Tag Archives: Nieto

A FRANK Tale: REAL Mexico

(Most photos in this blog appear courtesy of Stephanie Casey at Frugal Foodie Dallas, who live-blogged our menu for us!  Thanks, Stephanie!)

We’ve been wanting to do Mexican FRANK for a very, very long time.  Since the beginning, in fact.  BUT…when you live in a place like Texas, which is oversaturated with both TexMex AND traditional Mexican food, it’s not a menu to venture into lightly.  So we were waiting until the moment felt right.  And when Adrien Nieto called us up and told us he had just finished opening up a new restaurant in San Francisco and was free for a month, we knew the moment was right.

For those of you who didn’t watch MasterChef, Adrien was in the final 2 of our season, and many (if not most) viewers who watched it believed his menu was far superior to the final winner.  But if you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know that MasterChef isn’t real anyway.  Suffice it to say that Adrien blew us all out of the water from the first instant we met him.  He was born and raised in Ventura County, but his parents are first generation Mexican-Americans and he grew up absolutely steeped in both traditional Mexican cuisine, as well as the fresh, produce-centered cuisine of California.  This guy is brilliant.  And Jennie and I both felt like we’d be doing our diners a disservice if we did a Mexico FRANK without him.

As we began to conceptualize the menu, it was funny to discover that all 3 of us had very similar ideas.  We wanted to keep the focus squarely on the cuisines of central Mexico, rather than on the TexMex that so many Dallas folks are familiar with.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s a LOT of authentic Mexican restaurants here, but they tend to be small, neighborhood dives tucked away in strip malls and patronized mostly by Mexicans and adventurous folk who don’t mind a menu that’s all in Spanish and servers who barely speak English.  (My kind of places, and I’ve eaten at dozens of them.)  But there’s very little upscale, refined, authentic Mexican food in Dallas, and we wanted to fill that gap, even if only for 2 weeks.

After many hours of back-and-forth, along with research to find out if we could even get some of the ingredients, the menu was finalized:

We named it “Con Gusto” at Adrien’s suggestion, because this means “with pleasure.”  That carries many, many connotations in Mexico depending on the context, and I’ll talk about that at the end of this blog.

We ALL wanted ceviche (“say-VEE-chay”) on the menu, and it’s one of Adrien’s favorites.  Ceviche is raw fish and/or shellfish marinated in a highly acidic citrus dressing.  The acid “cooks” the fish by performing the same chemical process that happens to meat when heat is applied to it…the protein strands in the meat denature, or unravel, in the presence of either or heat or acid, and the normally translucent meat becomes solid white.  Our ceviche contained whitefish and shrimp, along with cucumber, serrano pepper, and shallot, marinated in lime and orange juices and tequila.  However, we put a bit of a spin on it by adding “sangrita.”  Spanish for “little blood,” sangrita is a condiment that is usually served alongside a high quality sipping tequila to cleanse your palate between sips.  In the US at most fancy tequila bars, sangrita is made with a tomato base, but this is a bastardization.  In the Mexican state of Jalisco, where the vast majority of the world’s tequila is produced, sangrita was originally made with reduced pomegranate juice, giving the liquid a dark red color.  So our sangrita was made traditionally by adding orange juice and chile to the very reduced pomegranate “molasses” and we topped the ceviche with it.  Its pungent, dark, sweet, spicy flavor was a perfect compliment to the bright, fresh flavors of the ceviche.  And we served it with a welcome cocktail made of champagne, cactus water, pineapple juice, jalapeno simple syrup, and a candied jalapeno.  A perfect start!

Next up was another dish we each wanted on the menu, but only discovered this when we began pow-wowing.  Stuffed squash blossoms, or “flor de calabeza.”  Squash blossoms appear in many unique ways across the vast culinary landscapes of Mexico, from salads to casseroles to tacos, even to dessert.  But when was the last time you saw them on a Mexican menu?  We decided to stuff ours with an ingredient we were all VERY eager to introduce to our diners: huitlacoche.  (“WHEET-la-COACH-eh”)

This unique ingredient results when a corn field becomes “infected” with a fungus called ustilago maydis, or, in the US, “corn smut.”  It causes the individual kernels of corn to swell massively in size and turn gray, looking like…well…like a mushroom.  In the process, it transforms the flavor of the corn into something that’s still unmistakeably corny, but also earthy and rich, like a mushroom.  In Mexico, when a corn farmer sees these “mushrooms” growing out of his ears of corn, he falls to his knees and thanks God, because it means he’ll fetch 10 times more for his corn that year.  Huitlacoche is a delicacy.

In the US, however, it’s a very different story.  Corn smut is considered a deplorable disease, and the USDA has spent many millions of dollars trying to eradicate it.  When a US corn farmer notices these gray mushrooms growing from his corn, he sets his fields on fire, files for crop insurance, and prays it never happens again…not realizing what a valuable treasure he had been gifted.

Needless to say, finding huitlacoche can be daunting.  Yes, every Mexican market sells canned huitlacoche…but have you ever had canned mushrooms?  Same principle.  Gross.

There is 1 farmer in all the US who is smart enough to deliberately innoculate his corn fields with ustilago maydis and intentionally raise huitlacoche.  His name is Roy Burns and his farm is in central Florida, and he is kept almost completely out of stock of his huitlacoche because in-the-know chefs like Rick Bayless and Jose Andres take shipments every week.  Huitlacoche is highly perishable, so Roy freezes it as soon as it’s harvested, which preserves its delicious flavor.  (Though the texture does suffer a bit with freezing.  However, you’re not likely lucky enough to taste fresh huitlacoche unless it happened to your corn.)  I called up Roy and begged him to ship me some, and thankfully, he did.  It arrived overnight in a cooler…at extraordinary cost, of course!  But completely worth it.

We combined the huitlacoche with some wild mushrooms and garlic, and stuffed the squash blossoms with it.  Then we made a batter similar to a tamal using masa harina (ground corn flour treated with alkaline water) and cornmeal, and dipped the blossoms in this before frying.  The result was similar to a tamal, but crispy on the outside.  We served the blossom on a lovely chilled sauce of crema de Mexicana (Mexican sour cream) with roasted poblano peppers and tons of cotija cheese, which is similar in flavor to Parmigiano-Reggiano.  (I still have dreams about that sauce, it was SO GOOD.)  And on the side was a little slaw of red cabbage, jicama (“HEE-kah-mah”) which is a root vegetable with a crisp texture like an apple and is lightly sweet, and epazote (“eh-pah-SOAT-eh”) a bitter herb whose flavor is unlike anything you’ve ever tasted.  One of our diners exclaimed, “It tastes like tarragon and basil with some rosemary and juniper berry and hops thrown in, along with kale and spinach.”  We dressed the slaw with a vinaigrette of mint and jalapeno.  This may, in fact, be my favorite course we’ve created at FRANK thus far, and it was the runaway favorite at most of our seatings:

The next course was created solely by Adrien.  While he had his fingerprints all over the entire menu, we wanted to give one entire course to him, to let him run wild.  And it turned out to be very special, indeed.  The protein was octopus, or “pulpo” as it’s called in Mexico.  Octopus is a tricky meat.  The vast majority of Americans have only experienced it at sushi restaurants, where the Japanese treasure its ability to be INCREDIBLY chewy when steamed or boiled.  THEY love it that way.  Americans, of course, do not.  So most Americans who’ve eaten octopus have eaten it that way, and said, “No thanks…don’t need to try that again.”  Which is a shame, because, when cooked properly, octopus is one of the most delicious, tender, succulent meats out there.  I didn’t know this until MasterChef, when I tasted octopus from both Adrien (who made it in the semifinals) and from Mario Batali, who is the executive chef at Joe Bastianich’s Los Angeles restaurant Osteria Mozza.  Eating octopus from them was a revelation.  I actually cried.  (Seriously.  Yes, I know I cry all the time, but very rarely does the flavor of a dish make me cry.  Properly cooked octopus did.)

So Adrien did it the right way…first pounding it like crazy to tenderize the meat, then a braise in the pressure cooker to infuse it with delicious Mexican flavors and make it melt-in-the-mouth tender, then a sear on cast iron to give it a nice crust.  Adrien is no stranger to pulpo.  In fact, it is the very first memory he has…in his entire life.  He remembers being on the ocean in Mexico with family, going to a food stall that was famous for seafood stew.  He remembers his Aunt buying a bowl of the stew and passing it down to him.  He remembers seeing the funny-looking tentacles sticking out of the spicy broth.  He remembers tasting it, with its tender texture and rich, spicy flavor.  That was the VERY FIRST THING he remembers in his life.  And, as so much of FRANK is about storytelling and truly special dishes, this was as FRANK a dish as any we’ve ever served.

The octopus sat atop a puree of black beans that were cooked with 2 different stocks, the stock from the octopus and the stock from our short rib from the main course.  He pureed this into a thick soup consistency, then topped it with some chayote squash sauteed with chorizo, lightly dressed arugula, a salsa verde with avocado, and then the octopus.  It was garnished with pickled radishes, one of his very favorite things to eat.  Any time we serve octopus at FRANK, some of our diners get VERY nervous…but just like always, after one bite, they were completely sold:

Next it was time for our traditional “boozy sorbet” course, and all 3 of us are crazy about mezcal right now.  Mezcal is similar to tequila, but instead of being made from the blue agave plant, it’s made from the maguey or American agave plant, which is more commonly know as Century Plant.  You see these in people’s yards from Texas to California, they are very popular ornamentals.  The tough spines are sheared off the plant to expose the heart, which is roasted over an open wood fire, crushed, and fermented into a lightly alcoholic substance that is distilled twice.  The open fire roasting gives mezcal an intense smokey flavor, like a very peaty Scotch.  Most mezcal is made in Oaxaca.  (Side note, mezcal was popular for awhile because some of the cheaper bottles came with worms or scorpions in them.  NONE of these brands is worth trying, avoid them.  A delicious mezcal that is widely available is called “Vida” sold by the brand Del Maguey which markets many varieties of mezcal.)  Mezcal is become VERY trendy right now, and clever barkeeps are discovering all sorts of delicious cocktail combinations.  (One I keep seeing everywhere is mezcal with chartreuse and grapefruit.)  We wanted to keep our flavors authentic, so we made our sorbet with tamarind (a bean pod with an intense sweet/sour flavor, popular in many cuisines around the world), grapefruit, and orange.  Many of our diners were trying mezcal for the very first time, and the sorbet actually got a few votes for best course on the entire menu!

Now, the main course.  This one was inspired by a breakfast that Jennie recently had in Mexico City, where she was offered grilled cactus and cheese.  She was so taken with the flavors and textures that she really wanted to put it on the FRANK menu.  The pads of the prickly pear cactus, called “nopales,” are delicious and have been a staple in Mexico for millenia.  They have a tart, astringent taste, almost as if they’d been marinated in vinegar, which most people are shocked to discover.  The cheese commonly paired with cactus is called “panela,” which is confusing to some people because panela is also the name of an unrefined raw sugar cake that is common in Central and South America.  But Mexican panela is a cheese with a strong, chewy structure, so it can be grilled to a nice delicious crust without melting and losing its shape.  For the protein on the plate, we chose beef short rib, one of our favorite cuts, and also popular in Mexico.  We were able to get USDA Prime short rib from our friend Clark, whose family runs Vintage Beef farms and consistently produces the best beef we’ve ever worked with.  One of the things we love about short rib is that it’s the beef version of bacon…it has that remarkable ability to be both crispy and succulent and juicy at the same time due to its fat content and its high level of collagen.  We braise our short rib for 10 hours at low temperature until it is so tender it’s almost hard to work with.  Then we remove all the meat from the bone and cartilage (very laborious!) and reserve the fat.  Then, just before serving, we saute that meat in the fat, so it’s crispy on the outside, and tender and juicy on the inside.  A perfect meat to place beside the tart, crisp cactus and the grilled cheese.  To round out the plate, we put our famous 63.5 degree shell-poached egg on the plate.  It always impresses folks who’ve never had an egg cooked at the proper temperature of 146F or 63.5C.  (Most poaching and boiling is done in water that’s 200F or higher, which means the white is overcooked and the yolk is still raw.  When you cook an egg at a much lower temperature for much longer, you get a uniform, silky, custard-like texture throughout the white AND the yolk.)  We also passed homemade tortillas around the table, both white and blue corn, and we had made a homemade butter with ancho chile in it to spread on the tortillas, and also offered passion fruit margaritas in addition to wine.  (We squeezed more than 60 pounds of limes over the course of 2 weekends to make these dinners…not an easy task, nor cheap, since the lime shortage has driven the price of limes sky high!)

And last but certainly not least…dessert.  I had a hard time selling my idea to Jennie and Adrien, because neither of them like flan.  And neither do I.  But several years back, just before I left for MasterChef, I was introduced to a version of flan that blew my mind at my favorite local Mexican food restaurant, Agave Azul.  The texture was nothing like a traditional flan…it was more like a ricotta cheesecake.  I kept prodding their chef to tell me how he made it, and he never would, so I had to embark on my own experimentations to recreate it.  I finally settled on a Mexican cheese called “requeson,” which is very similar to ricotta.  It gave the flan a rich, irregular texture, removing the jelly-like texture that turns many people off from flan.  After describing it to Jennie and Adrien and assuring them they’d love it, they still weren’t entirely sold.  So I made a batch and took it to Jennie’s place and left it in her fridge for them to taste.  And one bite was all it took.  Our flan was flavored with reduced tequila and vanilla, and we used piloncillo (“PEE-lone-SEE-yo”), the rawest form of sugar, and tequila to make the caramel.  Piloncillo is a fabulous ingredient…it comes in little brown cones which you’ll often see in the produce section at Latin American markets.  They squeeze the juice from sugar cane, boil it down until it’s syrupy and thick, and pour it into cone-shaped molds to set.  Sugar doesn’t get any more raw than this, the flavor is intense and dark and rich.  On top of the flan we put some candied pepitas, or pumpkin seeds, which have been an important food in Mexico since long before the Spanish conquistadores first set foot on its shores.  We also put some raw cacao nibs on the plate…cacao is the pod that chocolate is made from, but in its raw form, its crunchy, bitter, and intensely flavored.  And I can’t tell you how many people said, “I hate flan and was scared when I saw it on the menu, but this was DIVINE.”

And we served the dessert with some Mexican-style hot chocolate, rich and intense with heavy cream, coffee, vanilla, cinnamon, and chiles.

This was a truly fabulous dinner, and as I mentioned in the beginning, Adrien named it “Con Gusto,” which has many contextual connotations in Mexico.  Not only does it mean “with pleasure,” it also means “welcome, what is mine is yours.”  And it also means “with passion.”  If you’ve never ventured beyond the border towns of Mexico, or the Americanized beach resort towns, you have yet to experience the single most striking thing about Mexico…the hospitality of its people.  And food is ALWAYS the first and most important symbol of hospitality there.  If you recall the Thanksgivings of your childhood,when all the relatives gathered for an over-the-top feast…this happens almost weekly in Mexico.  ANY occasion warrants the gathering of the generations, and a ridiculous overabundance of food.  Food is how the people of Mexico show their love for each other, it occupies a MUCH more sacred place in their culture than it does here in the US.  As Adrien spoke about his family’s heritage and what food means to him, he brought things full circle by saying, “It has been so interesting to see what Ben and Jennie are doing at FRANK, because it reminds me so much of my family dinners as a child.  This isn’t a restaurant.  You don’t get this at a restaurant.  These guys are sharing their love with you, and you are sharing it with each other…with all these new friends you’ve made tonight.  Food has the power to make these kind of connections, but a restaurant robs it of that kind of power.  That’s what makes FRANK so special, and so exciting to be a part of.”

I usually spend so much time blogging  about the food at FRANK that I don’t often talk about this, which is REALLY what FRANK is all about.  Our diners sit at an 18-foot long table that we built ourselves out of lumber reclaimed from an old farmhouse in Ft. Worth.  The table is narrow, so the people across from you are very close.  We sit 18-20 per night, so the people sitting next to you are actually touching shoulders with you.  It’s not a roomy experience, to say the least.  But this, combined with a little wine for lubrication, and a few plates of delicious food cooked with love, are all it takes to break down those ridiculous social barriers we’ve put up, to keep our interactions with our fellow man superficial.  “How are you today?”  “I’m fine, thanks, how are you?”  After 2 or 3 hours of dining with complete strangers in this setting, people have discovered new best friends.  I joke at the beginning of FRANK, “Sit next to someone you came with, but across from someone you’ve never seen before until tonight…I promise you’ll be best friends on Facebook by the end of the evening.”  But it’s actually true…deep friendships have been forged around our table.  Occasionally Jennie and I will be walking around Dallas and we’ll come across groups of people who met at FRANK, and now dine together regularly and have become very close.  And while we both love to cook…THIS is why neither of us could ever be chefs in a conventional restaurant, because our love for cooking is born out of our love for PEOPLE, not for our love of ingredients and techniques.

And FRANK has been an extraordinary and rewarding place to let that love run wild!!

MasterChef recap: Three’s Company

(Please Note: This blog is not endorsed or approved by MasterChef.  The opinions reflected herein are solely that: opinions.  I have no inside knowledge of how MasterChef is produced or judged and my opinions should not be treated as fact.)

Josh, Becky, and Christine are the top 3.  And beneath the mystery box today is yet another non-edible item: a blank cookbook.  This is apparently to motivate the remaining 3 to give their all in the last stretch before the finals.  Gordon asks each contestant who they’d dedicate their cookbook to.  Christine says her mother, a talented cook who died when Christine was 14 without leaving her any recipes.  Becky would dedicate hers to her parents who have always encouraged her to follow her dreams.  Josh would dedicate his to his mom, an “amazingly strong woman” who is his biggest fan.

I can’t give any different answer, myself.  My mother taught me how to cook when I was too young to have any business anywhere near the kitchen.  My earliest memories in life are of mom in the kitchen, where she spent the majority of her day from sunrise to sunset, cooking and singing at the top of her lungs.  The kitchen was always a place of joy in our house.  And my passion for cooking, above all else, comes from my mother.

Who would YOU dedicate your cookbook to?  Please comment at the bottom of this post…I wanna know.

This mystery box challenge isn’t going to be a mystery.  The contestants get 5 minutes in the pantry to select anything they want, and then have an hour to make a stunning entree worthy of their very own cookbook.  And that’s a dream come true…I wish I’d been able to do that a time or two on MasterChef.  No ingredient restrictions…no themes…just do what you do best.

Our commercial break today is peddling the new MasterChef Ultimate Cookbook.  I had a bit of involvement with the creation of this book, though I’m not sure how many of my recipes will be included in it.  In theory, it’s an assemblage of recipes from all 3 seasons, “new” recipes that contestants have developed since being on the show, and recipes from the judges, as well.  Of course, that was the plan for it 6 months ago…no telling what it will end up being.  It’ll be released on September 18, but you can preorder it on Amazon at a killer price: $17.81 (compared to the list price of $26.99, which is what it will cost at Barnes and Noble in 2 days when it’s released).  Check it out!  I’m kind of excited about it.

All 3 dishes get tasted, because there are only 3 contestants left.  Josh is first, with his curried Cornish Game Hen with basmati rice.  We haven’t seen anything Indian from Josh recently, but back in the food truck challenge, Joe told us that Josh knew Indian food better than any of the other contestants.  (A bit of an affront to Tanya, who has Indian roots and has lived there.)  It sounds delicious, but the plate is a bit sparse, with only protein and rice…no veggies at all.  It’s hard to go wrong when you put Indian spices on dark meat poultry.  The judges love the flavor, but I’m surprised they didn’t mention anything about the complete lack of veg on the plate.

Christine is next, with her Vietnamese stir fried noodles with seared sea scallops.  Her scallops are mouth-wateringly perfect on the sear, and the bowl looks really yummy.  The judges praise it.  But again…very little vegetable on the plate.

Becky is last, with a dish she completely reworked at the end.  She took a whole loup-de-mer, which is French for “wolf of the sea,” but is more widely known as Branzino or European Sea Bass, and filleted it.  But the filleting didn’t work out well, so she only got 2 small pieces that were attractive enough to be plated, so she used the rest of the fillet in her stock.  When Ramsay pointed out that her two small pieces weren’t enough for an entree, she changed directions at the last minute and assembled it as a soup, with a creamy fish broth, roasted fennel in a charred jalapeno and scallion vinaigrette, and sunchoke puree.  Sunchokes, also known as Jerusalem artichokes, are actually the root of a sunflower and have nothing in common with artichokes.    They look a bit like ginger root, and are crisp and delicious…somewhat like a water chestnut.  You either eat them raw, roasted, or steamed.  If you boil them, they get nasty.  I prefer them raw, because I think most of the flavor goes away when you cook them.  (They make most people really gassy, though…go easy on them if you try them!)  Joe claims the fish is overcooked, and Graham says it’s yummy but not well conceived.

Becky has a little meltdown that I completely understand.  She grew up eating humble food (like most of us).  Now she’s a food photographer and exists in a world of fancy cuisine, and she’s on MasterChef cooking for 3 famous food powerhouses.  So instead of following her own instincts and being true to herself and her roots, she’s reaching out to try to conceptualize things that she thinks will impress the judges and appear sophisticated, rather than making something that she’s really truly passionate about and that truly represents her.  Becky…I struggled with the same thing in the first half of the show.  It wasn’t until I was able to make my rustic pumpkin carrot cake, a cake that I invented and make all the time, that I realized I had to stop trying to impress the judges, and just cook the kinds of things that I love to cook at home for friends and family.  Things that resonate with me.  That’s not always possible when you get something like a mystery box, or have to cook a genre of cuisine you’re not comfortable with.  But in a challenge like this…where you have free reign of the pantry and no binding theme…this is the time to make one of your specialties.  Something that’s your trademark.  Something that really speaks to you.  And Becky realizes that she wasn’t cooking from the heart on this challenge.  My heart is breaking for her…a mistake like this, so late in the game, could spell disaster.  And since I’ve been thinking for the past 2 episodes that Christine and Josh will be the final 2, I’m thinking we’re beginning to see the end of Becky.

This time, the judges give us a specific ranking for the mystery box, and the winner is Christine, followed by Josh, and then Becky.  Then all 3 head back into the pantry to discover their various advantages and disadvantages.  The theme for the challenge is “legs” and there are 3 ingredients on the table: leg of lamb, chicken legs, and frog legs.  Christine gets to pick first, then Josh, and Becky gets whatever is leftover.

Christine goes with the chicken legs…the most versatile, the cheapest, and also the most pedestrian.  An interesting choice.  It definitely leaves her wide open to a lot of possibilities.  But up against a premium ingredient like leg of lamb, and a wildcard ingredient like frog, she COULD be exposing herself to a potential loss.

Josh now has an interesting conundrum.  Given his southern roots, I’d imagine he would LOVE to cook with the frogs legs.  But that leaves the true premium ingredient, the leg of lamb, for Becky, who is accustomed to working with high-end ingredients, and it would be a huge boon to her.  So he gives the frog’s legs to Becky, and keeps the leg of lamb for himself.

Becky admits that she’s never eaten or cooked frog legs.  What a shame!  Frog is DELICIOUS.  When I was a kid, we had a huge cattle pond half a mile behind our house, with giant green bullfrogs living in it.  My little brother and I would sneak up over the dam with our pellet guns and peck off a dozen fat bullfrogs every month or so, and bring them back home to clean and cook.

On my last trip to Hawaii with Adrien and Christian, to cook for the homeless kids in Honolulu, we stayed in a condo on a golf course that was being flooded with unseasonably prolific rains.  All the giant cane toads (a harmful invasive species in Hawaii) had come up out of the golf course ponds and were sitting on the grass, and late one night when we were hungry, we went frogging.  After a quick, humane dispatch, we skinned the legs and salted them.  As soon as the salt hit the muscle tissue, the legs started twitching!  It freaked Adrien out, and Christian thought it was the coolest thing he had ever seen.  There was more twitching when the legs hit the pan.  And a few minutes later, the boys ate frog for the first time:

For those of you who are totally grossed out right now…don’t be!  Frog legs are incredibly delicious.  The taste is very similar to old-fashioned chicken (they have almost no fat, and lots of flavor because the muscles get worked a lot), with a texture halfway between chicken and firm whitefish.  Both boys loved them, and they were prepared very simply, with just salt and pepper and olive oil.

Needless to say, the frog legs would definitely have been my pick.  I’d have done 3 different preparations: Cajun-style blacked frog legs (my favorite way to eat them), Southern-style chicken fried frog legs (to represent my heritage), and Thai-frog legs with red curry sauce (to represent my favorite cuisine).  But poor Becky, I think she’s shaking in her boots right now, especially considering what just happened in the mystery box.

After shopping, the contestants return to the kitchen to find the 15 eliminated contestants waiting for them.  I remember last season being hurried into the kitchen while Jennifer, Christian, and Adrien were shopping, and how happy I was to see them come out that door.  You can’t imagine the joy we all experienced, being back together with everyone.  Some of them had been back home in the “real world” for weeks, and were having the usual difficulty re-incorporating themselves into a group of people they couldn’t give any details to because of the confidentiality agreement.  So, for them, to come back and be able to decompress with the rest of us who completely understood the whole situation…it was extraordinary.  Others, like me, hadn’t even left the show…I was simply eliminated and shuffled to a different hotel to await the finale.  So I was still isolated from friends and family, and as the number of contestants dwindled and things got weirder and more competitive, it was such a huge relief to see Alvin and Jennie and Tracy and Esther (Peanut)…even Max brought a giant smile to my face.  Those few glorious days were a time to celebrate with our new family without the stress of competition or threat of elimination.  It was divine.

The hour is up, and Christine is first with her chicken legs.  She’s done a traditional buttermilk-battered Southern fried chicken with creamed kale.  I’m gonna be honest…my grandmother could fry chicken in a cast iron skillet to perfection, and I just can’t do it.  My chicken always ends up raw in the middle, or overcooked on the breading.  I can deep fry chicken with no problem, but the shallow fry method in cast iron still evades me.  I should practice it more, but since I have a deep fryer and I can trust my results in it, I haven’t bothered.  Still, the traditional Southern shallow fry is one of the most challenging skills a home cook can master.  Christine’s chicken is perfect, and Gordon loves the seasoning, which combined paprika, cayenne, thyme, sage, and blood orange…a VERY unusual combination, but Gordon says it’s absolutely perfect.  Joe and Graham both forego the knife and fork Ramsay used to eat the chicken, and just pick it up and dig in.  They love the chicken, but the universal criticism is that her creamed kale has too much cream in it.

Next up is Josh and he’s incredibly proud of his unique plate of lamb carimanolas.  I’ve had carimanolas on the street in Central America, they are deep fried yucca fritters stuffed with veggies or meat.  And they are TO DIE FOR.  Yucca is a thick root that is a staple of the diets in Latin America and Africa, and is also widely used in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.  It is prepared in variety of ways…it can be dried and ground into a powder called manioc or mandioca (which can be used to bake cakes or simply toasted in butter and bacon fat, which the Brazilians call “farofa”).  It can be processed into the substance we are all familiar with called tapioca.  The root can simply be sliced, boiled, and then deep fried to make yucca fries, which are so much tastier and have a superior texture to potato fries.  But the yucca root (also commonly called cassava) is actually quite poisonous, and it must be cooked first to break down the cyanide that can be fatal if consumed in high-enough quantities.  It’s a fascinating ingredient, and one of my personal favorites.  So Josh has made a carimanola by boiling the yucca root, mashing it, and working it into a dough with egg and a little flour.  He stuffed the carimanolas with leg of lamb…not an easy feat in an hour.  Leg of lamb is usually roasted or braised, low and slow, for hours to make it tender.  Josh resorted to the pressure cooker, which works wonders in a short amount of time.  (I adore my pressure cooker and can’t live without it.)  He is presenting the carimanolas with 3 different salsas: tomato, mango, and tomatillo.  The plate is really stunning, and if he’s pulled off his flavoring and seasoning, he probably has the best dish of the day.  Joe decides to attack him for it, taking such risks with braising the lamb in such a short time, working with a poisonous and starchy ingredient…and then he tastes it, and it “astounds” him.  The other judges agree.  Josh reveals for the first time that his father is from Panama and he spent lots of time there as a kid, which helps explain his love of Indian food.  (The Caribbean region off the coast of Panama is referred to as the West Indies and has a huge culinary influence from both India and Africa.  Panama has an incredibly diverse cuisine.)  Josh has truly produced an incredible dish in this time limit, I am supremely impressed.

Becky is last with her garlic butter frog legs, confit potatoes, mushrooms, and a salad of bitter greens.  (Confit is pronounced “con-FEE” and is a term that covers a wide variety of preparations, but generally means that a meat or vegetable has been cooked slowly in flavorful fat, and then often stored beneath an airtight layer of the fat.  Potato confit means potatoes that were fried gently in fat until rich and tender…not necessarily crisp and fluffy like a french fry.)  These are very smart flavors to combine.  Bastianich likes every component but the potatoes, which she roasted in the oven with wine after the confit, resulting in soggy potatoes.  Ramsay is proud of her for perfecting the frog legs having never cooked them before.

To me, Josh is the clear winner of this challenge, and it would probably be a toss-up between Becky and Christine…they both nailed the legs, but had problems with other components.  (However, I’m fairly convinced that Christine and Josh have been pegged as the finalists for awhile now, which probably means Becky is going home.)  Not surprisingly, the judges send Becky home.

I was in LA for 4 hours recently, but didn’t have time to meet up with Becky.  And I regret that.  From the conversations we’ve had, she sounds delightful.  Becky probably wanted to win more than anyone else, maybe even Josh.  And she’s obviously crushed by the decision.  Gordon asks her what’s next, and, dejected, she mutters something to the effect of “Hopefully I can sneak into a restaurant and they’ll let me work there for awhile.”  Gordon says, “I have some restaurants.  Would you like to work in Central Europe?  Paris?”

It’s obvious to all of us how skilled Becky is.  She won like EVERY mystery box the whole season.  That girl knows her food.  And while her character was occasionally edited to be a bit snarky and a bit know-it-all, her fellow contestants tell me that she’s very sweet and extremely likeable.  And the fact that Ramsay has just offered her a job is a testament to exactly how talented he believes she is.

Becky is a food photographer in LA, and I’m sure MasterChef helped boost her position in that highly specialized world.  Jennie Kelley, who is a food stylist, is looking to collaborate with her on several projects.  No word yet if Becky will take Gordon’s offer…that would require a LOT of soul searching.

Understandably, Becky’s personal website is stunning, with enough world-class photos of food to leave you really, really, really hungry.  You can find her on Facebook and Twitter, too.

Becky, I think ultimately you got a raw deal, sorta like David Martinez.  While I think the show’s challenges definitely allowed you to display your strengths (as evidenced by your domination of the Mystery Box), I think you were sort of doomed from the start by the way they decided to edit you.  It’s rare that the person who effortlessly criticizes others ends up winning.  (Though in the ruthless shows like Hell’s Kitchen, apparently, this DOES end up happening, and it certainly seems like MasterChef is headed in the HK direction.  So maybe you were just a few seasons too early.)  To have realized that food is your calling at such an early age, and managed to work your way into the highly specialized and competitive world of food photography is a testament to your persistence and talent.  I think we’re going to see big things from you in the future, and I, for one, wish you all the best.

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