Did anyone watch this on the Food Network last night?
I thought it had some funny moments. The whole chicken with the cheese slices on top looked pretty disgusting, as did the peanut butter encrusted fish. Some of their dishes, on the surface anyway, didn’t look too bad.
I was amused by the professional chefs’ open mockery of the amateurs’ dishes. It’s an interesting twist to see reality show contestants who are humble and even cringing, but I don’t know how long that’s going to stay interesting. Much of the fun of this episode was seeing the nasty creations that the amateurs came up with on their own. Turning them into ordinary pros may be kind of dull in the long run.
I wonder how many of them were trying to be bad. Seriously, the guy who boiled the whole chicken or the woman who added “pineapple for crunch.”
No one does that in real life, do they?
I’m not sure I like the format. I’d like to see them learn how to make one dish each week & make it well. The method of instruction that they used doesn’t seem conducive to that.
I was kind of thinking that too. I’m not a master chef myself, but I’m no stranger to the kitchen and I love to cook. But even I wouldn’t attempt the complex dishes they were required to make in the competition.
I mean, saffron? Come on, that’s a pretty potent spice that requires a delicate hand, not someone who barely knows how to cook mac ‘n’ cheese out of a box.
I TiVoed it and watched it last night. Loved it!
I’m cheering for Marque, Sophia, Eddie, Kelly, and Rachel.
I wondered that, too.
You’d be surprised at what some cooks would inflict on people.
I didn’t watch it, but I think my wife recorded it.
This summer, we went to a foodie event at Elements. One of the guys at our table was Eddie Chang. He was under NDA, and couldn’t say very much, but we promised to watch him.
Cool.
He’s bad the way that I expect cooks to be bad, over salted, some elements overcooked, some undercooked, under/unbalanced spices. Stuff you eat anyway, not just completely “why on God’s green earth would you do that?” wrong.
Marque Hernandez’s mistake with the asparagus in his initial dish is also the kind of mistake I expect novice cooks to make. He was trying to use an ingredient he didn’t know how to use, and he used it wrong.
I remember the first time I made a recipe with scallions, I wondered which part you were supposed to use, and if it was dangerous to use the wrong part. Remembering that is why I like Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything so much- it starts with how to buy a good example of each ingredient, and how to prepare it before you start cooking. That’s stuff that a lot of novice cooks don’t know.
I kind of liked the show the way I like watching the bad singers on AI. The thing that bothered my wife and me is that they are not actually teaching these people anything about cooking. I would much rather the show be the chefs teaching some basic cooking skill (knife work, seasoning, etc.) and then make a dish that highlights using that skill.
This reminds me of the latest episode of Last Restaurant Standing, where duos compete for a chance to have their restaurant backed by a “celebrity” chef, Raymond Blanc. One of the chefs tried to make a “signature dish” of theirs that used peas, but she’d only ever used frozen before. They had fresh peas available, and since she didn’t know how to work with fresh, she assumed they’d need to be cooked for a long time, and ended up cooking them for 25 minutes. 
Blanc was horrified.
Another one was going to make a coconut cream dessert, and needed to open a can - I think it was of coconut milk. She actually used a chef’s knife’s tip to put a hole in the lid, and was grabbing it by the blade - hanging on around the spine of the knife, not the edge - to try to work a big hole in it - before Blanc saw what she was doing, ran over with a “you’re going to kill yourself” admonishment, and put the can under a can opener himself.
I was disappointed. Those people obviously don’t know a thing about real cooking and yet were supposed to recreate a dish like that? C’mon. I started learning how to cook when I was 7 or 8 years old. The “instructions” from the master chefs were a joke. I’d be hard put to recreate either dish. Unless there was a whole lot more that was edited, which is entirely possible/probable.
I agree, though, with Amarinth, they ought to be learning how to cook a dish well each week, but I suppose it wouldn’t be quite as “shock worthy” at the end to see if the food critics actually like the meal. And I find it very hard to believe the critics will believe the meal was prepared by the “teachers,” and that their reputation is on the line.
I’ll watch again to see how it progresses, but it wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped. Some of the contestants were mortified… on national t.v. no less. I do realize they knew going in, still, that poor girl who threw away $40 worth of saffron had to feel somewhat humiliated.
The recipe for the dish was written on a chalkboard that they could see. I thought it was more reasonable after I read that.
Here are the recipes. I don’t know if this is exactly what was written on the chalkboard for the contestants:
Beau’s prawns, clams, bok choy, and shiitake mushrooms.
Anne’s Tuscan shrimp and clams.
Both recipes are rated “Easy” on the Food Network site.
I don’t eat shellfish, so I don’t know personally how hard they are to deal with.
ah, thanks Anne … that makes more sense. I ought to have gone to the 'site and checked. I thought/hoped they’d just edited out something important like that 
Also I read somewhere (and can’t remember where; might have been TWOP?) that the contestants actually get some 4 hours or so of tuition outside of the “contest”. Now that’s probably not with the Chef, but even so is a good thing.
After last night’s show, I really hate the format.
I don’t mind pulling certain twists on Chopped or Top Chef or Next Food Network Star or Next Iron Chef, because those are all people at the top of their game. They’re confident, competent, and in an environment where they’re showing their strengths.
But yesterday’s show just seemed mean. The people on the show were struggling, the twists just made it worse, and the Chefs were simply not helpful to them. That 8 out of the 10 contestants seemed totally lost pointed to a problem in the level and method of the instruction, not a problem with the contestants. And in the end it was unpleasant to watch.
Someone made a mistake in the show design.
^ or that you’re not like the millions of americans that in fact love to watch a trainwreck. i’m sure the format was no mistake.
I personally find it pathetic to watch adults who have gotten this far in their lives but cannot season and cook a steak or saute some scallops. The knife work may have been new to them, but seriously was it that hard?
I get what they were trying to do; they’d instructed the students to write the recipe down. The students didn’t do that, it seems, and so were totally lost. It’s likely that they took notes, and didn’t copy as instructed. And since the entire thing seems to be about following directions rather than learning how to cook, it seems in tune with what they’ve done so far.
That being said, the entire thing is a gimmicky reality show based on the concept of public humiliation. It’ll be wildly popular. I fucking hate it.
And the challenge was insane. How many home cooks will ever cook on a flat-top grill unless they take a job at Benihana?
I felt sorry for the one who nicked herself and broke down sobbing because she couldn’t let the chef taste it. Compare this to Chopped, where the name is apt - more than once, chefs on that show have hacked into their fingers and bled all over the studio and still served up a dish without a moment of doubt.