Well, folks, with a game-dinner double elimination behind them, the Top Chef squad is officially down to 10. It’s just the right number to mosey on from Dallas to chef Paul’s house (okay, not literally) in Austin, the Lone Star State’s capital, arguably the live music capital of the world, and, from what I hear, home to quite a vibrant little dining scene, too.
 

Cue casual driving scene—in which we learn that Heather has a thing for handsome chef John Besh, and Chris Crary earned the nickname Malibu because of the concern he shows for his hair. Oh, hey! Paul is a former pot dealer. Does that fulfill some sort of chef stereotype, Anthony Bourdain?

 

OK, I have to admit that this episode’s quickfire was pretty interesting. The chefs were required to craft dishes based on viewer suggestions from Twitter. Say what you will about its ephemeral, 140-character constraints, but it’s become a great tool for businesses—restaurants, for example—to interact with their patrons. I use it regularly in my day job to keep track of what Toronto’s chefs and foodies are up to.

Tom and Padma picked three tweets to challenge the competitors: first, make a dish using bacon; then incorporate a hash into that dish (hash like hashtag, get it?); finally, add an ingredient provided on the spot by another chef. Somehow both Edward and Lindsay ended up being given sriracha sauce to use. Random.

And wouldn’t you know it? Homeboy Paul took top honours.

Also random: back at the hotel, R&B diva Patti LaBelle was introduced as guest judge for the elimination challenge (apparently, when not belting out “Lady Marmalade,” she’s also a cookbook author). Perhaps next season they could get Jimmy Buffett to drop by, or singer/actor/restaurateur Justin Timberlake. Whaddaya think?
 

 

Fortunately the elimination challenge was less over the top than Ms. LaBelle’s glossy tunes. Instead of, say, having to man a casino buffet, the chefs were asked to create a dish in honour of their first cooking influence. Overwhelmingly the chefs claimed to be inspired by the family—moms, dads, uncles, grandparents, how sweet. Breaking the pattern, Ty-Lör’s inspiration was his Japanese nanny.

Here’s a good spot to ask you about your biggest kitchen influence. I’m guessing you could put that question to 100 people and 75 or more would respond with their parents or grandparents. I’m thinking that’s basically true for me, too, but I also had a roommate in university who gave me a pretty significant nudge.

It was sort of poignant watching the cheftestants try to do justice to their parents and mentors through cooking. All the more so when the results didn’t live up to the chefs’ standards. Heather’s offering was a case in point. She knew her beef stroganoff wasn’t up to snuff even while she was cooking it. Emeril said it seemed like a hotel banquet dish. Enough said. Heather was asked to pack up her knives. Vindictive types might say that karma came back to bite her, following her past poor treatment of humble little Beverly. 
 

 
On the other hand, Sarah found herself in the winner’s circle for the second time this season, thanks to her pork sausage-stuffed cabbage roll. She seemed really chuffed. Good on her! Personally, I would’ve given it to Edward. It was a bold move to make a vegetarian dish on this meat-heavy show. Maybe next time.
 

Craig Moy is an editor at a Toronto-based city magazine. He also writes about all manner of cultural topics, including food culture.
 

I can't believe how amazing these dishes look. Chuck really knows how to turn something simple into simply wonderful! If you missed out, be sure to keep this recipe because it's a real touchdown: Popcorn Rock Shrimp with Spicy Honey. It could possibly be the perfect snacking food for this Sunday's Super Bowl. 

I'd also like to congratulate Chef Kelly C. on winning this month's challenge! 

Chef Kelly C: "These turned out so yummy, there was no stopping at just one! I chose to add my own twist to it by covering the shrimp with Panko breadcrumbs after coating with the given batter recipe and then fried them in peanut oil. They were just the perfect amount of crispy. In the honey, I used red pepper flake and paprika, along with crushed dried orange peel to give it an extra flavor. To garnish, I found an orange slice to be most appropriate. Will definitely be making this one again!"

Chef Darryl J: "No shrimp fans in our house, so I did a chicken substitute. I didn't find the honey glaze had as much pizzazz as I expected, but it still complimented the dish nicely." 

Chef Katherine S: "This was definitely a "challenge" considering I don't own a deep fryer, couldn't find my thermometer, and certainly didn't need to cook up 2 pounds of shrimp! So I scaled back the recipe quite a bit, and used larger shrimp but chopped them up a little. They cooked up beautifully and the sauce was awesome - I think that I'll have to come up with other dishes to use it on! Thanks Chuck!" 

Chef Wayne O: "So I thought it would be better to convert Chuck’s Recipe to an entree and here’s the result. A popcorn shrimp Po’ Boy and as a side a Deep South fave Mac and Cheese. I used the spiced honey as a drizzle and an addition to the mayo I spread on the buns." 

Chef Craig W: "I spiced the shrimp with chipotle powder and the deep fried them in a batter made with a Muskoka Winter Beard ale and Canadian whiskey batter. Great to help keep the winter chill out." 

Chef Kathy G: "Here is my creative flair for the Popcorn Shrimp. I halved the honey and used half honey & half agave syrup. For the shrimp, I used less flour and corn starch and also added panko crumbs. I added fresh ground pepper to the egg mixture and chili powder and pakrika to the flour mixture. I also added chili flakes to the honey mixture. I garnished with fresh cilantro, cucumbers and julienned carrots. My family really enjoyed this new recipe."

Chef Laurel L: "Dunk this tasty morsel in a bit of Spicy Honey Dip and “pop” it in your mouth.  What a wonderfully flavorful tidbit. Great recipe for a Tapas night or watching the big game on Sunday afternoon. This recipe rocks shrimp." 

Chef Melissa J-G: "My husband took the battered popcorn shrimp, basted them in wing sauce and topped them on a blue cheese dressing-topped green salad with veggies. His version of wings and veggies with blue cheese dip." 

Chef Vicky B: "Due to seafood allergies in the house I tried this with chicken breast meat. I think next time I’ll add a bit more spice to the corn flour mixture. The honey was really really nice, but simmering it makes it candy-like sticky when it cools down, a bit hard to drizzle, can fix that with a drop or two of hot water." 

Related:

• Vote for February's CCC
• December's CCC Results: Caramel Toffee Squares
• Novembers's CCC Results: Fettuccini Alfredo

Before we start our recap of Top Chef: Texas tequila-and-game-meats episode, I’d like to offer a shout out to chef Hugh Acheson. In these posts I’ve tended to gloss over the judges’ contributions to Top Chef (after all, they’re not the ones competing), but last week it was brought to my attention that chef Hugh is a native of our nation’s capital. In the journalism game we call that "a hook." Sure, it’s a small one, but the fact that Acheson grew up in Ottawa and began his career cooking at the renowned (though now closed) Café Henri Burger in Gatineau gives me an opportunity to pump up the city’s growing culinary reputation.
 

I lived in O-town for a few years in the early aughts. Back then the scene struck me as a bit wanting. Sure, there was a smattering of hot spots (I recall a wonderful meal at Beckta during its early days), but overall Ottawa diners seemed to make do with some decent if overpriced boites in the Byward Market and a few stuffy rooms frequented by politicians and diplomats. Since then a number of creative chefs have brought their talents to bear at eclectic restaurants like Town, Taylor’s, Oz Kafe and Black Cat Bistro. Which is all to say, if you find yourself famished after a day touring Parliament Hill, make a point of checking out some of Ottawa’s now-numerous options for gastronomic satisfaction.

Anyway, back in our regularly scheduled, Texas-based programming, the aspiring top chefs were presented with a Quickfire Challenge requiring them to create a dish that would pair well with one of a few types of Don Julio premium tequila. From the get-go, Ty-Lör was positioned to win, seeing as how he’d been to the state in Mexico where tequila originates. I’m going to trust him on that, because I have absolutely zero experience with the agave-derived spirit. What I do know is that it’s gained quite a bit of popularity amongst alcohol connoisseurs.

 
“Good tequila is made to be sipped, similar to a wine or a nice craft beer,” noted this episode’s guest judge, Tim Love. I call this the hoity-toity tea test: if you’re told to sip a drink, it must be classy (disclosure: I just made that up, but it has a ring of truth, no?).

As I was saying, Ty-Lör knows his tequila, and even though the stakes were low in this quickfire (immunity was not up for grabs), the mustachioed chef redeemed his poor performance from last week. His winning dish, briny steamed clams in a fish caramel sauce—paired with Don Julio 1942 tequila—was apparently dreamed up on a beach in Thailand. Texas? Mexico? Thailand? How cosmopolitan!

 

Now, while I’m far from a tequila expert, I do have a little familiarity with game meats. Some of my favourite meals ever have revolved around deer, bison, rabbit and other such tasty proteins. The elimination challenge, in which the chefs paired up to prepare dishes from quail, elk, boar and the like, had me salivating (another disclosure: I wrote this post after eating a disappointing stuffed pepper for dinner). 

 
Before sending the chef’s to Whole Foods, Padma tossed a few wrenches in the proceedings. Namely, the chefs themselves would be responsible for choosing the three worst dishes served in the six-course dinner. Both members of the losing pair would be sent home.

 

 
This was another challenge that offered a nice window into the culinary souls of our cheftestants. Last week I defended Heather’s assertiveness in the kitchen, but this week she basically just spent the day bullying her partner, the significantly more introverted Beverly (Heather was also unnecessarily arrogant during the “choosing of the losers” segment of the night). Grayson, too, was disappointed in Chris Jones for messing up some sort of too-creative sweet potato thingamabob; ever the professional, he was disappointed in himself, too. Two of the more level-headed chefs, Edward and Ty-Lör seemed to get along well—or, at least, they had no catty comments or blowouts worthy of being shown on camera. And heavens to Betsy! Their dish of quail with pickled cherries and eggplant was the chefs and judges favourite!

On the bottom end of this dual-elimination challenge were Nyesha and Dakota; the latter struck out by under-cooking her venison. For shame! Ruining a perfectly good cut of Bambi like that.

So, did the judges rule justly in this case? Can you imagine the carnage if it had been Heather who was sent home, dragging poor Beverly behind her?
 

 Craig Moy is an editor at a Toronto-based city magazine. He also writes about all manner of cultural topics, including food culture. 

For this week's Question of the Week, we caught up with You Gotta Eat Here! host, John Catucci, and asked him to weigh in on the following question:

What's the last over-the-top dish you ate?

Check out the video below to see what John had to say! Then, leave us a comment and let us know what your last over-the-top dish was.

Related 

• Question of the Week: What's Your Favourite Comfort Food Dish? 
• Question of the Week: When You Dine at a Diner, Do You Prefer to Sit at a Booth or at the Counter? 
• Question of the Week: How Do You Prefer to Serve Up Your Spuds? 

Got the winter blues? I know I’m feeling it, between the weather and the darkness it’s easy to lose track of what you’re eating and munch on the oh-so-delicious-but-not-always-good-for-you-items!

Well I’ve got a great solution. Our friends at Campbell’s have shared three impressive recipes to get us through the cold weather. I’m thinking of hosting a dinner party with this one, because you can’t go wrong with great food alongside great company. Check out your choices for February’s Cooking Club Challenge:

Roasted Red Pepper Chicken 

Weeknight Chicken Skillet 

Lasagna Soup 

Related:

• January's CCC Mid-Month Results: Popcorn Rock Shrimp with Spicy Honey 
• Post your photos in the gallery 
• Chat in the forums 

It's official! We'll be receiving a 'second helping' of Recipe to Riches! The national casting officially opens today as the team begins the new search for Canadian home cooks with a recipe worth $250,000.

Evaluating the auditions in each city will be returning judges Laura Calder, host of French Food at Home; Tony Chapman, Founder and CEO of leading advertising agency Capital C; and Dana McCauley, Culinary Director of Janes Family Foods. 
Contestants will compete in one of seven culinary categories including:

1. Hors d'oeuvres
2. Cakes, puddings and pies
3. Savoury snacks
4. Entrées
5. Condiments and dips
6. Candies and chocolates
7. Cookies and squares

Interested contestants are encouraged to register for their audition city, date and time at recipetoriches.ca.
Auditions will be held in four cities on the following dates:

• Halifax: February 11
• Vancouver: February 18
• Montreal: February 25
• Toronto: March 4 

To keep tabs on what’s new and what Canadians are saying about Recipe to Riches, check out the Recipe to Riches page on Facebook at facebook.com/recipetoriches or follow @RecipetoRiches on Twitter.

For some reason the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about sauces is Apocalypse Now. You may not remember, but there’s a guy on Martin Sheen’s gunboat that everyone calls Chef, and he explains it’s because he’s from New Orleans and was “raised to be a saucier.” For a long time I thought that was an absurdly specific career path, but based on Top Chef: Texas’s latest quickfire challenge, it’s evident that the ability to make a stellar sauce truly is a special skill, one that can be underappreciated by diners.

Said test was for each chef to prepare a dish incorporating his or her own take on one of Escoffier’s “mother sauces”—bechamel, espagnole, hollandaise, tomate and velouté—the sauces from which all other sauces are derived.

Something I didn’t know: apparently there is a debate over whether certain of these mother sauces require a roux. Guest judge Dean Fearing called out Paul and Whitney on their lack of the thickening agent. Did their disrespect of strict classicism cost them the challenge? We’ll never know. Paul’s offering was one of chef Fearing’s top three picks, but it was Grayson’s scallops with charred corn hollandaise, corn ravioli and blueberry balsamic reduction that best pleased the judge’s palate.

But enough of all this namby-pamby French stuff! This is Texas after all. Padma quickly tossed out the sauce and doubled down on the meat, announcing an elimination challenge the required the chefs to cook a four-course steak dinner for 200 guests at the Cattle Barons’ Ball. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m really starting to dig Edward’s style, and it’s not just because he reminds me of one of my good friends. He really took charge when it came to menu planning and ensuring all the chefs were on-point with their prep work. I imagine it takes more than a bit of moxie to wrangle so many Type-A chefs in the same kitchen. Alternately, Heather started to catch some flack from her fellow chefs. I guess they find her a little overly assertive? To me, it just seemed as though she knew what she was doing and wasn’t afraid to show it.

Oh! Ty-Lör cut his hand open! Apparently, he was at the emergency room until 6 a.m. waiting to get stitched up. The injury didn’t seem like it would hobble him too severely, but he did end up having some trouble with the steaks (he was the designated grill man); miscommunication with the kitchen made for some inconsistently cooked meat. Fortunately for Ty-Lör, Nyesha’s sauce saved the day.

Whitney, though, had some trouble with her potato gratin. All the judges agreed that it was, basically, not cooked. For her inability to master this simple side dish, she was sent home. 

  

And the winner? Supposedly-bossy Heather took home the gold (in the form of a brand new car) for her peach cake dessert. It looked like a nice, light end to a big ol’ Texas feast, and to some, anyway, a justified victory for a chef who was on this day fully in command of the kitchen.

Last Time on Last Chance Kitchen: 

Cheered on by previously eliminated chefs Andrew, Richie and Keith, Chuy and Whitney went at it in a burger battle. Each was asked to create the American classic using unorthodox lean meat—Chuy had ostrich, Whitney was given elk. They both did everything they could to ensure their protein remained moist and was spritely seasoned, but the consensus opinion was in favour of Whitney’s offering. Perhaps it was the egg on top that did it? Watch Last Chance Kitchen: Whitney vs. Chuy 

 Craig Moy is an editor at a Toronto-based city magazine. He also writes about all manner of cultural topics, including food culture. 

We went from down-and-out to high society in episode five of Top Chef: Texas, as the contestants tested their skills in a quickfire challenge using a back country survival kit, then scrambled to cook in one of Dallas’s wealthiest neighbourhoods.

After their exhausting rodeo chili cook-off, the cheftestants packed up their digs in San Antonio and hit the road for the city they call Big D. Surprise! They made it only partway before being stopped by a state trooper and detoured into a muddy field, where Padma and guest judge chef John Besh awaited for the quickfire. 

 
Before we go further, I have to ask: can just anyone hire the Texas police to setup a roadblock? The state is known, of course, as a bastion of free enterprise, but aren’t there some institutions that just shouldn’t be up for sale? Even to an innocuous cooking show?

Anyway, it was fun to see Chris Jones sprint, Tom Cruise-style, to the nearby cornfield in hopes of adding that extra something to his dish, which was to be composed of the canned and dried ingredients found in a “survival kit.” Texas, of course, is coming off an epic drought, so the ear he found wasn’t much to write home about.
 

 

Overall the chefs did display a certain resourcefulness (this city boy would be lucky to get a flame going on the kerosene burner), but I was disappointed that Edward’s dish—seemingly one of the only offerings that wasn’t “mess hall”-inspired—didn’t come out on top. Instead it was Lindsay’s play on a soup and sandwich combo, featuring Saltines and canned Vienna sausages, which earned the win and immunity.
 

 

The elimination challenge was one that my mom and her book club would have no doubt enjoyed. The chefs were tasked with preparing a progressive dinner for Dallas’ frou-frou set. Ty-Lör, having cooked for the likes of “Bill Gates, rock stars and movie stars,” seemed confident in his abilities; Dakota, on the other hand, regretted being placed in another dessert squad.

Personally, I found the “get to know the hosts” segment interesting. The chefs were given so many requests and restrictions, one gets an understanding of why they cook in restaurants—where they tell you what you’re going to eat—rather than catering kitchens, where the customer is always right.

Also, how come nobody likes cilantro? What’s with these Dallas socialites?

The dishes themselves didn’t strike me as the best that the contestants had ever envisioned. Everyone seemed to offer fairly generic mélanges of vegetables, slightly overcooked meats, and over thought desserts. That said, at least Chris Jones’s roasted chicken “cigar” with cumin and sesame “ash” took the hosts’ personality into account. (At judges table we learned that he didn’t pull off the concept successfully).

 

Ultimately, however, it was Paul’s roasted Brussels sprout appetizer that was deemed best of a fairly pedestrian carte. The Texas-based chef impressed both the judges and the party hosts with his simple yet texturally elegant dish. On the bottom end? Chuy’s overdone salmon with mealy goat’s cheese.

So whaddaya think? Was it really time for the “Chu-Chu Train” to make tracks? Or was there some other chef who earned your ire in this episode?

Last Time on Last Chance Kitchen
I’m sure Keith hoped that his third time in the LCK would be a charm. He battled Chuy in a challenge to butcher five bone-in rib-eye steaks and cook one of them to perfection. Tom seemed satisfied with both their efforts, but had to give the win to self-proclaimed “steak purist” Chuy. His meat was just seared ever so slightly better. Watch Last Chance Kitchen: Chuy vs. Keith.

Craig Moy is an editor at a Toronto-based city magazine. He also writes about all manner of cultural topics, including food culture. 

Winter is definitely in full swing and the colder weather has many of us wanting to warm up to some cozy and soothing food delights. So, for this week's Question of the Week, we caught up with Chuck Hughes and asked him:

What's your favourite comfort food dish?

Watch the video below and see what Chuck had to say! Then, have your say and let us know which comfort food dish you love the most.

Related 

• Question of the Week: When you Dine at a Diner, Do You Prefer to Sit at a Booth or at the Counter? 
• Question of the Week: How do You Prefer to Serve Up Your Spuds 
• Scavenger Hunt: FNC's 13 Days of Giveaways 

It’s time for a giveaway don’t you think? Really, we never get enough for free these days. Well Food Network Canada is here to change that. We believe that everyone deserves a little something special, and hopefully you’ll be our next winner.

Starting February 6th, we’ll be giving away 13 amazing prize packs. The beauty with this giveaway is that not only will you get one item, but a themed foodie package. From baking to drinks, we’ve got you covered. All you have to do is follow the clues to win. More information will come down the pipeline, so be sure to mark your calendars for Monday February 6, 2012 and keep your eyes posted for our next giveaway blog post!