Top Chef

[shipperx]

Last week's Top Chef  episode featured a QuickFire Challenge*  featuring Cold Stone Ice Cream.  The challenge was a to create a new mix-in flavor.  Anyway, having been so distracted by the description of one contestant's flavor as being "White Chocolate Cauliflower Foam"  (Yes, you read that correctly), I didn't bother to keep track of the other ingredients (yes, there were more!).   Reading the full description in TWOP's summary doesn't make it sound any less disgusting.   It looks like Hung used...

Candied pistachios, white chocolate, mint, tempura flakes, tamarind brown butter sauce, cauliflower, and white chocolate espuma (aka foam!)

What the frell???


* Quickfire Challenges are basically the quickie  immunity challenges at the start of the episode that usually involve egregious product placements.

Comments

[appomattoxco.livejournal.com]

If he had stopped at the first three it might've been ok. I might even be daring enough to go for the tempura flakes... As for the rest yuck.

[sourisvho.livejournal.com]

It was such a very Hung creation. Totally in la-la land. And he IS friends with Marcel, hence the egregious foam.

Honestly, it was like a concoction that someone would make you eat on a dare.

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

The espuma was white chocolate COMBINED with the cauliflower. In other words, just when you think it couldn't have gotten worse - it did.

Best yet? When the judge picked his as worst, he said (paraphrasing) "I guess it was too sophisticated. I should have realized I need to appeal to the common people." (emphasis mine)

Or, ya know, people without TASTEBUDS

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

My favorite part of that self-serving speech was his saying [paraphrase] "My monkey could put berries and ice cream together." I kept thinking "That's because even a monkey isn't dumb enough to put together ice cream and cauliflour!"

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

That's totally gross, one can only imagine the taste "shudders". Even as hot as it is by you I can't imagine anyone diving into a tub of that stuff.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

My weakness this summer has been iced lattes. Or, the even more decadent -

single scoop of vanilla ice cream
shot of sugar free vanilla syrup
shot of skim milk
fill the rest of the glass with (brewed double strength) dark roast decaf coffee.

Yum.


(And, yeah, the cauliflower ice cream looked as disgusting as it sounded. And the contestant had the balls to look shocked when the guy with the winning flavor had peach cobbler with Grand Marnier. Duh! Of course the other guy beat him!)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Didn't it, though? And as if the cauliflower itself wasn't an out there choice, he kept adding more and more and more stuff to the ice cream. He ended up with 8 or 9 flavors in it. That's the kind of crap a 7 year old makes on a bet.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

It was like he threw in eight totally random ingredients, then when he lost he complained that the judges pallets weren't 'sophisticated' enough.

[appomattoxco.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that they do this stuff because it's scripted or something. I can't believe ANYONE would think that icecream would tastes good.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I think that the root of it is that Hung is one of those artists that fall into the trap of thinking that "different" = Wow.

On the one hand, yeah, the quickfire where they cannot be eliminated is the place to try unusual stuff, but Hung has a tendency to then blow-off the criticism as people not understanding him whereas another contestant, Casey, also went the "strange substances" route and ended up amused by the fact that it was so awful it made the judge shudder. But she realized that she couldn't be eliminated so I could buy her trying something odd just for the hell of it.

It's unsurprising that the top two dishes in the quickfire were peaches... and berries.

[wildrider.livejournal.com]

I HAVE seen (and tasted) some oddball ice cream/gelato flavors in Chinatowns, though - taro root, green tea, even tamarind; but I don't think cauliflower was amongst them... (the Japanese chef on Iron Chef turns out some strange ice creams once in a while, like shrimp.)

The trick, as I see it, is to be innovative and GOOD...