Kevin's first up and says he thinks a lot of people will be freaked out by this, but he prefers working with only a few ingredients. Naturally, he rolls a 10. Maybe he'd have done better if he spent some time bonding with the craps table. Mattin rolls a 4. One of the brothers rolls an 8. Everyone continues to step up and roll, until we get to Laurine (who has made little impression on me up to this point), who rolls a 3 and decides that simple is the way to go. With three ingredients, she doesn't have much of a choice in the matter.

After Padma tells them their time starts and they've got 30 minutes, everyone starts scrambling around the room like mad. Eve's got eight ingredients, and she's making a salad with asparagus and blue cheese. Michael's got his eye on the prize -- he's making gazpacho in a way that maybe people haven't seen before. This involves liquid nitrogen. And a lot of smoke floating around the room. Bryan interviews that his brother sometimes goes overboard on techniques, and he prefers classic techniques. He's making black cod and cooking it sous vide. Kevin is overwhelmed by his ten ingredients but literally says "fuck it" and decides to make less components with lots of ingredients. Jennifer got nine ingredients and would have preferred less, but she shrugs it off. She's making salmon and some emulsions. Jesse's got nine ingredients and immediately her mind goes to scallops. This is NOT Top Scallop! She forgets a pan to properly sear them in, so they are sort of off white looking, and she can't even fake it with butter, since that would be an extra ingredient. Then time is up and utensils are down.

Laurine had three ingredients and made an asparagus and leek soup with lemon. Jennifer had nine, and says she kept it simple and made salmon with lemon, garlic, shallot, parsley and jalapeno emulsion. Mattin put slivers of carrots in the shape of a four on top of his carrot soup with ginger to show off his number. Padma finds this clever; I find it annoying that they need to put subtitles on this guy. He was flirty with Padma. That doesn't need a special translator. Eve introduces her grilled asparagus salad with raisins, pine nuts and blue cheese. The asparagus is hanging off of the plate and my OCD just kicked in and wanted to cut them to the same length. Michael V. introduces his nitro gazpacho (which would be a fabulous name for a bar!), compressed cucumbers and toast. It looks a little disgusting, actually, no matter how good it tastes.