Bar in Tokyo (yes, in Japan), our young Thomas Dolby clone Alton now explains to the Padawan Iron Chefs-To-Be that Chairman Mark is a fan of simple, ‘folksy’ cuisine – because, if you might recall, he likes ‘hole in the walls’ places – and Alton also explains what a yakitori is and how to eat said: ‘Food goes on stick, food goes on fire, food goes in mouth.’

Brilliant. See, I can’t understand why these people aren’t taking notes. I’d be asking for a written diagram on a chalkboard or at least a hand-out or study guide so that I could follow along. Just breathtaking in its scope and clarity. This is how Moses – who, you will recall, looked very like the late Charlton Heston – must have felt at the top of Mount Sinai hearing the Ten Commandments. It was probably a V8 moment where he smacked his forehead and thought, ‘Oh Adonai! This stuff should be carved in stone!’

Yakitori, Alton explains to them, is big on umani, primarily due to the use of Kikkoman Soy Sauce – seasoning your life – and that their challenge is to create, in thirty minutes, five umami-rich skewers using the conveniently ample supply of various Kikkoman Soy Sauces, seasoning your life, a sauce with a centuries-old culinary tradition, which are spread – labels out – in a vast array before them as a rather none-too-subtle hint that consideration has been paid for by Kikkoman Corporation, a division of Del Monte Foods.

They will be cooking in pairs (because the restaurant is small), or ‘two at a time,’ Alton clarifies, and their special judge this week is Iron Chef Morimoto – all the way from his secret hiding place in the back room pantry – who runs out in slow motion to the strains of The Terminator theme. Chef Mehta says that being judged by Morimoto is like going to the principal’s office. Foregoing the pointless subtitles to translate what Chef Morimoto says to the Final Four, Food Network has opted for dubbing Masaharu Morimoto as if he were in a Godzilla – or, more correctly, Gojira – film. The dramatic voice actor tells us (and presumably the smiling and nodding chefs who have no idea what is being said),  ‘This is difficult. You’ll be making five skewers with umami-rich sauces. You have very little time. Stay focused and cook well.’

Was this really necessary? Do we really need to have everything repeated to us again and again just seconds after hearing it the first time they said it only to have it told to us again after we just heard it?

So Alton tells Chef Mehta and Chef Freitag (who I’m really liking more and more, not that you care) that they will have thirty minutes to create five skewers, or yakitori, which are like shish kabobs, with the umami-richness of Kikkoman Soy Sauce, the sauce with a centuries-old culinary tradition, seasoning your life, and that they will have thirty minutes. Aaaaaaaand – GO!

Once the first pair are finished, Chef Mullen and Chef Garces are told by Alton that they will have thirty minutes to prepare five – yes, five – umami-rich skewers of what the Japanese call ‘yakitori’ (which are very like a meat of some sort grilled on a stick), slathered with Kikkoman Soy Sauce (which is an ancient cooking ingredient in the Orient, called ‘The Orient’ because of the uncanny ability of the indigenous population to know where they are at all times, although the oldest native inhabitants of Japan are called the ‘Ainu,’ who exhibit more typically Caucasian qualities and whose language is called a ‘Language Isolate’ because it bears no known relationship to other languages and, interestingly enough, ‘Anu’ or ‘Ainu’ are often mentioned in texts of ancient Mesopotamia and, quite surprisingly, ancient Celtic tribes – especially in Ireland).

Oh, yes. Iron Chef. Sorry.

Aaaaand – GO!

Chef Garces, it must be said, is going to veer from the status quo and says that it is his strategy to create a full yakitori menu including dessert. BUT – and here’s the cunning bit – he is going to infuse each yakitori or ‘skewer’ with a umami-richness: tasty deliciousness. Whoa! Mandy Freitag better watch out for this guy! Wow!

Chef Mullen tells us that when he thinks of ‘umami’ he prefers to think of something called ‘soy,’ which he thinks is a fantastic vehicle for umami-rich cooking. =:0

First up, Chef Mehta has chosen to take a leek…

Leek. Take a leek. Hello? Is this thing on?

…and put it on a skewer and grill it with panko bread crumbs. That would make a great shish kabob. Morimoto says it is not crunchy enough. Next are yuzu soy clams with sesame seeds.  He also offers grilled beef with pepper and ‘soy sauce,’ apples with ‘soy sauce’ and caramel (which the dubbed dramatic voice tells us ‘is delicious and very original’) and, last, strawberries with chocolate, ‘soy sauce,’ and chili.

Chef Freitag is next, offering a zucchini/eggplant/red onion combo with yuzu ‘soy sauce,’ grilled chicken with orange-infused ponzu, grilled duck with spicy kimchi ‘soy sauce,’ grilled cod with clam broth and lime ‘soy sauce,’ and finally a hanger steak with sesame teriyaki.

Chef Garces has created charred tofu with clam broth and dashi ‘soy sauce,’ teriyaki grilled asparagus, yuzu glazed cod with pickled cucumber, a ‘soy sauce’ glazed pork with broccoli and grapes, and for the wrap up teriyaki strawberries with avocado.

Chef Mullen provides an asparagus and leek ‘skewer’ in a cherry-wasabi marinade, dashi ‘soy sauce’ rice in spinach leaf (which Morimoto says is dry), a grilled clam with yuzu ‘soy sauce,’ peach infused pork with white ‘soy sauce,’ and finally a duck breast with tofu, ‘soy sauce’ and blackberry.

In the end, the dramatic dubbed voice tells us, like Casey Kasem on American Top 40, that Chef Mehta is the winner because he ‘enhanced each skewer with a sense of deliciousness – the umami. And remember… keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars…’

Next, we jet away to the Hattori Nutrition College where Alton Brown and some old guy who looks like Mr Miyagi but is, in fact, Dr Yukio Hattori (the original ‘culinary commentator’ on the original Iron Chef which was, I’m thinking, a programme made in Japan in a time long ago often referred to idiomatically as ‘the day’).

The Padawan Iron Chefs are challenged to make Five Tastes With Rice (not to be confused with Five Fingers of Death) which are to include the flavours of sweet, sour, bitter, salty – and, of course, the tasty deliciousness of umami – and which will be served in Bento Box or, what the little blue translation box over there describes as traditional serving trays for multi-course meals. I just can’t even imagine how these chefs can work with such unwieldy restrictions like plates and serving trays…

Chef Mehta gets to choose his box first – oh yeah, pick the shiny one, that’s just freaking great, man! – and then everyone else gets to fight over the others. They are to create their five rice dishes and, somehow, cram them into the Bento Boxes – all in just 90 minutes!

Fortunately the show isn’t that much longer, but it sure will feel like it.

Aaaaaaaand – GO!

Aaaaaaaand – we’re finished.

In an undisclosed kitchen, our judges – Donatella Arpaia, Anya Fernald, and Jeffrey Steingarten, and special guest Mr Miyagi – await their plates from the Final Four. Alton Brown reminds them (and us) that the chefs had 90 minutes to prepare Five Tastes of Rice with sweet, sour, salty, bitter – and umami, the tasty deliciousness. I’m so glad he had the chance to clarify that. I was lost.

Chef Mehta is first and he presents Sour – Yuzu sour plum sherbet over rice oyster; Umami – Shrimp with rice, mung bean and rice cracker (to which a Darth Vader-like Uber-dramatic Dubbed Voice for Mr Miyagi says ‘I…did not taste the umami’); Salty – Pork rice with salty caramel apple; Bitter – Bitter melon, tomato & basil salad; Sweet – Flower berry salad with sugared shiso and rice crisps.

Thankfully, after the length of time we had to go without it, Alton turns to the judges and explains to them that the chefs had to create five dishes for the Bento Boxes using rice as a vehicle. And as you know, rice is a bitch to drive. You’re always going against the grain.

The grain.

So… Chef Mullen is next. He offers a bitter dish of mixed tempura with green tea salt, a umami dish of Bibimbap with Kobe beef and Shitake mushroom (which the Darth Vader voice says was ‘perfectly done’), a salty dish of green olive rice cake with cured sardines, a sour dish of sticky rice with octopus and Umeboshi, and a sweet dish of yuzu ice cream with rice crackers.

Chef Garces, winging it without additional explanatory digressions from Alton Brown, offers a bitter dish of bitter green and black rice salad, a sour dish of pickled sardines over pickled vegetables, a salty dish of octopus rice cake, a umami dish of pork belly over congee and Shitake mushroom, and a sweet dish of canela rice pudding with raspberries.

Chef Freitag brings for her sour dish, a kuromutsu in yuzu dashi broth, a umami dish of Kobe beef teriyaki with red rice and Shitake mushroom (whereupon the Darth Vader voice asks her if she knew Shitake has umami on its own), a salty dish of sushi rice balls with seaweed and rice cracker, a bitter dish of tempura radicchio and prawns, and her sweet dish is black sticky rice with fruit. The Darth Vader voice says even Japanese chefs have a hard time doing what she did and commends her ability in the ways of The Force.

And, one more time before we go, Alton points out to the judges that the chefs were to create Five Tastes With Rice, each representing sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami  – the the tasty deliciousness.

And somehow, despite accolades from Mr Miyagi, Chef Freitag is snubbed in favour of Chef Garces, who is named the winner of the competition. Chef Mehta, who did not let Mr Miyagi taste his umami, also moves to the next round.  Chef Mullen’s beef dish has saved his ass and Chef Amanda Freitag is show the sliding rice paper exit door.

Bastards.

For tasty deliciousness in your own kitchen, why not make your next meal a umami-rich experience with the goodness of Kikkoman Soy Sauce, a sauce with a centuries-old culinary tradition? Kikkoman: Seasoning your life.

Thoughts on the Next Iron Chef 5

This week, Chef Suvir Saran (not of the Saran-wrap empire), the owner of ‘Devi’ in New York, is introduced as one of Chairman Mark’s ‘culinary cohorts’ and ‘Master of Indian Flavours and Techniques’ and someone who has ‘very refined views on what makes Indian food tick.’  He challenges the six remaining chefs to give him their impression of India in one bite: ‘Magical, brilliant, small, delicious.’ But without meat. And to verify that there is, in fact, no meat, the camera swoops round the table of ingredients to the ominous strains of something that sounds like the Hogwarts Express coming to an abrupt halt and some dramatic drumming.

Alton explains that this ‘One Bite Indian’ Pressure Challenge will be vegetarian in nature (on account of there’s no meat on the table as the swooping camera and dramatic Terminator score just indicated) and that the chefs will have 30 minutes to prepare their impression of India in one bite for Chef Saran to taste. Strange. I know Alton was in the room when this stuff was explained the first time. Why does he feel the need to repeat everything as if he is talking to kids on the short bus?

Chef Mehta (who is Indian) makes a something with eggplant, poppy seeds, tapioca, okra, coriander, and a chutney. It’s served on a piece of jute fabric which looks like a giant Triscuit cracker and Chef Saran tells him that everything was great except for the piece of carpet that confused him. Chef Mullen makes a Roti with raita, okra and a garam masala vinaigrette and a chutney. Chef Saran tells him he should not have  cooked the Roti in oil. He didn’t. That’s not a good sign.

Chef Frietag creates Pakora (Indian style vegetable fritters, informs the subtitles) with a mint-cilantro yoghurt. She and Chef Saran spar a bit over the definition of ‘chutney.’ Apparently everyone is doing a chutney. Chef Garces makes a curried cauliflower with raita and mango chutney. Chef Saran questions the use of irrelevant garnishes and says, because of the giant portion, it is an impossible ‘one bite.’ He also asks why Chef Garces used curry powder and why he would think Indians use it, for which Chef Garces says, ‘Uuuhmmm…’  Chef Saran tells him that, in India, they would have made three dishes in thirty minutes – and none of them with curry powder. Behind him, Chef Mehta smiles happily.

Chef Appleman makes his take on Aloo Gobi with fried cauliflower and okra, but no chutney. Chef Saran smiles, nods, and tells him that, with just a pinch more salt, the dish would be ‘the magic of an Indian home.’ Chef Appleman tells the camera (from the Fortress of Solitude) that he has never under-seasoned a dish. That’s great, man. Way to take a compliment!

Chef Trevino serves up a vegetable curry with chapati and raita which – again – is not precisely ‘one-bite’ friendly. He has to instruct Chef Saran on how to eat it. Chef Saran tells him that with more salt, the flavours would dance. Instead, they don’t.

A stunned Chef Mehta’s smile is wiped away when Chef Saran says that Chef Appleman had the best dish and that Chef Mullen was a close second. Holy cow. (See, that’s a joke because, in India… oh never mind…)

The next Pressure Challenge will result in a double elimination, Alton tells them (which sounds like a bladder control issue to me) and that the remaining chefs will have just two hours to create a five course Indian feast. Two hours? That’s easy! I’ve made Indian feasts in two hours and these guys are all ‘oh no that’s not enough time!’ Once again over-thinking some of the most basic cuisine in the world.

They do get the benefit of ‘proteins’ this time.  That’s meats to you and me. It’s an odd thing, though, to see how many times these chefs struggle with kitchen implements – like how to put a lid on a pressure cooker.

On the Pink Floyd set, Chef Freitag presents a Chicken Mughlai, grilled Naan with sautéed scallions, basmati rice with crisp potato, Thoran with cabbage and carrot, and a Kheer sweet rice pudding with saffron. Giggles Steingarten shocked me by not only loving the food but asking for Anya’s crisp potato. Amazing.

Chef Mullen offers a Samosa with garbanzo, okra, and potato, Vindaloo goat, spice grilled prawns with ghee, Chana Dal with red lentils – a dish called ‘an unpleasant interpretation’ by Sir Laffs-a-lot. Somewhere we missed the fifth dish. Oh. No we didn’t. He didn’t make one. That’s nice.

Chef Trevino prepares a Dal with orange lentils and saffron, basmati rice with curry beef, potatoes with nigella and fennel, Aubergine with mushrooms and almonds, and Chicken Tikka with tandoori spice.

Chef Appleman, who says he has no knowledge of Indian food, presents Saag Paneer dumplings in a spinach sauce, coconut milk batter-fried yellowtail snapper (which is not at all Indian), stuffed eggplant with lamb and tomato chutney, Masala Dosa with cauliflower and potatoes, and a roasted banana with cinnamon and clove which Donatella says tastes ‘soapy.’ Mmmm.

Chef Mehta creates eggplant with poppy seeds and shrimp, goat Palau with rice and saffron, Shrikhand with tapioca chips, Halvah with sesame and fig, and finally Rava, which is a cream of semolina dessert.

Chef Garces makes a Lamb Karahi with apricot and almonds, Dal with yellow lentils and zucchini, Prawns Korma in a coconut cream sauce, his version of Saag Paneer,  and then a coconut tapioca with pineapple and saffron foam.  

The gods know, of course, that we couldn’t completely escape the lunacy of Chairman Mark, and he pops up – via video (as usual) – to explain that only four chefs will get to move on to the next challenge and that the in-flight meal served on the airplane he is in should be a hint as to where this challenge will take place. Crate & Barrel? Ikea? No. It’s Japan! Wee!  Watashi no hobaakurafuto wa unagi de ippai desu!

In typical tension- and patience-straining style, the winners are announced: Chef Freitag… will move ahead; Chef Trevino is shown the comically large exit door – so soon! Man. They didn’t even bother dragging that one out.  Chef Garces not only gets a trip to Japan but is announced the winner of this challenge. Once again Chef Mehta is gnashing his teeth to a fine powder. Alton points out to him that it must just steam his naan to be Indian and have a Mexican kick his ass. But he survives to get the trip to Japan. In the last throw-down between Chefs Mullen and Appleman, Chef Appleman is shown the comically large exit door. He stalks off the Pink Floyd set claiming he is shocked. Really? He had the most non-Indian Indian food. How was that a surprise to him?

So, next week it’s off to Japan!

Kanpai.

Thoughts on the Next Iron Chef 4

Chef Dominique Crenn was warned last week that if she didn’t up her game she would be shown the comically large exit door to the bombastic strains of an Alan Silvestri- inspired Terminator style score. That fact that they chose to repeat this clip in the pre-show teaser is quite a clumsy method of telegraphing and foreshadowing the fact that this is no doubt Chef Crenn’s last episode.

But let’s find out…

Alton Brown strides in to magnanimously explain to the seven remaining chefs that there are only seven chefs remaining, and that kitchen stadium is strangely barren this week. We need to know why, of course, so we turn to the chairman…

Mark whips round all Kung Fu-like to explain to the seven remaining chefs that an Iron Chef must be able to show adaptability and also to tell them that a special ingredient is being flown in all the way from Mexico (a place where, I have been reliably informed by a certain crypto-zoologist, they smoke something called cigar-ee-os), which is why he is standing at an airport.  They – that would be the seven remaining chefs – will need to adapt accordingly to the super special secret ingredient.

So I’m thinking this challenge is about adapting. That’s probably a stretch, but I’m just gonna throw that out there.

That special ingredient is tamarind, to which all the chefs appear crestfallen. With it, they will have to prepare one sweet and one savoury dish to represent Mexican flair. This should be a no-brainer for Chefs Trevino and Garces (being of Mexican descent).  They will have 90 minutes to shop for and cook their meals. Just as in The Next Food Network Star, the seven chefs – because there are only seven of them left – are taken in a non-descript white hostage van to Grand Central Market in L.A. to shop for their Mexican-style ingredients.

In a free-for-all shopping experience, Chef Crenn finishes first, in under 9 minutes, and has the leisure to begin cooking whilst everyone else is busily engrossed with locating their proteins. They’re probably in the aisle with the ribonucleic acids…

The cooking drags on for about 30 minutes with lots of jump cuts and cameras whooshing about. There are dramatic close-ups of things being stirred, beaten, pureed, and otherwise mangled; fried, baked, flipped, frapped, and burnt, exciting and repetitive music played endlessly and with exciting repetition; little talking head shots of the seven remaining chefs explaining how hard it was to cook Mexican food in 90 minutes; and Alton Brown wandering about reminding everyone that they have to use tamarind in both a sweet and a savoury dish each with a Mexican flair – just in case we forgot in all the excitement.

And then, just when you can’t take the adrenalin-packed ferocity of all the activity, Alton Brown suddenly tells everyone – with literally minutes left – that, oh, and by the way, Mr Roboto would like you to make a tamarind-themed cocktail as well. Oops.

In the Judgement Hall, a set built to resemble the stage in the finale of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Donatella Arpaia, Anya Fernald, and Jeffrey ‘Chuckles’ Steingarten await their culinary delights as Alton Brown explains to them that the test for the seven chefs remaining  was all about adaptability and using tamarind in both a sweet and a savoury dish. Each of these dishes apparently had to have a Mexican flair. I wish he had made these instructions clearer before just now.

Chef Crenn – oddly shown in a clip running through Grand Central Market yelling ‘I’m done, I’m done, I’m done!’ (no, that’s not telegraphing anything) – is first at the chop. She has prepared a tamarind marinated chicken and tortilla soup, which Chuckles feels is more of a puree, a tamarind and blood orange screwdriver, which nobody cares for (and of course Alton won’t bother to explain to them that this idea was tossed into the challenge with only minutes to spare), and a tamarind churro which is, rather unfortunately, undercooked.

Chef Appleman prepared a sopa de albondigas (yeah, sorry, no translation there, baby; I don’t do Spanish) with pecans and tamarind – which seem to go over well – goat cheese with tamarind/pineapple crepas, also a hit, and some parfait drink that looks like Hershey’s syrup and foam.

Chef Freitag created a tamarind-chipotle shrimp and jicama salad which was not a hit, and makes Chuckles Steingarten enquire, ‘Did you shop badly or did you cook badly?’  For a drink she made a bitter margarita and for afters she created an éclair with a filling of tamarind and custard which, not being exactly Mexican, she gets shot down for.

Chef Mehta’s ‘tamarind journey’ (as Alton describes it) presents the judges with tamarind-apple pork with tomatillo and corn, a tamarind ice cream for his sweet dish, and his drink is a chocolate-tamarind shot with orange liqueur.

Chef Garces offers a mole de tamarindo with poblano chicken, a tamarind martini, and a coconut flan with tamarind and caramel.  Chuckles is duly impressed with the ability of Chef Garces to create a mole without tomato, calling it ‘Great.’ Huh. I didn’t think his mouth could form complimentary phrases.

Chef Mullen provides a tamarind marinated shrimp taco and a chunk of Mexican corn served with tamarind butter, a piece of mango with salt and chili sprinkled on it is served on a stick for the sweet dish (how is that using tamarind?), and his drink is an icy tamarind and hibiscus salt ‘granita’ with tequila.

Chef Trevino offers a tamarind coctel of shrimp and huachinango (not to be confused with Teohuanaco), a sake raspberry mojito,  and a chocolate gordita with tamarind and posole.

Chef Mehta comes out as the winner of the challenge, despite a number of caveats from the Judges on the Pink Floyd set, hedging out Chef Appleman by just a hair. Chef Garces comes in third because his flan was overcooked and slightly curdled.  Chef Mullen is chastised for using an under-ripe mango (and no tamarind) for his sweet dish, but is given the nod to move ahead. Chef Trevino survives, although his chocolate gordita wasn’t a crowd-pleaser. Chef Freitag’s survival is played out with an overly dramatic score and some really crap editing to, in theory, heighten the tension and, of course, divert attention from the obvious fact that, as predicted, Chef Crenn is shown the comically large exit door.

Next time is a double elimination for double the excitement.

Right…     

Thoughts on the Next Iron Chef 3

Alton Brown would like to have us (and the Iron Chef Padawans) believe Chairman Mark, when he is hobnobbing in Los Angeles, likes to eat at what Alton says are ‘hole in the walls.’  I am sure he meant to say ‘holes in the wall’ but perhaps that is a topic for a-whole-nother time…

Mr Roboto explains that this time round, the chefs are to seek out tradition – which sadly does not include a musical number by Topol – and that they are to find a means of making that tradition more innovative. As such, they are to be sent out to four Asian ‘hole in the walls’ in the greater metro area of L.A. to learn about Vietnamese, Thai, Korean – did you know that Debbie Lee was Korean? – and Chinese cuisine. Each one of these places feature a classic dish and the chefs will have to replicate that dish (in only ten minutes – even if they have never heard of it), ‘from its broad flavour profiles,’ Alton explains, ‘down to its most subtle nuances.’ Because there are eight remaining chefs, they will be sent in pairs to the four restaurants. One chef from each pair will, obviously, win their challenges and those winners will have an advantage in the next round. Later they will fight to the death wearing only paper hats.

Chef Mullen, who won the last round last week, gets to choose the teams and the places they will go.  Chef Trevino and Chef Farmerie get the Din Tai Fung Dumpling House (China), Chef Garces and Chef Crenn get the Pho Huynh (Vietnam), Chef Mehta and Chef Freitag get Jitlada (Thailand), and Chef Appleman gets to tag along with Chef Mullun to Nak Won (Korea). Alton Brown will get Hot Dog On a Stick (The Galleria).

Jazz Singsanong (seriously, would I make that up?) welcomes Chefs Freitag and Mehta to Jitlada and promptly introduces them to Green Curry with Fish Balls. No, that is not the boy who does the washing up. It is a traditional dish. And Chef Freitag pulls out ahead even though she missed out the onion and cilantro. At Din Tai Fung, Frank Yang shows his juicy pork dumplings to Chefs Trevino and Farmerie. Though it is a close tie, Chef Trevino’s less wrinkly testicle-looking pork dumpling carries the day. At Pho Huynh, Chef Minh and Chukky Don (yes, really) give Chefs Crenn and Garces a taste of their special Beef Pho, but only Chef Crenn is able to pull it off.  And at Nak Won, Young Choi and Sally Wang roll out their Dolsot Bibimbap (which takes longer to write out than it does to cook) for Chefs Appleman and Mullen. Chef Mullen loses because his Dolsot was too salty. And there’s nothing worse than salty Dolsot.

At the Korean Taco Truck for a snack, Alton tells the chefs that their next challenge is to take the complexities and flavours of the four Asian cuisines they’ve just learnt to cook and put them into an American application. Like, for example, a Fish Ball burger and Chicken Fried dumplings.  The ‘winners’ of the last round get five extra minutes to create their dishes and the rest get to stand and watch for five minutes, which they complain about a great deal.  Of course no-one stops to think about the fact that they just made – in ten minutes – a meal they had never created before and that an hour could be considered a luxury. Once again it’s a battle of the over-thinkers.

Once before the judges table, Chef Mullen unveils a Korean-spiced Reuben with fried potatoes and a barley/ginger soda and Chef Appleman dishes out a Korean short rib pot roast with carrots and crispy rice. Donatella Arpaia says the Reuben is the ‘best damn Reuben’ she’s ever had and Jeffrey ‘Giggles’ Steingarten dourly grumbles about Chef Appleman’s lumpy rice.

Chef Trevino offers a classic meatloaf dumpling with hoisin vegetables but the judges say his dumplings were gummy, hard, and ‘like a weapon.’ Chef Farmerie also offers a dumpling – a Pittsburgh-Peking Pierogi with sesame soy gravy – and for a chef whose speciality is pierogis, he doesn’t appear to make a clear distinction between a pierogi and a dumpling. Which is weird because one is obviously a dough filled with a meat of some kind and the other is simply a meat of some kind cooked in some sort of dough.

Chef Crenn prepares a Vietnamese Style American Breakfast with spicy sausage and Vietnamese coleslaw. Yeah. I think about those cold winter months to come and how I always love to start my day with a nice coleslaw. The judges feel that it’s tasty but ‘all over the map.’ Well, she is French after all. She admits she only has a vague concept of what an American breakfast is. But she got the coleslaw right. And that’s what counts. Mmm. A hot bowl of creamy slaw, slathered in rich Vermont maple syrup…

Chef Garces produced a Vietnamese-American-style French Dip sandwich with Pho dipping broth and Jeffrey Steingarten gets it all over his new shirt, blaming it on the fact that Chef Garces left cartilage in the meat, not on his own inability to sufficiently guide food into the large hole between his nose and chin.

Chef Mehta’s  Green Curry ‘Take Away,’ served in plastic containers, is deemed too sweet, and not very good. Donatella says that ‘ his story is often greater than what is represented on the plate.’  In contrast, Chef Freitag makes a Halibut Fish Cake in a green curry sauce which Bubbles Steingarten says wasn’t very original. Donatella leans in and asks, ‘Have you ever had that before? Fish Cake with green curry sauce? In the style of a Maryland crab cake?’ Bubbles pauses and then responds that, well, it’s not a big step from a crab cake to a fish cake. Mm-hm. That’ll teach her.

Chef Mullen edges out Chef Freitag by a hair but they both will go to the next round as does Chef Appleman. Chef Mehta, whose dish no-one liked, is saved only because he had an interesting concept and original packaging. I thought this was about cooking? Chef Garces moves ahead even though Bubbles Steingarten couldn’t figure out how to eat his sandwich like most humans have done since the idea of a sandwich was first conceptualised in the Neolithic and popularised in the Middle Ages.

Chef Trevino travails after offering up a gooey hard weapon-like dumpling, Chef Crenn gets the go-ahead because she’s French and didn’t know any better – but she is given a warning that she’d best step up her game – and Chef Farmerie, the pierogi king, is shown the comically large exit door because he didn’t distinguish enough between a piece of dough filled with meat and meat cooked inside of a piece of dough.

Next time Mr Roboto tells us that the chefs must learn to adapt quickly and someone won’t be the Next Iron Chef.

*Yawn*

Thoughts on The Next Iron Chef 2

This time the chefs are supposed to thrill us with their im-ag-in-ation!

And someone really needs to tell Marc to dial it down. In my theatre days we used to say ‘Let’s pull that back a little bit. Like to Cleveland.’

So the chefs are tasked with ‘Simplicity’ and are told to prepare a meal in essentially one pot or ‘family style,’ as Alton Brown says. For some reason they look almost worried, as if this cannot be done. Funnily enough I, like many people living alone, cook in one pot all the time. Usually it’s Pad Thai, pasta carbonara, Hoppin’ John, Jambalaya, shrimp scampi, or just a  random stir fry. Surely an Iron Chef can make a one-pan meal. Of course the Judges won’t be eating their sample dishes over the sink like many of us who live alone do but, still, this is not an insurmountable task.

After the free-for-all of grabbing their individual cooking devices and raiding ‘the pantry’ they have 45 minutes to create something wonderful. The problem I see right away is that they aren’t all of them cooking in one pot as per the instructions. Some of them are using the ovens or other pots and pans. And they certainly don’t all appear to be going for simplicity because with things like mixed lamb tagine, crispy rice with prawns (a popular breakfast cereal, new from Quaker Oats), Mongolian spicy noodles with skirt steak stew, bouillabaisse, sausage and clam curry, lobster curry and rice, or stuffed swiss chard, we also have Korean stew with squash blossom, pork broth, octopus and quail eggs, and a clam and chorizo paella with garlic and saffron.

Jehangir Mehta won the round with his lobster curry and rice. Because why? Because it was simple. Like the instructions indicated. And he cooked it in one pot.

After another ridiculous woosh! filled intro by Chairman Mark, the next test is all about interpretation of a classic cuisine. Each chef is given an item from either a French, Greek, or Italian menu and one hour to re-imagine the dish. Once finished and standing in judgement, Chef Mehta didn’t seem to fare so well with his Spanakopita but Chef Garces does well with his Minestrone (even Jeffrey Steingarten says he would actually pay for the dish – which is quite a shock). Chef Appleman’s Ratatouille wasn’t a great success, Chef Trevino’s Dolmas gets mixed reviews, Chef Smith’s bouillabaisse is too ‘deconstructed,’ Chef Crenn’s Moussaka is enjoyable, Chef Farmerie’s take on Vitello Tonnato doesn’t wow, Chef Freitag’s Coq Au Vin seems the most popular so far, and Chef Mullen (who did poorly one-pot simplicity test) creates a Pasta Puttanesca which brings a roll of the eyes from Mr Steingarten who of course argues with his fellow judges that ‘fresh and light sometimes stinks.’

This week Donatella Arpaia rather sternly reminds the chefs (and rightly so) that ‘deconstruction’ is not the same thing as ‘re-interpretation.’ Regardless, Chef Mullen, with his deconstruction of Pasta Puttanesca is considered the winner of this particular challenge, Chef Farmerie gets scolded for a plate of largely uninteresting food, and Chef Smith is shown the comically large exit door because she deconstructed her take on bouillabaisse to the point that it didn’t even vaguely resemble bouillabaisse.

Oh I can hardly wait until the next season of The Next Food Network Star. This show is such an incredible snore…  

Thoughts on The Next Iron Chef

I suppose it doesn’t matter, but Hawaiian-born actor Mark Dacascos – the ‘Chairman’  – doesn’t look Japanese. He doesn’t really sound Japanese, though he tries very hard to do. After seeing him in half a dozen episodes of Stargate Atlantis and various other Sci-Fi ‘originals’ such as the repugnant little Hershey squirt  I Am Omega  (also known as I Am a Steaming Lump of Poo That Totally Rips off I Am Legend and The Omega Man and The Last Man On Earth), I find it virtually impossible to take him seriously as a replacement for the Japanese original – his ‘uncle’ – Takeshi Kaga. Even more difficult to take seriously is the completely ridiculous Kung Fu woosh! sounds dubbed in every time Mark makes gestures with his hands or jerks his head about in the over-the-top avian style he and the producers appear to believe makes him seem more Japanese. I’m surprised he doesn’t have the Shobijin accompanying him for further authenticity.

The fact that no-one laughs out loud at the over-wrought theatrical stupidity of Iron Chef America says a lot about how badly they must want to be on television. Or of just how stupid Food Network think viewers are. And, like History Channel’s Cities of The Underworld, the music is incredibly irritating, exasperatingly repetitious and faintly Terminator-like. I understand that the original Iron Chef, which ran in Japan for, oh, I don’t know, 75 years, was all about spectacle – sort of a food-themed Kabuki theatre – but there comes a point, I think, when homage becomes unbearable parody. 

The contestants this year seem an odd lot of professional chefs – Amanda Freitag, Brad Farmerie, Dominique Crenn, Eric Greenspan, Holly Smith, Jehangir Mehta, Jose Garces, Nate Appleman, Robert Trevino, and Seamus Mullen – none of whom, at first blush, appear to have the typical Iron Chef personality. This is not to say that they don’t possess the requisite skills, they simply strike me as reasonable people who have no business being subjected to such humiliation. But then Dark Lord of The Sith Bobby Flay doesn’t appear to have much personality either, not when compared to the gnome-like Mario ‘Oo Me Likes Me Little Wood Shoes’ Batali.

I understand that The Iron Chef should be prepared for any challenge, but when they are given some of the most bizarre or exotic ingredients – grasshoppers, stinky tofu, cock’s comb, horse thingy or pencil shavings – I mean, come on! Cut them a little slack. The judges – Anya Fernald, Donatella Arpaia, and Jeffrey Steingarten – often seem to be almost stoically insensitive to the fact that these people have been asked to work with items completely alien to them, as if sea cucumber is as common to the kitchen pantry as mac & cheese. Yes, the idea, of course, is to challenge them and to push them beyond their comfort zones, but to be so fucking brutal, so thoughtless, in assessing the perceived value of a certain dish borders on personal attack.

The worst of them, in my opinion, is food critic Jeffrey Steingarten, who strikes me as so breathtakingly arrogant that it is just about impossible for me to sit still watching him slurp and burble his way through his relentless savaging of everything placed before him.

Chef Eric Greenspan failed to make the grade this week and was shown the comically large exit door because he was unable to impress the judges, more specifically Jeffrey Steingarten, with his preparation of grasshoppers. Unlike Bear Grylls, the thought of eating a fried, baked, or delicately roasted insect – or possibly one that is pureed into a creamy mousse – makes me want to hurl. I don’t believe that I would ever willingly dine on crunchy Orthoptera and, like Chef Greenspan, don’t believe that this was a fair assessment of his culinary skills. He didn’t get where he is today by cooking bugs, and to toss him out on his ear for not correctly exploring the gastronomic possibilities of Jiminy Croquette is just ridiculous.

It will be vaguely interesting to see how this season will progress…

More Liveblogging The Next Food Network Star 5.7

Still in Miami at the Eden Roc (a renaissance resort and spa!), we go through our usual morning routine of waking up to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic Water and to see Debbie and Melissa curl, blow-dry, spritz/and or mousse their hair. Each of the three remaining Padawans tell us that they are ready to be the next food network star – no matter what – especially Debbie, who confesses to having had what she refers to as a few ‘lapses in judgement’ and what everyone else would call ‘lying through your teeth and being a total self-centred bitch.’

Arriving at Emeril’s Miami Beach restaurant in Miami Beach, our Padawans are quite taken aback, it seems, to discover  Emeril appearing in person at his own restaurant to announce the sordid details of their next food challenge. Did they think someone else – say, Sandra Lee – would have this dubious honour? Maybe Martin Yan or Jet Tila? Are they this surprised when they see Ronald McDonald at McDonald’s? Perhaps, like the rest of us, they thought Emeril had jumped ship for Planet Green or FLN?

With vacuous gazes and painted-on smiles, they listen intently as Emeril explains that one of the major stars who first inspired millions and millions of people all over the world to learn to cook – and who was a personal friend of his – was Julia Child, played by Meryl Streep in the upcoming film Julie & Julia, written and directed by Nora Ephron, critically acclaimed writer of 1989’s Oscar-nominated comedy When Harry Met Sally, directed by Rob Reiner.

What about Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet? Hell, you didn’t even have to go to PBS for that…

So, Emeril tells them, in keeping with the spirit of Julie & Julia, their challenge will be to put their love of food – their passion – on a plate. Oh where’s Eddie when you need him? To allow them to think about their passion for food, the Padawans will get to see an advance screening of the film.

But wait, there’s more…

They will each be creating their own ultimate three course meal at a private dinner party for twenty of the world’s culinary elite. ‘It’s a very, very tough crowd’  Emeril explains to them. They will have three hours to prepare their meals and a budget of $1000 each. And, once they arrive at the kitchen, each will have a sous chef waiting for them. They will have to present each of their dishes to the crowd. ‘But this is not a typical presentation,’ Emeril smiles darkly, his black eyes reflecting the light in an unearthly manner. ‘We’ll expect you to demo some portion of the meal live.’

‘If anything goes wrong,’ Jeffrey confidently tells us from the hidden fortress of the Orange Specimen Room, ‘it could spiral into a gigantic mess.’ This statement is then punctuated by a shot of Debbie, smiling Stepford Wife-like at Emeril.

I sense a disturbance in the Force.

After screening the film, we are whisked away in our white hostage van to a very barn-like Fresh Market where chicken breasts are $2.99 per pound.

Melissa decides to make, for her first course, a potato torte with a ratatouille. Second course will be herbed chicken – yes, even the sale chicken is good for the world’s culinary elite – with a mushroom port sauce. A ‘cheese trio’ with a little bit of salad and a sweet chocolate orange pochette will comprise the third and final course. Unfortunately she does not comprehend that the wheeled, cage-like object with the large horizontal handle in front of her would be an easier method of transporting the mass of items she is clutching in her arms and balancing beneath her chin.

Debbie is not going to take risks (there’s a shock!) but decides that she is just going to show them what ‘Seoul to Soul’ is all about. Huh. Is she Korean or something? I guess I never made that connection. She is going to do a braised short rib (with some odd Korean name) served on a garlic grit cake for her main. Her appetiser is going to be a chili-rubbed barbeque shrimp with a savoury corn salad and her third dish will be an Asian pear eggroll.

Jeffrey realises that with $1000 to spend he has got to keep the food good but still come in under-budget. He plans on making seared scallop with a green chili chutney and a chipotle cream. The second course will be a seafood risotto, and the finale will be a chocolate mousse with biscotti.  He manages, somehow, to accomplish getting the ingredients for this entire three-course meal for twenty people for a grand total of $317.14. He stares at the bill, having a moment which he describes as ‘Wow, aren’t I a savvy shopper – or aren’t I totally screwed!?’

The Padawans are taken to a private home in Miami Beach which they call ‘beautiful’ but which surprisingly looks, to me, very much like an ugly white warehouse, replete with polished concrete floors and a few sticks of furniture. Minimalism can be done tastefully. This resembles an interrogation room. With a sofa.

They peruse the stark wooden table at which the guests will be seated and begin to read off some of the names on the place cards: Pastry Chef Francois Payard, Marcus Samuelsson (‘He’s an artist,’ Debbie beams), Rick Bayless, John Besh, Emeril Lagasse, Dark Lord of the Sith Bobby Flay, Iron Chef Morimoto, Tyler Florence, Anne Burrell, Gina Neely, Patrick Neely, Alex Guarnaschelli from ‘Butter’ restaurant… 

[I’m sorry. Who the hell are ‘The Neely’s’ and when did they rise to the status of world class culinary elite? Sandra Lee’s been on Food Network a damn sight longer than the freakin Neely’s, why wasn’t she invited? What about Alton Brown? Mario Batali? Ming Tsai? Wolfgang Puck? Jacques Pepin? Sarah Moulton? Gordon Ramsay?  Or even my personal favourite Nigella Lawson? Who are the damn Neely’s anyway? Did they have to go through this gruelling process of humiliation to get a seat at this crappy wooden table?]

Anyway… waiting in the kitchen to surprise our Padawans are three finalists who were shown The Bland White Hotel Room Door To Obscurity (the Miami-based replacement for the Brown Door To Nowhere): Michael, here to assist Debbie; Katie, sous chef for Jeffrey; and recently-burnt (and probably still stinging) Jamika is enlisted to assist Melissa.

They all hug.

There is a quick recap of Melissa’s recipe and she explains that she is going to create her potato torte with a butter pastry for one of her starters. She is also going to make a second pastry of ‘a little cream cheese and butter pochette.’ It looks as though she is also filling the pastry with orange marmalade, but she remains silent on the issue. She feels that she is taking a huge risk by making two pastries, given their labour-intensive nature, but if she is ‘going to go down,’ she confides from the OSR, she is ‘going to go down big!’

‘This menu is Debbie on a plate times ten!’ gleams Debbie. Though Michael confesses concern that her Korean short ribs will not be finished in time or tender enough. ‘We actually like to gnaw on our meat a little bit,’ she explains. Mmmmm….

Katie asks Jeffrey what the budget for this little soiree was and he admits to only spending a third of what he was given.  ‘We’ll see if that makes me a hero or an idiot very soon,’ he says.

Speaking of idiotic… Jeffrey prepares his risotto some fifteen to twenty minutes before their cooking time is finished. Now, on the surface, having your dishes all fully prepped and ready is a great idea. However risotto is one of the easiest things to ruin and one of the most-often botched dishes in restaurants. Allowing it to sit for fifteen minutes and through who knows how long until it is his turn to serve could be quite a disaster. Even Debbie, from the safety of the OSR, tells us that she is worried for him, as risotto should be cooked and served immediately.

Meanwhile, Jamika is busy over-salting Melissa’s orzo to the point of inedibility. As luck would have it, Melissa had to cook the orzo in two containers so she will mix the two together in the hopes that the saltiness will dissipate. And now Melissa, who has not checked to see if the ovens were up to temperature, is only just discovering that, with six minutes remaining, her torte – one of two pastries – is nowhere near cooked.

In a cunning move to salvage the potato torte, Melissa decides to swap her menu round to allow the torte more cooking time. Therefore she will serve the orzo with the ratatouille and the torte with the chicken.

Meanwhile, the culinary elite, and the Neely’s, pour into the stadium-sized warehouse and seat themselves at the stark wooden table, all smiles and pomp at the savagery they will presumably be dishing out.

Melissa is first out of the gate and shares a deeply personal story about how even though she might fail at this exorcise, she will be failing at the right thing and for the right reasons – not just because she wants a job. Some of the women at the table are misty-eyed, for all the right reasons. Even Lord Flay is taken aback. ‘You seem,’ he tells her, ‘completely different to me today.’ She explains that she is not the harried housewife that she is often perceived to be and that she realises that she has been allowing the fact that she is not a trained chef to get in the way of her success – but not any more.

When it comes to her dishes being served, the ratatouille and orzo go over very well; the chicken, though it is a little dry, gets the nod of approval as does the potato torte (which, fortunately, cooked up just right) and the cream cheese pochette gets raves. So obviously the Indian guy did not get raw dough from Melissa as we were lead to believe in the teaser trailer last week. But I think I know who it’s going to be…

Debbie comes flying out of the back room with her arms flailing above her head as if her team has just won a championship or as though she is being chased by a swarm of angry bees. There are some looks of ‘What the hell?’ from the stark wooden table. Her first course – the shrimp and savoury corn salad – is seen by most of the elite as being safe and more Southwestern in style and not a terribly successful Korean/Southern fusion. The reviews are mixed about her Korean short ribs: deemed tough and bland by some and perfectly acceptable by others. Gina Neely thinks the ribs are missing something. Probably a world-class culinary judge.

Her demo goes over quite well, but the Indian guy points out that her dessert was very nice except for the part where the dough was raw. He unfolds the eggroll to show her what he means. Debbie looks sad.

Jeffrey is the last out of the kitchen, approaching the stark wooden table with a smile. He begins by telling his personal story and doing a demo for his seared scallops and green chili chutney – a demo and dish which Tyler Florence describes as ‘flawless’ and about as perfect as it gets. Unfortunately his risotto is considered an insult to Italian cooking and one of the worst things the gathered elite have ever eaten. Out of the blue, Lord Flay asks how much Jeffrey spent from the $1000 he was given. He says $370 (which it wasn’t) and, in response, Lord Flay appears as if he’s just been told there has been an Ewok uprising on Endor. From the sanctuary of the OSR, Jeffrey confesses to ‘feeling that sense of crash and burn approaching.’ But in a grand moment of redemption, his biscotti and chocolate mousse garner enormous praise.

The elitists discuss their feelings about the food they have been served and about the Padawans themselves, and Lord Flay thanks them for their opinions and tells them that the Jedi Council will take their suggestions under advisement.

After what seems to be a four hour advertising break we are finally taken to the inner sanctum of the Jedi Council chambers for the evaluation. Susie Fogelson recaps the previous 45 minutes for the attentive impaired and Bob T follows up by explaining that someone must go home and that, next week, one of the remaining two will win their own show on Food Network.

That would be a cool premise for a show…

Melissa is praised by Bob T for creating not one but two pastries which absolutely blew away one of the world’s best pastry chefs – Francois Payard – and for having a captivating personal story and a personality which continues to surprise them all week after week. Lord Flay tones down the praise and says that he wishes Melissa would have given more in her demonstration portion. He confesses to frustration because he knows that she has it in her to be amazing. Bob T concurs, saying that there is a diamond in there if she could only peel away the nerves.

Jeffrey is praised for his humour, his charm, his charisma, his authority, his ease before the camera, and for having great culinary skills. His risotto is the loadstone round his neck, however, as is the fact that he only spent a third of his budget. He defends himself, saying that it’s not about the money it’s about what you do with what you have. Bob T feels that there might be a seat on the Jedi Council for Jeffrey next year if only he also showed a sense of Amy Winehouse unpredictability that would make him a star.

Turning to Debbie, Lord Flay tells her that she seemed comfortable and confident but her food, as Bob T defines it, was a ‘mixed bag’ which didn’t seem to hold much flavour and didn’t present her ‘Seoul to Soul’ idea terribly well.

That said, the Padawans are asked to plead their individual cases one last time. Melissa says that she has no problem showing her faults so that they can be worked out and honed into a successful television programme. She feels that she will have instant credibility to the working mother and that she can ‘cook with the best of them.’ This last is played to her peers on her left.

Debbie says that she is human (which will comes as fortunate and comforting news to the potential home viewer) and that she is ‘the emotional person that can find the enjoyment out of my life and who I am and what I’ve come to love as America.’ She feels that she fully understand the whole population and that they – we – in turn will want to study her as well.

What?

Jeffrey feels that the only requirement to watch him is that you love food – cooking it or eating it – and that he will be a winning member of the team and will not stop until that happens.

The Padawans are then sent back to their hotel room whilst the Jedi Council discuss their fates.

Each of the council members share an enthusiasm for Melissa as a ‘wild card’ who just does not stop surprising them and who turns out amazing food. Jeffrey and Debbie are considered strong, but it is clear that Jeffrey is coming out ahead between Bob T and Susie. They feel that the viewers would be drawn to him and that he knows his food (just maybe not risotto). Lord Flay feels that Jeffrey is polished but that he needs to go beyond his comfort zone and show more range. Debbie, Susie explains, has been consistently great before the camera and has fascinating stories. Bob T says that she is ‘camera ready’ but Lord Flay, always the voice of dissent, feels that Debbie has been flying under the radar and doing what it takes to be good and not get eliminated.

This is a hard choice and the Padawans are asked to return to the Council chambers for the judgement. Lord Flay tells them that this decision was not easy because each of the final three has really grown and shown that they are capable of doing amazing things but, in the end, Melissa is told that she will continue to the final round. Her eyes are as large as dinner plates at this.

Bob T tells Debbie and Jeffrey that it was unbelievably hard to come to a decision. Susie says that she would enjoy working with either one of them because they are both so unique. So she announces to Debbie that Jeffrey will be staying for the final round.

To the gentle sounds of a Fender Rhodes and light jazz drums, Susie tells Debbie how sorry she is. Debbie says that she has had quite a journey here and that the Jedi Council have been a big part of it. Which actually says nothing at all just like her plea about being human. She feels, she tells us from the solitude of the OSR, that she can walk away proud and happy with what she has achieved as she trods, weeping, to The Bland White Hotel Room Door To Obscurity.

Next week, Professor Alton Brown tells Jeffrey and Melissa that they will be starring in a pilot presentation of their very own cooking shows; Jeffrey feels the pressure is on; cameras and people will be everywhere; Melissa is looking at the wrong camera; Alton will have to tell Jeffrey that the yellow roundish things on the sandwich he is preparing are tomatoes, not onions; and Lord Flay tells us that the person who will be crowned the Next Food Network Star is…

Still Virtually Liveblogging The Next Food Network Star 5.6

In a surprising twist, Helena was not the audience’s least favourite this week, leaving Abi and Aoife to face each other in the final—oh… wrong show…  

Still in Miami, it is apparent that Debbie’s less than attractive side is blatantly obvious when she first wakes up and is doing up her hair.  I thought she was trying out for Phantom of the Opera for a moment. But she promises to ‘blow them away’ this week. I presume this means ‘to astound them with my skills.’ Or else this is going to be a very different show.

The Padawans spill out on to the pool patio at the Eden Roc hotel to meet Iron Chef and one-time Dinner: Impossible host Michael Symon who tells them that in just a few short hours they will all be demonstrating their food on a live Miami morning TV programme called southflorida.com LIVE, something for which they will need their ‘A game,’ and then he tells them to leave.

That was brief.

Meanwhile… on the set of southflorida.comLIVE, the host (whose name flits past in a reasonably unimportant blur) lets us in on a little secret: the cooking demo is rigged to have things go wrong. Bob T, Susie ‘Chuckles’ Fogelson, and Michael Symon are in a hidden chamber giggling like children at their awesomeness. Dark Lord Flay cannot join in the frivolity, as exhibiting joy is strictly enforced by the Sith code and may only be used in conjunction with torturing someone until they see the true nature of The Dark Side or just kicking the shit out of Ewoks. Simple schadenfreude can be had at any time.

Our nameless host assures us that  ‘it’s gonna be crazy, it’s gonna be spontaneous, totally absurd and awkward – and a whole lotta fun!’

Woo! Yeah! So let’s begin!

Out comes Debbie for her live 4-minute demo of her signature dish – crispy catfish with… yeah, whatever; something on the side that looks disgusting. Hilariously, her fish has been replaced by chicken and she has been provided almost no utensils to work with. To the chagrin of the Jedi Council, she sails through without missing a beat. That was crazy!

Melissa is next, making a tapenade caviar with potatoes (oh gods, there’s that sound again, sorry!) and Nameless Host is set to interrupt her and be a relentless dick and totally fuck with her recipe. That was so spontaneous!

Jeffrey’s demo of gorgonzola cheese, arugula and caramelised pear grilled cheese sammich – (Jesus! Was that me!?) – is rigged with ‘technical difficulties’ which throw him off his pace and he is forced to work with a handheld microphone and still try to cook! That’s absurd!

Jamika’s herb-roasted chicken breast – whatever that is – is fouled (yeah, that’s right, I went there) with incorrect time-cues at the camera getting too close. She thinks the crew are idiots and does not look like she’s having a good time. Awk-waaaard! 

It’s all in good fun, though, and when the Jedi Council gather the Padawans together, Susie tells Jeffrey that she laughed hardest at how bad he sucked, whilst Bob T tells Jamika that she was like sunshine – until the cameras came on, and then she didn’t have the ‘fun brightness’ they were expecting her to have. And he tells Melissa that she’s too stressed and frenetic under stress. Chef Symon tells them that you never want to show how perturbed you are, even when everything is sabotaged, and be more like Debbie who totally won this round.

Wow. That was a whole lotta fun.

And at the next challenge, as the Padawans once again gather pool-side at the Eden Roc, Chef Symon is there – again – wringing his hands and grinning with anticipation of totally fucking up their day. Joining them on the patio is Senior Executive Chef at Red Lobster, Michael LaDuke who tells them that the winner of… yeah, you know…

The Padawans all look at each other in what is by now feigned and insincere surprise.

So the aptly titled Wood Fire Grill Challenge begins with each Padawan being given a cooking station where they must prepare, in forty-five minutes, some pairing of fresh fish with crustaceans or shellfish to win the coveted spot on the Red Lobster menus of America. They are to highlight the freshness of the product, the flavour of the wood fire grill and their own culinary expertise.

Everything must be prepared on the grill – something Jeffrey knows nothing about, he tells us from the secrecy of the OSR. As the winner of the previous challenge, little Debbie gets to choose her fish first.

And off they go!

In the background, the Jedi Council arrive. Lord Flay joins them, dressed in what appears to be white linen trousers and a Sith-approved ‘Blood of the Screaming Ewok Pink’ tropical shirt.

Debbie chooses tilapia, something she says is very reminiscent of the type of fish used in Korean cooking. Huh. Is she Korean? I guess I haven’t been paying close attention. Melissa goes for the arctic char and will make a ‘citrus duo’ of orange for the scallops (which have appeared as if by magic) and lime for the fish. Jamika trends for the tropical with mahi-mahi and shrimp which she will cook with pineapple and peppers to compliment some Pina Colada  rice. Jeffrey decides he is going to ‘blow Bobby’s mouth away’ with the flavours of chilis, shallots, lime and cilantro to compliment his choice of  barramundi and some shrimp and scallops on the side.

And then it all comes to a halt. Lord Flay, sporting a straw tear-drop fedora as if he’s Frank Sinatra about to have some mug bumped off, decides to switch things round and takes away Jeffrey’s South-of-the-Border ingredients and replaces them with Asian-themed ingredients instead. Jamika has her pineapple taken away in favour of a couple of giant celery roots. Melissa’s ‘citrus duo’ quickly disappears as Lord Flay has them replaced with a bowl of habanero peppers. Debbie’s Asian ingredients are switched with those from the Mediterranean and – somewhere during this little exercise – Lord Flay’s sporty fedora has suddenly disappeared in favour of a pair of Blues Brothers Wayfarers.

As the Padawans struggle and squirm, the Jedi Council are, as Jamika points out, ‘sittin under umbrellas, sippin mojitos.’ Debbie has managed to fairly quickly adapt to her new set of ingredients, and so has Melissa (though Lord Flay does not believe she understands the true nature of the habanero), but the the others seem just a bit lost. Jamika is clearly upset and as she snidely thanks Michael Symon for the celery root, Bob T looks disappointed. He asks her how she’s doing, noting what he calls her ‘focus face,’ and she tells him that she’s pissed and doesn’t know where she’s going with her dish. Most likely it will be through the Brown Door To Nowhere if the ‘focus faces’ of the Jedi Council are accurate. Then, 39 minutes after she was given the celery root, Jamika finally tastes it – and discovers that she now loves it. Unfortunately there are  only five minutes remaining in the challenge for her to cook her dish.

In the judging segment, Debbie, it is discovered, didn’t use the capers (one of only three ingredients) she was given. ‘Oh. My bad.’ she says to a stoic Lord Flay. Her dish, it is decided, does not have a defining characteristic and lacks the briny saltiness so evocative of Mediterranean cuisine. Melissa pulls off a surprising upset with her dish and Lord Flay and Michael Symon are both stunned by the flavours of her offering. Jeffrey’s has also managed to create a well-considered dish which is well received. Jamika has not brought enough of her Jamaican flair to her dish. Well why would she? Everyone else had their key ingredient whisked away, so why would they expect her dish to have any signature flavour? Seems pretty stupid to have such an expectation of only one of the competitors. She is also pounded for showing an attitude and for having something of a chip on her shoulder throughout the challenge.

As we move to the calming blue and brown of the Jedi Council Chambers for the evaluation, Bob T explains that in approximately two weeks, someone will be set to begin taping their own show. But who will that be?

Will it be Jeffrey? He claims to embrace the concept of ‘Cooking Without Borders,’ a way of creating a culinary melting pot, though Lord Flay tells him that, despite his claim, he continues to focus on Mexican-style flavours and ideas. His Zen quality – an admirable trait – can often give, as Bob T says, ‘a vanilla performance’ because he lacks the unpredictability of a star. Perhaps he could shoot heroin and down a bottle of whiskey to loosen up.

Will it be Jamika? She is told she ‘shut down’ during this competition and offered food with little flavour and that it’s ‘cuckoo’ to Susie that Jamika can’t just keep on smiling through the day.

Will it be Melissa? She is scaring the hell out of Lord Flay – ‘in a good way,’ he says – because she has truly blossomed into someone who could possibly stand shoulder to shoulder with others on the Food Network, if she could just tone down the frenetic side.

Will it be Debbie? She ‘handled adversity very well,’ says Chef Symon, but her inability to have any sort of accountability for her actions, as seen in previous challenges and with ‘forgetting’ the capers in her Mediterranean dish, will be her undoing. Debbie cries and says this is hurtful. *yawn*

It could be Jeffrey. His dish will go on the Red Lobster menu and he is, therefore, safe to move to the next round. It could be one of the other three, but the Jedi Council need to discuss the matter after hearing each of the women plead their case. Lord Flay says it will come down to ‘one or two little things.’ Jamika has the potential to be the biggest star of the group but she fails to ‘bring it.’ Michael ‘brought it’ and look where he is. Melissa keeps ‘dialling it up’ each week and is always pleasantly surprising the Council. Debbie, says Chef Symon, is on solid ground and they all agree that she has risen to the challenges better than some people currently on the Food Network, but Bob T feels that she has been coasting and not giving 100%, to which Lord Flay nods in agreement.

And, in the end, joining others who ‘brought it,’ Jamika is shown the now far distant Brown Door To Nowhere and will apparently be asked to walk home from Miami.

Next week, Melissa says ‘Bon Appétit!’ whilst serving raw dough to some Indian guy, Jeffrey will find that it was painful to have his name on that dish, Melissa considers that maybe what she has isn’t enough and, as Lord Flay finds a certain amount of frustration with (presumably) Debbie, Debbie will look sad.

Can you hold out an entire week?      

Kinda Liveblogging The Next Food Network Star 5.5

As daylight breaks with stop-motion rapidity over the Manhattan skyline… boy, now there’s  a memory… sorry… young Jeffrey tells us that it’s like they’re about to go on vacation, except for the part where the rest of the Padawans will be hanging about, bumming smokes off the locals, wearing thongs…

And just when they think it’s going to be a nice nap-time flight on Jet Blue, they find that Ted Allen is there at the airport terminal waiting for them. With him is, as Jeffrey says, ‘some guy in chef whites’ – Michael Coury, ‘Concept Chef’ for OTG Management who run all of the fine dining establishments at Terminal Five, or T5 – and they are there to present the last five Padawans with the challenge of being assigned one of the restaurants in T5 and to cook a dish consistent with that’s restaurant’s cuisine. In thirty minutes.

No pressure.

Jeffrey is assigned  Aero Nuova, an Italian eatery; Michael gets La Vie, the French restaurant; Melissa gets Piquillo, a topless – sorry, tapas – restaurant; Jamika pulls Deep Blue, a sushi restaurant; and Debbie gets Five Steak, an American establishment which focuses on steak. Whomever wins…

…wait for it…

…gets to have their dish put on the menu.

Wow.

The Padawans are stunned by this stunning revelation and share looks of amazement all round. I do too. My cats are sleeping on the coffee table in front of the gentle spin of  the fan and have no interest in sharing my amazement, however.

Jeffrey, who loves Spain, feels that his ‘Cooking Without Borders’ (which is now, I guess, his official Culinary Point of View) will be well represented at Aero Nuovo by a Bruschetta (the Italian version of Spanish tapas) with Poached Egg.  Jamika, unhappy with the airport regulations which require all knives to be attached to the counters by limited-length cords (you must be fucking kidding me!) creates a Seared (Rare) Tuna Salad with a miso/citrus vinaigrette and Michael, soon discovering that he can’t shuck oysters with a shitty knife strapped to a table, opts for clams and shrimp with a bacon Hollandaise sauce. Melissa, who grew up speaking Spanish and who has been to Barcelona, decides on a Chicken a la Plancha with potatoes and chorizo. Debbie thinks that everyone at a steak house will want steak, so she chooses to do an Asain Spinach Salad. Whoa! Asian? Where the hell did that shit come from? What is she, Korean or some— oh. Yeah. Okay.

Jamika is the first one to face the Jedi Council, sans Lord Flay who is busy taking care of a difficult terminal worker who does not understand the true nature of the Dark Side…

 

Bob T, Susie ‘I Love A Good Laugh’ Fogelson, ‘Conceptual’ Chef Coury, Ted Allen, a Jet Blue pilot and a flight attendant are waiting to taste her dish. And then she talks about how the airplane toilet is nobody’s friend. Mmm. I am hungry already. The pilot takes a second to wash this down with a drink of water. The flight attendant appears to have been insulted. Perhaps the toilets are his responsibility. Ted Allen nods with his eyes wide, as if he is trying to stay awake. Susie speaks up and asks, ‘Am I alone here in not wanting to hear about bathrooms on airplanes when I’m about to eat something?’ Ted concurs. This is TMI, he nods. Bob T has no apparent complaint. But then he has eaten paste. He does, however, decide that there is ‘nothing new’ in Jamika’s dish.

Debbie drops a bomb by offering a salad in place of a steak, to the chagrin of the Jedi Council, and Jeffrey wows the panel with his personal story – a narrative, if you will – and his ‘Without Borders’ style. Melissa also knocks her dish and presentation out of the park, giving the panel some great points. Even Bob T says her dish has all of his favourite Spanish flavours. Is paste Spanish?

Michael actually does pretty well with his presentation, with a small bit of prompting, but his dish falls a bit far from the mark. And in the final tally, he is told that his dish just wasn’t ‘quite there.’ Jeffrey is deemed the over-all winner of this challenge – for which he is ‘super excited’ – and his dish will go on the menu at  Aero Nuovo.

And then they have to catch a flight…

In their hostage van, they are driven to their hotel in Miami. Melissa is only certain that they are in Miami when she sees the palm trees – an indigenous plant found only in the state of Florida – whilst everyone else points out the window to the big blue wobbly thing and says ‘Wow, that’s the water!’ Yes. The Atlantic Water.

They arrive at the Eden Roc hotel – where Jamika screams in Michael’s ear, just like on the previews – and then they discover a note which reads: ‘WELCOME TO MIAMI! Meet me in the lobby.’

This is from Ted Allen, of course, and Jeffrey tells us (from the OSR) that, after only one small challenge, he is already ‘starting to not like seeing this guy.’ Ted tells them that their next challenge is going to be working as a team to cook for a cocktail party at one of Miami’s hottest night clubs. They will have two hours and each contestant must create at least two hors d’oeuvres and create a signature cocktail because they are, after all, ‘about partyin tonight.’

The five of them will shop for one hour with a budget of $1500. Jeffrey, having won the earlier challenge, will get to assign tasks to each of the other four Padawans. With luck he will not hand the $1500 to Michael or Debbie who, it has been proved time and again, cannot handle a budget of any kind.

Jeffrey doles out the tasks: Michael will be behind the bar. ‘I can definitely work a crowd,’ he says; Debbie is given charge of the kitchen and ‘as a caterer for Hollywood,’ she tells us from the OSR, she ‘threw some of the hottest parties in town.’ I swear it sounded like she said ‘oddest parties.’

As they decide who wants to do whatever hors d’oeuvres, Melissa is surprised that no-one (especially those with far more experience) had thought to do a vegetarian dish, so she decides she will cover that base and do three dishes to everyone else’s two. Jeffrey confides that he feels there are some needlessly complicated dishes in this challenge, but he thinks everyone has a right to do what they want in this competition.

Shopping, as always, is at Whole Food and also, as always, is a nightmare of indecision and second-guessing. They somehow manage to buy everything for $1490.94.

Jeffrey is going to produce a crab tostada and a Cuban bite with spicy sauce; Debbie is going for a passion fruit chicken on daikon and a Korean torta (is she, like,  Asian or something?); Melissa will prepare chicken skewers, salmon shooters, and a vegetable Asada; Jamika prepares a shrimp with pineapple coleslaw and jerk chicken skewers; and Michael does Margarita salmon skewer and chili lime shrimp.

The signature drink, a chili-spiced Margarita will apparently take hours to prepare and may not be ready in time for service.

The trick is, Melissa and Debbie, as the assigned cooks, will have to know how to prepare the dishes of everyone else whilst Michael and Jeffrey run front of house. This should be interesting. Debbie says that Michael’s dish is high maintenance and rather passes off his explicit instructions on how it is to be prepared. Melissa explains that all of the dishes are somewhat labour-intensive. Sounds like poor planning and very little team work.

As the hors d’oeuvres are passed about, Jeffrey’s choices are generally panned as not being terribly spicy by the Jedi Council – and also by Lord Flay who has finally joined us after parking his personal Star Destroyer out by the Atlantic Water and stopping to kick over a couple of sand castles to make some children cry. Jamika fails to impress either with her style before the Jedi Council or with her jerk chicken, but her shrimp and slaw went over fairly well.

From the OSR, Melissa tells us that she has no idea what Debbie – ‘The Expeditor’ – was doing (other than plating her own food) but that, without the help Debbie was supposed to be giving, things were getting out of hand. The Jedi Council seem to like Melissa’s food – mostly – and her style, but the execution of a couple of the dishes was a little ‘off.’ That’s a fairly general statement.

It is fast becoming clear that food is not making it out of the kitchen as quickly as it ought to do and there are people at the party who have not yet eaten and not been served. It seems The Expeditor is not as expeditious as she ought to be and is still busy with her own food, ignoring that of the other Padawans. Lord Flay finally gets up from his comfy chair and marches back to the kitchen to see how things are going. He tells Jamika, who he sees first, that he is still hungry and would like to have one of her hors d’oeuvres if he may.

Debbie looks up from plating her dish, surprised (or as surprised as the epicanthic fold will allow one to appear surprised) to see Lord Flay in the kitchen and digs back in to plating her own dish. ‘We got lots of hungry people out here,’ Lord Flay reminds them. ‘Get that food out.’

‘This is not a good sign,’ Debbie tells us from the OSR. ‘Front of the party should never know there’s craziness going on in the back.’ It would seem that the only ‘craziness’ going on is that Debbie doesn’t appear to be pulling her own substantial weight and is letting everyone down. Maybe she did mean to say she threw the ‘oddest parties’ in Hollywood – those crazy Emperor’s New Food parties with big empty plates that she didn’t slave over for hours…

At last Debbie emerges from the kitchen to pass round plates of her own food – which are by far the favourites of everyone. Well of course. She spent half the night on them and fucked everyone over in order to make her own hors d’oeuvres the best. This is not the spirit of a team player. Even Michael stepped away from his assignment of serving drinks to bring out some more food, only to be criticised by the Jedi Council for not spending enough time with them and treating them as common guests. Of course he makes the fatal mistake of telling them that he’s great with crowds but it’s the camera he’s afraid of. That admission goes over really well. Bob T sits there staring up at Michael with his mouth open like a dog expecting a Beggin Strip (which he can’t get for himself because he doesn’t have thumbs).

In the end, the cocktail party was largely an epic fail.

Back from a much-needed advertising break, we watch as the Padawans gather before the Jedi Council (with guest judge Ted Allen) as Susie Fogelson recaps the details of their challenges in case they weren’t there. Lord Flay explains that the cocktail party was something of a disaster because he was starving and didn’t get enough food. And that other people had to wait as well.

Jeffrey explains, and quite rightly so, that most of the dishes were much too time-consuming and overly-complicated to have been prepared on time. Lord Flay asks him if he was in charge, to which Jeffrey says that, as the winner of the first challenge, he delegated certain tasks. One of those tasks, being in charge of the kitchen and to organise things behind the scenes, was given to Debbie – The Expeditor. She tells the rather dour Jedi Council that ‘I just did the very best that I could at that moment. I was basically the only person standing in that kitchen by myself at all times.’

This tear-filled little white lie garners a sideways glare from Melissa.

The Padawans are assessed in turn. Jeffrey is given high points for his hosting and his charm, but his recent dishes seem to lack the spice and the heat he claims to want to impart. Michael is called ‘the hostess with the mostess’ at the party, however he was not the favourite of the crowd. He is also told that his shrimp hors d’oeuvre was such that, despite its simplicity, it needed to be prepared in such a way that it burdened the women in the kitchen who had eleven other dishes to prepare. Well, except for Debbie who was concentrating primarily on her own dish to the exclusion of all else.

Jamika was one of the favourite personalities as judged by the party-goers and her shrimp and slaw was a hit, albeit difficult to eat, but her jerk chicken was lifeless. Melissa is scolded by Susie for taking on three dishes because it meant that her concentration was spread too thin. Melissa defends her position and says that the vegetarian dish was necessary – to which Ted Allen agrees.

And then we turn to Debbie to watch her squirm beneath the magnifying glass of the Jedi Council. Lord Flay calmly explains that her food was his favourite of the night, though he would like to understand what her role was and why the kitchen seemed to be so chaotic…

‘I was trying to do whatever I could just to get the food out,’ she lies. ‘I guess I was under the understanding that Jeffrey was the team leader.’

‘How would that have changed,’ Susie asks, ‘and made you more successful?’

‘My thing is, like, if I was catering an event,’ Debbie tells her, ‘I’m back in the kitchen first just to make sure food goes out then I go out there and greet the guests.’

This is all very nice, except that she has just explained Jeffrey’s role in the party and not her own. Perhaps Teddy – sorry, Debbie – feels that she can pass the blame on to the Team Leader and divert attention as she continues to dig her grave. Jeffrey says that he had every confidence that Debbie could organise two people to put out the food, since that’s what she does for a living, but that it just came down to the fact that this wasn’t happening.

‘Debbie, when a kitchen breaks down,’ explains Lord Flay, ‘it’s the chef’s problem.’

Debbie’s response to this is that she could only do so much and she was being selfless in order to make sure everyone’s dishes got served. The hint of martyrdom does not go unnoticed and Susie presses Debbie for a further explanation of what she was doing in the kitchen. Debbie counters by saying that there was just no way, given the skill level of the various dishes, that one person could produce all eleven hors d’oeuvres in a timely fashion.

Melissa appears rather perturbed by the ‘one person’ comment and finally steps in to say that Debbie did not, in fact, work alone. ‘I think I did five. I did your two,’ she says indicating Jeffrey, ‘and my three.’ She turns to Debbie to ask, ‘Did you plate some of my stuff and I didn’t know it? I was single-handedly in charge of plating five dishes with zero help from anybody. I was in charge of Jeffrey’s two; Jamika was in charge of Michael’s two…’

Bob T stops her because he needs to get the math right: There were eleven dishes over all; Melissa did her three and Jeffrey’s two; Jamika did her two and Michael’s two; and that leaves two dishes. Debbie’s two.

Debbie’s defence is that she did a couple of plates of Michael’s salmon too – the easy salmon dish which was essentially taking the salmon out of the marinade and putting it on a plate. Debbie nods. Obviously Bob T has no appreciation of just how hard it is to plate salmon and so Debbie tells him that there was some time involved in this Herculean effort. Ultimately Debbie explains that she wasn’t there to plate six dishes, she was there to ‘expedite.’

Bob T hangs his head in defeat and mutters ‘Okay.’

The Padawans are sent upstairs then whilst the Jedi Council deliberate. In the hotel room Jeffrey goes off on Debbie for not orchestrating and organising things the way she was supposed to have done and chastises everyone for having complicated dishes which needlessly burdened the process. Debbie’s position is that ‘It’s all me at the end of the day.’ Jeffrey refuses to let Debbie play the victim when she’s anything but.

In the Council Chambers, Bob T applauds Jeffrey’s hosting and feels that it’s part of what being a star is all about. Lord Flay says that he found Jeffrey’s food to be ‘not so good.’ Jamika, says Susie, had a bad week but she believes in her as a talent. They are overwhelmingly in agreement that Melissa is turning out to be quite a resourceful and smart lady who can learn quickly. They feel that Michael came up with a couple of lame appetisers and then just tended bar. They also feel that his confession about not being able to stand the camera will be his undoing. Debbie has shown them all a very unattractive side of her personality this week. Yes her dishes were the best, but does the end justify the means of back-stabbing everyone?

The Padawans are called down to the Council Chambers and Susie explains that this is the hardest part but, in that there are only about 2 minutes and 40 seconds left in the show, Jamika is safe to move on to the next round. Lord Flay tells Melissa that she is safe as well. Ted Allen gives Jeffrey another chance. This leaves Debbie and Michael in the bottom two. Bob T explains again how difficult this is – especially since Debbie clearly did not own up to her lies – but Michael is shown the door. Not the Brown Door To Nowhere (because that’s back in New York). Michael tells us from the OSR that he was surprised – that everyone was surprised – and that the Food Network won’t forget him anytime soon, honey, because he ‘brought it.’ Or ‘buh-wrought it,’ as he says.

Next week, still in Miami, we will see the Padawans demonstrating their food and cooking skills on live TV. Jeffrey wonders what happened. Debbie will have all of her Asian ingredients taken away by Lord Flay (sweet!). Susie, in a light moment, will say that ‘It’s cuckoo to me!’  Someone shuts down, Debbie cries, and Bob T asks the burning question ‘Who is ready now?’

Indeed…

Just About Liveblogging The Next Food Network Star 5.4

Has it only been a week?

Well alrighty then…

Our six remaining Padawans trundle down to Chelsea Market (home of the Food Network) to face Lord Flay who announces that this next challenge will be much like their mid-terms where they will need to show their culinary skills and share their personal stories in their first-ever cooking demo ‘to camera.’ Debbie helpfully explains from the OSR that this challenge will be like their mid-term – because that was first explained almost four and a half seconds ago and we probably forgot about it in all the excitement.

Melissa tells us, also from the OSR, that Food Network stars have to cook and talk to the camera at the same time. Huh. I guess I never made that connection.

Then they are forced to turn to their left and watch a video which will explain more.

Rachael Ray appears suddenly to shout at them and talk about her organisation called Yummo, named from one of the lesser talented Marx brothers (after Lepp0 and Gummo), which is dedicated to two of her favourite things other than whiskers on kittens and warm woollen mittens – children and food.

The Padawans are to turn something traditionally thought of as ‘grown-up food’ (finger-quotes) into something more kid-friendly and healthy. Like a nice foie gras and a coq au vin.

Debbie wants to hang out and chat with Rachael Ray and be her friend. That’s nice.

In the interest of making this fun for all, Lord Flay tells the Padawans that they will be cooking with Brussels Sprouts, squid, and tofu. Yea! Kid-friendly!

Jeffrey and Jamika are teamed together and get the tofu (which Jeffrey has never cooked with and has no idea about how to use); Melissa and Michael’s team will get the sprouts, and Katie and Debbie get the squid. They have an hour to prepare their dishes and then will be judged accordingly by what Lord Flay calls ‘a panel of experts.’

On Team KD, Katie will make a calamari fruit salad (sorry, did I just make that noise out loud?) with Quinoa whilst Debbie goes for baked calamari with yams. Oh. There’s that sound again. Sorry.

On Team JJ, Jeffrey decides on a Spaghetti with tofu ‘chicken nuggets.’ He says he does not understand tofu. People say that you can make it taste like anything, so why not just eat the thing it’s supposed to taste like? he ponders. Jamika will do a corn and tofu wrap. There’s a fun surprise in tomorrow’s toilet.

Melissa of Team MM explains that the best way to introduce something  unusual or new to children is to attach it to a texture they know and like – such as Marmite and strawberry ice cream – so she is making what she calls ‘smashed potatoes.’ Plated cunningly next to these so-called ‘smashed potatoes’ she places a sliced, raw Brussels Sprout and a sliced cherry tomato. This seems rather like it’s not quite incorporating the desired ingredient  in quite the desired fashion. Michael, in the meantime, whose food is ‘funny and cool’ has devised a plan to entertainingly disguise his sprouts in a grilled cheese sandwich and to make deep fried Brussels Sprouts skewers. He also draws happy faces in what looks like a bowl of butterscotch pudding – which I am hoping is not the dipping sauce for the sprout skewers.

The ‘panel of experts,’ (to the great surprise of the Padawans for some reason) turns out to be three children. And also Rachael Ray, fresh from her video appearance just a few minutes before. I’m guessing this was supposed to be a surprise as well. Given the fact that she has been highlighted in this episode, and the fact that the episode is entitled ‘Rachael Ray,’ I would have been more surprised to see Mario Batali, but…

Each Padawan is given two minutes before the panel and the camera to demo their dish. Katie begins and seems to present her dish flawlessly and effortlessly, addressing the children in particular and making squid sound fun. The panel agree, enjoying her dish to the point that one of them can’t stop eating it to give his assessment.

Debbie falters a bit towards the end of her demo, to the wide-eyed disinterest of the panel, but they enjoy her food nevertheless.  Melissa, in her somewhat rushed demo, reveals that she pureed some Brussels Sprouts and put them into these so-called ‘smashed potatoes’ as well as putting them raw on the plate – something that Rachael Ray finds ‘a little weird.’

Michael explains in his demo that what appeared to be a butterscotch pudding dip with a smiley face is, in fact, a Brussels Sprout and tomato soup. He also presents his deep-fried sprout ‘puppets’ and then just rambles and stumbles and does his usual nonsense that makes you want to walk out of the room until he’s finished proving Einstein was correct about time being relative because two minutes with Michael seem like two hours in Hell.

Jeffrey pulls off the tofu spaghetti thing without a hitch, making Rachael Ray just a bit jealous it seems, but Jamika is there to bring her back to reality by totally pulling a Michael and just rambling on and on.

In the end, everyone gets kudos for something – even Michael – but Jamika is singled out by Rachael Ray for not cooking in her cooking demo.

After a commercial break we are jettisoned back to Food Network kitchens where Rachael Ray tells the Padawans they the very next day they will be on her show, the Rachael Ray show, she clarifies, where they will be doing the complete reverse of the challenge they just got finished doing – so they will be cooking kid food for adults. The teams will be as before: Katie and Debbie will prepare chicken nuggets and mac and cheese; Melissa and Michael get tomato soup and grilled cheese; Jeffrey and Jamika get hot dogs and baked beans. Oddly, however, they act as though this is the first time they have been paired in this fashion. Jeffrey says he hasn’t worked with Jamika yet, so he doesn’t know what to think.

Did no-one watch their last segment where they all worked in these same pairs?

As always they have forty-five minutes to shop (at West Side Market) and hilarity ensues. Melissa is entirely too organised for Michael, Debbie wants rich and heavy Southern food whilst Katie wants light and healthy, and Jeffrey and Jamika have no clear communication between them.

Back at the Food Network kitchens they have 90 minutes to prep for the next day’s demo. Team MM seem to be working together better in the kitchen than they did at the store. Michael is feeling confident that being in front of a live audience on the Rachael Ray show (with Rachael Ray) will be cake. A big, clumsy, unwatchable and desperately interminable piece of Relativity Cake.

Team KD are figuring things out well enough and Team JJ… well they just aren’t really playing nice. They aren’t really talking, not really collaborating, not really making franks and beans. It’s more like a jambalaya. And neither of them are willing to say anything bad about it, for fear of offending one another, and their hearts really just are not in this dish. Jamika tells us from the OSR that she thinks she’s next on the chopping block.

Once at Rachael Ray’s show, called Rachael Ray, starring Rachael Ray, the Padawans are thrust into the limelight as the Jedi Council watch from the safety of the Green Room. Team MM are up first and Melissa takes control as Michael stands beside her and makes yummy noises because he is like a deer in the headlamps with all of the cameras swirling round him – prompting Lord Flay to shout ‘Cook something, man!’ at the Green Room screen. Bob T says that Team MM are likeable personalities who looked like they weren’t having any fun until the last ten seconds of the five minute demo.

Team KD come out strong, except for Katie who does not look up enough to suit Bob T, and Debbie seems like a natural in front of the camera, except for the annoying part about constantly reiterating that she is Korean. Lord Flay asks, ‘Oh, is she Korean?’ as she beats the dead horse of her Korean heritage once again.

Team JJ make Bob T sad. Susie covers her face and hangs her head and Lord Flay stands up, sighs, and turns away from the television. It was a traffic accident. Jeffrey talked and cooked as Jamika stood statue-like, without a smile, nodding occasionally and then rushed through making beans in less than a minute. She feels that she did not have a second to shine, she tells us from the OSR. And their food is not to the liking of the Jedi Council.  ‘Tastes like raw, powdery spices,’ complains Bob T. ‘And a lot of them.’

Rachael Ray, who apparently has a programme called ‘Rachael Ray,’ arrives in the Green Room afterwards to discuss her views of the Padawan’s performance. The general consensus is that Team KD did the best job. Dragging everyone out in front of the live audience again, Rachael Ray tells the gathering that only five of the six Padawans will be moving on to the next challenge – in Miami.

Wow.

At the evaluation (finally), Bob T resumes the mantle of recapping the entire episode for the Attentive Impaired and then Susie Fogelson narrows her focus on ‘the ladies,’ ripping into Katie for presenting her dishes to the kids in a condescending manner (a view which, somewhat surprisingly, Lord Flay strongly disagrees with) and for not looking up during the Rachael Ray demo on the Rachael Ray programme. Strangely these were not comments we saw earlier during the actual demo. Also Susie felt that Katie’s chicken dish was bone dry and flavourless.

Debbie is praised for excellent performance and ease before the camera (at Rachael Ray’s show which apparently called ‘Rachael Ray’ and not at the children’s demo), but Lord Flay slams her for repeatedly explaining that she’s Korean. Debbie cries.

Melissa is told that she needs to the same calm Melissa in front of the camera as she is off and that she needs to share more of her motherly tips. Michael is asked what he sees when he looks into the camera: ‘The depths of Hell,’ he says. And that’s how you win big with television executives.

Next in the firing line is Jamika and Jeffrey, who are told they did not work well together nor did they look as if they were having fun.  Jeffrey is told by Bob T that he talked almost non-stop and Jamika did nothing but shut down. Susie does not entirely agree with this assessment, thinking that Jamika could have and should have asserted herself more but chose not to, unfortunate considering this is the half-way point and someone has to go home.

And speaking of which… Debbie is safe for the next round and is told by Susie that if she is going to ‘bring it,’ she best do so quickly. Melissa, told that she has a certain amount of expertise and knowledge that the others do not, is also safe.  And Jeffrey is told he can stay in a fairly unvarnished fashion by Lord Flay.

They are sent away leaving Katie, Jamika, and Michael in the final elimination. Then the ‘bottom three,’ as they are called by Bob T are also sent upstairs to wait as the Jedi Council discuss their fates. It is pointed out that Jamika seems to be backpedalling, that Michael’s admission that the camera is not his friend does not bode well for someone who wants to be on television (though this did not stop Aaron from winning last season, with a great deal of assistance and hand-holding from Lord Flay) and that Katie has been in the ‘bottom three’ for three consecutive weeks.

Ultimately, as it was fairly obvious by this point, Katie is shown the Brown Door To Nowhere. Kind of surprising to me given that, apart from some dry chicken, she did everything right this week. So that still leaves Jeffrey (my other projected potential winner) but I have a bad feeling that he may be next if he doesn’t stop being so one-dimensional.

Next time Jamika squeals in Michael’s ear, Ted Allen tells them that they will be cooking for a cocktail party at one of Miami’s hottest nightclubs, Michael tells a guy in a pink shirt to ‘Work it out!’, Bob T will tell someone that they struggled, Lord Flay will tell someone that their food was sloppy, and Melissa is in charge with zero help from anybody!

Oh. There’s that sound again…