Top Chef

Top Chef is blowing my mind! Three chefs went up on the chopping block on Wednesday, December 3rd each for failures in their dishes that they were to present on television. One of them, a guy who was set to be married in a month chose to cook creme brule and there was no way that he had enough time to even PREP it, let alone cook it live. I bring up this marriage thing just so you know. Later I'll go into this a bit more.

The next chef (a woman) cooked an egg that was basically raw and when confronted about it in front of the camera (because she had also run out of time) she folded her arms and looked down as if she was all of five years old.

The last chef (also a woman) cooked shrimp that was so spicy that one of the professional chef judges said he considered it inedible. One of the other judges said that half of her mouth was throbbing.

This is ridiculously bad. The challenge was television related which means that you're playing to a huge audience. A huge audience does not usually consist of people who like things hot. I like things hot but going from what she was using, even I would never cook anything like that.

So right away I'm thinking that one of the women are going home. All the guy did that was wrong was pick a dish that was impossible to accomplish in the time permitted, a small mistake that didn't involve taste or personality and it is something I doubt any show's producers would give the go ahead (they would probably at least ask to confirm on ANY dish "You CAN do this in the allotted time, right?") on it anyway. The other two had serious problems, one serious, one wickedly serious. Raw eggs are bad and can lead to bad things, things you do not want all of America trying out (they'll sue you if things go bad). As bad as raw eggs are though, telling someone to use habaneros is pretty ballsy and very limited as far as the market goes.

True, the egg lady could have SAID toward the end when time was running out, "make sure you leave YOUR egg in the pan a bit longer so it cooks all the way through but since my time is limited I'm going to go ahead and plate this fairly raw egg just for demonstration." That would probably save her in the long run, at least with the audience. The judges are always a different story.

The shrimp lady was very vehement about defending her dish though claiming to the bitter end that she likes spicy food and basically called the judges pussies for not being able to take it. Then she mentioned sort of off hand that SHE wants to stay there very much while some OTHER people may want to leave (hint hint: the dude who's getting married in a month and has said that the competition is not the thing that makes his life) and the judges asked who did NOT want to be there and she said "Oh I don't know, but I'm just saying that I DO want to be here."

Weak. I'm sure if you turned the guy around there would be a boot print and tire marks from getting kicked under the bus.

So who did they send home? The guy.

BECAUSE THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL! Now, he wasn't my favorite chef of the season (Richard is still number one to me, it's a damn shame he had to go home) but I think as far as the challenge and results of said challenge went the dude should have gotten a scolding at best to be a little more thoughtful on his dishes in the future and the chick who was STILL SAYING HER SHRIMP WASN'T THAT SPICY should have gotten the boot.

On a slightly different note, one of the judges said to the shrimp girl that she should not have used habanero peppers because people who aren't experienced with handling such a hot pepper shouldn't even try. I paraphrased there.

I use habaneros in a dish I make and it only once has gotten the best of me (where I washed my hands THREE times and about a half hour after the last washing itched my eye and felt like my left eye was going to shrivel up and wave a white flag just before dying) so I felt pretty good that me, not even an amateur chef manages to work around the ticking time bomb that is the habanero.