By Kim
The cheftestants arrive in Alaska and face their first Quickfire: create a dish that highlights King crab. The winner is Sheldon for a take on miso soup with crab and pine-smoked asparagus. He wins some cash but no immunity.
Elimination Challenge: Create a dish using salmon and sourdough for the people of Juneau. They start out by preparing their dough; Lizzie is especially nervous because she has little experience baking in general and no experience with sourdough. The morning, they all get to go out on a boat and choose their salmon, complete with cleaning the fish. And here's what they served:
Brooke: sockeye salmon and seafood broth with mustard seed caviar and dill sourdough. The judges think the broth is tasty, and that she nailed the bread.
Sheldon: green tea and chive sourdough with smoked salmon and pea soup. Some of the judges don't like the bread, and that the salmon might be a little too smoky. They're also split on the soup.
Josh: roasted garlic sourdough soup with sockeye salmon and black olive croutons. The judges think the salmon is well-cooked and the soup is good, but they don't know if the two go together.
Lizzie: citrus and beet glazed salmon slider with poppy seed butter and pickles. Hugh points out that she has the best crust on her bread, but no one understands the glaze, which doesn't add a lot of flavor.
The locals voted on the winner, and the judges agreed: Brooke. She wins a trip to Costa Rica. And the judges decide to send Lizzie home because her salmon was underseasoned and her dish was too simple for this stage of the competition.
After Stefan's elimination, the final four lament his loss. Brooke gives him a backhanded compliment by saying she didn't realize how good-hearted and decent he was. Thanks, I guess? Sheldon can't believe how close he came to elimination. Josh reminds us that his wife is pregnant and due any day.
The boat arrives in Alaska and the cheftestants disembark. Sheldon tells us that he's going to wear a few extra pair of underwear to "keep the package warm." Now I'm thinking about Sheldon's bait and tackle, and I never wanted to think about that, ever.
The cheftestants find Padma waiting for them at a small food stand called Tracy's King Crab Shack. She is joined by Sean Brock, who's a big time Southern chef, and Josh's hero. Padma explains the Quickfire Challenge: Create a dish highlighting king crab. Sean says that his favorite dish is crab with butter, but that might be a little too simple for this challenge. They have thirty minutes, and the winner gets five grand.
Time starts and they all get busy stripping down layers of clothing and grabbing some crab. Lizzie loves that they're in this tiny shack in the shadow of this beautiful Alaskan mountain landscape, and she decides to make something rustic and filling. Brooke wants to make something delicate that highlights the buttery, briny flavors of the crab. She jokes that she won't have any crab to use in her dish because she keeps eating it. Josh wants to tip his hat to Sean's food by making succotash with, of course, bacon. Sheldon is still stinging from his near elimination, so he's trying to be creative and make something he's never done before. He's making miso soup from crab innards (ohhh...kay) and he's smoking some asparagus on pine needles. Won't that taste like a burnt Christmas tree? Josh runs into trouble because his butter sauce is breaking and he doesn't have time to fix it.
Time is up! Time to eat. Lizzie made crab frittata with cherry tomato, garlic oil and fried capers. Padma asks if she soaked the capers and Lizzie says she drained them. I don't use capers enough to know why that matters. Sheldon made King crab, Dungeness crab "miso", pine-smoked asparagus and charred corn. Sean wants to know about smoking with the pine and Sheldon says that he's seen it done before but never tried it himself. Padma says she likes the broth but it's a little thick.
Brooke made King crab, sweet corn and leek salad on toast with Dungeness crab butter. That sounds amazing. I would eat a million of those. Sean asks about the butter and Brooke says that she used the shells and meat of the Dungeness crab; Sean jokes that it's an expensive butter. Josh made butter poached King crab with succotash and bacon. Sean laughs that Josh had the balls to serve him succotash.