By Kim
Quickfire Challenge: Guest judge Dana Cowin presides over a dumpling-making competition. They each get a different kind of international dumpling and five minutes with a product-placed Internet-enabled tablet to research what they're making. Kuniko doesn't get a dumpling on the plate for judging. Carla doesn't understand the Internet (plus has a bandaged hand) so she doesn't even get to learn what her dumpling was supposed to be. Brooke doesn't manage to get any flour so her dumpling has no wrapper, which is kind of a meatball, right? Micah, Stefan, and Josie are the top three, and the winner is Josie.
Immunity Challenge. Create a Thanksgiving meal for the staff of a non-profit called Fare Start. The cheftestants are divided into two teams; one is headed by Tom Colicchio and the other is headed by Emeril. Here are the menus:
Emeril's Team: Cajun Thanksgiving:
Josie: triple spice turkey with cayenne and hot sauce. Apparently, Josie's never heard of a meat thermometer because the turkey is nearly raw inside. I mean, it looks like a ham, it's so pink. Good thing she has immunity.
Danyele: Emeril's mom's dressing, bread stuffing with chorizo and cayenne. Judges think it's okay but not much to say.
John: Emeril's cornbread stuffing with ground turkey and diced bacon. Judges also think it's okay with no much to say.
Kristen: assiette of root vegetables, parsnip truffle puree, and crème fraiche. Emeril liked the idea and Padma liked the presentation, but it was underseasoned and Tom didn't think the crème fraiche was necessary.
Tyler: andouille and shrimp gumbo. The judges thought it was a little bitter and lacking depth.
Kuniko: potato pave, which was raw and underseasoned. She once again screwed up the timing.
Sheldon: braised greens with ham hocks. Tom liked the flavor but thought they were undercooked.
Brooke: sweet potato buttermilk biscuits. The judges loved these.
Chrissy: white chocolate and pecan bread pudding. High marks.
John: spiced pumpkin and goat cheese ricotta torte. Judges liked the flavor but not the texture.
Tom Colicchio's team: Italian-inspired Thanksgiving
CJ: Braised turkey with Tom's stuffing. The judges think it's moist and the skin is great.
Carla: carrot soup with turkey meatballs. The judges love the creamy soup and say the meatballs are perfect.
Bart: fennel, gorgonzola, orange and pumpkin seed salad. There's that fennel again! Dana thinks it's great, but Padma thought it needed refinement.
Josh: sweet potato ravioli with pecans. Emeril thought the dough was tough and Tom explains how Josh made mistakes in forming the ravioli which led to the dough being too thick.
Micah: roasted Brussels sprouts with cranberries, bacon, and shallots. Dana thinks they're underseasoned and a little greasy.
Lizzie: potato puree. The judges know it's a basic dish, but think that Lizzie did an amazing job.
Stefan: panna cotta with orange cardamom crisp and candied pecans. Didn't he make something like this for the finals in his season? The judges don't love the jam, but Padma and Tom are divided on the use of cardamom.
Eliza: chocolate tart with white chocolate and mint syrup. The judges think it's a little much.
The judges unanimously choose Tom's team as the overall winners. Carla, CJ, and Lizzie are chosen as the top three, and Carla is the overall winner. CJ looks pissed because he not only cooked the turkey but also oversaw the entire operation. He's too classy to bitch about it, though.
The bottom four are Tyler, Kuniko, Sheldon, and Josie. Well, we know Josie's not going home because she has immunity, but the judges wanted to tell her that her team lost because her turkey was undercooked. Tyler's gumbo was underseasoned, Kuniko's potatoes were undercooked AND underseasoned, and Sheldon's greens were undercooked. When you put it like that, it's obvious that Kuniko's the one going home, and she does. She seems like a great chef, but she just wasn't cut out for this competition, where the clock is so important.
In fight news, Carla and Stefan mix it up during prep, and John gets on everyone's nerves in the Stew Room when he delivers him eighteen-billionth lecture on the magic of cooking and blah blah blah, and he gets in a scrap with CJ. CJ! The gentle giant! Yeesh.
Starting right out with the Quickfire this week! Padma introduces the cheftestants to their guest judge, who is a familiar face around these parts, Dana Cowin, editor-in-chief of Food and Wine magazine. Padma points to a world map behind her, and says that there are magnetic knife signs representing seventeen dumplings from seventeen different countries. They will each choose one in a scrum, and then have an hour to make it. Since some of the cuisine may be unfamiliar, they will also get to use a product-placed tablet to look up information about their chosen dumpling. Dana reminds them that she wants to see what they can do with a wrapper, a stuffing, and sauce. And...go!
Micah ends up getting screwed on the scrum and gets Kazakhstan, which he didn't even know was a country. Luckily, he can look it up online and find out that it's very Middle Eastern, and he's familiar with that flavor profile. Carla gets a fufu from Africa, and she struggles with her tablet since she's got a bandaged hand. That said, she had five minutes and couldn't manage to type fufu into Google? Apparently not. So she has to go into the kitchen and make...something? I guess she's just going to make it up.
Stefan got the German dumpling, which hardly seems fair, but we do get to see some photos of a young Stefan. Sheldon also know about his dumpling ahead of time, unlike most of the competition. Kuniko is making a dumpling that she rally likes, but rarely makes for herself. Josie has some philosophy about dumplings being love pockets or something? I don't know. Brooke didn't grab any flour so she can't make a wrapper. How can there not be enough flour? Did someone take more than their share? I don't understand.
Cooking, cooking, cooking. Plating, plating, plating. With ten seconds left, I don't know what Kuniko is doing, but she's not putting dumplings on her plate. I think she's putting on sauce and some garnish? Anyway, time runs out and she never plated her dumplings. Is this a language issue? Like does she not understand what they're saying when they say "One minute?" I feel badly for her but she didn't look like she was even in a rush; it's not like when people haven't plated in the past, but it was because they misjudged cooking time or whatever. Her food was done. She was saucing and garnishing the plate in an unhurried manner. Weird.
Stefan is up first for judging with his German klopse, which is ground lamb, mashed potatoes, and capers. Lizzie made Hungarian szilvas gomboc, which is plum and cinnamon filling in a potato pastry. That doesn't sound good. Potato pastry with fruit? Carla made whatever, but it's wrong, so who cares. CJ made a Polish pierogi which is veal and pork and a demi-glace. I mean, who hasn't had a pierogi? Kuniko has an empty plate, and Padma explains that they can't judge her. Josie made Korean mandu, which has a pork, tofu, and shitake mushroom filling. Dana asks if kim chi is traditionally a part of this, and Josie says it is. So did Josie put kim chi in there? I don't know. Bart made Norwegian potetball, which is a potato ball with lamb and fried spaghetti. Dana asks about the fried spaghetti, and Bart says he wanted to add texture.
Kristen (whose name I keep wanting to be Jen or Jenny for some reason) made the Nepalese momo, which has pork and chicken liver with ginger and cumin. John made the Swedish kropkaka, which is a potato dumpling with béchamel sauce. That's a lot of white on that plate. Padma and Dana joke about the name, because how can you not? Dana questions the use of béchamel. Dana is psyched to meet Sheldon, because her magazine named him one of the best new chefs. He made the Chinese jiaozi, a pork and shrimp filling with shitake mushrooms. Brooke had the Indonesian siomay, which has chicken and shrimp with peanut sauce and daikon. Sounds delicious if she could have made a wrapper. She explains the no-flour problem to Padma, who is as dubious as I was. Micha made the Kazakhstanian manti, which is ground lamb with dates, curry, and cinnamon. Dana likes how bold the flavors were.
I forget that in the early going, they don't show everyone in the Quickfire. I mean, thank God they don't, since there are seventeen of them. After the break, Dana says that she loved how much some people succeeded creating food from other cultures. The failures were Brooke with no wrapper, Carla with her whatever, and Kuniko, who didn't plate anything. With the losers out of the way, Dana says that she liked Josie, Stefan, and Micah's food the best. They were all authentic and flavorful. And the winner is...Josie! Stefan is pissed, since he was making one of his childhood dishes.
Padma jumps right to the Elimination Challenge, and says they'll be cooking a Thanksgiving meal for a non-profit called Fare Start, which provides culinary training for poor and homeless people. Padma divides them into two teams and then calls Tom Colicchio and Emeril into the kitchen. The judges will each be leading a team. I'm psyched to see these two cook. One team will win, and one member of the losing team will go home, as usual.
Tom and Emeril greet their teams. Emeril wants to make a Creole New Orleans meal, while Tom is leaning more traditional Italian food. Josie tells Emeril that she has immunity, so she's happy to "push the envelope" with the turkey and take responsibility for that. It makes sense - no one else will want to cook the turkey because, honestly, once you put it in the oven, there's not much to do, and yet it's so, so easy to screw up. Emeril seems to be more dictating to his team what dishes need to make, while Tom just tells them to take traditional American Thanksgiving dishes and put an Italian twist on them.
And the prep begins! Tyler is psyched to be getting a one-on-one lesson from Emeril in how to make gumbo, and who wouldn't? Emeril helps him get the roux started. John gets brownie points from Emeril for suggesting bacon and jalapeno in the cornbread stuffing. Tom, meanwhile, approves of Micah using bacon in his Brussels sprouts dish, and Micah is psyched that Tom is giving them freedom. Tom is surprised how fast the clock moves while you're cooking. See, I wanted them to do a Quickfire or something. Brooke is making sweet potato biscuits for Emeril, and she plans to sweeten the butter. Carla is making turkey meatballs for Tom, and she's worried about the timing but she can't say no to him.
My favorite moment of the night because it's totally something that I would do: Chrissy says "bam" when she dumps some vanilla into a mixture that Emeril is whisking. And then she's really pleased with herself and Emeril is totally not paying attention. That's how most of my jokes go over with my husband. Like the other day my kid was coloring Muno from Yo Gabba Gabba except he used a blue crayon (Muno is red) and I said, "That's not Muno, it's Blue-no!" No response. So I said it again, louder, and waggled my eyebrows and my husband just rolled his eyes and sighed. Come on.
Tom lets Emeril sample his stuffing. That's not a euphemism. Josie is stuffing her turkey. Then Emeril and Tom josh each other about their hometown football teams and this suddenly turned into Iron Chef. CJ has decided to oversee his team, but isn't that Tom's job? I don't understand why CJ needs to do it, unless Tom is just a figurehead.
The day, the teams arrive at the location and start prepping and cooking. Stefan just starts yelling at people because he doesn't have enough room to work. No one seems to be giving into his demands to move; could it be because he just started screaming that they needed to go? Maybe he could have asked politely instead of cursing and yelling? Jeez, take a chill pill, Stefan. Carla finds him funny, because he's crazy.
CJ checks in with his team and thinks that they're looking really good. He's especially excited about the foie gras in their stuffing. Like he can't stop talking about it. John is making the stuffing and the pumpkin torte for his team, and Kuniko is helping him prep because her dish is really simple. She's making potato pave, and she's determined to time everything right. Kuniko also helps Tyler make his rice. She's a big helper, but I hope it's not to the detriment of the dish she'll actually be judged on, her own.
Josh and his stupid moustache and his stupid hat are making sweet potato ravioli. Lizzie is making mashed potatoes, which she knows is not super creative, but she plans to make them perfectly, based on her training in a French restaurant. Kirsten asks Kuniko how her dish is coming, and Kuniko says she hasn't touched it, but she thinks she has time. Uh oh. I'm worried.
Tyler talks about how his Thanksgiving tradition was getting really drunk, and then he interviews that he's struggled with alcohol for twenty-five years and he's been sober for seven months. And then that's all we hear about that so presumably it's going to come up later? Meanwhile, Josie and Sheldon are checking their turkeys (not a euphemism) and realize that the oven is too hot and the turkeys are burning on the outside, so she turns down the oven temperature. Do these people not have meat thermometers? How do you even know if something that big is done without a meat thermometer, especially with finicky ovens? My meat thermometer has saved my family from many bouts of food poisoning, I am sure.
Tom and Emeril walk in to finally check in on things? I thought they were leading the teams? Tom likes the looks of his team's turkey, but Emeril notes that Josie's turkey is looking burned. Emeril and Tom walk around and sample all of the dishes and then leave. Is that how you lead a team of chefs? I could do that.
Carla finds CJ and Stefan tasting her soup and she flips out and tells them that it isn't seasoned yet and is just yelling random syllables as they explain that they were just trying it and don't worry about it. They didn't offer any critique at all. She is crazy. CJ is just looking at her like, "WTF lady?" and Stefan says, "Carla, honey, relax." Then Carla starts flipping out that all the guys are calling her sweetie and honey. Look, I get that Carla has probably had to deal with a lot of macho Italian guys who were condescending to her and assumed she didn't need to cook, and Stefan is also very condescending, but she seriously needs to take it down a notch or SEVEN because she's going to blow a gasket.
Fifteen minutes until service and the people from Fare Start arrive along with the judges and their guests. They're all wishing each other Happy Thanksgiving even though it's probably like July when this is being filmed. Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, plating is happening for Emeril's team. And then it's time to serve.
Emeril's team serves first, and Josie comes out to explain that they have prepared a Cajun Thanksgiving, starting with Josie's triple spice turkey with cayenne and hot sauce. The judges and guests dig in and Tom is the first to notice that the turkey is undercooked, as he shows Emeril his plate. Dana Cowin notes brightly, "It's a little pink!" And then they show a shot of the carved turkey and holy hell is that thing undercooked. I mean, the first inch or so from the skin is white but then the rest of it is as pink as a ham. That's disgusting and kind of inexcusable in my mind. Emeril tries to save it by saying that at least it's well seasoned but Dana Cowin says it's mostly inedible. Josie interviews that she wasn't sure if the turkey would be overcooked and dry. I really need like a graduate-level seminar on how she thought that turkey could possibly be overcooked. She didn't make any other dishes? What was she doing?
Danyele made Emeril's mom's dressing, bread stuffing with chorizo and cayenne. Dana and the guest judge, Thierry, think it's tasty with a nice kick. Similarly, John made Emeril's cornbread stuffing with ground turkey and diced bacon and Tom notes that properly seasoned stuffing is always so good. I'll agree on that, Tom. Bland stuffing is terrible, but moist stuffing with lots of flavors is my favorite.
Kristen made assiette of root vegetables, parsnip truffle puree, and crème fraiche. Emeril liked the idea of the dish, but thought they were underseasoned, and Tom didn't see the point of the crème fraiche, but thought the vegetables were fine. Tyler made andouille and shrimp gumbo. Emeril says that it's a little bitter on the finish, and Thierry agrees that it's lacking flavor and depth. Emeril pinpoints the problem as lack of Worcestershire sauce and hot sauce. Did Tyler just forget? Or decide not to follow Emeril's recipe?
Kuniko made potato pave. Padma tries to cut into it and realizes it's raw, and Dana concurs, so it's not like one corner didn't get cooked due to an inconsistently heating oven. Tom adds that it's underseasoned to boot. Speaking of things that weren't cooked long enough, Sheldon made braised greens with ham hocks and everyone but Padma agrees that they're undercooked.
Brooke made sweet potato buttermilk biscuits and Dana can't get enough of them, calling them "sweet and tender." Tom notes that they could be a new tradition. The judges are similarly full of praise for Chrissy's white chocolate and pecan bread pudding. That sounds awesome. John's spiced pumpkin and goat cheese ricotta torte doesn't fare quite as well; the judges like the flavor but thought the pumpkin was a little grainy, which John knew.
Overall, Dana thinks the team had good balance on the plate and did a good job planning their dishes to go well together. Emeril grins and spreads his arms wide to take credit.
Weird interstitial: Carla and Stefan continue their fight. Carla points out that Stefan calls the women honey and sweetie and the guys chef. Stefan interviews that he needs to be careful around Carla because she has a short fuse and he's heard her ex-husband is in the New York mafia.
Tom Colicchio's team serves their Italian-inspired Thanksgiving . CJ is still overseeing everything, walking around and offering up suggestions and affirmations, and coordinating the plating to make sure that all of the food gets out there. Stefan starts freaking out and CJ tries to calm him down. Finally, CJ comes out to start with his braised turkey with Tom's stuffing. He explains that Tom's stuffing was passed down through the generations and Thierry scoffs at that notion, since the stuffing contains foie gras. CJ demurs that he's just saying what Tom told him, and Tom just smiles. Tom tells the judges that there was probably three pounds of butter stuffed under the skin. The judges can't get over how delicious the turkey is; it had better be with all that butter and CJ's constant basting.
Carla made carrot soup with turkey meatballs. Emeril says its "fantastic," and Dana praises the perfect meatballs and creamy soup. I can't see carrot soup tasting that great, but I'll take their word for it.
Bart made fennel, gorgonzola, orange and pumpkin seed salad. There's that fennel again! Dana thinks it's a great idea to have a slightly bitter green salad as a palate cleanser, and thinks it's well dressed, but Padma thinks it needs refinement. I'm not sure what that's code for in this instance. Maybe it needed less stuff in it?
Josh made sweet potato ravioli with pecans and Emeril calls it the weakest thing on the plate, mostly because the dough was tough. Tom is some sort of ravioli expert and explains how you have to thin out the dough on the edges, where it's doubled, so that it's equal thickness to the part that goes over the filling. That actually makes a lot of sense, but if I'd never made ravioli before (and I haven't), I probably wouldn't think of that. I don't know how much experience Josh has with it.
Micah made roasted Brussels sprouts with cranberries, bacon, and shallots. Thierry goes back for seconds, but Dana thinks they are greasy and Tom points out that they're not well seasoned, compared to everything else on the plate. Conversely, Lizzie's potato puree gets high marks from both Emeril and Dana, who admit that they were surprised to see them on the plate, since they're such a basic dish, but Lizzie hit a homerun with them.
On to desserts. Stefan made panna cotta with orange cardamom crisp and candied pecans. Thierry doesn't love the jam because he thinks it's too sweet. Padma adds that there's too much cardamom, but Tom says it's his favorite part of the dessert. Eliza made a chocolate tart with white chocolate and mint syrup. Emeril thought the first bite was delicious, but the chocolate was overwhelming on subsequent bites, and Thierry agrees that it's too much chocolate.
Tom and Emeril decide to duck out of the discussion of which team should win, since they are obviously biased. The rest of the judges vote, and it's unanimous that Tom's team did a better job.
Tom and Emeril tag back in for discussion of who's going home from Emeril's team. Dana brings up Tyler's gumbo, which was all wrong in terms of texture and spiciness, and Thierry adds that screwing up the gumbo in a Southern meal is a huge violation. Emeril reminds them of Sheldon's greens, which had all the necessary ingredients, but weren't cooked down enough, and Tom agrees that they really only needed another five minutes on the stove. And finally, Emeril brings up Kuniko, and he can't believe that she didn't taste a bit of her potatoes while cutting them. Tom points out that she didn't even have to taste them; just cutting them should have revealed that they were nearly raw. Tom brings up Josie's name; she has immunity and can't be sent home, but he feels that she needs to hear that she blew it for her team.
The judges all depart (with Padma giving the least convincing and most snarky "Happy Thanksgiving" ever, since we all know this was filmed in the summer), and Padma heads to the Stew Room to tell Tom's team that they won. She asks to see CJ, Carla, and Lizzie. Those three head to Judges' Table where Padma tells them that their team gave the diners a "near-flawless meal." Padma starts out by complimenting Carla's carrot soup and Tom jokes that he had no idea what she was doing because she said she was making a cabbage soup and he kept looking for the cabbage. Lizzie clarifies that Carla was saying carrot the whole time and Tom just didn't understand. Heh. Emeril compliments Lizzie's simple yet delicious potatoes, and Dana says she hit the mark of Joel Robuchon's "half butter half potato" recipe. That sounds fucking awesome. Tom knows CJ took on a leadership role as well as cooking a perfect turkey. So the winner is...Carla! CJ looks super bummed; I think he thought that making a great turkey PLUS overseeing everything would push him over the top. That's just speculation, though. Carla can't believe she won; she's thrilled.
CJ goes into the Stew Room and sends back Tyler, Kuniko, Sheldon, and Josie. Once they leave, John continues what seems like has probably been an ongoing lecture about Emeril's Portuguese beginnings. Danyele acts interested, but CJ and Josh are both pretending to fall asleep and muttering under their breath; you get the vibe that John never shuts up about how much he knows about cooking.
Meanwhile, the bottom four are facing the judges. Padma tells them, like they didn't already know, that they are the bottom four. Tom tells Josie that she can't go home, but she's there because she caused her team to lose with her undercooked turkey. Josie is surprised to hear that it was undercooked; she will be horrified when she sees the footage of her pink turkey. Emeril asks Tyler what the fudge happened to his gumbo, and Tyler doesn't know, although he finally says he should have added more Worcestershire and Tabasco sauce at the end, which is exactly what Emeril said while tasting it. Dana has to tell Kuniko that her potatoes were undercooked. She claims that she was pushed on time, and Tom says that she had five hours to make it. Josie tries to defend her by saying that Kuniko was helping out a lot of people, and Padma says that's fine, but they have to judge Kuniko based on the potatoes they were served, which were plain and undercooked. Ouch. Dana tells Sheldon that his greens were undercooked, but Sheldon says he was worried about his greens getting mushy. They've introduced a new time-wasting tactic during Judges' Table where they insert interviews of each chef talking about how they don't want to go home, etc. It's boring. Stop that.
Finally, after many shots of everyone staring at everyone, Tom says that they mostly made a great Thanksgiving meal. Tyler's gumbo was weak and underseasoned. Josie is lucky to have immunity because her undercooked turkey lost the competition for her team. Kuniko's potatoes were raw and underseasoned. Sheldon's greens were seasoned well but undercooked. It's pretty obvious who's going home when you look at it. Josie can't. Tyler's was underseasoned, and Sheldon's was undercooked. Kuniko's was underseasoned AND undercooked, so she's going home. Padma makes it official. In Kuniko's exit interview, she says that it meant a lot for her to come there and try, and she has no regrets, because she wouldn't want to ignore her teammates and stay. She's glad she helped everyone. I think she's a good chef who's not right for this competition. She couldn't get the timing thing down, which may not be as necessary when cooking in a restaurant, but you can't win this competition if you don't put food on the plate.
After Kuniko leaves, those left in the Stew Room do that thing where they sit around and talk about how much they admired the person sent home; it's their version of a wake. Josh says something nice about how this shows that anyone can go home at any time. John pipes up that if you can't cook potatoes, you don't belong there and CJ raises his eyebrows. That was pretty ill-timed. Brooke defends Kuniko and John shoots back that if you can't taste your food once in five hours, your mind is someplace else. CJ points out that his comments are ill-timed and that everything turns out to be a lecture with John. John says he's not lecturing and CJ is full of shit. CJ! The nicest person in the world! This is going to get ugly, but not until week at least.