And then there were six… Eric Ripert (love him) guest judges the quick fire challenge which is a 3 round fish filet challeng. Round 1 is sardines. They are given 5 minutes to clean and butterfly their 2 sardines according to Eric’s example. Eric chose Leah and Fabio as the best and Carla and Jamie as the worst. The two worst are eliminated. The next round is an artic char (I hate salmon). Leah and Fabio are eliminated from round 2. Hosea and Stefan have to kill and skin a live eel. Stefan won the quick fire challenge. Eric invited the chef to Le Bernadin, his restaurant, for lunch the next day. I smell a challenge coming.
Le Bernadin is a fine seafood restaurant that focuses on minimal ingredients, but is anything but simple. The chefs begin their lunch with a sourdough encrusted red snapper with a tomato basil consommé. Next, the chefs taste baked mahi mahi with miso and matsutake mushroom sauce. Next the chefs eat a baked lobsert with asparagus and hollandaise sauce. The next dish is an oil poached escolar with potato crisps in a red wine béarnaise sauce. The next dish is a za’atar spiced monkfish with black garlic. The next would probably be my favorite. It was a sautéed black bass and braised celery with Serrano ham peppercorn sauce. I love black bass and it looked amazing. Everything was presented beautifully. The chefs are to recreate the 6 dishes that they just tasted. Stefan gets to choose what he wants to make since he won the quick fire. The rest have to draw knives. Hosea criticizes Stefan to taking the easy way out. Like he wouldn’t have picked the lobster? Bullshit! Jamie picks the black bass. This was her least favorite dish. She doesn’t like celery and thought braising it was “a little weird.” The chefs are given two hours to practice before actually cooking.
The judges taste the dishes head to head, Eric’s vs the Cheftestant. Fabio did a good job with the sourdough snapper. They thought that Leah’s mahi mahi was overcooked and that the flavors were off. They are very impressed with Stefan’s dish. Carla did a good job recreating the escolar. Hosea’s monkfish is up next. Jamie is worried that her celery is too salty. The chefs agree. They also think the bass was cooked well.
Stefan is the winner. He wins a book and a trip with Ripert and also gets to go with him the to the Pebble Beach food and wine festival. That’s awesome. Jamie, Leah and Hosea were in the bottom 3. Jamie is eliminated. Next week they will narrow it down to the final four.
UNTIL NEXT WEEK...
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