Yeah, but Chef Tom said it with regard to an elimination challenge where they were serving multiple dishes – and true to his word, they didn’t penalize Sara and Casey for only serving the better of their two dishes. To me it’s a very different thing to wuss out on a Quickfire where you’re only making one thing, and where you know your dish will probably kind of suck because of the parameters of the challenge (the point is just to suck least – and I’ve got to believe Howie’s was better than CJ’s “sweetened with salt”, which he still had the guts to serve.)
I don’t think there was any requirement to serve two dishes. Some did because they thought it would boost their rating.