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MasterChef 4 recap: Sausage and Mushrooms (S4E15)

Posted on July 21, 2013 | 40 Comments

(PLEASE NOTE: This blog contains the drunken ravings of a MasterChef season 2 survivor. It should be considered solely opinion, and nothing more.)

We’re down to 9 contestants, and Luca rubs a bit of sand in the face of Giuseppe Morisco from Season 2 by stating that he is the only Italian to have ever gotten this far in MasterChef USA! (Giuseppe will be featured in an upcoming “Where Are They Now” post, because he has opened restaurants all around the world since MasterChef!) But he’s technically correct, and he’s so adorable, I forgive him for it.

The mystery box challenge today includes another box at the judge’s platform that is about 20 feet long. Under the contestants’ boxes is a meat grinder, and under the long box is a veritable “crap load” of meat. Poor Bri, the vegetarian….OH WAIT! The judges have graciously give her tofu, tempeh (fermented soy bean, but drier and more flavorful than tofu) , and seitan (cooked wheat gluten)…vegetarian ingredients that can be used to make sausage. So this has just become a VERY interesting challenge. I, for one, am not too keen on trying a vegetarian sausage, as much as I’m in love with the pig. But it will be fascinating to see what Bri can turn out in the 60 minutes allotted to make a perfect cased sausage, and then turn it into an entree.

Let’s chat about sausage. It’s one of the major food groups, you know. Sausage is divine. It’s a way to turn an otherwise tough, boring cut of meat into something truly extraordinary and enlightened. Give me a deer leg and I’ll thank you, not because I can turn it into something that approaches the elegance and perfection of leg of lamb…but because I’m gonna cut it up, grind it with pork fat, add my secret spices and veggies, and turn it into the yummiest sausage you’ve ever tasted.

To make true sausage at home you need a meat grinder. ANY meat can be turned into sausage, but in order for it to be an effective sausage, it needs to hover around the ratio of 80% lean meat to 20% fat. Some people take this to 75% lean, 25% fat for extra indulgent sausage. But if you get much leaner than 80/20, you stop making sausage and you start making pate or ground meat. The fat is all-important. You can buy pork back fat at most butchers and ethnic markets, and even if you’re making a chicken or fish sausage, pork fat is still the fat that chefs choose for making sausage. (Though on the Truffle Challenge in Season 2, I made duck sausage using duck fat, and it was pretty damn good if I do say so, myself!)

When shopping for sausage, don’t be fooled into thinking that something like chicken or turkey sausage may be “better for you” than traditional pork sausage. While chatting with one of my local butchers last week, he told me that the ratio of pork fat they have to add to chicken sausage to make it palatable is much higher than the ratio in their pork sausage…so there’s MORE saturated fat in many chicken sausages than there is in good old fashioned pig sausage. You’ll have to carefully analyze the nutritional information to determine its fat content.

Bethy’s sausage is sounding really good…wild boar and bacon, something she’d serve at the bed and breakfast she wants to open some day! Something tells me Bethy has been talking about this dream in her interviews for weeks, and this is the first time they edited it in. I’d come to your B&B Bethy! Especially if you’ve got wild boar sausage on the menu. Wild boar is VERY gamey. Far gamier than venison. So balancing it out with bacon and lots of pork fat and bold flavors can result in a truly sublime sausage. I LOVE using full-flavored, gamey meats in sausage. Chicken just won’t cut it for me.

We’re seeing a lot of folks “poaching” their sausages before cooking them. We were taught to do this at MasterChef during my season, too. I HATE this technique. What a great way to lose all that wonderful flavor you’ve cased inside that sausage than to put it in a big pot of hot water to dilute everything. Here’s how you properly cook a sausage:

Get the heaviest cast iron skillet or griddle you have. Place it over medium heat for about 10 minutes to get it good and evenly heated. Then place your sausages into the pan and don’t touch them for 5 minutes. Then flip them every 5 minutes for about 20-30 minutes. Low and slow. That’s how to cook sausages. Eventually you’re going to get a delicious crust built up all over it, and it’s going to be tender, juicy, and evenly cooked on the inside. If you add the sausages to a screaming hot pan, or a hot grill, the casing is going to burn instantly, open up, and all your sausage on the inside will burst out of it. (Which is what has just happened to Luca. I know how you feel, Luca, on our cased sausage sandwich challenge for the bikers on my season, our sausages were exploding all over the place because our coals were too hot…we had to just do sausage patties on the flat top.) Sausages really come into their own in a cast iron skillet. I think it’s the single best way to cook a sausage.

Time is called, and the 3 top dishes tasted are:

Natasha – She has a chicken sausage that contains bacon, apple, and mozzarella with red chili flakes, oregano, rosemary, and sriracha (a Thai condiment that is becoming VERY popular in the US right now…fermented red pepper and garlic sauce. ALWAYS on my table at breakfast.) Sounds delicious, though it sounds in as if she didn’t add any pork fat, but she cooked it very slowly and carefully to keep it from drying out, and there is milk fat in there in the form of mozarella. (Maybe Natasha will chime in and tell us how she made the sausage, because it looks DELICIOUS.) She presents it with a fried egg and potato hash. Breakfast has always been my favorite meal to cook and eat, and Natasha’s plate has made me RAVENOUS just now. The judges love it.

Eddie – He’s got a sausage made with pork shoulder, bacon, brown sugar, smoked paprika, onion powder, and Worcestershire sauce (pronounced ONLY: “WOO-stir-shir” with the “woo” sounding like “wood.”) He presents it with braised cabbage (a classic sausage pairing) and apple chutney (apples are another classic sausage pairing). The judges love it, too, and Gordon says it’s delicious enough to be served in his gastropub.

The final sausage belongs to Krissi, who has made salsiccia e peperoni, the classic Italian dish of sausage and peppers, served with polenta. I would dive in for a swim, it looks so good. Joe likes Krissi. I can tell. Her food probably reminds him of his grandmother’s, and he admires her brazen independence and fighting spirit. (I know many of you don’t care for either of them…this is just my observation. I don’t think Joe “likes” many contestants on the show, and admires even fewer.) The judges love her dish, and it’s branded her best performance thus far.

I am sad that they didn’t critique Bri’s vegetarian sausage. Understandably, NO vegetarian sausage will be able to compare to a well-made meat sausage, but I think it would have been very fascinating for the audience to hear what the judges thought of Bri’s sausage. (Though the rumor mill has it that Joe despises vegetarians and even shoved raw bacon into a vegetarian contestant’s mouth during the signature dish series this year. Funny they didn’t air THAT! I would imagine it resulted in a lawsuit and was buried.)

The winner is Eddie! (Though I wanted to eat Natasha’s plate the most.) Eddie is emerging as the meat master on this season. He heads back to the pantry to learn his advantage, which is that he won’t have to cook, and he gets to choose from one of 3 ingredients to be the feature of the elimination challenge: ham, wild mushrooms, or shrimp.

We all know you’re not reading my blog for drama, so let’s have a little education, shall we?

Ham! Which Joe presents. Without a doubt, the noble pig is the greatest of all meat animals on the planet. But it’s value only flourishes when its meat is met with salt. Salt and pork combine to make the finest and most delicious cured meats on the planet. And some hams are among the most expensive foods available anywhere…though they come from the humble, mud-wallowing pig. Ham is the pig’s rear thigh muscles, cured with salt. There are two ways to cure hams, either by dry-packing the thighs in salt to dehydrate and season them, and then hanging them in a temperature and humidity controlled space (typically underground) until they are just right; or by wet-curing them in a salty brine. Dry-cured hams are shelf stable and can remain hanging in your closet or garage for years. Wet-cured hams need to be refrigerated and consumed quickly. The vast majority of ham consumed in the US is the cheaper wet-cured kind. Dry-cured hams, as I mentioned, are among the priciest and most sought-after ingredients on the globe. Iberico ham hails from Spain and Portugal, and some artisan varieties command over $200 a pound. Check out this particular ham, from Cinco Jotas or 5J, which comes from acorn-fed, heritage-breed pigs and is hung for 2 years after curing, and costs a meager $1,290 per 6 pound ham. Serrano ham is a cheaper type of dry-cured ham from Spain, where the pigs are raised on feed, rather than wild acorns, and can come from any of several breeds of hog. Serrano ham will run you $15-$40 per pound. Joe also presents a “spiral of cut ham,” which is an American-style wet cured ham. Wet cured hams are the kind you eat a big slab of at a breakfast diner, or at Christmas dinner. You could never do that with a dry-cured ham. It would be too brittle and too salty, and far too intensely flavored to eat a half pound of in one sitting. Dry-cured hams are sliced very thin and used sparingly because of their robust flavoring. Prosciutto is another very popular type of dry-cured ham, which hails from Italy…where charcuterie (curing meat, primarily pork) was developed to its highest art form, but strangely enough, there’s no prosciutto on Joe’s table.

Wild mushrooms, which Graham presents. One of my favorite of all ingredients. If you follow me on Facebook, you see me out foraging for mushrooms all the time. In fact, we had so much rain in Dallas last week that I went out foraging in midsummer (a rarity for fungus in north Texas) and found 2 pounds of cloud ear mushrooms! Graham’s box contains black trumpets, which are a type of chanterelle. Black trumpets are harvested exclusively from the wild, though some types of chanterelle can be cultivated. We served black trumpets at the epic FRANK foraged dinner last spring. Ours had been foraged in Oregon. (The Pacific Northwest is the primary source for all wild mushrooms eaten in this country, due to abundant rainfall.) But black trumpets are more common on the east coast, growing beneath hardwoods like oak, and they primarily fruit in summer and fall, though they pop out at lower elevations during spring melt in the western Cascade mountains. Also in the box are maitake mushrooms, pronounced “mah-ee-TAH-kay.” In the US they are more popularly known as “hen of the woods” mushrooms, and they grow wild at the base of oak trees in all but the most arid parts of the US during the summer and fall. They can develop in huge clusters in excess of 2 feet wide and can weigh in at 50 pounds or more. Maitakes are among the yummiest of the mushrooms, and they can be cultivated, so look for them at your local Asian market. The final mushroom in Graham’s box is the hedgehog mushroom, or “sweet tooth.” It gets this name from the unusual “teeth” that hang down beneath the mushroom’s cap, where we are accustomed to seeing gills. This delicious mushroom grows all over the US in many types of forest during the summer and fall (earlier in the PacNW.) Unlike bolder-flavored black trumpets and maitakes, hedgehogs have a very mild flavor but a superb texture, and should be prepare carefully so as not to overpower the delicacy.

Mushrooms are fruit…did you know that? They are the fruiting body of a fungus that lives below the ground. MOST of the fungus is actually located below the ground, though some individual mushroom fruits can get up to a pound in size or larger. The thread-like filaments that live below the ground are called mycelium (pronounced “my-SEE-lee-uhm”) and a single teaspoon of soil can contain up to 40 miles of mycelium threads!!!

Gordon presents the final ingredient: shrimp. Perhaps the most commonly eaten shellfish, most folks in the US just think of shrimp as one specific thing, with the only difference between them being their size. But just as there are an infinite variety of types of mushroom, shrimp are the same, with well over 15,000 unique species. They range in size from microscopic ocean shrimp, to freshwater monsters a foot long and weighing over 2 pounds! Gordon presents 3 types: spot prawns, tiger prawns, and rock shrimp. Spot prawns are fished from the wild in the north Pacific from around Tijuana north to Alaska. Large specimens can get up to 10″ in length! Their meat is sweet and firm. Next is the tiger prawn, one of my personal favorites. These salt-water crustaceans are the most popular shrimp to be farm-raised around the world, and they, too, can become monsters a foot long and half a pound. Due to some shrimp escaping from farms, the tiger prawn has become an invasive species in the Gulf of Mexico, so catch and eat all you want, fellow Texans! Tiger prawns are savory and meaty, and many people prefer their taste to lobster in blind taste tests. And finally, rock shrimp, which are harvested exclusively from the wild and live at VERY deep depths in the ocean. Their shell is incredibly hard, like a lobster, and their meat has a sweet taste very much like west coast spiny lobster, too. They are small shrimp, typically about 2″ long.

For the record, there is no difference between the word “shrimp” and “prawn.” Prawn is the word for shrimp in much of the English speaking world outside the US. Here in the US, it tends to be attached to larger-sized shrimp, but it does NOT specifically mean “big shrimp.” The words are completely interchangeable.

Eddie chooses mushrooms as the featured ingredient, because he feels like it will be the most challenging for everyone. (I’d have picked mushrooms because I love them, and I’d have asked if I could stay and cook, too. I LOVE mushrooms!!!) The next twist comes when Gordon announces that half of the constants will have to cook with CANNED mushrooms, rather than the fresh mushrooms. Many, many varieties of mushrooms are available canned if you visit an Asian market, but in most grocery stores, the only canned mushrooms available are the common “button mushroom” or Agaricus Bisporus. This species is also the most commonly available fresh mushroom, which can be marketed as “white mushrooms” when their color is white, “cremini mushrooms” when their color is brown, and “portobello mushrooms” when they grow to full size. They are all 3 the exact same species of mushroom, with white being an accidental pigment-less “albino” found on a farm in Pennsylvania in 1926 and perpetuated because people loved white food back then. When canned, they are downright foul. Woe to you, Eddie, if you had assigned me canned mushrooms when the contestant next to me gets fresh, wild maitakes!!!

Eddie has targeted the 3 J’s: Jessie, Jordan, and James, but they don’t all get the cans. James, Jordan, Bethy, and Bri are the lucky ones who get the fresh wild mushrooms, while Jessie, Natasha, Krissi, and Luca get the cans. I love how Krissi just cackles when she gets the canned mushrooms. (THANK YOU, producers, for showing us a glimpse of her personality other than highlighting the divisive aspects.)

I honestly have NO CLUE what I’d do with the canned mushrooms. I’d rinse them well to get off as much of the canned taste as possible, them layer them between paper towels to soak out more of the canned juice. Then cook them in butter, spread out far apart in the pan to let all the water cook out, and get them nice and caramelized. But after that…I’d be stumped. These guys have no flavor at all. They taste like cardboard. Jessie does something particularly brilliant…she’s cooking the canned mushrooms with bacon. Yes, bacon makes everything taste better, but bacon and mushrooms actually share MANY of the same flavor compounds. In fact, vegetarian bacon bits and bacon flavorings actually use MUSHROOMS as one of the primary flavoring ingredients. Very, very impressive, Jessie.

Bethy is the first in trouble. She’s doing a Szechuan-style stir fry, but has forgotten sugar from the pantry, so she’s begging her fellow contestants for some. (Note that Krissi DOES say she’d share if she had any!) Jordan appears to be the only contestant with sugar, and he loans her some. And I love his quote, “I want you to be at your game. If I wanna beat you, I wanna beat you with all your stuff.” I can’t count the number of times I said this on my season, and it’s one of the things that bugs me about the direction the show is heading. Yeah, giving contestants the chance to make something remarkable from a can of mushrooms is interesting…but it’s not a fair competition. Competition is ONLY fair when everyone is playing at the top of their game. If you win because someone screwed up, or was denied the same ingredients you were…you didn’t win anything. You simply lucked out.

Bethy is first up for judging, with her Szechuan-style mushrooms with homemade noodles, ginger, garlic, and toasted Szechuan peppercorns (which are not true peppercorns but are a type of citrus, very aromatic, one of the foundational spices in Chinese “5-spice” powder.) Bethy is the only contestant who went with Asian flavorings, which was smart, because the Asians revere the mushroom more than any other culture on the planet. Graham is worried because the predominant flavors are sesame and ginger, rather than mushroom…but that’s exactly what you’d taste eating a mushroom dish like this on the streets of Chengdu in Sichuan province. Mushrooms are revered more for their texture and healthful properties rather than for their flavor in Chinese cuisine. Bethy hasn’t done anything wrong, the judges are evaluating her from a Western perspective on mushrooms…Joe, in fact, gives her a smack on the hand for cooking Asian rather than something Italian or French, which is “much more refined” than Asian cuisine, at least according to him. (Better not head to China any time soon, Joe!) However, their primary complaint is the overpowering presence of sesame oil. And sesame oil is VERY flavor-forward and should always be used sparingly…NEVER as a cooking agent, always as a flavoring agent. (Still, it’s one of my favorite flavors!)

Natasha is next, and she used canned mushrooms to make mushroom ravioli with crispy pancetta and mushroom cream puree sauce. Her raviolis are stuffed with mushroom, tarragon, and aged gruyere. (Yes, there’s a BIG difference between a young gruyere and an aged gruyere! In fact, I made gruyere yesterday and I’m hoping I can leave my hands off it for a couple of years, because gruyere becomes truly magical after that long. The vast majority of gruyere sold in the US is aged for 2 months, and is a mild-tasting slicing cheese. Aged gruyere becomes crumbly and sharp after about a year of aging.) You just never want to present an Italian dish to Joe Bastianich if you can help it…Alvin Schultz and I made a pact the first week of MasterChef season 2 that we were gonna try to get all the way through our season without cooking ANY Italian if we could, specifically because Joe is more “friendly” when critiquing food styles outside his own cuisine. Which is a shame, because Italian is really one of my specialties. But Natasha has really impressed him with her canned mushrooms, and Joe thinks the use of tarragon (which tastes a little like licorice) was a brilliant foil to the canned flavor.

James is next, and he has presented a wild mushroom chowder. He slow cooked his mushrooms in butter. Butter is DEFINITELY the best cooking fat for mushrooms, but I tend to prefer cooking them a little faster so that they get nicely browned. The proteins in mushrooms will brown up just like meat at the proper temp, and that’s when mushroom flavor really starts to shine. His chowder also has creme fraiche for richness (cream is a perfect compliment for mushrooms) and fresh arugula, and those flavors all sound amazing. But Graham says it’s too heavy and rich, but seasoned well. Joe says that all he tastes is salt, which is the easiest way for the judges and producers to slam a dish whether it’s good or not, since we can’t “see” how salty it really is. Any time I hear on MasterChef that a dish is under-seasoned or over-seasoned…I take it with a “grain of salt” because that critique was used on my season as an easy way to give someone a bad day when they produced a dish that otherwise LOOKED good, and probably tasted that way, too. (Hey, we all know James is a genius, but they’ve got to make him have a bad day every now and then or we get bored, right?)

Jessie’s up next, and she’s got pancetta and canned mushroom risotto with julienned leeks and an arugula flavored oil. Risotto is definitely something you NEVER want to serve to Joe, and we don’t get to hear his critique, unfortunately…but Gordon is impressed. I really like Jessie. I think she’s incredibly talented, and she gives the genuine appearance of being humble and personable (two characteristics you don’t typically associate with someone of exceptional attractiveness who comes from a very wealthy background). Had the last 3 seasons of MasterChef NOT been won by attractive young women, I think she’d be a dead ringer for the win this season. It wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if Jessie is a regular Food Network personality in a few years, especially considering the vacancy in the all-important Southern food scene now that Paula Deen has been ousted. Food Network hasn’t yet found another iconic figure for Southern food, which is the favored food of the network’s majority audience.

Next is Luca, who presents a cream of canned mushroom soup with a GOREGEOUS plate of tri-color roasted cauliflower, croutons, carrot and parsnip. He pours the soup over the veggie plate, but the soup is incredibly thick. (It probably wasn’t this thick when he finished cooking it. His plate has been sitting for an hour at the VERY least before it landed in front of the judges. Any mushroom soup is going to thicken and congeal after sitting for that long. Technically, the judges aren’t supposed to critique you for what happens to your dish in the delay between cooking and tasting…but it most certainly DOES happen.) Graham loves the soup’s flavor, but is upset with Luca for using truffle oil to finish his croutons. We also get a shot of Joe wincing and Gordon covering his face when Luca “confesses” to using truffle oil.

Okay, pause…I’ve HAD IT with this condemnation of truffle oil on MasterChef. Graham’s kitchens ALL use truffle oil…in fact, they use the same brand of truffle oil that Graham has criticized MasterChef contestants for using! (Though the tweets from the intern at his restaurant who discovered this were immediately deleted from Twitter. Interesting!) I guarantee you that you’ll find truffle oil in the pantries in ALL of Joe’s kitchens, and probably in Gordon’s as well. YES…some cheaper brands of truffle oil “emulate” truffle flavor with other compounds. (Probably NOT the brand stocked in the MasterChef kitchen.) Folks…it’s OKAY to use truffle oil. Especially when real truffles aren’t available. Just don’t overdo it.

Krissi brings forward her mushroom cassoulet. Pronounced “cass-oo-LAY,” this French peasant classic is a slow-roasted casserole of white beans cooked with meat, typically duck confit and pork sausage. Cassoulet is one of my favorite dishes. Krissi has made her cassoulet with canned mushrooms, eggplant, and pancetta, and Joe is impressed.

Bri, the vegetarian, should have the upper hand in this competition, as mushrooms are the “meat” in many vegetarian diets. Bri has given us the second “walk through the forest” dish to appear on MasterChef, the first being on season 1 when Sharone Hakman plated a venison dish that Graham said looked more like “a walk through a crime scene.” Bri has grilled her wild mushrooms with sage (a lovely pairing of flavors), beet and goat cheese salad, and a base that looks like mashed potato or grits. It sounds really divine, and the judges love it.

Jordon presents his wild mushroom ravioli with mushroom and beet cream sauce, and fried hedgehog mushrooms stuffed with goat cheese and onion. *drool* The judges criticize him, though, for “hiding” the beauty of the wild mushrooms, because nothing on the plate is recognizable as a mushroom. (Honestly, I just wanna know how it TASTES.) Joe suggests that Jordan take some pasta making lessons from Natasha, though we aren’t told why. (But congrats, Natasha! Joe doesn’t dole out compliments like that very often.) I’m HIGHLY suspicious of these critiques being legit…something tells me Jordan’s plate was fabulous, but the “too bad, you overthought this dish” is such an easy critique to throw around when the audience can’t taste something that looks truly divine. The whole basis of the Modernist movement is overthinking. Turning foie gras into cotton candy. Turning watermelon juice into caviar. And Graham is one of the top Modernist chefs in the country. My gut tells me these comments are completely unfounded. (Though I DO love to see a big fat wild mushroom there on a plate, waiting for my fork. They are SO beautiful.)

The top 2 dishes belong to Natasha, who used canned mushrooms, and the ultimate winner, Bri. (Congrats, sugar! Though I’m not sure ANYONE deserves to be congratulated when the are subsequently punished by being a team leader! HA!)

The 3 bottom dishes are Jordan, James, and Bethy. And Bethy is forced to give up her apron…which is sad because I’m sure her dish actually tasted really good. Bethy is graced with an overwhelming compliment from Joe, who says, “If I had to hire one person in this room to work in a restaraunt, it would be you.” Bethy has apparently shown to the judges that she has a very strong work ethic, and intense dedication. (Thanks for showing that to US, producers! That would have been nice to see.) The big smile on Bethy’s face as she hugs the judges goodbye is so refreshing. THAT is the spirit in which to EITHER win, or be eliminated, from ANY competition. So admirable, and in a mere 5 seconds, Bethy goes from being someone we hardly know, to being someone we adore and admire. (I wish we had been given a better look at her earlier in the season, so we’d appreciate this moment even more.) Bethy calls out Jessie as the deserving winner of the show, and as she exits the MasterChef kitchen, I shed the first tears I’ve cried this season over an elimination. Because Bethy embodies the true spirit of a human competitor, and is celebrating her experience and friendships as she leaves, rather than being angry or heartbroken. Which is the way to look at ANY experience in life, whether it’s the death of a loved one, or the birth of a new baby…the foreclosure of a house, or the announcement of a big promotion. EVERY moment in life, no matter how challenging, will bring new richness and insight, even if it lands you in a scary or trying place.

Guess what? Bethy is PROBABLY the most fascinating of all the top 18 candidates this year. She’s an avid outdoorswoman and adventurer. Here she is fighting a fire:

Here she is after killing a massive wild boar WITH A BOW AND ARROW:

Well, look here…Bethy doing roller derby:

In fact, Bethy was cast on MasterChef NOT just because she can cook…but because she’s an INTERESTING person. Too bad the producers didn’t give us even a fraction of a glimpse at how fascinating she truly is. Did you know that she’s the host of a show called Adrenaline Hunter? TWO FULL SEASONS of it have aired on Comcast SportsNet. (Bethy, if you read this, can you tell us where we can find episodes to stream? Looks AWESOME!)

So, I might humbly venture the statement that Bethy was the BenStarr of this season…though that’s an insult to Bethy because she leads a FAR more interesting life than I do!

Bethy is the kinda person you REALLY wanna follow, because her life is absolutely filled with interesting stuff. Check our her websites cookingrusticwithbethyrossos.com and bethyrossos.com for a peek into her fascinating life. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter (non MasterChef), Twitter (MasterChef), her YouTube channel, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Please comment below with your thoughts on this episode!

http://instagram.com/bethyrossos#

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Tagged Bethy, Bree, Bri, Chrissy, Crissy, Gordon Ramsay, Gordon Ramsey, ham, Iberico, Krissi, Master Chef, MasterChef, mushroom, prosciutto, sausage, shrimp, wild

MasterChef 4 recap: Surfers and Chicken Breasts (S4E14)

Posted on July 13, 2013 | 87 Comments

(PLEASE NOTE: This blog is not endorsed or approved by Fox or MasterChef, and you probably shouldn’t read it. The information in this blog is limited to opinion, only, from a former MasterChef survivor.)

10 contestants left, and the judges are arriving at the beach on jetskis…well, Graham swims up in a skin-colored wetsuit, complete with abs. A hundred and one surfers charge onto the beach to shred some, and the judges are giving the contestants an hour to make enough fish tacos to feed them all. They have to choose just one fish: ahi tuna, cod, catfish, or mahi mahi. (That’s a no brainer…AHI!!!!!)

Jessie was the only contestant selected to be a team captain, so she gets to pick 4 contestants in a row, leaving 5 remaining as a team, and Jessie will get to select their team captain for them. A very interesting move.

Jessie selects James first, then Eddie, Bethy, and Natasha. Leaving Krissi, Savannah, Luca, Bri, and Jordan as the other team, and she selects Savannah to head the team.

Savannah selects the cod and decides to first experiment on both battered and fried cod, and blackened cod. Krissi takes ownership of the battering and frying, and Jordan takes seasoning duties for the blackened fish, and Luca is assigned to fish prep. With only 5 team members, I’d be hesitant to go both ways and lose time deciding on which route to take. The 2-taco serving must consist of identical tacos, so they can’t serve one of each.

Jessie wants to use mahi mahi for her tacos. James is assigned to the sauce: a roasted pineapple and habanero sauce. (DAMN that sounds good.)

Fish tacos is a dish near and dear to my heart. I got my apron on Season 2 with fish tacos. (Mine were a crispy panko-crusted tilapia, marinated in homebrewed pumpkin IPA and lime juice, with a purple cabbage and jicama slaw dressed in a pumpkin IPA vinaigrette, chipotle crema de Mexicana, and crispy fried pumpkin strings on homemade tortillas.) But given those fish selections, I’d have jumped all over that ahi tuna. No offense to cod (boring), mahi mahi (delicious, but is best cooked all the way through), or catfish (no way would I use catfish in fish tacos if we’re on the ocean). But ahi is the king of all fish and offers several distinct advantages serving 202 tacos in an hour, not the least of which is that it should be served COMPLETELY raw, or barely seared. You could go the Hawaiian route by making a quick poke (pronounced “poe-KAY”)…cube up the ahi and marinate it in soy, lime, and sesame oil, with chopped onion, jalapeno, garlic, some seaweed or sea asparagus, and avocado…then you can concentrate on an explosive sauce by reducing soy and molasses, garlic and ginger, and lime. That in a tortilla is perfection…simple, raw, healthy, bursting with flavor, and laughably easy to turn out. AND has its roots in Hawaii…the global mecca for all surfers the world over. The more Asian route would be to crust it in sesame seeds and sear it off very quickly in sesame oil, so that’s it’s stone cold raw throughout 80% of it, with a delicious crust around the outside. Slice it and heap it up with quick-pickled cabbage and radish and carrot, with a sauce of ginger, garlic, rice vinegar, chili flake, and maybe some red curry paste. That would take a bit longer due to the partial cooking, but it’s still fast. No way would I touch the other fish for this challenge.

On Savannah’s team, as she preps the cabbage slaw for the tacos, she seasons it only with lemon juice, and Jordan and Luca are nervous about that. On Jessie’s team, James’s pineapple habanero sauce is supposed to be a “5 out of 10” on the heat scale, but Graham and Joe have their palates blown out by the heat, so he’s having to fix it. (Habaneros are incredibly hot, yet have the most delicious flavor of all the chiles, and they can be VERY tricky to work with.)

On Savannah’s side, Jordan’s cilantro lime sauce is coming along nicely. The team doesn’t like the flavoring of Krissi’s fried cod, so they decide to do it grilled and Krissi is assigned to charring the tortillas. (A waste of your talents, Krissi, but it’s a critical task and somebody’s gotta do it.) Tortillas GOTTA get charred for fish tacos!

Service begins and Jessie’s team isn’t keeping up with the demand as well as Savannah’s is, primarily because their fish isn’t getting cooked through quickly enough. (Not a problem with ahi!) “So much for the team of all-stars,” says Gordon, which means they’re probably going to win, magically, somehow.

As always, the roles reverse, and suddenly Savannah’s team is out of fish, and Jessie’s is doing fine.

Voting begins via the silly voting device of surfers leaping into colored surfboards, and the first 22 votes are ALL for Savannah’s team…not a single vote for Jessie’s. Which means, of course, there’s been some very heavy manipulation by the producers…as is made very obvious when suddenly Jessie’s team catches up from 0 votes to 22 without a single vote in the opposite direction. At a tie of 22 to 22, Jessie’s team surges ahead to 51 votes, with Savannah’s team only getting an additional 3. Now what are the odds of that happening naturally? And it’s plain from the look on Krissi’s face that she’s fed up with all the engineering.

Back in the MasterChef kitchen, Jessie’s team learns that they have an additional surprise for winning. As they don baseball jerseys from their home city’s teams, Graham announces that their team will get to watch the big MLB All Stars game with him “next Tuesday” in New York. Of course, this episode was filmed back in March and a lot can happen between now and then. I’ll be curious to see if they all show up next Tuesday.

Savannah is now at the gallows, with Gordon pressing her to call out the weakest member of her team. I recall Esther Kang being placed in the same position on Season 2, and as an attorney, Esther knows how to work around a question. They grilled her and grilled her, insisting on an answer, and when it became apparent that she wasn’t going to give them one, they start asking questions like, “Who was in charge of grilling the sausage?” “Ben and Adrien,” she’d reply. “Who was in charge of casing the sausage?” “Max and Christine,” she’d reply. And then they suddenly had their magic sound byte…so in the final edit, Gordon asked Esther, “Who were the weakest links on your team?” and Esther immediately replies without hesitation, “Max and Christine.” And the country immediately hates her for throwing her team members under the bus, which never actually happened.

Who knows what REALLY transpired on Savannah’s team, but her team members are ganging up Krissi, pointing her out for being the weak link because all she did was “warm tortillas.” (Which is all she was asked to do.) The team is sent back to the wine cellar to hash out who will be saved from the elimination challenge, and I’m surprised when they actually edit in Savannah calling out her team members for giving into the engineered drama.

“In the moment, we all agreed on everything. But the minute we get in front of [the judges], everybody’s tune changes.” Then Bri and Krissy have an all-out brawl, and the team decides unanimously that Jordan will be saved. Leaving Bri, Krissi, Savannah, and Luca to battle it out on Challenge Chicken Breast.

I have to stop here for a second and ask all of you to promise me that you’ll NEVER buy chicken breast again. It’s absolutely the most ridiculous of all meats. Tasteless, tough, and dry with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. And if you had half a clue about what has been done to those poor chickens to get their breasts to that gargantuan size in 2-4 months…trait selection favoring large breasts to the point that meat birds can’t even stand up because their breasts are so large…antibiotic loading which causes unnatural fast growth…you wouldn’t want to eat it anyway. My chickens are 5 months old and they weigh half what a 2 month old commercial meat chicken weighs.

If you want lean meat, eat pork. (Yes…most modern pork cuts have LESS saturated fat than chicken, which is a travesty of epic proportions, but that’s what the American public wanted from pork, so that’s the way it’s raised now.) I haven’t bought chicken breast in probably 5 years, unless it was attached to a whole chicken. I can’t think of a more boring protein. I’d rather eat tofu.

At least the judges have left the contestants the skin…the only edible portion of a chicken breast. And they have to prepare it 3 ways: sauteed, Southern fried, and stuffed with mozzarella and prosciutto. And they have only 40 minutes to do all 3 preparations. That’s not easy. At all.

Because the ONLY way to make chicken breast edible is to brine the crap out of it, which takes an hour at the very least, before it even sees heat. Poor Bri has never cooked chicken before at all. (Can you imagine?)

The frying is really the only prep method that interests me, and I make a mean fried chicken. (Of course it’s brined OVERNIGHT in rosemary buttermilk.) But the secret to the perfect fried chicken crust ISN’T, as Graham said, to do two layers of flour. In fact, you season your flour (I use cayenne, thyme, rosemary, garlic powder, onion powder, and black pepper in addition to salt), then you add a pinch of baking powder, and then you sprinkle in buttermilk and mash everything together until you have a bunch of coarse, damp crumbs. Then you remove the chicken from the buttermilk it was brined in, press it firmly into the crumbs, packing them all around, and drop it into the oil. These thicker, denser crumbs make a hard, crunchy crust, but the baking powder reacting with the acidic buttermilk and the heat of the oil causes those crumbs to expand as they set, resulting in a mouth-watering crust that shatters in your mouth delicately as you eat it. THAT’S the secret to perfect fried chicken. (Sorry, Graham. You KNOW I love you!)

Begrudgingly, I will tell you how to prepare a boneless, skinless breast in the only healthy way that makes it barely tolerable, in 20 minutes. Move your oven rack to the top position and preheat your broiler on high. Place the breast on a foil-lined baking sheet. If it’s VERY plump on one side and very skinny on the other, pound it a bit to make it more even. Then season it with kosher salt, black pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. Let it sit until the broiler is screaming hot. Then spray the top of the chicken breast lightly with olive oil. (If you don’t have olive oil spray, brush the breast with olive oil before seasoning, but I prefer to spray just before broiling, as the oil is a barrier preventing the seasonings from journeying into the meat with the salt.) Broil the breast for 6 minutes on the first side. Remove, flip the breast, and broil it an additional 6 minutes on the other side. Remove from the oven, tent loosely with foil, and let it rest 5 minutes. Then slice it. This preserves the moisture, requires the least amount of cooking fat, still delivers a browned, flavorful crust, and will give you a boneless, skinless breast that’s not really edible, but will do in a pinch. (As you get to know your broiler, you may need to adjust the time per side. Gas broilers don’t produce as much radiant heat as electric broilers, and will result in less browning.)

Savannah has chosen to go with a batter for her fried chicken, which is traditional in some parts of the world, but not in Southern frying. And Bri is so flustered that, with time ticking down, she’s still staring at her chicken breast in the bowl of flour, and hasn’t put it in the fryer yet. (Chicken needs to fry for awhile at lower temperature, like 300F or 325F, so that it cooks all the way through before the crust browns excessively. It can even be cooked through at lower temp, removed, and just before serving, do a last fry at 365F for a minute or two to brown and crisp the crust. If you rush a chicken frying, you’ll end up with raw chicken on the inside, and a dark brown crust. I’ve done that PLENTY of times. If you’re pushed for time, battle this by cutting the breast into tenders, or pounding or filleting it to an even, thin layer.)

Time is called and the dishes are brought down. We get some snarky remarks from Krissi about Bri, no doubt very much prodded out by the story producers. (They all but TELL you what they want you to say in the interviews…and sometimes they do, in fact, tell you exactly what they want you to say. You always have the option not to say it, though.) I know a lot of you hate Krissi right now. That’s exactly what the producers want you to do. That’s why they cast Krissi. That’s why they held her hand all the way into this spot where the country is heaping hate on her social media. They want this. Because the more you hate Krissi, the longer you’ll tune in, waiting to be satiated when she’s finally eliminated. Which will happen. Because whatever villian they decide to create, they’ll never let win. Because MasterChef is a “good” show…bizarrely enough. While the throat-slashingest, bus-throwingest-under, ultimate supreme backstabber may win Hell’s Kitchen or Survivor, MasterChef hasn’t yet given itself over to that genre quite yet. (Maybe next season.) Even though all we’re being shown this year is savagery, someone we all love is going to end up winning. Probably Jordan or Luca, since they’re not going to let a beautiful girl win for the fourth year in a row, or the audience will cry foul. (I actually know who wins, though, so perhaps I’m leading you all astray!) So Krissi has NO chance of winning MasterChef. Not because she’s not the best. But because she was cast specifically to be the villain this season, and when she finally falls, she’ll fall so epic and so hard, and all of America will pounce on her like a pack of wolves, greedy for her blood.

DON’T you let yourself be played like that by a team of psychologists and story producers sitting in an RV outside the MasterChef studio, grinning smugly as they pull their puppet strings, thinking they’re smarter than you and you’ll follow anywhere they lead you.

Why not, instead of deciding that Krissy is the most awful bitch on the planet, refrain from making a character judgement on her until you’ve actually met her, and walked a mile in her shoes. Until you’ve done that, I won’t listen to a single criticism you have to say. I lived MasterChef. I know exactly how fake it is. The worst villain on my season is one of my closest friends in the world, and I don’t befriend awful people. So I will NOT have this crucifixion of Krissi, folks. Calm the f–k down. You’re being played.

Savannah’s sauteed chicken breast is first for tasting, and Gordon says there is raw fat visible, the skin tastes fatty (ie not properly rendered), and the bottom tastes poached (ie boiled) rather than seared and browned. Next up is her fried chicken that was battered, and Graham finds that it’s undercooked on the inside. He says there’s no seasoning. Her stuffed breast is last to be tasted by Joe, and he likes the flavor and the cook, but the sauce is “goopy.”

Krissi is next. Her sauteed chicken looks great on both sides, but is “slightly pink” on the inside. (Also perfectly acceptable if you’ve got quality chicken.) Her fried chicken is a little dark, but cooked through with a crunchy crust, and Graham likes it. Her stuffed chicken doesn’t have enough stuffing, but it is cooked properly.

Luca’s sauteed breast looks dry to Gordon. It’s seasoned well, but overcooked. Graham likes his fried chicken crust, but the inside is slightly under. And his stuffed breast is very undercooked and Joe won’t eat it.

Finally, Bri, the vegetarian, has her very first 3 attempts at cooking chicken evaluated by the judges. Her pan fried chicken needed 4 more minutes of cooking. Her fried chicken batter is good, but the chicken meat is very raw. And her stuffed breast is cooked through, but the sauce is excessively buttery.

So the judges have given these contestants an unreasonable 45 minutes to cook a chicken breast 3 different ways, and are upset that they were served so much raw chicken. Fancy that.

Krissi performed the best out of the 4, so she is safe. So is Luca. And so is Bri.

Leaving Savannah to surrender her apron. Savannah is sweet and kind. She’s not nearly nasty enough to command the kind of airtime this season that the other contestants are getting. So, frankly, we don’t know much about her. And as she smiles optimistically through her parting tears, I start Googling to find out more about her. She’s a special ed teacher, which immediately leaves a soft spot in my heart. My mom was a special ed teacher for many years, and I know exactly how challenging that job is, and how much of a difference she is making in kids’ lives every day. And she’s making the most of her summer, doing cooking demonstrations and teaming up with Lynn to do charity events. She even got to meet Sam the Cooking Guy.

Something tells me Savannah isn’t going to completely ditch the classroom for the kitchen. Not that she doesn’t have the skills. She’s teaching cooking classes and doing catering, and you can learn more about this on her website, especially if you live in the San Diego area. But Savannah seems like a hero to me, and something tells me she can’t walk away, cold turkey, from the students whose lives she’s changing every day. Mad props, Savannah. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter, and comment about this episode below!

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Tagged behind the scenes, Bree, Bri, challenger, Chrissi, Chrissy, Crissi, Crissy, elimination, fake, fish tacos, fried chicken, Gordon Ramsay, Gordon Ramsey, Krissi, Krissy, Master Chef, MasterChef, rant, raw, Savannah, secrets, Sturges, surfer, team, undercooked, who got eliminated

MasterChef 4 recap: Baby Eels and Agnolotti (S4E9)

Posted on June 22, 2013 | 121 Comments

(PLEASE NOTE: This blog is not approved or endorsed by MasterChef or Fox, and you probably shouldn’t read it. The opinions contained in this blog are merely the OPINIONS of a former MasterChef contestant who has no inside knowledge of how this season was produced.)

So our magical time machine transports us back from the longest-pressure-test-ever in Vegas back to the MasterChef kitchen, and apparently the contestants don’t know who was eliminated. (You can bet they all knew the likelihood of Luca being safe, though.) Krissi is worried that Kathy would be eliminated, and Kathy is her only friend left on the show. (Fascinatingly enough, a fellow contestant indicates that Kathy arrived to MasterChef with a very bold diva look, with big orange hair and giant hoop earrings, and before the signature dish round, the producers made her transform into something more mousey and less Kathy. They took her to have her hair colored, they took away her jewelry, and they made her wear baggy, drab clothes. What a shame that she couldn’t be herself!)

When Luca walks through the door, we see genuine despondence on Krissi’s face. Sorry, gal.

We also find out in this segment that Eddie is originally from Texas!! So even though he now lives in Georgia, I’m gonna consider him a Texan along with James.

The mystery box today is awesome…a bounty of bizarre ethnic ingredients with no English on the labels. And the judges aren’t going to tell the contestants what they are…they have to figure it out for themselves. I would actually like this mystery box, even though I normally hate them. Ethnic markets are where I do the majority of my shopping these days, and I love buying stuff with interesting packaging when I don’t have a clue what’s inside.

The box isn’t THAT bizarre, there are just a few items that are “out there.” I immediately see rambutan, which is one of my favorite fruits! It’s has a spiky outer shell, and a large, hard inner seed that is covered with a 1/2″ layer of fruit that has the consistency of a grape, and a beautiful, delicate, fragrant flavor. When I’m in Hawaii, the place where I always stay has rambutan trees and I just gorge myself.

It also looks like there’s a Chinese bitter melon (it looks like a cucumber), which is the milder of the 2 species of bitter melon and is GREAT sauteed with scrambled eggs and a little soy or curry paste. Bitter melon is used as a highly effective insulin regulator in other countries…in fact, in India, it’s practically the ONLY thing doctors prescribe to treat diabetes, and some Indian MD’s claim it can actually cure diabetes. If you enjoy or can tolerate bitter flavors and you are diabetic, you should check it out. Get the Chinese variety over the smaller, wartier Indian variety if you can. The Chinese type is less bitter:

I also see some sea beans or sea asparagus. I LOVE this stuff. I cook with it all the time when I’m in Hawaii because it’s so cheap there. Sea asparagus is a type of seaweed that is crunchy, juicy, succulent, and naturally salty. It is amazing raw in salads or lightly sauteed. Adrien Nieto and I put it into our Hawaii-Mexican fusion “guaca-poke,” which is a cross between guacamole and the Hawaiian staple poke (properly pronounced “POE-kay” though rampantly mispronounced “POE-kee” even in Hawaii). Poke is Hawaii’s version of ceviche, raw fish (often ahi tuna) marinated with soy and sesame and tossed with onions and sea asparagus or seaweed and a variety of other veggies. So Adrien and I make guaca-poke with raw cubed ahi, avocado, cilantro, fresh ginger, onion, garlic, sea asparagus, tomato, and lime juice. It’s DIVINE. If you ever see sea asparagus at your local market, you should try it. Good stuff:

There’s also an Okinawan purple sweet potato. I first encountered these in Hawaii, as well. The folks I stay with have an amazing farm, and they raise them…but they raise an heirloom variety that they “illegally” snuck into Hawaii in their pocket from a farm in North Carolina that grew a particularly sweet and healthy version. The Okinawan purple sweet potato isn’t actually a potato. It’s a member of the morning glory family that’s native to OUR continent, but became popular in Japanese cuisine when it was introduced over there, and THEN became popular here. They are one of the most healthy foods on the planet…absolutely packed full of antioxidants due to the anthocyanin pigments that give it color. (The same pigment is found in beets, blueberries, chard, rhubarb, etc.) You can find them at Asian markets, so give them a try. They’re not nearly as sweet as yams or American sweet potatoes. My Hawaiian friends make an amazing potato salad out of them:

There also appears to be baby bok choy or some sort of Asian cabbage. There are some tiny green globes that might be an Asian eggplant variety. These are the only things I identified just by looking. Later we learn there is a can of baby eels (!?!), elk flank steak, Chinese black moss (which Krissi says must be Chinese pubic hair!), mojama which is a Spanish delicacy of salted and sun dried tuna loin, a can of cod liver (an intense umami flavor, it could be used like fish sauce or anchovy paste), and lots more than don’t get narrated for us.

This is definitely the coolest and most interesting Mystery Box in MasterChef history, I LOVE this challenge. And while many contestants play it VERY safe and stick to the elk and potatoes, I applaud all those who went way outside their comfort zone and used the weird stuff.

After looking at that box, knowing me, I would probably do a weird Asian-influenced breakfast. Purple sweet potato home fries with baby eggplant. Eggs scrambled with bitter melon and salt cured tuna (which is like gravlax or smoked salmon) with a bit of the cod liver, with lightly sauteed sea asparagus and crunchy fried baby eels on top. There’s just no reason to play it safe, even though that’s exactly what Graham said HE would do!

Jordon immediately starts tasting EVERYTHING to figure out what it is, which is the mark of a great chef.

FINALLY we see some actual footage of Lynn! He speaks with confidence and expertise. I want to see more. His plate of elk tartare is really stunningly plated, but the judges don’t put him in the top 3 because they say his dish is underseasoned. (That’s really the only attack they can give when a plate looks beautiful. Because we, the audience, can’t taste it, they can technically say whatever they want about it, which is how the show can create drama. Only Lynn knows whether his dish was underseasoned or not. My guess is that it was seasoned perfectly, and they’re deliberately keeping Lynn down to frustrate him and get some emotion out of his otherwise confident, stoic persona.)

The first selection for the top 3 is Eddie, who “played it safe” by searing the elk flank, making a sweet potato puree, and sauteing the greens with olive oil and lemon zest. The judges say it is simple but perfectly executed.

Next is Jordan, who really stepped outside his comfort zone and utilized all of the weird stuff. He has a “salad” of black moss and sea asparagus, salt cured tuna, sauteed greens, crispy baby eels, with purple sweet potato chips. I love it that, as he’s narrating his dish, he really doesn’t know WHAT it is. He just knows it tastes good. Very impressive, Jordan.

Finally, Bime comes forward with a lovely plated dish that is similar to Eddie’s but a little more dangerous. He has a sweet potato mash topped with baby eels and perfectly cooked elk flank.

The winner is, surprisingly, the guy who played it the safest…Eddie. (Great way to teach the contestants to step outside their comfort zone, producers! Ha ha ha…)

Eddie heads back to the pantry to discover the theme of the next challenge, which is: filled pasta. Definitely one of the more challenging things for a chef to produce. The judges present him with 3 types of filled pasta to choose from:

Agnolotti – (pronounced “an-yo-LO-tee”) These little pillows of stuffed pasta hail from the mountainous region of Piedmont in northwestern Italy. A really stunning place. The traditional filling is some type of meat and/or veggies (typically leftovers), and they are sauced with a lightly reduced beef stock, or a sage brown butter sauce.

Mezzaluna – (pronounced “met-zah-LOO-nah”) Translated as “half moon,” this pasta is obviously named for its shape. It can be stuffed with anything, but most often a cheese like ricotta and/or herbs. They are among the easiest of the filled pastas to make, you just cut circles of dough, spoon in a little filling, moisten the edges, fold the circle in half, and seal with a fork.

Caramelle – (pronounced “kah-dah-MELL-eh”) This one is kinda obvious in its naming origin, too. The shape of the pasta mimics a wrapped caramel candy. (Gordon says they call it the “bonbon pasta” in Italy…I’ve never heard of that.) It is typically stuffed with cheese, Gordon’s version is stuffed with mozzarella and sauced with a spicy tomato sauce (pomodoro or, if it’s really spicy, arrabbiata). It is the most “informal” and rustic of the 3 filled pastas…something you can make quickly at home…and would probably be the very simplest choice.

Eddie is safe from cooking, and he wants to choose the most challenging type of pasta for his competitors, so he picks the agnolotti. It is the most challenging to shape, and since it traditionally has a meat filling, it’s more complex than a cheese filling.

Last season Joe gave us a demonstration of how to shape tortellini, except that the camera never showed the final product once he had shaped it. (Contestants say he did it multiple times just to get a shot of him doing it correctly, but that the final result wasn’t pretty enough to show.) This season the producers aren’t making him do that again. Thank God. He has invited someone else to do the demonstration, and that someone is the queen of Italian American cooking…Joe’s Mom. The legendary Lidia Bastianich. She’s like the Julia Child of Italian food…she brought Italian home cooking to the American table via her appearances with Julia Child in the early 90s, to her 5 PBS shows in the late 90s. She also appeared as a judge on the FIRST MasterChef USA in 2000, which was on PBS at that time, did NOT have Gordon Ramsay, and was probably the kind of show that I WISH MasterChef was. Read about it on Wikipedia. In addition, Lidia is a highly successful restaurateur, with restaurants primarily in NYC but also in Kansas City and Pittsburgh, and she was one of the people who helped put celebrity chef Mario Batali on the map.

So Lidia waltzes in through the door and Krissi pees in her pants. (I peed in my pants, too, Krissi, when we had to cook for Lidia in a group challenge on my season.) She’s definitely a legend, and Krissi quips, “If Jesus came down and stood next to Lidia, I’d be like ‘What’s up, dude? LIDIA, HOW ARE YOU?!?”

Lidia didn’t grow up cooking. In fact, she wasn’t even the chef of her first restaurant…she learned to cook from the chef there after she gave birth to Joe’s sister. But extensive travel and study in Italy and Croatia, which is where the Bastianich family is from and where their vineyards are, turned her into an expert. In case you didn’t know, Joe was never pressured into joining the family restaurant business. He went to college, became a bond trader on Wall Street, but loved the food world so much that he walked away from that high-paying career and convinced his mom to help him start his first restaurant, Becco. So in a way, Joe is like many of the MasterChef contestants. He left the path his life was on to follow his dream. And while a lot of the MasterChef fans don’t care for Joe at all, there’s no doubt that he’s in the food business because he loves food. Sure, he had an easier ticket because of his mother’s success. But it’s no secret that Joe would be MORE wealthy than he currently is had he stayed on Wall Street. Instead, he followed his dream, and he has been very successful at it. He may not be a chef. But he’s a smart guy. He’s savvy. He’s shrewd. And his restaurants are incredible.

Back to Lidia…she’s going to give a demonstration on how to make agnolotti, but the twist is that Eddie gets to send 2 people out of the room, so that they don’t get to see the demo. Krissi shouts up at him, “I’ll kill you where you stand, Eddie.” Not because she needs to see the demo. Krissi is an accomplished Italian cook. But Lidia is her idol, and she wants to watch her cook.

Eddie is strategic about his decision. He wants to pick strong competitors who may not be experienced with pasta, to put them at the most disadvantage. He sends out Lynn, who has always wanted to learn agnolotti, and James, who says, “I’m not mad at him. He’s playing the game smart.”

And here we have encapsulated what I abhor about what MasterChef has become. It has become a game; a game where strategy is more important than cooking. And that may be the way the restaurant industry is. But people aren’t going to come to your restaurant if you’ve got great strategy on the plate. They come for the food, and if it’s good, they come back. This is not The Apprentice: Restaurateuring. This show is not about being a savvy, shrewd strategist. This is supposed to be a show about which home cooks have the potential to become a great chef. And while these “games” make the show interesting from a sociological standpoint, I hate them, and I’m about to stop watching.

Why does this have to be the evolution of EVERY reality TV show? Why did Survivor have to go from people actually surviving in the wilderness to alliances and strategies, scheming against every one of your fellow competitors, even your “friends,” to come out on top? This brings back up the comparison to Capitalism I made in an earlier MasterChef blog. This is the most disgusting, vile thing about America and Capitalism…it teaches us an “every man for himself” mindset. It encourages us to succeed AT ALL COSTS, even at the expense of those around us. It teaches us that the best decision is always one that’s in self-interest, even if it’s damaging to others.

This is why I have decided I will NOT join MasterChef for a reunion or “all stars” show, if I’m invited to participate. I know that will make my fans upset. But just imagine that MasterChef season: since all the prior contestants already know how engineered the show is, that reunion show will be even more of a Hunger Games. It would come to the point where the producers would have ME singled out in front of the judges. And after all this criticizing and preaching I’ve been doing for the past 2 seasons, you can be certain that they’re thirsty for blood. They’ll put me in a position where I’m FORCED to do something cruel or mean to a contestant, like take away their mixer, prevent them from viewing a demonstration, or, in all likelihood…something worse. And I won’t do it. And there will be a big, nasty, awkward production halt. And I’ll leave the set and hitchhike home. And they’ll try to sue me for all the vast millions of dollars I have hidden under my mattress. And they’ll have to re-shoot the whole season without me, or stage some dramatic stunt to explain why I left. And it will be a stupendous mess.

(Or maybe they’re smarter than that and they know that the audience wouldn’t stand for them manipulating someone like me or Christine or Monti or Whitney, and instead they’ll put us in positions where we can help other contestants at our own expense, and the audience weeps and feels great, and we get to be the redemption scapegoat for the manipulations they’ve been spinning thus far.)

Regardless, I am completely, utterly disgusted by what this show has become. And the American audience is LOVING it. (Check the ratings.) It breaks my heart that this is the kind of television we have an appetite for. This is why I don’t watch TV. And NEITHER SHOULD YOU. Or at least watch GOOD TV, which is increasingly rare these days. TV that celebrates humanity, compassion, generosity, integrity, and empathy. TV that puts people in a position to be HUMAN, rather than selfishly, sadistically animalistic. Last season, even though the show had its nasty moments, we had this over-arching thread of good that Christine Ha and Monti Carlo brought to it. We hoped and we cried and we felt good things in our hearts for them. They were fighters and they were struggling. But they were never forced into a position where they had to hurt another contestant in order to gain benefit for themselves. This year, it’s all about the contestants sh-tting all over each other, scheming, scamming, to try to win by sabotaging their fellow competitors, rather than winning because they’re the best cook…where’s the goodness, Adeline and Robin and Elisabeth? I hope to God it’s coming. I’m not gonna make it much longer. I have far better things to do with my time…things that make more lives better than just my own.

*steps off the soapbox*

Lidia demonstrates agnolotti. The contestants make agnolotti. Krissi and Jessie are the best.

There are 4 on the bottom:

Jonny, for making butternut squash agnolotti with a maple cream sauce. (If you haven’t noticed, Italians are prone to resist modifications to their classic dishes. The Spanish and Dutch are completely the opposite. Personally, I’d be very interested to taste Jonny’s dish.)

Lynn, who didn’t get to see the demo and processed his filling too smooth in the food processor (rather than using the meat grinder for a more coarse texture). His delicious-sounding ricotta and short rib agnolotti with charred leek brown butter sauce is also proclaimed by the judges as underseasoned. (Again, that’s an easy faked criticism since WE can’t taste it. After being criticized in the mystery box for underseasoning, I GUARANTEE you Lynn didn’t also underseason this dish.)

Beth, for undercooking her agnolotti, which is stuffed with herbs, ricotta, watercress, and goat cheese. (DANG that sounds good.)

And Howard, for daring to be creative with the concept of agnolotti and seasoning his veggie, jalapeno and chicken filling with cumin. Lidia says, “Classics work and are appreciated time after time, otherwise they wouldn’t be called classics.” She is correct. But if no one ever innovated, cuisine would become stale. Innovation has led to dramatic improvements in cooking, like the sous vide technique, which yields near-miraculous results for cooking meat and fish. Joe, in traditional Italian fashion, doesn’t like the way Howard is talking to his mother, so he lights into him. Howard defends himself with the VERY acceptable question, “So you want 15 of the same dish up here every time?” But no human is allowed to question Joe Bastianich. He hisses: “The only thing worse than a cook who can’t boil is a narcissist in denial. Thank you for nothing.” Food in garbage. Howard goes home.

Please comment below, but I have to take a break from this nonsense because my blood pressure is through the roof. I’m going to go pet my chickens, (who just started laying this week!), pull weeds in my garden, pick blueberries and take them to my neighbors, and try to do SOMETHING good for the world to offset this temple of self-interest that MasterChef season 4 has become.

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Tagged agnolotti, baby, Bastianich, behind the scenes, caramelle, Chrissy, Crissi, Crissy, eels, elimination, ethnic, fake, Gordon Ramsay, Gordon Ramsey, Howard, ingredients, Joe, Kathy, Krissi, Lidia, Lynn, Master Chef, MasterChef, mezzaluna, mystery box, pasta, secret, weird

Tag Archives: Crissy

MasterChef 4 recap: Sausage and Mushrooms (S4E15)

MasterChef 4 recap: Surfers and Chicken Breasts (S4E14)

MasterChef 4 recap: Baby Eels and Agnolotti (S4E9)

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