Top Chef Recap: Karma Karma Karma Korean

Merry Christmas, ‘Gasmii! I am actually writing this on Christmas Day, which is normally something I would avoid because I usually find it difficult to get into the mood to recap on the holiday itself (it sorta seems wrong to my twisted sense of propriety to make fun of people on such a joyful day when we’re all eating and giving each other nice things and raining booze down on top of it all). However, this year, holidays at Casa J-Mo have been slightly less than optimal, partially because the house underwent a massive kitchen remodel that took up most of December and therefore cancelled all Christmas decoration (on the plus side, I won’t have to spend my New Year’s Day Valentine’s Day Memorial Day taking all that shit down again)… and partially because one of my siblings had a huge fight with their spouse this morning, and instead of doing the right thing and pretending to love each other for the four hours we all spent together, they chose to passive-aggressively bitch and pick at each other throughout present opening, point out each other’s flaws during dinner and not-so-subtly threaten divorce for dessert…

this is the exact look I had on my face as I sat on the couch watching them

SO, let’s just say that my sense of propriety has been violated to the point where I feel comfortable talking shit about people again, and we can dive right on in!

Last week, we learned that…

black people are still getting a raw deal at the hands of white people

Penis-Hair did his best to blow the competition

and this is what Bore-verly saw coming at her for pretty much the entire episode

The chefs are still stuck in the teensy superheated kitchen at Cowboy Love’s restaurant, and Hag Heather fetches a giant nonironic yawn and says “Holy crap, that’s an emotional rollercoaster…”…

oddly, she leaves off the part about her being at the controls of said rollercoaster

Bore-verly is still mastering the art of understatement as she tells us she believes Hag Heather “crossed the line at Judges’ Table”. Um, yeah, and then she ate the line, shit it out, and nuked it into oblivion. In other words, her shitty behavior was totally ridic. Bore says people often misinterpret her humbleness as weakness, “The universe is full of karma and it’s very powerful, it always comes back to you.”…

often in shades of red, gold and green

Scar appears and tries to scare everybody into thinking that they have another cooking challenge right now, but we all know this is just her bitchy way of saying they’ve been evicted from the Glorified Motel 6™ and will be moving down to Austin, which is where TexAsian is from. He says this puts more pressure on him to perform well seeing as that is his home city, “I’m like, sweating balls at this point.”…

nothing says stress quite like Musky Manfunk™

Of course, this means we have to sit through yet another Cloyota commercial, not-so-cleverly disguised with canned chef-chat to make it look like they are having the time of their lives driving these minivans. Case in point, someone forces Ninja Eddie to *gag* ask Hag Heather about what kind of man she’s looking for. Her reply?…

one who isn’t picky… or Asian

KIDDING, she says she likes the usual generic man-traits, tall, dark-haired and a chubby-chaser funny. I’m guessing there’s been a drought of dating action in her life, as she claims it’s been hard to have a “long relationship” because she’s been so “career-focused”…

yes, I’m sure that’s exactly why it’s not raining men in her world

Lest you mistake her for a lesbiana, Hag says given the choice between a night of sin with John Besh and $5,000, she’d take Beshy. Provided he has the same “work-ethic” as she does. And can clean 4,503 shrimp in an hour or less.

Inside the less-eyeroll-inducing van (daintily driven by Ty-Böre) we find Chris Scary once again playing at being gay as he faux-hits-on TexAsian (sweaty balls or no). Jobless Grayson tells us Scary has been given the nickname “Malibu” because he’s very beautiful and very concerned about his weight hair…

not concerned enough to get a more current haircut

Something tells me Scary is still watching old reruns of Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica to get tips on how to act like an ethnicized white boy. Anyhow, they finally arrive at their new digs…

which immediately answers my question “What’s the biggest shithole in Austin?”

Actually they’re staying at a place called the Driskill Hotel, and naturally they’ve been given the “Cattle Baron’s Suite”…

which looks exactly like you would expect it to

We have the obligatory shots of everybody walking around oohing and aahing, but some people just aren’t that good at acting…

ummm, Jobless?… stick to cooking, sweetie

Once everyone gets settled in on their twin-size faux-fur bedspreads, TexAsian sheepishly confesses that he used to be a weed dealer…

on an episode of Miami Vice

He says he did that for about seven years, selling only to his “friends” to get “extra money” (translation: selling only to “anyone with cash” to get “ill-fitting oversized tuxedos and more hair gel”). He says he woke up one morning and noticed that his apartment was trashed, his dogs had shit everywhere, and he decided he needed to do something with his life…

I can see how waking up to this would inspire someone to become a chef

Time to head on over to the Austin branch of Le Cordon Blew so they can find out about today’s QuickFire Challenge! Everyone’s bowels get all hot and loose-feeling when they see Scar… and Daddy Tom…

who aren’t speaking to one another because they’ve been fighting about who is the bigger gay icon

Jobless Grayson knows it’s a bad sign if Daddy Tom deigns to grace them with his presence during a lowly QuickFire, so she’s pretty sure it’s about to be a doozy-dum-diddly. Anyhow, Scar welcomes them to Austin and says because the city is a “hot-spot in the world of technology” they are going to let technology play a big role in today’s challenge. And by “technology” she means Twitter…

and by “Twitter” she means “broadcasting stupidity farther and faster than ever thought possible”

After giving some boring history on Twitter, Daddy Tom says that he and Scar are constantly getting challenge ideas and suggestions from their Twitter followers. I’m betting most of those suggestions involve having them remove various mis-spelled pieces of clothing (such as “hy-wasted pance”). As I suspected, when talk turns to techno-geek topics, Penis-Hair immediately affects a bored yet superior attitude…

really, Twitter? pfft, whatevs, Google+ is what’s about to blow up… any day now… really

You may think I’m kidding, but Penis-Hair actually says that at the almighty Moto they have Twitter conversations back and forth during service with their guests and send real-time pictures of the food they’re making “and that gets people interested”. Well, I may be old-school, but when I go to a restaurant the only thing I’m interested in is that the chef get off the goddamned internet and finish cooking my fucking steak. Jesus Christ, between the stupid chicken cigars, the sweet-potato architecture and now hearing that their staff dawdles around tweeting shit instead of doing their job and serving food, it sounds like Moto is just about as style-over-substance as you can get. I wish I had friends with an extra $500.00 to blow so we could go there and be served liquefied air.

Oh well, Daddy Tom says that for the first time evah the fans are going to be deciding what the chefs have to do, and as the tweets come in, Scar and Daddy Tom will choose the ones they like to instruct the chefs as to what their next twist is going to be…

just so we’re clear, this is who is in charge now

Sarah GroanyBooger thinks this is awesome, but she hopes they don’t get a tweet telling them to make their dish into baby food…

because apparently she doesn’t know how to use one of these

Calm down, Booger, I’m sure you’ll get the chance to make some kind of phallic sausagey thing before the hour is up. Anyhow, winner gets $10,000.00 and zero immunity. So what is the brilliant tweet they’ve chosen to start out this awesome challenge?…

i.e. make something that pairs well with eggs. or lettuce and tomatoes. or a cheeseburger

Gee, could they have picked anything easier? Well, potatoes, I guess. This just doesn’t seem like a $10,000.00 challenge, but I guess that’s where these tweetwists will come in. Their 45 minutes starts now. Scary echoes my sentiment that this opening salvo is a total softball because bacon is every chef’s secret guilty pleasure…

and hopefully bacon doesn’t end up being horribly insulted like it was earlier this year

Bore-verly says she loves bacon, too, so she’s going to try to braise a pork belly with a pressure cooker… which she has never used before. I’m sure Hag will tell her exactly how it works, right?…

*speaking from a safe distance*: “Sure, Bev, just unlatch the lid when the steam is at it’s loudest…”

Penis-Hair says he’s keeping his scallops, corn and bacon dish open to allow himself some leeway in case there are some “changes” on the way…

cuz this challenge is not for partially-assed peeps

So, out of all the amazing tweets they got, this is their clever choice…

habitat for dumb-anity

Yes, so now they have to add a hash as one component of their bacon dish…

and somebody looks mighty guilty about their level of hash experience

So far this seems like an exceedingly simplistic challenge. If the next tweetwist says to add eggs to the dish…

then we’re in for ten variations on this

Thankfully, some chefs have already cooked themselves into a corner, such as Ninja Eddie, who says he was making a bacon paté with soft-shelled crabs, but now he’s pissily having to figure out how to incorporate a hash into it. Jobless Grayson, on the other hand, is loving this because she’s going to be able to add german potato pancakes, so this twist actually helps out her dish. She nervously hopes they don’t pick a tweet where someone asks them to incorporate everything into a cupcake.

With only a few minutes remaining, it’s time for another tweetwist…

and the Koreanspiricy™ continues!

Finally, somebody put some semi-thought into this shit! Total chaos ensues as the chefs begin to grab random things and hand them off to each other. Chris Scary gives Mousy Lindsay a bottle of sriracha, so she plucks a bottle of maple syrup and tosses it right back at him. She is pissed at him because the hot sauce has no part in the direction her dish was going. Meanwhile, Bore-verly is asking someone to give her something, and I was expecting Hag to rise up and deliver an open-handed roundhouse slap, but instead Penis-Hair offers to give her a lemon in exchange for some butter. Scary whines in the background “I don’t think it works like that!” Too late, Penis-Hair grabs a bottle of oil off Bore’s work-station and calls it good. I kind of agree with Scary, I don’t think that’s what @koreanblue really had in mind for this twist, but leave it to Penis-Hair to wimp out if it’s not something he can pull from his Menu Of Moto Experiences™.

The fun doesn’t end there, because Ty-Böre also grabs a bottle of sriracha and plunks it down at Ninja Eddie’s station while looking mighty pleased with himself…

you’re Asian, you can always find a use for this stuff, right?

Ty-Ty truly believes he has done Ninja Eddie a favor here because he thinks spicy sriracha goes with anything (really, Ty, does it go with chocolate cake?), but as Eddie hands him back some scallions he tells us that there ain’t a damned thing in his dish that can possibly be complimented by using hot sauce…

white people suuuuuck

Jobless was handed some tomatillos, and as time is ticking down, she’s frantically trying to purée them and get them onto her plate. You know how sometimes the editing makes it look like these chefs are going down to the very last second on plating these dishes?…

this time that shit is for real, yo

The judges begin with Bore-verly’s pressure-cooked pork belly (which apparently turned out just fine)…

and suck it, Hag, it’s not even an Asian dish… (for once)

Next in line to wow them with more of his Pretentious Chicken Pox Plating™ is Penis-Hair…

tweet a picture of this to people and you’ll have them lunging at their phone screens with some Windex

Daddy Tom takes one bite and makes a face…

that Penis-Hair mistakes for perplexed admiration

Nope, Daddy says there’s something really salty in the dish. REALLY? Gee, wasn’t that what LimpHawk’s whole problem was, an overly-salty palate? Naturally, Penis-Hair thinks his dish would have won this challenge if not for his heavy hand in oversalting his taters. Maybe they need to rename his restaurant to Morton’s.

Oh well, let’s leave salty behind and head on over to bitter with Hag’s dish…

and her angry little ball of birdflesh

To try and sell her dish to Scar and Daddy Tom, Hag decides to add a little sex-appeal…

be good to Mama, and Mama will be good to you

Eat your heart out John Besh! Let’s move along to Ninja Eddie…

whose dish is subtitled “Ty-Lor sucks”

And then there’s GroanyBooger…

that looks like a giant pork rind

Then we hear the sounds of the sea and surf as we come to the dish prepared by the lovely “Malibu” Scary…

which necessitated the use of the “wave plate”

Scary makes sure to complain about having been saddled with maple syrup thanks to Mousy, but Daddy Tom says it actually works really well in the dish. Scary still looks pissed, though, because nothing is ever good enough for the beautiful people. Let’s see how Jobless’ Tour Of Germany turned out…

looks like a moldy IHOP plate

Daddy Tom is looking puzzled again and asks why she’s calling that lump of shrimpmeat a “puff”? Jobless’ response is why I’m coming to love her more and more, “I wanted it to… get into your mind that it was light and fluffy… I dunno.”…

kittens and rainbows?

And that right there is why I want her to win Fan Favorite. And now it’s time for Ty-Böre…

this could prolly use some sriracha, right?

And boy, if you thought TexAsian was overachieving before, you’ll love his bacon hash dish…

done forty-seven ways

Scar calls it “interesting” and now TexAsian is worried they didn’t like what he tried to do. Which was basically everything. Oh well, at least they showed them trying his dish…

poor Mousy wasn’t so lucky

On the other hand, at least we know Mousy’s not in the bottom. Maybe next week they will actually judge everyone’s QuickFire dish. Daddy Tom says most of the food was pretty exciting… but he didn’t care for Jobless Grayson’s shrimp “puff” because it was “more like a wet mousse” and he didn’t like her obviously draping a piece of bacon over the top of it. Also, he’s still trying to rehydrate after tasting Penis-Hair’s salty-ass dish. Finally, Ninja Eddie’s dish wasn’t awful because of the sriracha, it was awful because his hash was burnt and therefore turned bitter. Along with Ninja Eddie.

Whose dishes did they like? Well, Bore-verly’s to start with, Daddy thought her dish was subtle using just the one piece of perfectly cooked pork belly. Naturally they cut away to show us Hag, who manages to look both pissed at Bore and disappointed in herself at the same time…

shoulda used more sexy eyebrow

He also liked the subtlety of GroanyBooger’s dish, and the fact that it didn’t use a lot of over-the-top bacon flavor, plus he loved her crispy pork rind thing. Lastly, he compliments TexAsian on making a “really unusual dish” (or dishes, really) by combining blackberries, asparagus, clams and bacon, and it all worked together… and he wins and scores $10K!…

this is so much better than living among dog turds

And speaking of dog turds, guess who looks like they were just forced to eat one…

wah

Poor GroanyBooger, she goes home empty-handed again. Daddy Tom only rubs salt in her wound as he points out TexAsian has won $30,000.00 so far (!!!) and suggests he treat his fellow chefs to a drink, and directs them to head over to the Driskill Hotel’s bar…

which is naturally bursting with Leisure Suit Larrys

This place looks like somebody’s tacky 70′s living room (i.e. my mother’s) but I suppose it’s as good a place as any to get hammered. And speaking of needing booze, things start off awkwardly as Hag half-jokingly hits on Scary…

if I wasn’t gay before I sure am now

While they are kidding around, a man comes out and begins to play flourishes on the piano. When the chefs finally begin to pay attention (i.e. shut their yaps) he introduces… Patti LaBelle…

who busted out her Bore-verly wig for this gig

The chefs are appropriately awed by Miss Patti’s presence, as they should be…

and this is exactly how I react when I go to one of her concerts and she appears

If you have never been to a Patti LaBelle concert, GO. It’s like going to gay pride, therapy and church all rolled up into one, and you will never be the same. I am not one to name-drop celebrities (mostly because I haven’t met that many) but I am more than happy to tell people that I met Patti LaBelle…

this is me trying my best not to go to pieces on Patti’s pretty purple dress

Honestly, it was all I could do to keep from bursting into tears, and like a complete dork I actually told her that. Of course she looked concerned and said “Why, baby?”, and I was like “OhmygodbecauseI’mahugefanandIloveyousomuch.” and she said that was sweet and asked me what my favorite song of hers was and I told her (it’s a ballad called “If By Chance”) and she stood there and began to sing it to me. It was at that point that the power of speech left me, and it was a good thing my BF was there to ask her to sign my Patti CD and my Patti 12 inch single and my Patti book. Truly, it was one of the coolest moments in my life, and sadly, I was completely uncool throughout.

In any case, let’s get back to the show… of course Miss Patti is going to sing, and naturally they made her sing “Lady Marmalade” because it’s not like she has a catalog with eighteen studio albums and forty-seven singles to choose from…

gitchy-gitchy ya-ya dammit

Oh well, this is the song she is best known for, and she’s graceful enough about singing it for the 8,934,271st time. The chefs sure seem to like it, as evidenced by GroanyBooger…

who has suddenly become a Sassy Black Woman™

They didn’t show it, but I can bet you dollars to dickshots that Ty-Böre was also head-bobbing and making Mariah Carey Dismissive Waves™ with his free hand. In any case, when Patti finishes sangin’, Scar suddenly appears and introduces her as today’s guest judge…

and oh, if only you knew

The chefs may not have bee aware until now, but Patti fans know that she is an excellent cook and has written her own cookbooks, as well as being famous for bringing pots and pans with her on tour so she can make meals for her road crew, hotel staff and security people… in other words, Miss Thing knows what she’s talking about when it comes to food. And she probably has the fattest happiest road crew in the music business. In any case, Scar asks her who taught her how to cook, and she replies that she learned from her mother and father and aunts while growing up. She says all cooks have soul, “I don’t care if you’re black, white, pink or green or whoever…” GroanyBooger looks relieved upon hearing that, because it just gave her license to snap and head-bob whenever she feels like it.

This leads into the Elimination Challenge, which is for the chefs to make a dish inspired by the person that got them started cooking. Oh dear God, nooooooooo! Where is my umbrella? Cuz there’s about to be a storm of Dead Relatives™ up in here! Sure enough, GroanyBooger has started waving her hands at her eyes again as she talks about going to her grandparents’ house and learning how to cook everything from scratch, and how much they meant to her, especially now that they’re gone from this world, and– wait, what? Did she just say that her grandparents are getting older, and that they are, in fact, not even dead yet? What the hell?!? So she’s weeping hysterically now because they might die someday?!??! Jesus, get the voting ballots…

nominee Sarah GroanyBooger, Top Chef Texas, Episode 8, “I’m Sad About My Not-Dead Grandparents”

Please, let’s move on. Scar says they have 2 hours to make their dishes for the Judges, plus Miss Patti and her friends on the following night. And now they get to go to Whole Paycheck Market! This is where we find out that Hag Heather learned how to cook from her mother…

and she learned how to dress from Morticia Addams (and hair by the Great Depression)

She says her mom made a lot of “one-pot” meals (my mom called it “concealing the fact that we’re having leftovers”) so she’s going to make beef stroganoff since that’s her favorite. Wow, Hag and i have more in common than I first thought: we’re both fat and angry and now we both love beef stroganoff (or, as my older brother M-Mo and I used to call it, “beef strokin’-off”… and then we’d cover our mouths, giggle and fall on the floor).

Jobless Grayson says she’s going to use her dad as inspiration since he was always the one grilling steaks on Sunday at their house…

holy crap, is Susan Powter her mom??!?

That would certainly explain her willingness to stand up to the likes of Hag Heather. And speaking of standing up to Hag, it’s now the next day and Bore-verly is talking about how haaaaard it has been to be away from her husband and baby for this long (it’s been two months in Show Time, but we know they film an episode every two days, so in Real Time it’s been a little more than two weeks). Still, I kinda don’t blame her, children grow up so fast…

and you only have a small window of time where they can’t talk back to you

She does mention that there has been “some bullying” going on (ominous cut to Hag putting on dangerous amounts of eyeliner) but Bore is keeping her family firmly in mind as a motivator. Over in the Boys’ Room, Penis-Hair is busily affixing the rubber band to that silly doink of hair on top of his head…

and encouraging appetite suppression by going commando

In the dining room, Ninja Eddie is eating a plate of dry kashi cereal and telling Ty-Böre about how poor he was growing up, so his grandmother made a lot of vegetarian dishes. She also apparently was responsible for telling him to wash his hair and shave off his stupid beard…

and stop talking with scary sideway mouth, okeh?

I can’t tell if Ninja’s grandmother is dead or alive, and he doesn’t start weeping or pointing at the sky and mouthing “I love you, MeeMaw” in Korean, so I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel here. Let’s go to the kitchen at Driskill Grill and watch everybody start to run around in circles. While we’re at it, let’s hear from TexAsian about his inspiration, which also happens to be his dead-or-alive grandmother. He says he has really warm memories of her cooking for him…

she might not have if she had known he was going to grow up to become the Dogshit-Encrusted Weed Dealer™

To honor her, he’s going to make a version of Filipino Adobo. Next we come to Chris Scary, who says he was inspired by his uncle who showed him how to cook fish with all sorts of awesome techniques…

most of which involved a lot of butter, I guess?

I guess we now know who to blame for Scary’s weight problems. He also manages to insult his mother’s cooking in the same breath, so…

once again, can someone please explain to me why this is happening?

Bore-verly naturally says she is using her mother as inspiration, which means she gets a free pass to cook Asian food tonight…

thanks, Mom… and suck it again, Hag!

She’s making braised short-ribs in the “kalbi jim” style, and since they’ve only got two hours, she’s going to tempt fate and bust out with the pressure-cooker again. Meanwhile, her arch-nemesis Hag is working on the opposite end of the kitchen with her rib-eye. She seems concerned because the texture of her beef has turned spongy, and says she’s not wanting to use the pressure-cooker because she got “dinged” on the previous challenge for cooking her duck legs that way and they turned out stringy (lest we forget, that’s the dish she insisted she would serve again at her restaurant, but that Bore was the real bully on, and how come it took her two full days to clean shrimp that one time three weeks agoooorrraaawwwwgggghhhrrrrrrr??!?!?!??!) so she says she is trying to oven-braise the rib-eye and go into rescue mode, “Because I know my beef is not good…”…

nor is it valid

And here come the Judges, including Scar, Daddy Tom and Em La Gassy, along with Patti, her small entourage…

and her new wig

Penis-Hair is the first to present, and he talks about his grandmother (whom he called “Mommy 2″) and her steak and potatoes. He decided to do the same dish, only in miniature form…

they still charge you a hundred bucks at Moto for this same portion size

Cool, so he made doll-house food? How innovative. And stupid. The only non-pretentious thing here is that he mentions having made “an A1 demi-glace” before turning it over to Hag Heather and her mother-inspired beef strokin’-off…

which looks nothing like I remember… where are the egg noodles?

La Gassy says he likes Penis-Hair’s idea, but he’s not sure he would have used A1 sauce in the demi-glace…

this is not making me want to say bam

Miss Patti says the veggies were excellent and the meat was tender, while her friend, Sister Nads, says she loved the presentation, calling it “petite and pretty”. Those are not adjectives that they are going to use in regards to Hag’s dish… La Gassy says he can’t identify what cut of meat this is supposed to be, and Miss Patti pipes up, “It’s Bigfoot!”…

if you haven’t got anything nice to say, please either be bald or put on a pretty wig like this one, you will totally get away with it

La Gassy continues that he feels like he’s at a banquet at one of “those hotels” that Daddy Tom keeps dragging him to…

like this one

So, it sounds like Hag’s dish is a pretty well-rounded suck-cess. Back in the kitchen, GroanyBooger is suffering from Plating-Envy™ over TexAsian’s far prettier dish, but she got to make some sausage, so all will be well in her world… as long as she doesn’t start thinking *snif* about her *choke* not-dead grandparents getting older *sob* and then…

Thankfully, TexAsian gets to go first…

this is your brain on Grandma (instead of drugs)

Also thankfully, GroanyBooger gets through her description of her inspirational grandparents without going all Steel Magnolias on us…

eat your pork sausage stuffed cabbage, Shelby

Daddy Tom thinks GroanyBooger did a great job, the flavors are clean, and the dish is surprisingly light. Miss Patti thinks the brown butter made it a little sweet, but she likes the cabbage. As for TexAsian, Daddy says he thinks his use of mango and herbs is great. Then Miss Patti says she is “not a quail girl” but that she never even got to the rice in his dish because the quail was so good. Then La Gassy rudely invites himself and Daddy Tom over to Miss Patti’s place and wants to know what she would make them. “Fried chicken, cabbage and macaroni with eight cheeses, with lobster and shrimp.” she snaps…

can we have that now, instead of the rest of this shit?

Daddy Tom says he’ll be there “with bells on” and Miss Patti cuts him the side-eye and says “Love bells on, haaayyyyy!” Wait, did Daddy Tom just become one of Patti’s Honorary Gays™? I’m so confused. Let’s go back to the kitchen, where we see Scary cooking his salmon. He says he sees a little bit of whitish albumin starting to seep out of his filets, it’s fatty stuff that comes out of the fish when it is cooked at high heat. Apparently this is not desirable and he does his best to wipe it away before plating it, “Hopefully the judges aren’t gonna notice…”

that their dish both arrived and came at the same time

Bore-verly is his serving partner, and she’s the first to present…

that colby gin stuff

And she is followed by Scary…

a.k.a. DJ Jizzy Fish

Miss Patti says she loves the carrot purée on Scary’s dish, “but the fish was fish”. Daddy Tom doesn’t like the carrot purée because he says it tastes like everything but carrots. He also thinks there’s too much going on and the chunks of herbs are way too big. He also clocks the fact that Scary cooked it too fast and at too high of a temperature and that’s why the white gooey albumin is oozing out. Scar looks vaguely disturbed by the sight of it as well…

and she knows first hand about disgusting whitish goo that shows up when you do something too quickly

Patti’s pianist John says Bore-verly’s meat is very tender and the dish is well-done, and Miss Patti echoes that it is “so good”. La Gassy points out that Bore used the pressure cooker properly to get the desired tenderness, and Daddy Tom praises it for being a great reinterpretation of her mother’s version. Plus it doesn’t look like the floor of an X-rated video arcade, so I’d say it’s a win all around.

Mousy Lindsay is up next, and talks about the influence of her two possibly-living grandmothers, one of whom is Greek and the other is Southern…

opa, y’all

Next up we get Ninja Eddie’s also-MeeMaw-inspired vegetarian dish for poor people…

and now all I can hear in my head is that fucking Hanson song

Miss Patti compares the roe in Mousy’s dish to caviar, and says that La Gassy is the one who introduced her to caviar. La Gassy himself likes the crispy trout and the roe, but he thinks there’s too much butter in it, and it’s muddling the flavors. As for Ninja’s dish, Sister Nads says she’s allergic to eggs, so she tossed that aside and loved the rest of the authentic flavors of the veggies in his dish. La Gassy agrees, it seems like a dish poor people with no access to meat would eat that’s very well thought-out and nicely executed.

And speaking of about to be executed, Jobless is back in the kitchen doing this…

ruh-roh

It would seem that she got a good look at Ty-Böre’s plate, which is very dainty and fussy, and noticed that she’s serving a full 12-ounce steak to everyone, so she’s afraid maybe her portions might be a tad too…

insanely ginormously huge?

Before Jobless even begins her description we hear “wow” and “ooh” and “whoa” and “myyyy, myyyy, myyyyyyy” (I think that last one came from Miss Patti) as the plates are set down on the table…

and the accompanying looks aren’t much better

Jobless acknowledges that she just plunked down half a cow in front of them, but this is what people eat in Wisconsin…

i.e. everything

Now now, don’t give me that look, I will be the first one to tell you that I’m half a Ho-Ho away from being that guy, and my mother’s family is all from Wisconsin (reprezentin’ Appleton, bytchezzz!) so I get a free fat-guy pass. Plus, he’s the kind of guy I like to date anyhow, so keep on serving them huge steaks, Jobless!

Up until this point everyone’s inspiration has been taken from a cherished family member who may-or-may-not be dead. Ty-Böre, on the other hand, tells the Judges that he was inspired by his Japanese nanny Michiko…

who liked to make him MichiMcNuggets

Wow, that’s really kinda not-so-heartwarming. But, whatever, I guess it’s not a requirement that your maybe-dead relatives inspire you to greatness, for some people maybe-dead employees can do the trick just as well. Also, just in case we didn’t “get” that this was supposed to be a Japanese dish, the Magical Elves helpfully added a bunch of twangy koto-notes to the soundtrack so it sounds more like a Kikkoman commercial from the 70′s (back when everybody lumped that entire half of the world together under the “Oriental” moniker).

After the chefs leave, Miss Patti coos that Ty-Ty’s McNugget is “beyoootiful foo-oo-ood” and Daddy Tom says he was touched by the sweetness of the Japanese nanny story…

though I suspect he may be confusing it with this

As for Jobless, Daddy Tom says she just cooked the exact same dish she probably had on Saturday nights growing up (Miss Patti thinks she must have had a huge family cuz she cooked enough for 20!). Sister Nads complains that her steak was very stringy, and Pianist John says his was gristly. Back in the kitchen, Jobless thinks that every component of her giant meat platter was delicious in it’s own way, and says she’ll fight for that. I suspect she will be shortly.

Tonight’s vignette is the chefs all sharing a toast to the people who inspired them to cook (while the Really Meaningful Guitar Strums™ adorn the soundtrack) and Ty-Böre makes sure to point out that “All these people that inspired these dishes are people that, like, love us and care about us… They don’t care what you do, they just want you to be happy, you know?”…

um, Ty-Ty, this is the same speech all porn stars give

Ty-Böre also makes sure to point out that Miss Patti’s toenails were painted to match Scar’s blouse…

you’ll never believe it, they were both light blue

I would say that Ty-Ty was just being a stereotypical gay by pointing out an accessory connection, but I tend to think he really just has a huge foot fetish. In any case, Scar appears, and before anybody can yell out to her that her blouse looks like Patti LaBelle’s feet, she says they want to see Jobless Grayson, Chris Scary… and Hag Heather. No one knows quite what to think about this choice, they’re all unsure and after those three leave, Ty-Böre wonders aloud if they’ve ever called bottoms first this season.

Well, if they didn’t before, they sure have now. After Scar tells them their dishes were least favorite and “fell flat”, Daddy Tom wants to know if any of them are surprised to be there. Jobless believes her flavors were there, and repeats that serving a giant steak is how people eat in Wisconsin…

um, not after having had nine other dishes they don’t

La Gassy gently tells Jobless that he doesn’t think the steak was trimmed properly and he expected a lot more from her. She insists she trimmed it and cooked it the way it should be cooked, but Scar insists that her piece was spongy and sinewy. Daddy Tom wants to know why she didn’t do something more exciting or modern with the original dish. Jobless admits she may have taken the challenge too literally.

As for Scary, Daddy immediately points out that his salmon was seared too hard and fast, the outside became dried out and Scar mentions the whitish spooge all over her piece made it unappetizing. La Gassy also says his chunks of dill were too big and overpowered the rest of the dish. Miss Patti shows some love for his taters, but says the fish didn’t “flip” her…

which makes Scary extra sad because he did his hair in tribute to her tonight

I’m wondering if Uncle Inspiration is the one who taught him the technique of flash-frying the fish into a gummy, cummy mess… or if he’s gonna also blame this one on his mother being a shitty cook. And I must ask again, WHY IS THIS GUY GOING TO WIN FAN FAVORITE??!?!?

Now the part everybody’s been waiting for: Hag. Daddy Tom starts by saying her dish went off the rails right after she chose beef strokin’-off as her starting point. Scar says her dumplings were dry and chewy and overcooked. Then Miss Patti proves she is afraid of nothin’ as she flat-out tells the largest and meanest-looking chef in the bunch to her face: “I thought I had Bigfoot on the plate…”

and girrrrrl, he needed a new attitude

She goes on to say the meat was unidentifiable and that she couldn’t cut through it. Daddy Tom takes over here and says he’s not sure how she cooked it, but it wasn’t braised well enough. Hag agrees that she second-guessed herself, saying “I was afraid to use the pressure-cooker…” and then trots out last week’s stringy duck as an example of why she didn’t want to go that route. Daddy Tom pauses a moment before delivering the coup de grâce, “I mean, Beverly used the pressure-cooker and… **looks around** …she’s not here!”…

unless you’re standing in front of her

no, but I sure wish I were standing on top of her

That being said, Scar dismisses them and they head back into the kitchen to give the good news to the other chefs that they’re all safe, and to send GroanyBooger, Ninja Eddie… and Bore-verly back in… where the winner is declared…

CONGRATULATIONS… you won zero dollars

GroanyBooger is just glad that her grandparents are still alive to brag about how awesome she is to their friends… “She was so worried we would die before she ever did anything great, but now we can tell everyone our granddaughter cooked for Patti LaBelle and discovered her inner Sassy Black Woman™…” Awwww, that’s so sweet, it makes me wish they’d given her a free cookbook, or a Patti LaBelle CD or something for winning. Cheap ass season.

The loozahs are called back to Judges’ Table, and tonight we find out…

who is the real alpha bitch on this show

OMG, they just kicked off Hag Heather! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! No wonder her Twitter Page is “protected” now, she prolly had 28,736 tweets all saying “BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA”. At least she thanks the judges for an annoying amazing experience and heads back to the kitchen to say her goodbyes and command everyone not to be upset over her departure…

for the record: definitely not upset

And Bore-verly sums it up perfectly by using Hag’s own words against her: “Heather reaped her own karma. Nobody else told her what to do, and she’s going home for what she did. I’m sorry to say it, but there is a personal satisfaction with that.” And not just for you, Bore, because we all heard her wish this very same thing at the end of last week’s episode when she was going off on Jobless, so, buh-bye Hag…

…OR IS IT??!?!??!!

You know, speaking of spoilers, those fucking asstwirlers over at BravoTV.com never fucking hide the goddamned comments on the Last Chance Kitchen videos, and some douchebucket always posts “Yay! So-and-so won and isn’t going home!” right there, so there’s almost no point in even watching the video (which is really just an extended Cloyota commercial like everything else this season) but tonight we must watch, because this time it’s pretty juicy…

After an extended montage of Hag yelling at Bore-verly and being a mega-bitch, we get to see her eliminated again (sweeeeeeet) and hear her admit that she’s devastated, this hurts really bad, and “there’s a sickening feeling”…

that I should have learned how to cook more Asian food

Back at La Casa Del Cheffo, Hag finds her Last Chance Kitchen letter, which reads “Mistakes are meant to be fixed, I’ll see you in the kitchen.” What the hell? Are they saying her going home was a mistake of some kind?…

not if Divot Diva has anything to say about it

Nyesha says she is totally relishing the fact that it’s Hag coming through the door, “From the beginning Heather talked bad about a lot of people. A lot of undermining, very condescending… I really wanna shut Heather up!” Amen, sista! Plus, you missed out on cooking for Miss Patti! That’s enough of a reason to beat a bitch down.

So Daddy Tom welcomes Hag to Redemption Kitchen and explains that this is a “secret” competition amongst the eliminated chefs to see who will beat all the others and compete in the Finale (which will be a giant surprise to the other chefs cooking there, can’t wait to see their faces when they hear about this, hopefully nobody over at BravoTV spoils it for them with misplaced comments). Hag keeps giggling like an 8th grader it is pissing the Divot Diva off, “I want to wipe that smile off her face…”

or she might just settle for removing Hag’s face altogether

So Daddy Tom says their challenge today will be all about “techniques and methods”. Oh, please don’t let it be “methods of overcooking steak” or Hag’s gonna win this thing! Nope, instead they have to come up with a dish using frying, injecting and foaming. Immediately Hag says she’s never foamed anything in her life so she’s already nervous. And they get 30 minutes to figure it out while the rest of the fully eliminated chefs file out and take a seat…

please welcome the Bitter Brigade™

Hag has grabbed a bunch of giant prawns and is trying to concentrate on injecting their heads with something tasty, but she’s finding the questions from the Bitter Brigade are distracting and annoying her (we still have that much in common). Divot Diva, on the other hand, in the process of making a crème anglaise because she’s decided to be ballsy and do a dessert, possibly a churro injected with caramel sauce and some kind of sweet foam on top (a la Cóol Whip, perhaps?).

Meanwhile Hag is having a terrible time making her foam, so she blames the hand-blender thingy for being a piece of crap. Then when she starts filling her turkey-baster with her prawn-head liquid, she “accidentally” squirts some onto Divot Diva’s fry-bread dough, and then sorta half mumbles an apology for being so underhanded clumsy…

if I aim a little higher maybe I can blind her with this next shot

Diva is clearly kinda pissed, but tells us the mess didn’t really affect her dish, she thinks Hag being all chaotic and messy is just her way of trying to get inside her head and trip her up. Now Hag is complaining that the deep fat fryer is super-hot and she’s worried it’s going to overcook her shrimp (they are both using it for their dishes) and it sounds to me like someone wishes they had a certain wispy annoying Korean woman to push around and blame everything on. Finally time runs out and Divot Diva presents her dish…

most. important. donut. EVAH.

Maddeningly, Daddy Tom gives no feedback and moves on to Hag’s squishy shrimp…

hope this is one of the ones caught during the BP oil spill

Naturally she forces Daddy Tom to suck the head on national TV…

one of the times I’ve seen Daddy Tom be completely unsexy

Daddy Tom compliments Divot Diva for doing a dessert and says it was nice, although her foam was a little heavy. Then he tells Hag that he loves the combination of chanterelle mushrooms and corn, and thanks her for making him suck the head in front of everyone, but “Goat cheese and prawns?”…

sucks in a completely different way

In the end Daddy Tom says Hag’s shrimp were overcooked, so Divot Diva wins for a second time…

while Hag gets to add extra security to her Twatter Feed

And there we have it! What did you think of this episode? Did you feel like it was Hag’s time to go, or should it have been Scary for his disgusting fish, or Jobless for her giant also-crappy steak? Are you as surprised as I am that there have been so few Elimination Prizes this season? And was it just me, or did these chefs seem to be straining to force themselves to look excited over having a legend like Patti LaBelle in their midst? Who do you think is likely to go next? My vote is on Penis-Hair, I think his gimmicks are gonna fuck him in the end. And do you guys think I could maybe find a way to get Candice to pause her Campaign Of Terror™ over on Toddlers & Tiaras long enough to leave me a 7483-word single-paragraph mis-spelled commentrant with random punctuation sprinkled over it like sea-salt?

I want to say thanks again for your patience and your time, PLUS a HUGE thank you to everybody who has been so generously commenting (special shout-out to my fellow recappers Vallegirl, TheMiki, and DearCrabby for dropping by and showing some love, I am a huge fan of all y’alls work) and since it’s the holidays, I have a little present for you guys in the form of… kitty porn!…

all Chunky and Chica wanted for Christmas was a shaft of sunlight and a nap…
…and the shrimp we had for Christmas Dinner

There is no new episode this week (YAY, a break!) but we will be back next year with a brand new show, and I can’t wait. In the meantime, the kitties, the BF and I all wish you guys a belated Happy Holidays and a Merry New Year!

love, J-Mo

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