Yes, that was exactly the moment I started to hate him. Unfrotunately, it looks like he’s extremely talented so we can likely look forward to a galling season.
I’m sure he’s there precisely because he’s a talented ass. All the best seasons had a good “villain”.
I think that’s when we all started to hate him, as I am sure the producers planned.
“I just got back from Monaco*, have you ever been**?”
- This made him approximately a 2^6th power douche
** NaN error generated trying to calculate
I think he actually said Monte Carlo, which is even worse imo.
I loved whoever it was that replied. Just “Yes,” and then they just stare at each other.
An interesting behind the scenes look at last week’s episode and some of the editing shenanigans (which should come as no surprise.)
“All of you no doubt are familiar with our judges, Gail Simmons, Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi” – this prompts some whistles and catcalls – “but we respectfully ask you to act nonchalant around them. We don’t want it to look on camera like people are ogling our judges.”
In other words: Please don’t pet the Padma.
I am appalled at the first episode! They (a) canned freaky hippie guy, who clearly would’ve been extremely entertaining. Plus he cried and said he’d let his family down. Aw. And (b) they failed to can—and then thoroughly mock—the woman who made diet liver mousse, an incredibly stupid idea, which she proceeded to execute incompetently. And then gave “I didn’t have my recipe book” as an excuse.
Well I think they made the right choice of who to send home. If at that level of competition you use store bought puff pastry as a huge part of your dish you dont deserve to be there.
“I have a great idea, I’m going to make a dessert despite not knowing how!” has been a dramatically bad idea for years now, so if he fell into that and didn’t pull it off, eh. I’m sure the die mousse girl will be gone before too long. Becuase she can’t have her recipes.
Based on their selected comments at judges table it sounded like they at least thought the mousse girl had some good ideas (setting aside the lowfat boner) just poorly executed whereas the dessert guy just failed across he board. I agree, though, that mousse girl is not long for this world.
Yeah, her excuse spiked my fishiness meter. I like that Tom C. called her on it, and grilled her about whether she really had “made it hundreds of times.” Then he let her off the hook, but she was still obviously lying.
Regarding tonight’s show:
Thank god.
Well, he sure as hell wasn’t going to make his own puff pastry. That takes hours and hours to make and years of experience. The main problem is that the dish just wasn’t prepared well.
Mousse girl knew what she did wrong, as evidenced in the in-episode reactions. It probably came out more during the questions / deliberations than was demonstrated.
Making a bad dessert that is a) 1/3 store bought when b) you weren’t required to make a dessert means you go home. Really, no surprise there.
Ssshhhh!
“Zathras likes to dance! Zathras loves to twirl!”
EDIT: Goddammit, wrong show. I’ve got The Next Food Network Star on the brain.
No, she really didn’t. That chick will be gone in the next couple of episodes. The whole concept of low-fat healthy chicken livers is silly for a reason– they don’t work. The mouth feel is wrong, which she knew (but served her dish anyway) and the fat covers up a lot of the more hardcore mineral offal flavor.
She could have recovered it. I would have strained it through a chinois, emulsified in some double cream in the food processor, added golden raisins plumped up with cognac, and piped it onto rounds of black bread topped with fully caramelized onions. Pretty classic preparation, nothing out of bounds, but it would have tasted good.
C’mon, how could she possibly have done any of that? She didn’t have her recipe book with her.
The impression I got was she knew the mouth feel would be wrong, but then didn’t have the time or materials to fix it. I think she explicitly states that she considered putting it through a chinois, but only had a few minutes left, so she opted not to. When she saw the result, she did what she could to save it on-site, which was not much.
Now, as to why she left the fat out to begin with, that’s a mystery. I don’t disagree that she’s probably not long for the show, but in terms of who deserved to go for this show, her issues were small fry compared to hippie-crazy man’s very bad dessert.
I agree, the hippy guy just didn’t understand the competition. Choosing 200 canape-sized servings with puff pastry and ice-cream? And not even making the pastry? Obviously that won’t work, from a baseline catering perspective. He lost for a reason. But mousse chick needs to go too. It’s always incredibly obvious who the weakest competitors are-- remember that indian broad from last season? Awful.
Even if she didn’t want to or have time to strain the mousse, it could still have been saved. Toss in some chopped up hard boiled eggs, caramelized onions, finely chopped crispy chicken skin (gribenes), and rendered chicken fat (schmaltz), mix, and schmear onto the very same black bread. Garnish with pickled beets. Voila, gussied-up jewish-style chopped livers. Not low-fat, though, I must admit.
Could have done some sort of paté too, now that I think about it, but it might not have had time to properly set.
Of course I have the luxury of time to think about it, but I’m not competing for Top Chef.
A lot depends on the exact rules of the competition, but I was under the impression that, on-site, they have exactly what they brought with them, so none of that would’ve been available. Any ides for saving the dish are moot, since she didn’t realize it was chunky and gross until she no longer had access to the materials required to fix it.