Quickfire Challenge

We start this week off with a familiar face. The chefs are introduced to everyone's favorite (especially the girls) chef from season two - Sam Talbot! We all know he should have won.

The chefs are given the task to make a "sexy salad" in 45 minutes, a rather long amount of time to make a salad if you ask me. This, of course, only means that the chefs better create some amazing salad, or they're in for it!

Sam was not a fan of Richard's salad, Stephanie's unfinished fall flavored salad or Lisa's grilled squid salad, despite the high end ingredients. It's interesting how some of the best chefs this season were all in the bottom three. Dale and Antonia both did well with their unique salads, but Spike took the win with his beef and pineapple salad.

Chef Ramsay starts the morning off with some homemade food for the chefts. He produces three dishes: chicken parmesan, sausage ravioli and beef stew. He tells the chefs there is one ingredient missing in each and asks what the missing ingredient is. The trick is - there was no meat in any dish, it was all soy. None of the chefs are able to spot the difference, angering Ramsay.

After the taste test, the chefs are lined up to do another taste test, expect this one is blind (and soundproof). The chefs are asked to taste a variety of foods while wearing a blindfold and headphones. The women seem to do much better than the men. It is kind of surprising that Bobby (an executive chef) can't identify a truffle when he tastes one. The last two up are rivals Ben and Matt (he is on the red team now remember?). Who said Hell's Kitchen can't do poetic justice?

Quickfire Challenge 

This week we start off with... no guest chef. The chefs are greeted by plain ol' Chef Tom Colicchio and Padma. Right off the bat Padma drops the first bomb - from now on the Quickfire Challenge does not grant the winner immunity. She then asks the chefs to divide into two teams, the Forks and the Spoons.

Then the chefs learned they would be doing one of our favorite Quickfires - the relay race. The first task was between Lisa and Antonia to slice an orange. Lisa smoked Antonia and gave her team a head start. The next task was between Spike and Andrew - to de-construct an artichoke. With the help of a peeler, and Spike breaking an artichoke top, Andrew quickly broke up his artichoke and picked up the slack. Up next, Richard and Dale, who were pretty much head to head. They had to clean up a monk fish and produce two fillets which they do at pretty much the same time. The last task was to make homemade mayo. Stephanie and Nikki both beat the crap out of some eggs to make a mayo. Apparently Stephanie has stronger arms and her mayo gave her team the win.

Two notes: No one was able to shock viewers as much as Hung did last season when he broke down the chicken. Also, was this foreshadowing or what? Dale couldn't stand that Nikki said she hadn't made mayo since culinary school. We just know this means drama for them later in the episode.

The First Mini Challenge

After it was decided that no one was sent home last week, the chefs went back to their rooms to relax - and talk smack. Bobby and Ben form a semi-alliance and talk about how lazy Matt is. All the women seem to dislike Christina, but I think it's just jealousy.

The next day Chef Ramsay takes the chefs to a farmers market and informs them they will be cooking for a sweet sixteen party (oh boy). He tells the teams they have to make a tasting menu to serve to Ramsay so he can decide what will be added to the full time menu that night for the honored guest. They are given fifteen minutes to shop before they head back to prep for the main event (wait a minute - am I writing a Top Chef blog or a Hell's Kitchen blog?).

Back at the kitchen the chefs have 45 minutes to make two appetizers and one entree for the tasting menu. Throughout prep Matt complains he has no voice and doesn't agree with his team's menu. When it comes time to present the dishes to Chef Ramsay, he asks if any of the team members have been to a sweet sixteen party recently. Matt informs the chef he has, but was not allowed to influence his team's menu, which is unbelievable to Ramsay.

Ramsay, of course, has the sweet sixteen girl, Melissa, and her mother come out to try the dishes. Between the chicken and the shrimp appetizer and the buffalo wings, the princess chooses the men's wings. Her next choice is the women's fish and exotic rice. For her third dish, it was between a fillet minion and a skirt steak. After some serious thought (and possibly her mom's two cents) she decides to go with the men's dish, giving the men the win.

As the men go out for their reward, the women are given the task of decorating Hell's Kitchen -- luckily with the help of a "sparkelicious" decorator. And of course no party planing is complete without the mother stopping in to tell the chefs they are doing it wrong. Meanwhile the men went to a local go-kart track to release some stress.

 

Quickfire Challenge 

This week's celebrity guest chef is none other than Art Smith, Oprah's personal chef (it is Chicago, remember) and owner of the restaurant Table 52.

The chefs are quickly told they must create a simple, tasty entree - in fifteen minutes! It's going to be a madhouse!!! Luckily they get to use good ol' Uncle Ben's quick cooking rice (who was clearly a sponsor).

After pure chaos, the guest chef tastes each cheftestant's quick entree. Art was not a fan of Mark's dry miso turkey breast, Stephani's rice pancake (not good sounding at all) or Lisa's southwest dish which was not very original. Chef Smith loved Dale's fried rice and scallops and Antonia's rice salad, one of her mother's homegrown dishes that she loves. Antonia wins the challenge and gets immunity. She better call her mom and thank her for that recipe!

Elimination Challenge

Sticking with the Oprah theme, the chefs are asked to share their culinary skills with the common folk and devise a healthy, nutritious, and (above all) tasty meal for a family of four. But the catch is the dish has to cost under ten dollars. How are they going to pull this one off?

After a trip to Whole Foods ( and Mark ripping it up on the Didgeridoo -- an Australian instrument), the chefs head to the kitchen to start working on their ten dollar meals. There Padma throws the chefs a curve ball and tells them they will have a little help with their meals - literally. The chefs are paired up with a team of little kids from Chef Smith's school, Common Threads! How fun!

Thirty seconds into cooking Spike's little chef cuts himself peeling carrots. After a quick wash, the kid hops right back on the horse and keeps peeling. Thatta boy!

This week, Vanessa is back, but from last week's injury, she is unable to do much. She says she will need plastic surgery. I have a feeling this will be a problem this episode. Poor girl.

In the morning, Chef Ramsay shows the chefs his white truffle onion pizza - worth $200. The chefs are challenged with providing their very own high end pizza. Man I'm getting hungry.

After all the chefs each make a pizza, they try each other's to pick one to perfect and present to Chef Ramsay. The women choose Jen's pizza rather quickly, while the men have a little more of a problem. They debate between pizzas and Ben calls out Louross' pizza for being similar to a pizza you would get at Pizza Shack. Ouch. Finally the men (well actually just Ben and Bobby) decide to serve Ben's pizza.

Quickfire Challenge

As the chefs walk into the kitchen this week they are greeted by tables covered with pastries, chocolate cakes, and everything else that is yummy and sweet. They are then introduced to this week's guest chef, James Beard Award-winning Executive Pastry Chef of Jean-Georges, Johnny Iuzzini. Wonder what this quickfire will be all about.

Padma begins to point out that usually in Top Chef, the one killer is the dessert. So, to test this theory, the quickfire challenge this week is for the chefs to make their best dessert. The winner will get their recipe in the new Top Chef cook book.

Johnny was not a fan of Antonia's lemon cake and Spike's rum-cake souffle, despite his effort. Dale's traditional dessert won over our guest judge, while Richard's faux scallops (banana) over a dessert guacamole won big points for creativity. So big in fact, Richard won the challenge and immunity for this week.

Elimination Challenge

After the quickfire, the chefs learn they get to go to Second City, the birth place of improvisational comedy in America.  But as we all know  when the chefs are sent to enjoy themselves, well, they are never just sent to enjoy themselves. At one point in the show, the Second City cast starts to have the audience yell out a color, an emotion and a food used in cooking. Guess what those suggestions turned out to be? The chefs soon learn that they will be cooking a five course meal based on the suggestions yelled out by the audience. This should be good.

Immediately after last week's elimination, Chef Ramsay continues to spew insults as the chefs head back to the dorms. The chefs think they can relax and head to bed, but Ramsay doesn't let them. He sends them back to the kitchen to clean it. Corey (who is still on bad terms with everyone since she tried to eliminate two strong team members a couple of weeks ago) leaves early before all of the cleaning is done. Clearly she's not winning any points with her teammates.

The next day Chef Ramsay informs the teams that Hell's Kitchen will be opening up for a special family dinner service with a new menu. He then shows them how to make fresh pasta for the new menu, which just so happens to be the teams' first challenge. They have twenty minutes to make the most pieces of perfect pasta they can. After Chef Ramsay inspects the pasta, he weighs it. The women beat the men by over a pound of pasta, sending the men into the kitchen for prep work. The women, on the other hand, get to spend their day at the amusement park.

At the beginning of service Chef Ramsay tells the teams that whichever team completes the dinner service first automatically wins. Should be some incentive to finally finish a service!

I hope everyone has cooled off from last week. And if not, this week's episode might help.

Quickfire Challenge

This week's Quickfire put a huge smile on my face as soon as the chefs walked into the kitchen. They were greeted by this week's guest judge Koren Grieveson, owner of Chicago's Avec restaurant, and sixteen pitchers of delicious beer. The challenge for the chefs is to create a dish to pair with one of the sixteen beers. Mmmmmm. My mouth is watering already.

While tasting the dishes, Chef Koren seems to have a great poker face and doesn't say much.

Spike didn't win the chef over with his boring tapas and clams plate. Richard and Stephanie both did well by using ingredients in their dishes that were similar to what was in their chosen beer (duh). But the winner was Jen with her beignets. Clearly she channeled her emotions from losing Zoi last week and used them for good. Good for her.

Elimination Challenge

The chefs are sent to a Chicago Bears game to tailgate for the fans. Who can't relate to that? 

This week's episode of Hell's Kitchen started where last week's left off; various members of the girls team still mad at Corey for trying to send them home. After a night of trash talking and complaining, the teams are awakened by Chef Ramsay to catch loose chickens in their dorms. Once they finally catch their animals, Chef Ramsay shows them how to break down a chicken (not the live ones thankfully) and give them the challenge of breaking down a chicken in under 2 minutes into 8 pieces.

The ladies do a great job with most of the chefs getting all eight pieces passed by the chef. With the men up, the ridiculous women-hating chef Jason rips apart his chicken after claiming it's a no brainer that the men would win. This fiasco, accompanied by Craig's below-par cuts, guarantee the men's loss. Their punishment is to pick peppers in the scorching heat while the women visit the Saddle Ranch restaurant on the sunset strip.

As the women walk into the restaurant, they are greeted by a familiar face. Everyone's favorite past contestant, Aaron (the one who fell asleep standing up), is there riding the mechanical bull! After he says his hellos, he leaves the girls to ride the bull, while Ramsay watches (in kind of a creepy way if you ask me).

Quickfire Challenge

This week's Quickfire challenge stars guest judge Ming Tsai, owner of Blue Ginger, a well established Asian restaurant in Boston.

The challenge is the always popular blindfold taste test challenge. However, this year's version is a bit different - the cheftestants have to choose the more high-end ingredient of two products while blindfolded.

Most chefs seem to know what they are looking for and did pretty well. The ingredients ranged from meat to butter, and from olive oil to sake. Sounds fun!

Stephanie did the worst, with 6 out of 15, and Antonia did the best, giving her immunity. She was the smart one, using different fingers while tasting and really cleaning out her mouth out with water after each taste. Her trick seemed to pay off.

Welcome to this weeks recap of Hell's Kitchen!

As we start this week's episode, we get the feeling that the teams don't seem to like each other very much. Jason says he will not lose to girls again and the girls say it was nice to cut some of the dead weight (i.e. Dominic). Can't wait until these teams join up and we see some real fun!

The next morning the chefs are pulled out of their beds at 5:45 a.m. to dig through the trash and really take a look at all of the amazing food they tossed at the previous night's dinner service. It amounted to thousands of dollars of waste, according to Chef Ramsay. Not a smart way to run a kitchen.

Back in the kitchen (after a shower), Chef Ramsay shows both teams how to fillet and cut up a rather large halibut. For the challenge, each team has twenty minutes to follow Ramsay's example and make the most perfect six ounce portions of the fish as possible.

After twenty minutes of slicing and dicing, both teams come out with 41 sliced portions of fish (coincidence?). A tie for the first time in Hell's Kitchen history. The tie breaker: each team needs to pick a member to go to the front and pick a piece that they believe is closest to six ounces. The team's portion who comes closest to six ounces wins the challenge. And let me tell you if you missed it, it was very, very tense... (Kidding, but don't you love how they manage to make halibut weighing so suspenseful?)

Hello and welcome back to your weekly recap of Top Chef: Chicago!

Before I start I need to ask a question: At the start of this episode, some of the contestants mention how Jennifer and Zoi have an advantage because they are dating. Do you agree? Personally, I think it is a little unfair. A lot of reality show contestants make dumb decisions because they miss their friends and families. In probably one of the only times I will agree with Spike, he says everyone else has a slight disadvantage because they don't have that person there that they connect with. But on the flip side, if either Zoi or Jennifer goes home, the other might be even more affected. Comment with your thoughts!

Quickfire

This week's Guest Judge is Chef Daniel Boulud, one of the best French chefs in the world.

The challenge - to create a vegetable plate using at least three culinary techniques to impress Chef Daniel. Talk about stressful! Most (if not all) of the chefs get very nervous. Apparently they're a little rusty on technique.

After 30 minutes of running around like nuts, the chefs present their dishes. In the bottom tier, Nikki fails using her endive like a boat, as it was "cute," but not very technical. Lisa had no train of thought with her dish and Manuel fails to impress.

The tops: Dale with his vegan sashimi plate and extraordinary knife skills. Zoi impresses with her wonderfully blanched eggs and Richard's does well with his interestingly prepared mushroom. Dale, however, came out with the win and walked away with immunity.

Welcome to another episode of Top Chef Chicago!

Quickfire Challenge

As usual we start off the competition with the Quickfire challenge. The guest judge: Rick Bayless, a multi Beard award winner and owner of Frontera Grill and Toplobampo in Chicago. The challenge: Create a high end staple of Mexican cuisine, the taco. Mmmm I would be lying if I said I wasn't salavating.

Immediately I'm thinking that Manuel (executive chef of Dos Caminos) should be able to pull this one off, seeing as how he IS the executive chef of a high end Mexican restaurant.

Manuel makes the quintessential taco with chorizo (a staple type of sausage in Mexican cooking). Oh man am I hungry.

Lisa blows her chances by creating a chewy skirt steak taco. Andrew uses duck meat, which works well seeing as Bayless' favorite taco in the world is duck taco. Spike manages to gain points by going with a street style taco. Richard decides to use jicama as the tortilla for his taco which is an interesting choice.

Once judging comes around, the guest judge doesn't like Eric's taco because it doesn't look high end enough. Eric retaliates by saying Mexican food can't be high end. So there.

On the top end, the guest judge really likes Andrew's duck taco, Richard's jicama tacos and Spike's street style tacos. In the end Richard's oddball jicama taco pays off as he wins the Quickfire challenge. On top of the win, Richard's taco will be featured in one of Rick Bayless' restaurants. Not bad.

 

Welcome Top Chef viewers! Come here weekly to catch up and comment on recaps of Top Chef:Chicago.

We start this episode with Stephanie and Valerie working out, talking about the challenges. They mention how they used to work together at a restaurant. What is with all of these contestants knowing each other? Take Zoi and Jennifer dating. What's up with that??

Tonight's Quickfire takes place at the wonderful, yummy, fresh and fun farmers market. The cheftestants find out, however, that they can only use 5 ingredients (not including salt, pepper, sugar and oil). If anybody has been to a local farmers market you know just how hard that is. All of the fresh fruit, veggies, meat, cheese, pies and other assorted goodies are overwhelming. It's like a foodie heaven.