I should give up on speculating on future weeks of NFNS as I've been wrong every time. So, no, this was not the big redemption week for Adamski. More on that later. FN personality o' the week was Cat Cora. First challenge was to take a pic-a-nic basket w/ 6 ingredients and create a dish in 30 min. Everyone gets savory items except Aaron (still too boring for a nickname). The back half of the challenge is to describe the dishes on camera. Of course, all assume they will be describing their own dishes. Psych! In easily the most brutal (and brilliant) switch-up of the season, they all have to describe someone else's dish. In 90 seconds. Without being able to taste it first. Savage! Sure, it's mostly a giant "gotcha." But it also tests them to see if they've been learning, oh, anything, about confidently presenting to camera. First big surprise is Young Shane. He had good energy and nailed a lot of specifics. K-bot was okay but lapsed into generalities and mis-identified habañero compound butter as citrus compound butter. Adamski was also okay, altho he screwed up by sticking a big honkin' piece of cake in his mouth near the end of his time and losing his wrapup. Ro is now getting K-bot's critiques from a few weeks ago -- that she's reading as fake or forced on camera. Aaron was brutal. Used most of his time tasting and still couldn't come up with anything interesting to say. And, of course, Boring Jen was boring. Plus she kept calling udon noodles linguini. I think she managed to get thru w/o apologizing for anything but she gave not the slightest hint that she knew what she was talking about. Almost as bad as Nipa and the squid.
Since the challenge was all about description, they don't really spend any time telling us who made good or bad food. But it seems like everyone did a pretty good job.
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Part the second takes us uptown. Working in teams of 2, they have to update a classic dish. Specifically, take one with an insanely long prep time and create a 45 min. version. Winning recipe gets published in Bon Appetit. Dishes they have to choose from: coq au vin, beef wellington, turducken. Because Young Shane won the first challenge he not only gets choice of dishes but also gets to assign the remaining two to the other teams. It's still unclear to me how they chose these teams, but they use the same pairings as in the first challenge. Which means Aaron (who shall have no nickname until he shows me something TV seriew worthy) and Adamski, Ro and Boring Jen, K-bot and Young Shane. Which means (and this can't come as any surprise if you've seen a minute of this season) that Young Shane and K-bot's recipe for updated beef wellington will be running in BA this summer. Let's see... one team has 2 recent culinary school grads... perhaps they might have an edge. Their recipe wasn't all that risky or adventurous but it clearly was good. The only bad thing they got anyone saying on camera was that it wouldn't photograph well. I'm pretty sure BA has a food stylist on staff to take care of that. Plus they presented well. K-bot got dinged for talking about culinary school & undermining her expertise. Which I don't think she does that much more than Young Shane. But it wouldn't be the first time FN dinged one contestant for the same thing they praised another for. Plus, they're always yammering on about how they want to get to know the "real" people. But you tell a story or two about your real experience in culinary school and they bust you for it.
Adamski and Aaron basically recreate their train wreck on the train. Aaron, who is supposed to run a hospital catering operation, defers to Adamski (who by this point in the show its clear he knows squadoosh about professional cooking) on whether to use bone-in or boneless chicken breast. I believe that it's possible to grill a bone-in chicken breast in 45 min. but Adamski can't pull it off so they have to switch to boneless. They end up crunched for time, their plates are a hot mess, and what the dish has to do with coq au vin remains mostly a mystery. Presentation-wise, Aaron was nervous and Adamski was funny. In other words, nothing new was revealed.
Aayah! Ro and Boring Jen and turducken was every bit the disaster you'd expect. Ro's utter contempt for Jen was apparent throughout. Of course, it didn't help that Jen, trying to open a glass bottle of juice, tapped it against the edge of the stove causing it to explode sending broken glass all over the flat-top. They had to completely trash her side dish plus a leg of duck confit that was supposed to go into the deconstructed turducken. Oh, and Jen decided that the sauce was "too herb-y" and wasted so much time dinking around with it that they couldn't get it onto the plates. Ro, altho she's taken to robotically adding some version of "beautiful basics" into almost everything she says, managed to carry over her improved public speaking persona from last week. Boring Jen, however, had another crash & burn. Started off fine but then went into a long and painful over-explanation of all the problems they had in the kitchen. Admittedly, it was a tough room. All the judges plus the editorial staff of BA. But, still, it was clear that she was never never ever gonna be able to get past whatever nervous tic was turning her into a babbling twit on TV. So she's gone. Aaron (maybe now that Jen's gone I'll call him Boring Aaron) once again got dinged for his lack of personality. Adamski once again got dinged for his lack of cooking skill. In fact, they said to his face that the only reason he was still there is cos he's good on camera. I don't know why they think he's gonna suddenly learn to cook in the last 3 weeks of the show. Maybe they figure if he gets marginally competent seeming they can slot him onto the Guy Fieri/Marc Summers hosts-who-can't-cook job track.
K-bot I still can't see winning, unless they're worried that Rachael Ray might leave the network and want to groom an even perkier replacement. That might become clearer after next week's show, which will feature the noted terrorist donut sympathizer. But I don't expect her to reach the final two because it's a fan vote for the winner and she would crush any other challenger. Hands down, not even close and I think FN wants more suspense out of the final vote than that.
Ro says several times tonight that she knows she needs to be more approachable on camera. As long as she's working the "dominatrix chic" look, that's gonna be tough to pull off. But she's got a big personality and she knows how to cook. If she comes off as a bit of a rich girl pretending to be a chef, well, so do Nigella and Giada.
My hunch for now is that it'll be Ro v. Young Shane in the final. After that, who knows?
Fun fact: cooking in the second challenge was done at Cafe Grey which is in the Time Warner Center, which is also home to Per Se, and a Whole Foods where I'm pretty sure they were doing their ingredient shopping. WFM is clearly not a sponsor so they were framing the shots to keep logos and such off camera. But I've been in that store. Plus I've got a pretty good idea what the current gen of WFM stores looks like.
Line of the week, from Young Shane: "She is striking and she wields a powerful knife."
