Chef Lynn Crawford’s in the house this week, and she’s got her hair did – it’s usually pretty wild on Pitchin’ In. The Quickfire this week is to design both a morning and afternoon snack size meal for Porter Airlines. The food has to fit into the little boxes, and everything needs to be served chilled or at room temperature. After a quick moment of Francois and Dale drooling over the flight attendants in their little outfits, the cheftestants get to work. Lynn wants the chefs to be creative, and make sure the presentation is on point. (I’m skipping the descriptions of the Quickfire meals, because each chef has 3 dishes in the Elimination.)

 Connie wins for her homemade blueberry yogurt and granola for the breakfast meal, and her chicken salad sandwich with pasta salad for the lunch meal. It was creative, tasted great and had visual appeal. Connie gets a trip to Chicago for a culinary adventure courtesy of Porter.

 

For the Elimination Challenge this week, the cheftestants have to prepare three meals to represent a day in the life of Canadian food, and accentuate the food that is raised or grown in the region. Chefs draw knives, go to Loblaws, and get cooking. Seriously, can they not blast the AC in that kitchen? I’m surprised everyone’s food isn’t too salty because of all the sweat dripping everywhere. Dale and Rob are lucky because they’ve basically chosen the regions they’re from (Interior BC and Ontario), while the other chefs are struggling: Connie’s only been to Montreal once, Andrea has travelled all over the world but never to the Prairies, Francois has never been to the East Coast, and Dustin’s going to do the best he can with Alberta. We have a soundbite from Andrea shown here in her Restaurant Wars outfit, where she talks about wanting her own restaurant by the time she’s 30, and she wants to win Top Chef Canada so she can open it. I feel this lends further credibility to my theory that Dale will be the winner, because his restaurant just opened in BC. Anyway, Dale ruins any goodwill he gained with me last week by talking about how the girls won’t make it to the Top 4. I knew it was too good to be true, Dale!

 

The guest judges this week are Chef Lynn, as well as Jonathon Gushue from Langdon Hall. No Shereen this week – I didn’t even notice she was missing until they showed the preview for next week.

 

Breakfast: roasted bison steak and quail eggs

Lunch: short rib stew

Dinner: stuffed cornish hen

 

Judges: Breakfast was perfectly cooked and well executed. Lunch left Mark hanging. Dinner’s stuffing was too salty, and Jonathan says it tastes like banquet hall food.

 

Breakfast: brandade topped with a poached quail egg and lobster

Lunch: seafood salad

Dinner: lobster and scallop chowder

 

Judges: Breakfast lacked acidity and Lynn says it didn’t need both breading and hollendaise. Lunch was a disjointed and confused plate that did not say East Coast. Dinner’s chowder was tasty, but should have been thicker. He tried to show too much.

 

Lunch: bison and barley soup

Dinner: rib eye with smoked tomato chutney

Dessert: blueberry and huckleberry crumble

 

Judges: Lynn’s not reading prairies from these dishes. Lunch’s soup had no background flavour. Dinner’s puree is good, but the rib eye has no flavour. They hate the crumble.

 

Breakfast: morel, leek and potato hash

Lunch: salmon and peas three ways

Dinner: venison loin and huckleberry puree, and bannock with rosemary and thyme

 

Judges: Breakfast had a perfectly cooked egg, and I can’t believe it takes ten episodes for Jonathon to use the word I hate the most to describe this dish: it has a great mouthfeel *shudder*. Lunch’s salmon was perfectly cooked, the pure flavour came through and the puree is delicious. The venison at dinner lacked flavour but everything else is good.

 

Lunch: smoked trout salad

Dinner: tourtiere with tomato jam

Dessert: blueberry pie with maple creme anglaise

 

Judges: Lynn loved the potato salad and smoked trout. The tourtiere’s flavour is great with delicious pickles, although Mark says it’s not a classic tourtiere. Everyone loves the dessert and Lynn says there’s heart and soul in every dish.

 

Lunch: smoked ham and corn chowder with Ontario vegetables

Dinner: pickerel with crushed new potatoes

Dessert: fresh Niagara fruit and sabayon

 

Judges: Chowder is very rich and the veg don’t shine. Pickerel is perfectly cooked with a nice dill sauce. Dessert isn’t great; berries and stone fruits aren’t in season at the same time and the peach isn’t ripe. Looks like he threw it together. Lynn says he played it safe.

 

Back in the supply closet, and did you notice that the products stocked on the shelves rotate from week to week so someone new gets the pimp spot? This week it’s Smartwater. Thea arrives on the scene and calls in Dale and Connie. They are the best! Their menus really highlighted their regions. Mark said Connie had a lot of entertaining flavours, even though her tortiere was more of a pot pie. Lynn absolutely loved the blueberry pie, and this is why we love Connie, because she steps up and admits she didn’t make her pie crust because it was too hot in the kitchen and there was no time. Mark doesn’t care, he says it was “really really yummy” (surprised he didn’t add “in my tummy”). Dale is commended for thinking outside the box, and Mark said his cabernet jus was reduced perfectly. Jonathon says his salmon was perfect and Lynn says he gave an overall perspective of what BC has to offer, paired his ingredients well, and even though they were disappointed in the venison, all-in-all well done.

 

The winner: Connie! First time someone has won both the Quickfire and Elimination in the same episode.

 

Francois and Andrea are called in, and they are the worst. Andrea fell down on execution, her soup had oil on the top, and the meatball was dry. For her blueberry cobbler, the grains weren’t incorporated. Andrea defends herself by stating that she was going to make a pie, but due to the heat she switched to a crumble because there’s no way she’d use something store bought (dig at Connie!). Lynn says she shouldn’t make excuses, she needs to cook under the conditions she’s given and adapt. Francois missed the spirit of the East Coast, and his seafood salad was a disaster and the flavours were unidentifiable. The mushrooms in his breakfast dish were also from the wrong region.

 

Going home: Andrea 🙁

 

Next Time: Street food! Dale’s not having any of it. 

 

Obviously I’m biased because I picked her to be in the Top 3, but I’m not sure that Andrea should have been sent home over Francois. The challenge was to accentuate the food raised/grown in a particular region, so if both Andrea and Francois failed on execution, shouldn’t Francois have been eliminated based on the fact that he used some ingredients from the wrong region? I liked this episode, but my favourite part of the hour was the commercial that told me that Top Chef Just Desserts is FINALLY going to air in Canada starting July 11th!