The Jet Stream: Not feeling the Love

Jet Tila

Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009 | 3:21 p.m.

It all was about cowboys this week, from cactus to ranch hands. Chef Tim Love, whose personality is dryer than a desert, presided over the top chefs. Tim's advice for working with cactus this week was...wait for it... "Be careful!" Thanks Tim. He also had some good one-liners such as "It tastes like I sucked on a piece of chlorine" and "I'm not well from it (Mattin's dish); I'm flippin' sick." A true cowboy chef/poet.

Cool Quickfire this week with cactus – not a common ingredient by any means, but creative! My take on cactus would've been an homage to a culture that cooks and eats cactus regularly, Mexico. Called nopales in Spanish, cactus is excellent in a salad or crude salsa. Because it's so delicate in flavor, I would've married it with some heirloom tomatoes and sweet onions and topped a nice piece of delicate fish with the nopales salsa.

We had a lot of WTF dishes this week. Ash's "sopes," which are supposed to be round thick tortilla type corn cakes topped with vegetable or meat, was a total joke. First off, his corn cake looked more like a cow pie. Then, he slams some cheese and cactus in it and decides to call it a grilled cheese. Ash, that dark figure looming in the shadows is the TC grim reaper coming for you.

Robin's grilled romaine salad with drunken prawns and spicy chicken sausage was a mess! Nothing about this combo made sense: grilled romaine, with alcohol marinated prawns and spicy chicken sausage? It makes me think of the flavors left in my mouth after a terrible hangover and a few rounds with the porcelain queen, if you catch my drift.

Then there's Ron, who had a totally disastrous week with a double header of terrible dishes:

First, the chipotle swordfish and mango crab salad with cactus sauce. There wasn't a cactus in sight, so he blends it into the sauce to try to hide the fact he has no clue what to do it. Then Chef Love claims his crab was rancid? Ouch man. Then Ron comes in with coconut-lime tuna ceviche and Haitian mojito that lands him in the bottom three. Not looking good.

Ron also wins the MTV/fashion moment of the week!: The vision of him in the desert with a do-rag, BDU pants, and chef coat was straight gangsta! I'm gonna call him Chef DJ "Voodoo" Duprat, the Mesquite killa! Homeboy rolls up on a mesquite tree and strait breaks off a trunk like a stone cold killa! Then he casts a spell on his tee pee with the mesquite to keep the snakes away. I'm almost too scared to write anything negative about him now 'cuz he's gonna mold a voodoo doll of a little fat Asian chef and put some pins in me!

Congrats to Mike I's cactus-and-tuna ceviche, which took the win for this week's Quickfire! Just when I was giving up on this guy he pulls a $15,000 gold chip win. Don't get used to it, brother. This is your one-and-done win. The best Top Chef moment this week by far was Mike I's pork gyro, which he pronounced "ji-ro" as in "gyroscope" instead of "yeeeeee-rooooooowww". Dude, aren't you Greek?

So, this week's elimination challenge was to cook for a bunch of ranch hands out in the desert. Was I the only one that was shocked with the amount of seafood they brought to the DESERT, and then the decision to make a bunch of ceviches out of that raw fish? It's 100 degrees out there and you want to marinate fish in citrus until the acid cooks it through? Sounds a little like an experiment in who's going give a judge the runs first.

And guess who won that challenge? Congrats to you, Mattin! You didn't just make a terrible trio of ceviches, you also made Tim Love "flippin' sick!" As a bonus, you get to be the one booted from Top Chef this week. To me, based on last week and this week's performance, Mattin was a good choice to say au revior to. You, mon sieur, will not be missed.

I really felt this week's challenges forced a lot of the chefs out of their element. It was fun to see the bitching and moaning about having to sleep in teepees and cook on outdoor grills. I think a lot of chefs forgot to keep their dishes relevant to the challenges.

Big props to Laurine this week: Girlfriend was on point and in the pocket with her sautéed arctic char with tomatillo salsa and grilled potato and the cactus salsa with glazed pork chop. She was one of the few that really understood the challenges and what the judges were looking for. I think she is a comfort food cook, but is out of her element with fine dining.

These comfort food weeks are fun, but it's going to take some fine dining prowess and creativity to ultimately win Top Chef. For those skills, we need to look to Jennifer and the V brothers.

Speaking of the V bros, Bryan took the win for one clear reason: He understood what the judges were asking for – a fancy meal for ranch hands. Bryan's roasted pork loin with corn polenta, dandelion greens, and glazed rutabaga is perfect up market ranch food. Mike's dashi with miso-cured black cod was great, but it just didn't make sense for the challenge at hand.

This week's who knew moment goes to...

Who the hell knew that Kevin was a friggin' horseshoe master? The dude perfectly nails every horseshoe toss around the metal peg. He is the Rain Man of horseshoes! No, he's the bloody Yoda of horseshoes!

I swear to God, if I see another damn ceviche, I'm gonna slit my wrists and go running into the night! Please, please, please, no more ceviche! For God's sake, Hector, our Latin chef is gone, and we still see three ceviches in the episode. No más, por favor!

This was a fun week. It took us out of fine dining mode and somewhat evened out the playing field. Fine dining and French influenced shows will be dominated by the three I mentioned above. These types of weeks give the rest of the competitors a chance to shine. Big props to Ashley and Laurine for showing some top cheffing this week. We were all starting to give up on you two. It looks like next week is going to go molecular and touch on nouvelle cuisine.

I am seeing a brilliant pattern here. We started with classic food or cuisine classique (as it's known in France), you know, old school French stuff: cream, butter, frogs' legs, and escargot. Then this week, there were cowboy themes and American rural cuisine. Next week it's on to nouvelle and molecular cooking (the antithesis of cuisine classique)! Do you see the genius here of TC producers and creators? Every week will be a different discipline and will give each chef a chance to show off their talents or continue to weed out the weak!

It's friggin' genius TV, man! So, ultimately the winner of TC this season will really be a TOP CHEF!

My picks for next week? Oh hell, let's just call them the Holy Trinity now: Jennifer, Bryan V. and Mike V. So, the dark horse for me next week is Eli. I think he's part chef and part mad scientist; look to him to place or win something! Happy trails to you, until we meet again!