That Was Sexy

First, the Quickfire challenge. I personally like to do snails with curry. You need to have a good amount of fat and this is one of the times instead of using a lot of butter to cook them, I like to use coconut. I love snails. I think they’re meaty and not fishy at all. They can be a little chewy.

Kevin’s was pretty cool. Bacon with snails - that looked pretty top notch. The food is looking pretty tight.

The worst out of the 14 got another chance to redeem themselves with an amuse-bouche, but it didn’t look like they knocked it out of the park. I’m not happy to see anyone go home, but Jesse seemed kind of just hanging on by a string. Nothing has been terribly impressive. She had no reasoning behind her dish.

Let’s talk elimination. The one issue I had with this pairing thing was that historically, throughout the competition, you are assigned partners. With this choosing partners thing it’s kind of lame. It allows people to work together who have similar styles. This isn’t let’s see who we’re compatible with and then cook with this person. It’s just an issue I have with the challenge, specifically. Obviously you have some stronger cooks working together and they don’t want to be put under the knife. For the weaker folks, I just want to see some people with different styles bring it together.

I would have liked to cook a rabbit course for Joel. I love cooking rabbit. That would have been my number one. I’m pretty bored with lobster and beef tenderloin. It’s not very exciting to me. You make lobster with Sauce Americaine and it’s like lobster with lobster sauce. It’s not something I really care about cooking. I also would have really loved to do the trout with the béarnaise. Just because you’re in a French restaurant doesn’t mean you need to make the sauces classically. The deconstructed béarnaise was a little different, but everyone else cooked the sauces very classically.

I’m surprised Mattin did what he did. Making a straight-up veloute to me is pretty much the most boring thing you can do. I’m not really into starch thickeners. So, you make a chicken stock and you make a roux and you put them together and you cook it down. I don’t really want to eat that and I don’t think the chefs want to either. That is one of the most boring things in the world. Maybe I didn’t pick it up, but I could have sworn Ashley said to put asparagus in it. She did something. He said he didn’t remember. But, it was terribly boring. I respect the fact that she didn’t throw him under. I like her. She’s my dark horse. I was really impressed with her.

Everybody except for the two top teams went very classical. What I loved, which nobody commented on, with Bryan and Michael’s trout dish was soufflé at the end. If you were watching the plates go out you see what they did. You take the potato and you cut it in little rings, you take it out, you let it cool down, raise the oil, and then blanch it again. It creates this soufflé and you could see the little potato discs puffed up. That was sexy. None of the judges commented on that. It was tight.

Also, the way they prepared the fish I liked. If you’re going to serve skin on a fish you have to keep it crispy. There’s no point in keeping skin on fish if it’s not going to have texture. What he did was wrap it inside some plastic wrap, cured it or gave it a quick poach, and then portioned it so the exterior was on both sides. At my restaurant, I take chives and I tie it and wrap it so it’s edible. Then, I give it a little roast.

I thought Mattin should have gone instead of Hector. Maybe he saved himself because he came out speaking French. I think if Ashley would have thrown him down then Tom would have drove the bus right over him. But Hector had 4½ hours, so seriously? It was cut poorly and cooked poorly. That’s what happens when you don’t let meat rest. All the juice comes rushing out.

That's it for this week!

Harold

http://www.perillanyc.com/