Trashy TV Recap is all about the Cooking!

We’re down to the final four on The Next Iron Chef! Chefs Falkner, Chiarello, Guarnaschelli, and Zakarian.

Man, there is major talent in those four chefs, so the outcome is anyone’s game. It might be the best chef, or the chef that had the best dish one time. The tiniest of mistakes will send someone home at this point. I’d be freaking out and peeing my pants! Thankfully, these are professionals and they don’t pee their pants on national T.V. Whew!

So, Alton Brown, devilish creature that his is, takes the chefs to the Hamptons and sends them scrambling all over town to get ingredients. They rush through markets and dash around tourists all in an effort to get whatever the other chefs aren’t getting. Um, you’re basically on an island and paying $12 a pound for butter. Yeah, you all have basically the same ingredients, move along.

But wait! There is more excitement that ensues ~ this will be a double elimination round. Wow. How horrid would it be if two of my favorites end up as the final two? Not too horrid, now that I think about it. If my two faves are in the final, then I have a 100% chance of my favorite winning the show. Bonus!

When they weren’t lazing about, they were actually cooking some mighty fine food. Unfortunately, one of the chefs would be eliminated immediately after judging and poor Chef Alex prepared the least yummy food of the day. Buh-bye Alex! She’s my friend’s favorite, so I know she’s sad to see Alex go, but me not so much. I’ve still got my two favorites in the race, so I’m still happy. And, just to make my day even brighter, Chef Zakarian won this challenge, so he’s automatically in the finals!

Back to Kitchen Stadium. The sudden death match, or whatever silly name they call it, is between Chef Falkner and Chef Chiarello. Their secret ingredient? Wine and crackers.

Um, say what?

Those wily peeps at Foodnetwork sure are pulling out all the stops on this show. Last week we had panko crumbs and now crackers? Quit with the sucking up the advertisers, already!

Not to fear, these chefs are amazing, as I think I say each recap, and they’ll come up with something so fabulous and amazing it will make your mouth water. Something like this:

I seriously don’t know what this is, but it makes my mouth water, but not in a good way.

Does this look appetizing to you? Okay, maybe that little crackery thing on the left, but the other two look, um, ew.

 

Lucky for me, this was Chef Chiarello’s dish and the judges didn’t find it quite as appetizing as Chef Falkners.

My two favorites are in the finals! I can’t wait for next week when these two super chefs battle it out to see who will become the Next Iron Chef!

Way down south of the Hamptons, Top Chef Texas was heating up. After last week’s fiasco, Ty-Lor was revved to win a challenge. The poor guy got stabbed, stitched up, and then thrown under a bus by his fellow teammates. He not only deserves to win a challenge,  but I hope someone bought him a beer after all that drama!

Oh, my heart be still. Tim Love of Top Chef Master’s is in the house. He’s so cute. I had to rewind the DVR several times because I forgot to pay attention to what was being said, I just kept staring at my sweet Tim Love.

The Quickfire Challenge is all about tequila. I kept expecting PeeWee Herman to come riding his bicycle into the kitchen and then do his tequila dance! It never happened, but in my fantasy, it did. And he won the QF, which was so much fun to imagine.

The chefs had to pair a dish with one of the many tequilas on offer. Apparently oysters are a good pairing with tequila, who knew? I thought lime and salt would be the favorite, but nope! Oysters and Ty-Lor for the win! Finally. Redemption. Someone buy that man a shot of tequila!

Padma has another surprise for the chefs ~ they are going to pair up and cook game for Tim Love’s friends. Game? We’re not talking Monopoly here, are we?

Um, no. Duck, bison, quail, those kinds of game. Ew. Give me straight up cow any day of the week.

On top of being on teams of two, the team that loses will send both chefs home. Oh, snap! Not only that, but the chefs have to pick the three worst dishes to send to the judges table. Double snap!

Of course Heather gets paired with Beverly (why were you standing by her, Heather, why?) Instead of drawing knives like normal, Padma says, ‘look at the person standing next to you and that’s your partner’. Poor Beverly.

Heather is awful. She’s a bully, self-righteous, and thinks Beverly is incompetent as a chef when really Beverly is just trying to be polite and not get steamrolled by Heather. Dang. Bad place to be in, if you ask me.

Most the teams do well, but three are major flops. Heather and Beverly couldn’t communicate well enough to pull off a cohesive dish (big surprise!), Chris and Grayson made a fatal error with their sweet potato fence thing (totally lame idea that Grayson should’ve shot down, but she had faith in Chris), and Dakota and Nyesha’s super rare whatever their protein was (lamb? bison? elk? I forget).

In the end the judges found poorly cooked meat a bigger offense than the other two and Nyesha and Dakota were give the boot.

That is, until… da da duuuum, Last Chance Kitchen!

Dakota and Nyesha went up against Whitney, last week’s winner in LCK. They had 30 minutes to cook prickly pear cactus in a wok.

As expected, Nyesha kicked butt, which made me happy since she got booted due to Dakota’s error. So, Nyesha is still in the game. I hope she makes it all the way to the end. She’s a plucky gal and I like her more and more each week.

Until next week, keep it trashy!