Last night’s Chopped Canada definitely had very interesting baskets, and in all three rounds. The first, for example, consisted of PEI oysters, dried shrimp, chocolate shavings and wasabi peas, definitely not the easiest basket to use. In fact, I’m not sure what I would have done had I been in that position! Yet, the four contestants (who once again, all come from different backgrounds, including one who was raised on a fishing boat and another that served the country in Afghanistan) went right to work, creating appetizers that included breaded oysters with a “disassembled” salad (fishing boat chef) and another marrying the oysters with wasabi peas and serving it with a chocolate and shrimp sauce, which the judges surprisingly liked. However, one of the judges complained about a different chef who, for some reason, had a piece of plastic in the food. Yep. He wasn’t, however, the one who was chopped.
Wasabi peas, one of the mystery ingredients
For the second round, the “mandatory ingredients” were quail, marble cheese, fish sauce and golden raisins. It’s a bit “different,” but nowhere near as hard as basket one. One of the chefs accidently dropped half the quail, so the judges had to make do with smaller portions. However, his dish, which consisted of grilled quail, served with a marble cheese crostini (basically an open-faced mini grilled cheese) over root vegetables was presented very elegantly. Another chef made quail and mushrooms, sous-vide and served it over a mixture of quinoa, millet and raisins. His presentation was criticized, and yes, he was chopped. So far this season two chefs used the sous-vide method and neither was crowned the champion. It’s like the kiss of death or something. And what would I have made? The marble cheese crostini gave me some ideas – perhaps a deconstructed quail croque monsieur, served with greens of some sort. Or, would that not be “elevated” enough for something like Chopped Canada?
The dessert round was back to really odd ingredients. There were saltine crackers, millet, coconut and a Bleu Bénédictin – a kind of blue cheese made by monks in Quebec. I guess ice cream was the easiest thing to create using the cheese – both contestants attempted this. Unfortunately, while one chef made amazing ice cream (and served it with chocolate covered crackers, among other items), the other came out, well, sloppy. Rather than presenting as ice cream, he had to call it a gazpatcho. Judges criticized the presentation, and one even mentioned that it could have used a bit of thickening – not necessarily into an ice cream, but perhaps a custard or pudding of some sort. Guess who was chopped?
Image credits: Wasabi peas by GuillaumeG (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
