Top Chef – Recap & Review – Red Hot Chili Cook Off

photo: bravo

Top Chef
Red Hot Chili Cook Off

Original Air Date: Nov 23, 2011

Ryan O – Two Cents Senior Reviewer
ryano@thetwocentscorp.com

This episode featured a Quickfire with an interesting method of determining the prize a chef could win. The Elimination Challenge is a chili cook-off at a rodeo.

Because it will eventually impact the show, I’ll include a quick recap on Last Chance Kitchen. Last Chance Kitchen is where eliminated chefs face off one-on-one. The winner stays to face the next chef eliminated from the show. Eventually, the chef left standing in the Last Chance Kitchen will re-enter the competition. (If you watch Survivor, it’s their version of Redemption Island, although I prefer it here since elimination is based on skill and not a collective decision by competitors to oust someone from the game.)

Quickfire

In the kitchen with Padma are guest judges and Top Chef: Masters alum Mary Sue Miliken and Susan Feniger. I enjoyed them a lot on Masters. They were talented and fun to watch.

Now this is an ingenious challenge. There’s half-dozen or so baskets on a table, each containing one type of chile pepper. The peppers range from very mild — poblanos — to the very, very hot — ghost chiles. The challenge is to make a dish highlighting one type of chile. On each basket, along with the name of the chile and its hotness rating is a dollar amount, which goes up as the heat goes up. So, if you win and use a very hot pepper, you win more. I like this a lot. (As far as I’m concerned, “chili” is how you spell the dish one makes and “chile” is how one spells the vegetable.)

Susan points out that they have to eat 15 dishes. Ha! Good luck to the three of them!

Here’s what some chefs made and the chile they used:
Beverly – Anaheim
Anaheim chile crudite with ssamjang paste (a thick, spicy paste in Korean cuisine)

Sarah – Fresno
Salmon belly seared with Fresno chile relish

Richie – Fresno
Fresno slaw with pineapple curd and seared bay scallops

Chris J. – Manzano
Seared chicken with Manzano vinaigrette
Let me just take a moment to comment on Chris J.’s personal styling. He’s wearing glasses, has a head band, AND he has sunglasses resting on his forehead. Glasses of any sort resting on the forehead are a no-no for all guys regardless but in his case, they go from being wrong to indicating dillholeness.

Chris C. – Thai
Coconut soup with Thai chile

Heather – Thai
Data and pistachio cous cous, pickled cucumber, red onions and Thai chile

Chuy – Habanero
Sauteed scallop with achiote (a fruit common in Mexico)

Grayson – Habanero
Habanero popper with cream lime sauce

Nyesha – Habanero
Baby fennel and rock shrimp salad with orange habanero vinaigrette

Paul – Ghost
Chilled coconut soup with Kaffir lime, ghost pepper relish

(The judges did taste the dishes in ascending order of spiciness of the peppers the chefs chose.)

Bottom 3
Beverly – didn’t do enough with the pepper to change or highlight it.
Richie – his dish was just one layer of sweet on top of another and he lost the power of the chile.
Chuy – his use of canned tomatoes overwhelmed the dish.

Top 3
Heather – using the Thai chili was exactly what the judges were hoping would come out of the challenge.
Grayson – the judges were impressed that she served them an entire habanero plus the dish was tasty.
Paul – the judges loved that he took the risk using the ghost pepper and they loved his dish.

Paul wins. He gets immunity and $20,000.

Elimination Challenge

They’ll be competing in a chili cook-off. They’re split into five teams of three. Also, there’s no time limit. They can keep cooking until they have to serve it the next afternoon at the rodeo. The winner will be chosen by people attending the rodeo.

Here’s what each team made:

Green – Sarah, Chuy, and Chris C.
Chili con carne
Tom thinks the flavor grows on you. His first bite was “eh” and it kept getting better after that. Gail thinks it’s a little thin.

Red – Dakota, Whitney, and Chris J.
Braised brisket and short rib chili
Gail likes the subtle smokiness and thinks it has the right amount of heat. Tom thinks it’s seasoned well. Mary Sue thinks the texture of the meat is a bit stringy.

Blue – Heather, Edward, and Paul
Smoked brisket chili with summer pickles
Gail loves the pickled peaches on the chili. Tom thought they did a great job with the vegetables and hot sauce but not so much with the actual chili.

Black – Nyesha, Beverly, and Richie
“Chili mole” with corn bread
Susan loves the corn bread. Mary Sue wishes they were able to focus their effort more on the chili. Padma does say they intended the chili to remind people of mole and it does that.

White – Lindsay, Grayson, and Ty-lor
Three bean and beef chili with poblano corn bread
Gail and Susan disagree about putting pickled vegetables into the chili — Susan liked it and Gail didn’t.
Tom thought Black’s was too sweet. Red’s meat texture was not pleasant. White’s chili had not enough heat.

Padma rides out into the middle of the rodeo ring and announces that Green won the cook-off by virtue of being selected by the crowd and that Black was the least favorite. She then announces that each chef from Black has 30 minutes to transform the losing chili into a new dish. They head into the kitchen at the rodeo.

Here’s what the three cheftestants made:
Beverly – Seared tuna with habanero creamed corn
Nyesha – Frito-encrusted black tiger shrimp with roasted corn salsa
Richie – Frito-encrusted pork tenderloin, potato hash and ricotta cheese chili puree

Susan says that Richie’s dish disappointed her; it lacked seasoning. Tom calls it one-note. Padma says he did do a lot in 30 minutes. Gail says that Nyesha’s dish was beautiful but she needed sauce (which she admitted in a solo-view to not getting on the plate). Tom calls the dish disappointing. Mary Sue says that Beverly took the mole and used it to her advantage.

Richie is told to go home.

Over on the Bravo website there’s the Last Chance Kitchen: Richie vs. Keith. Here’s a quick recap.
Challenge: Make Something New and Exciting from Thanksgiving Leftovers Using at Least Three Ingredients Provided
Richie works on making a corn bread puree but adds too much salt. He tries to rescue it but you can’t come back from that.

What they made:
Keith – used leftover ham, turkey, and sweet potatoes
Turkey and sweet corn hash, ham fritter, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie smear.

Richie – used macaroni and cheese, dark and light meat from the turkey, and green bean casserole
Turkey, green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese fritter, and corn bread puree

Tom says Keith did a good job with everything but didn’t need the pumpkin pie smear. He says Richie did some inventive things and he liked the mac and cheese fritter but the corn bread puree was a bit too salty and there wasn’t as much inventiveness on the plate as there appeared to be at first glance.

Tom declares Keith to be the winner. Richie goes home now and Keith awaits the next eliminated cheftestant.

What did you find to be tasty in this episode? Did you think anything was overdone? Give us your Two Cents below!