By Samantha Zalaznick
It's Top Chef
Thanksgiving! Food and Wine EIC Dana Cowin kicks it off with a dumpling
quickfire. There are 17 types of dumplings from 17 countries. Cowin has eaten
her weight in dumplings (she's small, we've eaten double that) and she wants to see what they
can do with a wrapper, stuffing and sauce (nice Thanksgiving tie-in). They have
five minutes to research their dumpling and for Micah to find out Kazakhstan
isn't just Bruno's made-up country. The lesser dumplings all failed on a
technicality. Brooke didn't have flour for a casing, Carla couldn't use the
Kindle with her broken hand to read the recipe so she made it up and Kuniko didn't get hers on the plate in time. Josie's Korean
Mondu, Stefan's German Klopes (when he was young he had hair and ate klopes)
and Micah's Kazakhstan Manti are on top. Josie wins immunity.
On to Thanksgiving, it's Tom vs. Emeril. They're each leading
a team (a Top Chef first!) to cook Thanksgiving dinner for culinary community program FareStart. Emeril's
lived in New Orleans for the last 30 years so he does a Creole Thanksgiving and
Tom does an Italian American Thanksgiving. For the turkey, they both have the
same advice: stuff a ton of butter in there. Tom and Emeril seem like they're
having a blast in the kitchen and all the chefs are super excited to be working
with them. Chrissy's an Emeril fan, "Can I say Bam? Bam!"
The Emeril-led Creole Thanksgiving has its ups and downs. The
biggest problem is the turkey made by Josie with immunity. The whole time she
worried it was going to be overcooked and it's practically raw. They loved
Brooke's sweet potato biscuit, Danyele's chorizo and cayenne stuffing and
Chrissy's white chocolate and pecan bread pudding (yum). Tyler's gumbo is
bitter and lacking depth (and Worchester and hot sauce). John nails the
cornbread dressing but his deconstructed pumpkin pie is too grainy. Kristen's
root vegetables are under-seasoned, Sheldon's braised greens are good but
undercooked. It's not a good night for Kuniko, her potato pave is raw.
Tom and Emeril can't vote because they're biased but the
Tom-led Italian Thanksgiving wins unanimously with the rest of the judges.
Almost everything is works. The weakest thing on the plate is Josh's sweet
potato ravioli, the dough is too thick. They don't love Stefan's panna cotta or
Eliza's too spicy chocolate tart but CJ's turkey is roasted to perfection. They
love Carla's carrot soup with turkey meatballs and Cowin tells Lizzie she hit
the Joël Robuchon high mark of half butter half potato in her mashed potatoes.
Carla takes the win.
Tyler, Kuniko and Sheldon are on the chopping block. They'd
like to send Josie home for her raw turkey but they can't. It's Kuniko. She won
last week but everything fell apart for her tonight. She says she has no
regrets because if she didn’t help anybody and only took care of herself that's
worse than her going home. Awwww. That's the holiday spirit.
Happy Thanksgiving!
It's always interesting to watch Top Chef and learn a new thing or two (or three) from up and coming chefs and seasoned mentors. What I learned from episode 3 is that I will NEVER go to or recommend an Emeril Lagasse restaurant, after watching that man put his nasty fingers in pot after pot (and licking them in between) - disgusting! He's not barefoot and cooking in his home kitchen; he's cooking food for a major event. He should respect the dinner guests enough to practice basic hygiene. (Didn't Tom excise one of the cheftestants for identical behavior in episode 1?). C'mon Top Chef, surely you all can afford tasting spoons.
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