Amanda made crab salad with sauterne, ginger, and juniper gelee. I'm going to admit that I don't even understand half of the words in her dish, and she probably doesn't either. Padma says, "Wow," and Amanda asks for clarification, so Padma says, "It's pungent." That doesn't sound good. She basically said that Amanda's dish stinks. Kevin made blue crab chowder with potato, celery, and espelette oil, and frozen bacon crumble. I wonder why he froze the bacon? What does that do? Isn't bacon pretty crisp already? Or does it do something to the flavor? Mystified.

Andrea made warm crab salad, citrus gastrique, and Mexican red chiles. She doesn't feel great about her dish, because while the flavors are good, she thinks she did too much. Kenny, Master Overkill (hey remember Urge Overkill? What ever happened to them? Sorry, random '90s flashback due to watching Reality Bites on HBO the other day and I have so much to say about that, but I know, stick it in a blog), made crab three ways: Korean crab bisque, crab bruschetta, and warm crab with sesame and mango cream chile aioli.

Patrick (who totally reminds me of Dick Van Dyke, I just realized, sort of crossed with his brother Jerry, who you may remember from Coach) announces that his least favorite dishes belonged to Andrea (heavy potatoes overwhelmed the crab flavor), Amanda (out of balance), and Kevin (confused, and lack of crab flavor). His favorite dishes belonged to Ed (brought out natural crab flavor), Kenny, and Angelo (extremely delicate and showed off crab). Tim looks confused, since all of the finalists had Asian-inspired dishes. Heh. The winner is...Ed! He interviews that he's "coming out of [his] shell" and hopes to keep going. Aw, I just realized he (intentionally or not) made a crab pun. Tim interviews that he was wrong about the Asian influence thing, and should have put some soy sauce in his dish. If he thinks that adding soy sauce makes something Asian, I get why he's not doing so well in the challenges.

Elimination Challenge: The cheftestants will travel to Ayrshire Farms and create a meal for forty local chefs and farmers, and they have to work as one team. They'll be putting out a minimum of six dishes. This is the part I missed before; I thought they were restricted to six dishes total. They won't know the ingredients or equipment before they arrive at the farm, but come on. Can't they kind of figure out what will be available in Maryland in whatever month it is? They each have to be responsible for at least one thing on the table. So how is this a team challenge? They can pair up if they want, but they don't have to. They just have to make sure all of their dishes go together, and since they're all from the same farm, they probably do.