Top Chef Texas, Week 6: Who Shot JR?

Nice choppers! (by BravoTV.com)

Previously: the horror of the Highland Park dinner, but also Heather hating on Bev (Chekhov's side eye?), and the male cheftestants (mostly Ed) bitching about how Chuy's elimination reduced the number of men in the competition. (Side note: I know this is TOTALLY UNREASONABLE of me, but I was really disappointed to see Paul Qui smoking in this scene.)

Quickfire! Chef Dean "Dentures? What Dentures?" Fearing! Le Cordon Bleu, where Paul Qui went to culinary school, so he better do good or they will revoke his degree! (Not really.) For the Quickfire, the cheftestants must make a mother sauce (because they are in a culinary school, which is where they learned to make mother sauces, and probably never made another one after that). They draw knives to determine which sauce they were to make: bechamel (which is helpful because I always get Bechamel and Mornay mixed up; this will help me remember. Servicey!), tomates, espagnole, veloute, and hollandaise.

The chefs make their sauces. (Heather: Bev's is too Asian.) Chef Fearing is really weird about whether the chefs used clarified butter in their sauces. On the bottom: Dakota (wearing far too much eye makeup), Nyesha (who rilly rilly wants to be a saucier), and Bev, whose sauce was too Asian. (Heather smirks.) On the top: Grayson for her bechamel and ravioli, Not Fat Chris for his veloute, and Paul Qui for his espagnole. Grayson is winner winner chicken dinner and has immunity for the elimination.

The Elimination challenge will take place at the Cattle Baron's Ball, hosted by the American Cancer Society. The chefs must prepare a four-course steak dinner for 200 people. Ty-Lor talking heads that he worked at a steakhouse in NYC for two years, so he has a lot of experience cooking steak. (Chekhov's ribeye?) The chefs must incorporate steak into two of the courses, which makes absolutely no sense to me. But whatever, I don't even eat steak. Not my problem.

Padma then announces that they event will take place at Southfork Ranch! Oh, how they all did laugh! Heather v/o's that they were a Dynasty family, not Dallas, so she can't remember who shot J.R. (Uh, KRISTEN DID. DUH.) Anyhoo, the prize for the challenge is a 2011 Product PlaceMobile! Yaaaaay!

Planning. Yadda Yadda. Heather plans to reprise her lovely (tres) leches lumps from the Quinceanara challenge for dessert. The cheftestants trash Whole Foods during their shopping trip. Whitney will make a potato gratin. Nyesha is making a compound butter and some sort of sauce. (Top Condiments?) Sarah explains that the appetizer course will be a shrimp gazpacho because with alla this steak, they'll need something light. Heather bitches that Bev is being too perfect with the shrimp prep because she is selfish and covering her ass when she should be working on a team.

And then ... blood on the walls. BLOOD ON THE WALLS!!!! Ty-Lor cuts the bejoozies out of his finger. Be careful out there, people. This bit of misfortune means that T-L only gets an hour of sleep because Obama hasn't managed to rescue us from interminable emergency room visits. (Really? The emergency room? There's not an after-hours clinic in Dallas?)

Southfork. Heather is barking orders at everyone. Things are hectic! Beverly is still prepping shrimp, which really gets under Heather's saddle. Dakota thinks that Heather is an obnoxious bully and that given her druthers, Heather would be the first one "booted from the island." (Note to Dakota: You may want to bone up on your reality shows.)

Let's cut to the chase: the chefs fuck this up spectacularly. The gazpacho was fine but safe and maybe too acidic, the appetizer course (triple seared steak carpaccio with asparagus and mushroom bacon) is muddled, and Lindsay and Heather get antsy about the timing of the entree and wind up firing the steaks too soon. The steaks are incorrectly and inconsistently cooked (they were all to be medium rare). Poor Ty-Lor is suffering at the grill, marking the steaks in 104 degree heat. Whitney's potato gratin is too heavy for the season and the potatoes are undercooked. The only dish that the judges really love is Heather's cake.

A side note: Why so much steak at an American Cancer Society event? Aren't there direct links between meat consumption and certain types of cancer? I confess I worked up a pretty impressive head of steam about this when I watched it the first time, and it still pisses me off. This makes. No. Sense.

(Let us not speak of that horrific, awkward interstitial scene of Bev fan-girling all over Ed, whom she apparently idolizes because he's a Korean American chef. I don't have any particular fondness for Heather, but I can sort of empathize with her hatred of Bev. That doesn't mean that she needed to publicly humiliate her in the stew room by attacking her shrimp prep.)

The winners bracket includes: Heather (cake), Nyesha (compound butter), and Chicago Chris. The winner of the challenge and of the Product PlaceMobile is ... Heather. (Seriously? The person who won the steak challenge was the one who made the dessert?)

Losers bracket: Ty-Lor, Whitney, and Ed. Whitney v/o's that guest judge Hugh Acheson is her culinary mentor and therefore it's comforting to see him there. Aaaaand, there's your loser, folks.

Last Chance Kitchen: Whitney goes up against Chuy in a burger challenge. The previous three Last Chancers (Drew, Keith, and Richie) serve as a peanut gallery and help decide the winner, who is Whitney.

Next week: still in Dallas, and it looks like Dakota takes a stand against Heather. Also: "Are you happy with that meat?" That's what she said!!!