| what a strong finger
Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: the edge of the beltway
Posts: 8,054
| Re: 10/28 Show Discussion Thread **Spoilers**
Part of Gail's and Tom's blogs. Enjoy!
The bolding is mine. Top Chef - Blogs - Gail Simmons - She's a Vegetarian - Bravo TV Official Site Quote:
Thankfully, a few glimpses of brilliance emerged. Eli’s smoky eggplant and perfectly firm, flavorful lentils did show a significant amount of skill. And although it took some getting used to, I will never forget the playful sweetness and creamy, bold texture of Michael’s banana polenta. As I write this I am still in awe that he chose to make it—and that we all could not get enough. But it was Kevin’s Duo of Mushrooms, Smoked Kale, Candied Garlic & Turnip Puree that saved us. As much as Michael would like to believe it was thrown together in an amateur way, this dish was far from simple. The bright taste and integrity of each individual vegetable was apparent with each bite. What’s more, they all made perfect sense when eaten as one harmonious creation. Cooking vegetables this way is no easy task. It was decadent and robust, and exactly as Kevin had promised in his description.
It seemed that the rest of our chefs’ goals were just too lofty, too precious, and more focused on making their food look pretty than on making it taste good or feel substantial. Jennifer’s Charred Eggplant, Braised Fennel, Tomatoes & Verjus Nage was little more than a side dish. Bryan’s Artichoke Barigoule was barely any better. Finally, there was Mike Isabella’s Whole Roasted Leeks with Onion Jus, Baby Carrot Puree & Fingerling Potatoes. I am still unsure how he planned on passing off those stringy leeks as scallops. A trick of the eye cannot fool a hungry vegetarian stomach, I assure you. Most of all, his food was undercooked and tasteless. His dish was by far the weakest of the night. It is no wonder that as soon as Judges’ Table ended that evening we all went out for a second dinner, to this amazing little Japanese robata spot just off the strip that chef Paul Bartolotta introduced us to (he is the chef at what I believe to be the most spectacular restaurant in Vegas and one of the nicest people I know). The restaurant, to everyone’s delight, had plenty of delicious vegetarian options on the menu!
| Top Chef - Blogs - Tom Colicchio - “If you can mock a leek, you can eat a leek�
–William Shakespeare, Henry V - Bravo TV Official Site Quote:
I know that Mike V. was furious that Kevin won this challenge — as we all saw in the episode, he felt that Kevin’s techniques were more rudimentary than his and didn’t merit the win. He said something to the effect that he could have made Kevin’s dish in culinary school, that he cooks that way when whipping things up at home on his weekends off. In general, please do not be snowed by the techniques employed by the Voltaggio brothers. Yes, they’re employing advanced techniques versus Kevin’s more basic methods, but at the end of the day unless you can pull off those elevated elements and actually make the food taste great, I don’t care how many blowtorches it took to create the dish — Kevin’s food not only is consistently well executed but also tastes really incredibly good. Young chefs are often keen to use technological wizardry and forget how to just roast something and make it really delicious, and perhaps Michael would do well to use the “weekend technique” he’s disparaging in order to make his food soulful and flavorful. In general, when Kevin has won challenges, the Voltaggio brothers’ methods might have been more advanced and out there but were weaker on seasoning. So I usually agree with the results when Kevin wins.
That said in response to Michael’s comments, I will also say that as regards this challenge, I was a huge fan of Michael’s dish and was talked out of my position by my fellow judges. That combination of banana and asparagus was so out of left field, and yet it worked. It gave us an interesting combination of the grassy asparagus with the rich banana. And yet there wasn’t the overwhelming banana flavor you’re probably imagining: if you were blindfolded and given a bite, it would take you a moment to realize you were tasting banana. It was an interesting background flavor — subtle, not caramelized and sweet — and it made sense in the dish. Mike showed great foresight and took an enormous risk: the dish could have been utterly disgusting and could have gotten him sent home. And yet it was great.
As for the bottom three dishes, while Jennifer gave us what amounted to a side dish or an appetizer, it was very well crafted and an overall competent dish. In light of what her colleagues in the bottom three gave us, Jennifer wasn’t going to be sent home for that dish.
Robin’s dish was a poor dish. It was what we might get from an accomplished home cook who says, “Oh, I like this … and I like that … and this would look pretty with them, too….” The elements were not in harmony, there was no cohesive vision, and it missed the mark. It wasn’t very good, but Michael Isabella’s was terrible.
Before we even discuss the leeks, let me confirm for those of you who weren’t there to taste the dish that while the leeks may have been the primary problem, they were not the only problem. Natalie was right to say that the rest of the dish underwhelmed. As for the leeks themselves, they were butchered; they were horribly cooked. Certain ingredients can withstand imperfect preparation; please never serve me a badly cooked leek. Mike had time to correct what was happening and didn’t. But even had he done so, I still can’t quite grasp what Mike was striving for, conceptually. Why did he think it was in any way inventive to make leeks look like scallops? That’s just silly — there’s no reason for it. A leek is not a scallop — it’s not even a protein — and there’s no reason to make it look like one. This was a challenge about vegetables and was an opportunity to honor them, rather than turn them into faux-finishes of proteins. Furthermore, even were I to accept the premise that making a leek look like a scallop was a cooking innovation, I’d think it would have made more sense then for Mike to have roasted it as one would roast a scallop, which would have yielded a far more satisfying taste and texture than the one he was striving for and failed to attain. I don’t get it.
Mike I. knew his dish was bad — he even acknowledged as much to while we were shooting the reunion episode — but seemed to count on Robin’s dish being worse, so he never seemed to actually consider that he might be packing his knives. I really think he believed that as long as Robin was still there, he was safe, that there was no chance she’d outlast him. Jennifer, on the other hand, was wholly focused on her own performance, without giving a thought to those of her competitors. She understood that a mistake could get any one of them sent home.
| I have already said it, but I am glad Mike I went home before Robin.
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11-01-2009, 12:14 PM
