Small Bites

In last night’s episode we got some local Top Chef action. The cheftestants spent the day on the farm at Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, and cooked in the kitchen at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. After the jump, a rundown of the local scenes.

The cheftestants went from spam to ham. After they finished their quick fire challenge and got in their SUVs — supposedly to shop for their ingredients for their elimination challenge. Instead, we see them driving up the Thruway by the Saw Mill Parkway exit.

Fabio says:

“We are driving now and there is bushes, trees everwhere. I’m lke it doesn’t look like we are going to the Whole Foods Market.”

The GPS shows Ossining.

Cut to: the Blue Tractor in the field.

I know where we are! says Jaime. This is Dan Barber’s restaurant!

Dan Barber has got an amazing reputation … so it’s kind of an honor to be cooking for him. This is totally the food I do.

Cut to: the sign for Blue HIll at Stone Barns.

We see Dan, Jack Algiere, Craig Haney and Shannon Algiere.

Dan and Craig (And Stella):

Jack and Shannon:

Dan says welcomes the chefs to the farm, then says they’ll be shopping for a “different kind of whole food.” This illicits much laughter from the crowd.

Jeff gets worried.

I’m concerned because we’re not shopping at Whole Foods and the menu we’ve written is going to have to be restructured.

The farmers take the chefs into the fields to get their produce. There are gasps of esctasy from the smell of the fresh food.

Jeff notices some green tomatoes on the ground and decides he’s going to fry them.

Team sheep — Ariane, Hosea and Leah — horse around with the fencing for the sheep. (Stella makes a cameo.) They corral the sheep into a new pasture.

Team pig — Fabio, Jeff and Radhika — head into the forest to see their protein on the hoof. Fabio gets all preachy on us, in his own way.

I’m not a vegetarian but this doesn’t mean that I don’t have respect for another life. You get born, you be raised and you get killed for a purpose. But still in this lifetime process, you should deserve respect.

Wow.

Next we see Shannon with team chicken: Jaime, Stefan and Carla. Shannon leads them toward the coop and says “So here we have the meat bird houses….”

Jaime tell us she grew up in the city and never had the chance to be around farms.

It’s nice to see where your food comes from.

We see the team walking along the path by the dooryard garden into the courtyard.

Next we’re back at the chicken coop and the chickens are supposedly “attacking” Jaime. (I don’t see that they are but…) This is so we can get one of the show’s raunchiest quotes (and there were several):

Stefan:

I’m the only guy there. Shannon — the chicken lady — Carla and Jamie and 140 hens. So i’m the only cock in the stall.
Cock. I love that.

Wow.

So we cut to the kitchen.

(Chef and kitchen manager Adam Kaye and chef de cuisine Josh Lawler in 2007):

We see meat all over the place — trays of pig, lamb and chicken, from nose to tail, including the faces and eyes. You’re really getting the farm-to-table lesson here.

All of a sudden Hosea gets some cold feet.

We are cooking for the farmers and it’s a bit daunting because these guys are going to have certain ideas about how their food should be handled.

So there’s some cooking — people breaking down their meat, making stocks, peeling carrots, etc. etc. And then we hear Radhika complaining she’s upset because she can’t make her bread pudding because there are no figs.

I had planned to do a bread pudding but for some reason they don’t have figs, so that idea is out the window.

(Funny aside: chocolate bread pudding used to be one of Blue HIll’s best-known desserts.

Next we find out the menus.

Team Pork
Seared Pork Loin
Sausage, Zucchini and Eggplant Ravioli with Pesto
Fried Green Tomatoes with Tomato Jam
Grilled Corn Salad with Green Beans Bacon
Creme Brulle with Summer Berries

Team Chicken
Chicken Paillard with Mizuna, Corn, Onions, Bacon and Tomato
Lemon-Herb Roasted Chicken with Jus
Chicken Consomme with Chicken-Swiss Chard Ravioli
Nectarine and Strawberry Tartlet with Thyme and Lemon Cream

Team Lamb
Roasted Duo of Lamb with Green Beans
Heirloom Tomato Salad with Shaved Fennel, Cheese and Basil
Rosemary and Garlic Rosted Potatoes
Swiss Chard
Summer Berry Trifle

We have a little scuffle over on Team Lamb.

Leah: Sure, you can do the potatoes and then what am I going to do?
Hosea: Tomato Salad?
Leah (rolls eyes): OK.

Cut to Leah: I’m doing the salad and dessert and that’s not really doing enough. And I know that.

Then Fabio is complaining about Radhika because she’s taken an hour to shuck and grill 10 cobs of corn.
When Tom makes his kitchen rounds he asks Jeff how things are going and Jeff also disses Radhika by not mentioning her contributions.

Then we get an interview with Tom by the blue tractor. He’s worried that the pork and lamb teams are removing the meat from the bones, that the chicken team is going to serve soup in 80-plus degree weather and he’s worried about creme brulee being too simple (though admits it was an Achilles heel for another team this season.

Now we’re having a roast-tying issue on Team Lamb.

Leah:

Ariane doesn’t know how to tie a roast. So I help her. But I probably could have tied the roast a little better but at that point I just wanted to get it in the oven.

They show the timer with 13 mintues left and Jeff is running around looking for a roasting rack. Next thing you know Radhika says there are 4 minutes to go and the pork is out of the oven. It’s a miracle! The pork cooked in 9 minutes! And they cut it without resting!

Now it’s time for lunch. There are picnic tables set up between the restaurant’s patio and the fields with the blue tractor.

Padma walks into the shot looking like she just came from riding out on Martha’s Bedford farm, what with her high boots and jodphurs and her cute little brown vest. The teams set their dishes down and Jaime’s worried her dishes are complex enough.

We start hearing from the peanut gallery. First, a shot of Adam Kaye and his gorgeous son, Jonah.

Next, a quote from pastry sous chef Kristine Egan, discussing serving soup in 85-degree weather:

The consomme, I agree with but at the same time, it was really really great soup.

Dan thinks the chicken is “really delicious.” And he’s impressed with the idea of serving a fried cutlet with salad. (Really?)

The idea is good. The fried cutlet with the salad. Nice conception.

Tom thinks the other chicken is “nicely roasted.”

Shannon is impressed, but thinks the citrus was a little much.

The fried chicken was great. Having the citrus there, the lemon was a little jarring.

Lamb? Not so much:

Dan:

The lamb is a mess.

Tom thinks the pesto on the ravioli was “agressive.”

Chef de cuisine Josh Lawler:

I thought the lamb team’s meal was slightly out of season.

And, from line cook Chris Diminno:

And also they sliced it with the grain so all the juice ran out so it was a little overcooked.

Toby Young, the trying-oh-so-hard-to-be-pithy critic from the UK, had this gem:

The pesto was the big, bad wolf which was blowing this pig’s house down.

Wow.

Let’s move on to Team Pig.

Tom thinks the meat should have been left on the bone. We don’t get many other comments on the pork.

On to dessert, though, Tom loves Crazy Carla’s crust, and Dan said her dessert wasn’t too sweet, “which was a really nice way to end this lunch.”

Alex Grunert, pastry chef —

— was impressed, saying, “The taste was excellent.”

Tom thought the pork team’s creme brulee was too sweet and the sugar on top was too thick.

Toby chimed in, comparing the berries on top to taking a Pimms cup and dumping it on top of the creme brulee.

And Jack:

It was a rich thing for a hot day but the portion was small enough that I don’t feel heavy from it.

My favorite dessert quote, though, comes from Dan on the subject of the trifle. He basically compared it to airline food.

It reminds me like I was being served, tray tables down. I really found that to be unappealing to look at.

In the last shot of the lunch, we see GM Philippe Gouze, wearing a pink shirt, getting up and stretching his legs.

After the break, we’re back at judges table. I think you can guess where this is going.

Jaime, Carla and Stefan are called in first. Turns out, they’re all winners. I’m guessing that’s because when you work as closely with farmers as Dan does, you realize what a collaboration a great plate of food can be. He said:

It was a great day on the farm to collaborate on a terrific plate of food. It showed off everything the farmers worked very hard to do.

Crazy Carla was estatic.

I got a win! I’m on the board! Whoo Hoo!

Now for the bad news. Kids. You gotta keep your meat on the bone and cook it with its fat.

Dan:

I’m going to second guess your removing that fat … It’s really one of the most delicious parts of the animal.

Tom:

When you can get something that’s on the bone … it creates more flavor.

Then we have this ridiculous excuse by Fabio about why he made pesto. He had been planning on making a cherry tomato sauce, but one he realized he wasn’t going to be getting cherry tomatoes, he went with pesto.

What? There were hundreds of tomatoes in that field. Surely you could have found something better, even, than cherry tomatoes!

And the excuse for the bad lamb had to do with not knowing how to tie it properly. Are you’re telling me that you are a contestant on Top Chef and you own a restaurant in Montclair, N.J. and you don’t know how to tie a roast? Whatever.

Now I’m saving the best quote for last. This is from Toby.

There’s something so bloodless and anemic about the pork dish. When I’m faced with a beautiful, well-reared piece of meat, I don’t want to stand back and admire it, I want to have full-blown, unprotected sex. And I didn’t even get to first base with the pork.

Wow.
After that, who misses Gaii?

In the end, Jeff’s Fried Green Tomatoes saved the pork team and they asked Ariane from Team Lamb to pack her knives and go. She got a little snarky at the end, saing Leah wasn’t a team player and Hosea was a “wimp.”

But the last line? Very appropriate for a farm where nothing goes to waste: the chicken clean up the grass after the sheep; the chefs use every part of the pig; and even the kitchen scraps are composted and fed back to the soil:

From Ariane:

What goes around comes around.

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