Finally, Susur Lee makes his appearance on Chopped Canada! And having him on the show definitely makes things more interesting – for one, he’s more critical of the chefs. In fact, he’s like that teacher everyone hated in elementary school – the Mean One who gave kids too much homework. Contestants this week included Eric Wood of The Beverley Hotel in Toronto as well as a guy who looked like he could be on Duck Dynasty (he called himself a “fancy redneck” at least once on the show), and as usual, there were some very interesting ingredients each round. The January 30 show seemed to have a sweet theme, as there was some sort of sugary snack in each round.
Jicama (seen here at a market) was one of the ingredients for the appetizer round
The first round consisted of duck breasts, jicama (indigenous to Mexico and described as a cross between and apple and a potato), chili sauce and those pink snack cakes (YUCK!). While three of the ingredients were fairly easy to combine, it was the snack cake that made things a bit different. Chef dishes ranged from going Asian fusion to a more “traditional” roast duck and salad as well as deconstructed duck sliders. Two of the chefs were missing items for one of the judges’ due to timing – this is a big no-no on the show. Another chef was criticized for too under-cooked by Susur Lee while a different contestant was told that his duck was too dry (the “redneck”/Duck Dynasty Wannabe chef). It was interesting to see how the snack cakes were incorporated into each of the contestants’ dishes. For the most part, it went into a sauce.
Round two was sockeye salmon, morel mushrooms, cloudberry compote and strawberry popping candy – probably a bit less of a throw-off than the snack cakes. The candy could easily be combined with the compote for sauce (though the candy should be ground first, as adding them to heat whole will cause them to…pop). One of the chefs honoured his Estonian heritage (as suggested by a judge) made seared salmon over saurkraut while another, roasted the mourels with his salmon roulette and served it with eggplant. While the judges agreed that the salmon was excellent – near perfect, in fact, Lee criticized him for the mushrooms. Mourels, he noted, aren’t meant to be roasted. A third chef (“Chef Duck Dynasty”), who made salmon with cinnamon star anise, was questioned on why he used the ingredients since the star anise didn’t seem like it “belonged.” He was chopped after this round.
Dessert was probably the most interesting, as the remaining two had to incorporate sweet relish to graham crackers, limes and Marcona almonds. While I would have probably made a version of baked apples (replacing the lemon juice with lime and walnuts with almonds and graham cracker crumbs. The relish would probably have been incorporated with honey or maple syrup) if I were presented with the same ingredients this round, the two remaining chefs created lime relish meringue pie with almond and graham cracker crust and a coconut lime custard with burnt relish brittle respectively. Though the brittle was really sticky in appearance, the judges seemed to like his more than Eric, the other remaining contestant. Chef Eric was told, again by Lee, that the garam masala he used for the course, did not “match.” Eric was chopped.
Image By: Wicki (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
