Top Chef ™: World All-Stars
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Elimination Challenge
The chefs were asked to create vegetable-forward dishes, where proteins served as the accompaniment. The dishes were served at the Temperate House in Kew Gardens. The guest judge was chef/director Angela Hartnett. Other diners in attendance included chef/owners Adam Handling and Brett Graham, chef patron Vineet Bhatia, and Kew Gardens botanical horticulturist Helena Dove.
Padma Lakshi: "For your first Top Chef ™ elimination challenge, we want you to create a vegetable forward dish where the protein is used more like a seasoning or an accent."
Tom Colicchio: "Vegetables are where all our flavor comes from, and more chefs are really focusing so much on produce."
Padma Lakshi: "This is an individual challenge. You'll each have £250 to shop at Whole Foods Market. Then tomorrow you'll have 2 hours to prep and cook at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew - a UNESCO World heritage site. You'll be serving a distinguished table of chefs from the United Kingdom. And your first guest judge of the season will be Michelin starred chef and Officer of the Order of the British Empire, Angela Hartnett."
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Dishes prepared in
Top Chef ™: World All-Stars
Chef Luciana: "I also used cassava. It's a Brazilian root vegetable. It was brought to Africa by the Portuguese to help with the hunger. So I made cassava in different ways. A bisque, little pieces of cassava and tapioca, which is the cassava starch. The protein is prawns."
Judging
Tom Colicchio: "The flavor is really good. I think the cassava is really well seasoned. But the Shrimp, I don't know if you need it."
Chef Victoire: "When I was young in Congo, we were so poor that every day we ate cassava. I tried to give some flavor to cassava with cocoa butter. For protein I used scallop confit with carrots and gazpacho."
Judging
Gail Simmons: "Victoire's gazpacho was lovely."
Angela Hartness: "I really liked the cassava bread."
Helena: "I did. I liked it."
Tom Colicchio: "But I think the scallops kind of, again, were not worked into the dish."
Chef Nicole: "I made a summer bass with garden vegetables, onion soubise and fondant potato."
Judging
Brett Graham: "It all felt like an old fashioned dinner, maybe."
Angela Hartnett: "Oh, yeah. That feels very old European."
Gail Simmons: "I found it charming in its quaintness. But the fish feels completely disconnected."
Chef Gabri: "I made a reinterpretation of mextlapique. Charcoal vegetables, confit of corn, black truffle beans, pickled mushrooms and celery. But I forgot to plate my chicken emulsion. The beans were cooked in pork fat."
Judging
Adam Handling: "It looked like a lot of dried things, but as soon as I tasted that puree on the bottom, I thought it was really tasty."
Angela Hartnett: "I mean, I'm all for charring, but that just left this burnt sort of taste in my mouth."
Vineeet Bhatia: "Such a shame he forgot the espuma (emulsion). It would have actually changed the dish a lot. Taken it to a different level."
Chef Dawn: "I made a patty with onion squash with West Indian flavors, coconut broth on the outside and salad of lobster and mushrooms at the bottom.
Judging
Angela Hartnett: "I mean, listen, I'm English. We love a bit of pastry. What can I say? "
Padma Lakshi: "The pastry is what this dish is about and not vegetable."
Chef Samuel: "I made a tiger prawn carpaccio and prawn head emulsion sauce. There are different vegetables, and vegetable vinaigrette and a prawn cracker on the top."
Judging
Gail Simmons: "Samuel's carrots are cooked nicely."
Tom Collichio: "The vegetable work was actually pretty good."
Padma Lakshi: "But that fish just ate so slimy. "
Brett Graham: "I sort of picked it up and there it is. Poo pipe, if that's a professional word for it.
Padma Lakshi: "He didn't devein the shrimp."
Other judge: "I got the same thing. Not very refined. He needed to clean it."
Chef May: "I call this "garden salad". On the bottom is cured English sea bass and then there is a Thai spicy emulsion on the side."
Judging
Gail Simmons: "It was vibrant. I thought she cooked each individual vegetable beautifully. "
Angela Hartnett: "Got that heat. The heat does bring it together in the end. "
Chef Begona: "I made Tallarines of Pumpkin with Duxelles and with cream made from raw milk."
Judging
Tom Collichio: "Begona's dish. This is crazy. You eat it, and it's so interesting. And you go for another bite and say you taste something else. You go for another bite, you taste something else.
Helena: "Begona also understood the texture of what you can do with pumpkins because quite often we overcook them."
Chef Buddha: "I cooked eggplant with shrimp and shiitake, silken tofu, pickled purple korrabi. I wanted to keep it more Japanese."
Judging
Gail Simmons: "I appreciate how subtle the flavors of Buddha dish are. "
Brett Graham:"It's poached in dashi and sucks in the flavor of the broth."
Chef Dale: "I made roasted and pureed eggplant with a little tomato relish of stewed peppers with best spring lamb."
Judging
Vineet Bhatia: "Dale's was good. Aubergine (eggplant) was cooked perfectly, nice and fleshy."
Angela Hartnett: "I don't think that Dale needed the lamb."
Chef Charbel: "I wanted to use the onion as the star of the dish. I roasted and then I also did onion puree in the bottom, chicken jus on the side, and sumac tuiles"
Judging
Angela Hartnett: "Chabel's dish was much braver."
Vineet Bhatia: "Simple ingredients done technically perfectly."
Tom Colicchio: "Then I also love the fact that you take a humble onion and just raise it up to that level."
Brett Graham: "I quite like it that Charbel had a budget of £250 and spent £2.50!"
Chef Ali: "Today I have made pan-fried Sea Bass, with different textures of cauliflower and technique. Cauliflower puree with licorice, pickled cauliflower, and cauliflower couscous. "
Judging
Adam Handling: "The cauliflower was delicious. I'm not sure why the fish was there!"
Tom Colicchio: "Yes, what was the fish there for?"
Helena (Kew Gardens): "It can be scary to take the protein off the plate if you're used to cooking with it."
Angela Hartnett : "I thought it was a safe dish."
Chef Tom: "I made all kinds of variations of carrots ... blistered carrot chutney, carrot glaze, and carrot mousse. Then I made bone marrow dust and green chutney."
Judging
Gail Simmons: "Tom's dish. My first bite was a little sweet, and then my next bite was quite bitter and I loved that."
Brett Graham: "Tom's carrot fitted the brief perfectly about using vegetable forward and meat as a supporting actor."
Chef Amar: "I did an assortment of different vegetables, some glazed and some pickled, Romesco sauce, seared scallop, and an herb oil."
Judging
Tom Collichio: "I thought everyone really focused on the challenge except Amar. His scallop was clearly the star on his plate. That said, his vegetables were probably cooked better than anybody else's."
Chef Sylwia: "I made a (deconstructed) sandwich with the beetroot and goat cheese with kohlrabi reduction and bacon tomato sauce."
Judging
Angela Hartnett: "I thought she really cooked all the vegetables perfectly."
Adam Handling: "I liked the sauce. Wasn't truly a fan of the little sandwiching."
Chef Sara: "I made cover crops with pot liquor, smoked pork, and cornbread. There's a little bacon fat in the cornbread and the pot liquor."
Judging
Vineet Bhatia: "Nice balance of flavors on it. Had a little sweetness. Visually, I think it was a little unappetizing."
Tom Colicchio: "It's just that the sauce is a little murky looking. The pot liquor is something you'd find in the south. It's lovely, but it is not known to be pretty."
Culinary Challenges inspired by
Top Chef ™: World All-Stars
Soba Cha (also known as Soba-Cha and Sobacha) is Japanese buckwheat tea. It is drunk hot or cold, and is gluten-free and caffeine-free and apparently tastes nutty and slightly sweet.
It appeared three times in Top Chef: Wisconsin ™. The first showing was in Restaurant Wars when Danny's team, under his leadership, served up cold Soba Cha as a welcome drink. It wasn't well received.
In reparation, Danny re-introduced it in week 12 when he infused mushrooms into Soba Cha for his fish dish. This time, the judges regretted that he had buried the flavor of the buckwheat tea in very powerful mushroom flavors and would have preferred the essence of the tea to shine through.
Danny didn't try again, but Dan used Soba Cha in his Smoked Dashi and this time it went down a storm.
Hummingbird cake is a Jamaican banana and pineapple spiced cake which has been eaten in the southern United States since the 1970s. It is a leavened cake with a salty cake and often contains pecans.
Mofongo is a Caribbean dish originating in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Made by mashing ripe plantains with fat, garlic, spices, and (optionally) pork crackling, it is then shaped into a ball. The dish is famous for its complex and contrasting textures, with fried plantains that are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. It is often found topped with melted cheese and served with a clear garlic broth.
Danny, in the 'spoiler' for the Top Chef Wisconsin Finale, was heard to say that he wanted to get fresh scallops for his first course and treat them in the style of "Leche de Tigre".
Leche de tigre, (translates to tiger's milk), is the Peruvian term for a citrus marinade that cures fish or seafood. Also known as leche de pantera, this marinade usually contains lime juice, onion, chile, and fish sauce.
In the semi-finals of Top Chef Wisconsin ™ we saw Chef Danny out shopping in the Curacao markets and finding 'quenepas' which we heard he had eaten as a child.
Quenepa, also known as Spanish lime, mamoncillo, or limoncillo, is a tropical fruit native to the Caribbean, Central America, and parts of South America. It is a small, green fruit with a thin, leathery skin and a tart, juicy pulp surrounding a large seed. It isn't so tart that it is inedible and children often suck the juice and pulp, but it needs careful balancing in cooking.
Kewpie Mayonnaise is known for its richness, and has a tangy, savory "umami" character which sets it well above traditional store-bought. It is made using only the yolks of egg and typically uses rice wine vinegar. It has a rich creamy texture. We saw Chef Dan using it in his lionfish dish on the semi-final episode of Top Chef Wisconsin.
Frico is an Italian preparation which originates in times of hardship when cheese rinds could not be wasted. It is basically melted cheese which can be combined with seeds, spices, herbs, potato or grains and then cooked to any required degree of crispness.
Five spice (5-spice) powder is used really heavily in almost all branches of Chinese cuisine and reflects the five elements - fire, water, earth, wood, and metal. These elements are mirrored in 5
tastes (sweet, sour, salty, savory and bitter). There is a wider spice mix (13 spice) which is less frequently seen but equally magnificent.
There is some small variation in the exact five spices but most often we see fennel, cinnamon, star anise, Szechuan pepper and cloves. A fabulous version of this spice is available here.
The lionfish, an invasive species in many parts of the world, is gaining popularity in the culinary scene. Recognized for its striking appearance with vibrant stripes and venomous spines, the lionfish is surprisingly delicious and sustainable.
Its white, flaky meat is mild and tender, making it versatile for various cooking methods. Chefs often prepare lionfish as ceviche, grilled, or pan-seared, accentuating its delicate flavor with citrus, herbs, and spices. By incorporating lionfish into dishes, chefs contribute to controlling its population, which threatens marine ecosystems.
Paliamento is one of three languages spoken in Curacao. The others are English and Dutch. Keshi Yená is a Paliamento term for 'melting pot' and the dish is usually served as a parcel of rich Gouda (or Edam) cheese which, when cut open, reveals any combination of meat (usually chicken), vegetables and seasoning. Capers are often used, and soy sauce, curry and dried fruits feature heavily, too.
In the semi-finals of Top Chef Wisconsin, the four remaining chefs were asked to make a "Keshi Yena" out of lionfish and Gouda.
Increasingly, we see chefs deliberately burning food because, when handled well, the impact on the flavor can be positive, not negative.
In Top Chef: Wisconsin ™, in the last round before moving to the Caribbean Cruise for the finals, Savannah won the Elimination round with a dish that used a jam/chutney of burnt onions and cherries.
Onions can be eaten raw, or gently cooked, or deeply caramelized, and now burned black. The onions should be treated with respect and removed from the heat as soon as they are 'beyond caramelized' but before they turn to miserable ash. Catch them at the right time and they really do bring a beautiful flavor to a dish. Try it out sometime. It's my belief that the burnt onions need combining with a strong accessory like anchovies, or eggplant, which is why Savannah's jam was so remarkably good.
Escabeche is the name for a food treatment, found in Southern Europe and Latin America, that involves fish or chicken (and occasionally other meats and vegetables). The fish (etc.) is fried then cooled and pickled in an acidic sauce, and flavored, typically with paprika and/or garlic. Chefs work to balance the acid with the other elements of the dish.
Like its distant relative ceviche, escabeche often involves seafood and an acid, but the similarities end there. Escabeche is served cold.
In Top Chef Wisconsin ™, Laura was praised for the balance of her Mussel Escabeche.
