Reprinted with permission from www.healthywaytocook.com

Episode 7

The sixteen remaining cooks are in Pasedena, California for their Team Challenge—cook for 101 firefighters. Each team has ninety minutes to prepare a banquet-style dish that showcases a New York strip steak with a sauce and two side dishes using carrots, bell peppers, zucchini, mushrooms and asparagus. The two cooks with the top dishes from last time, Bethy and Bime, are team captains. Because Bethy won the last challenge, she also has a chance to swap one member of her team with one member of Bime’s team. She chooses Eddie because he is the grill master, and gives Krissi to Bime’s team.

Bime’s Red Team decides on sautéed mushrooms, cauliflower puree, and a simple reduction sauce. Bethy’s Blue Team goes with potatoes, red peppers, and, because Bethy can’t decide on a sauce, either a balsamic reduction or a chimichurri sauce. The Red Team was skipping a rub on the steak and despite Gordon’s plea to season the damned steak, Bime wants the flavor of the steak to shine. And, though Gordon advises Bethy to focus on one sauce and do it well, she wants to prepare both and decide later. But later may be too late, because she picks the chimichurri sauce just as the firefighters start arriving.

After thanking the firefighters for their service, the teams start serving their steak entrees. The Blue Team’s plates are coming out quickly but inconsistency. Meanwhile, the Red Team’s plates are trickling out at a snail’s pace. But there can only be one loser, and that loser is the Red Team. Which means the Blue Team wins. The Red Team will now face “the dreaded Pressure Test.”

Six of the eight members of the Red Team must compete in the Pressure Test. For some reason, the judges give Bime immunity because he was the team captain, and allow him to select one other competitor. He picks Jordon, and the two of them join the Blue Team in the gallery. For the remaining six, they must cook eggs benedict—poached egg on Canadian bacon on an English muffin and covered in hollandaise sauce. But, they only have enough ingredients to make one complete portion and thirty minutes in which to accomplish this seemingly impossible task.

Bri has never made eggs benedict before, and has never successfully poached an egg. Natasha is so confident that she waits to prepare the hollandaise sauce. Luca’s water is not boiling, and Beth is feeling good about her egg poaching skills. Then there’s Krissi, whose hollandaise sauce breaks. With only one egg left and the remnants of a bad batch, she whisks for her life. Kathy’s kind of an idiot and tries to transfer the most perfectly poached egg to the plate with a spatula instead of a slotted spoon, and splat.

Miraculously, Krissi pulls it together at the last minute. And Bri, who is, like, vegan or something, cooked the perfect eggs benedict. Everyone else, however, made a hot mess, including Natasha who whisked up some mayonnaise instead of hollandaise. Because the judges can’t decide whose dish was the worst, they reward the four rotten eggs—Natasha, Luca, Kathy, and Beth—with a trip to Las Vegas to compete in “an even greater challenge.” Which is weird, right? “You all are the worst, so we’re taking you to Las Vegas for the weekend.”

Episode 8

So now we’re in Burgr, Gordan Ramsey’s Planet Hollywood restaurant in Las Vegas. The cooks are split into two teams—Luca/Kathy, and Natasha/Beth—and give them one hour of prep and seventy-five minutes of continuous service to prepare a signature burger for the diners.

Luca decides that the Red Team is making a minimalist beef burger with caramelized onions, but no cheese. The Blue Team settles on something called a hangover burger with a sunny side up egg on top. Kathy is moving super slow with the onions, which leaves the Red Team no time to prepare a sauce. Meanwhile, the Blue Team forgets to make burger patties. Oddly enough, both teams dress their burgers with arugula.

With Gordon Ramsey expediting, things are sure to get interesting. When it’s time to send out the burgers, the Red Team’s burgers are raw. The Blue Team is having problems with its buns, which are burned. And diners are sending the Red Team’s burgers back because they are tartar raw instead of medium rare. Then, in walk the remaining contestants to vote for the best burger.

The Blue Team burn four sets of buns, so four of the contestants don’t get burgers from the Blue Team. Well, that’s four votes down. When all of the burgers are gobbled, it’s time to vote. The winning burger is the Blue Team’s Hangover Surprise, so Natasha and Beth are both safe. As the losing team, Luca and Kathy must compete against each other in a Pressure Test.

The Pressure Test is on the top of Caesars Palace, which has been transformed into Master Chef Kitchen. The cooks must prepare butter poached lobster with shaved fennel salad in only forty-five minutes. Gordon explains that the longer they cook the lobster in the salt water (the boiling detaches the membrane from the shell) the less time there is in the butter and the tougher the lobster will turn out. While Luca stabs the lobster in the head and rips its legs off, Kathy is focusing on her butter and hasn’t even plucked her lobster out of the tank. But Luca makes an error and cuts the tail instead of twisting, cracking, and pulling the tail off which causes him to lose a lot of meat.

With fifteen minutes left, Kathy finally grabs her lobster and gets the twist-and-pull technique correct. Oh right! The lobster still has to be shelled and there’s also a fennel salad to prepare. Rush, rush, rush, and both cooks get the lobster on the plate (though Kathy’s looks a mess). Kathy’s lobster is perfectly cooked, and her butter is beautifully seasoned. Her salad, however, is acidic. Luca’s presentation is excellent, though his lobster is lacking color. Gordon finds the cooking to be thirty seconds off, but good overall. Graham likes the seasoning, and Joe is his usual noncommittal self.

And the winner by a lobster claw is Luca. Which means Kathy is going home, or to the craps table.

Kathy is sent home despite her perfectly-cooked lobster.

Next week, it’s a mysterious mystery box and Joe’s mom is the guest judge.

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