So the ingredients weren’t THAT unusual last night, but combining them into something delicious and elevated was indeed more of a challenge. How DO you use toaster pastries (e.g. Pop-Tarts) in a first course, anyway? Turns out, many different ways (even if some are better than others). The four contestants, who hail from Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary, went right to work, creating dishes using the pastries, along with the other mandatory ingredients, which were Italian sausage, enoki mushrooms and canned lima beans).
How would you use these for an appetizer?
There was some variety with the dishes – one used the pastry to create a dumpling with the sausage and made lima bean and enoki butter for a sauce (some of the judges thought the sauce was a bit overpowering). Other dishes included an asparagus salad with enoki and using the lima bean as a sauce (the chef didn’t do too much with the pastry and was criticized for that (one of the judges thought it was just….”there”)), a lima bean cassoulet with an Italian sausage bruschetta (judges like it for its creativity and “whimsicalness” of using the pastry for bruschetta) and roasted sausage with stewed mushrooms and beans (the judges thought it was plated beautifully and that the sausages were roasted well. He was, however, missing ingredients on one of the judge’s plates). So who was chopped? Mr. Over-powering Sauce.
Mandatory ingredients in the second round were: granola bars, sweetbreads (calf pancreas or thymus), black kale and condensed milk, again an interesting mix. Since there was granola, the first thing I thought of was a breaded dish, which two of the chefs made. One chef made crispy sweetbreads with braised kale, using the condensed milk as a sauce. The judges absolutely loved the dish, and one even said it was “orgasmic.” Another, who likes to make elevated “comfort food,” was inspired by chicken and waffles, so he breaded the sweatbreads with the granola and paired it with waffles (using condensed milk in the batter) and sauteed kale with pancetta (two of the judges loved it, but one thought there wasn’t enough sauce. Another felt the waffles were too “spongy”). The third remaining chef opted not to bread the sweetbreads, and instead, made sweetbreads blanquette (a French dish with meat in a white sauce, a bit like Chicken a la King). One of the judges liked how he did not add “crunch” the the sweetbreads, and another thought it was great that the chef was inspired by his heritage. He was also criticized for the bits of blood that remained in the sweetbreads. I actually thought he was the judges’ next victim and was very surprised that the waffle chef was eliminated.
In the dessert round, the remaining two contestants were required to use fresh peas, marzipan, tarragon and blue tortilla chips. One of the chefs, once again, called upon his French heritage and made a chilled sweet pea soup with a bit of lemon and paired it with a cake made with marzipan and chips. He also added a strawberry salad with tarragon. The judges loved his presentation and thought it was very colourful, but also mentioned that the chips were a bit soggy. The other remaining finalist made raspberry sorbet infused with tarragon and mixed chocolate and cream together and blended it with the marzipan. It was accompanied by brittle made with the chips. One of the judges loved it so much that he called the dish a “party in my mouth.” However, on the critical side, another felt that the chocolate was a bit too overpowering the marzipan. The plating was also not that pretty.
I was, again, fairly surprised at the winner. I thought the Quebecois chef would be chosen, considering that the other finalist had missing ingredients in round one and unattractive plating for dessert. However, the judges felt that the undercooked and bloody sweetbreads was enough for the chef to lose.
By Evan-Amos (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
