Hung helps Sara plate her dish, and Sara tells us she's not classically trained in French cuisine, so it's nerve-racking to have all these great chefs as her judges. Sara's dish goes out to the judges and she follows to explain how she's Jamaican, so her fricassée chicken makes her feel "homey and warm and cozy." I'm still really not getting how fricassée is Jamaican. The whole point of fricassée is that it's all white. The chicken is cooked, but not allowed to brown (very anti-Jamaica, if you ask me) and is served in a white cream sauce with mushrooms and glazed onions. Anyway, Sara explains, "I did that with a sheep's-cheese-marinated yogurt, uh, chicken breast, seared and sliced." Wait, what? She told us earlier that she marinated it in goat's-cheese yogurt. She also did a confit of onions, a microgreens salad, and an Israeli couscous and potato risotto. After she leaves, one of the judges criticizes the confit, saying when you make confit, it's supposed to be like marmalade. Chef Noren says he's no Jamaican, but he used to have two reggae bands in Sweden (Padma giggles at this point, probably assuming he will pass the dutchie from the left-hand side) and he went to Jamaica regularly, yet he doesn't taste anything Jamaican in the dish. Colicchio agrees and adds that Sara told him she was using "some of those spices." Gail announces that her chicken is "quite undercooked," which she's "not a huge fan of." Dorothy Hamilton says the dish was overly ambitious, given the required ingredients, and she thinks that the concept was great, but Sara could use some years at the FCI.
Dale plates his dish and acknowledges that it is a very risky dish. He admits that he usually sacrifices presentation over taste, but this time, he was really going for presentation. Dale presents his duet of chicken and explains, "Underneath the confit of leg is a truffled potato and onion puree. On the other side, I have the same puree, except it does not have truffle, and a roasted chicken breast." The judges complain at the lack of jus and that the dish is so complicated that it got cold. In the back, Dale realizes that he screwed up and forgot his honey-rosemary sauce. He's pretty upset because he says his sauce "turned out fucking beautiful." Chef Torres says the concept was good but the realization is lacking.









Comments