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akr

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Everything posted by akr

  1. I'm in Dungeness crab territory & disagree that Baltimore is the only place where people know how to make crab cakes. But it's certainly one of the best!
  2. 60 episodes of Curtis Stone seems like 50 too many to me.
  3. That's fine but I don't want to buy a tater-tot based dish from anyone, food truck or not.
  4. The brunch babes use a lot of frozen tater tots.
  5. The gantry stuff is mostly cheerleading anyway. It's like a bunch of little kids cheering on their teammates at a sporting event: come on, Nushie, you got this! etc. I've decided to take as positive a view of things as possible going forward. I'm not finding nitpicking to be much fun. I like Larissa's boldness in choice of flavors, & don't really care that much about the use of parfaits as one element of such desserts. Re Simon - although I don't always quite get why, for example, coffee & parsnips work together, I take them at their word that they do, & in surprising ways. Tessa is just damn impressive, & the latest butter sauce really wasn't similar to the two prior ones. Tim & Nicole have been more hit or miss, but the hits are strong, & Nicole seemed to be peaking late. She probably made a mistake in trying to do things to impress - shows a lack of confidence that what she does well will be enough - but I don't know if that's smart risk-taking because of who she's up against, or a tactical error that she can correct in time. Tim - I'll wait till tomorrow to come up with something to say. He doesn't bother me but again the mistakes seemed to be more about editing (leave off the cracker) than fundamental lack of skill or ambition. They're not going to reinvent food, & I appreciate that the show was trying to move away from gimmicks a bit the last few years. Gimmicks can get tiresome & tend to detract from taste. If they're in the flavor business, though, they need to step up their descriptive game so that the audience better understands why people are doing well. I'm not going to be more impressed if they go back to over-reliance on domes & foams & mirror glazes & tempered chocolate & so on. I do think they would have been well served by a trip abroad with ingredients, techniques, & master classes that could get some new ideas swirling in their brains, though.
  6. I think the next court date for his towing incident is the 29th. That's the only other one I know about.
  7. He at least asked if that was all the plates, & Christina assured him that it was. He shouldn't have trusted that, but I think they were both at fault & I think the reason the whole team was frazzled was due to the slow start on the first course. So - I see this as a team failure rather than an individual one, & think they both deserved to be in the pressure test.
  8. How did Christina not look at that massive pile of espuma powder & think, "that can't be right"? She must have been off by several orders of magnitude. And why not taste it before serving, so she could leave it off if it was terrible? The grainy mousse (because "I don't need to read the recipe") & over-reduced quail jus might have been enough to send her home anyway, but with Simon leaving off the tuile she might still have had a chance. I think she was the weakest left, so it was the result I was hoping for (but would have come around if she seemed to outperform Simon.) It's interesting that her highlighted dishes were all savory Asian dishes rather than her self-declared strength of desserts. That may be her comfort zone, but I'm not at all sure it's really her strongest suit. (I also hope the degree she's working on is more mainstream nutrition than naturopathy, or I really won't want to hear from her again.) i love banana ice cream - it may be worth borrowing just that one element from the dessert recipe!
  9. I can't really agree with the conspiracy theory because I assume she'd have preferred to hang onto the pin. That said, what a fiasco! It's bizarre that they didn't have enough lamb etc left to serve the diners what they'd originally planned & instead had to create a new dish on the fly. There must have been a ton of disorganized thinking going on, beyond just not keeping track of the plates. Congratulations, Anushka, on being the one person to put up a dish to meet the occasion. Tessa's seemed good, too, but a little generic. Not what you hope for at this stage! An advantage to the foreign travel episodes was they shook people out of ruts. I think they don't have the Qantas partnership anymore, but they need it back! Maybe they'll travel next week but we've heard no inkling of it & usually we know where they went because people saw them there.
  10. Yes this is also the year of grapefruit/tangerine/etc/etc beurre blanc, & beetroot molasses/syrup! I think the other contestants are influenced by Tessa & Simon on these - they did them first, to great acclaim (with interesting variations the first time - I want to try Tessa's b.b., & possibly Anushka's, but I think I can just wing a basic one), but now it's just - oh! I could make a beurre blanc/syrup! - and off they go. congrats to Nicole! I haven't watched yet but followed on twitter - not sure I need to see the whole thing since the fish dishes looked a little obvious - but it sounds like a deserving result. I would have been ok with anyone but Christina, as I think she tops out at solid. (I don't like rooting against someone & she seems like a perfectly nice person (although I roll my eyes at the naturopathy studies), but I'd hate to see someone stronger go home because she had a fluke challenge win due to everyone else screwing up.)
  11. Like I said earlier, I'm finding this part of the season kind of frustrating, as some not so strong contestants are still hanging on & there aren't enough of the standouts left (a lot of good people left in the middle). That's always true at this stage I think, but also I think I just get a little fatigued by it at the end. Still, when there are 15 people cooking, someone is bound to do something interesting, for good or ill, & probably several of both; when there are only 7, and they probably aren't the best 7, too often the results are a little underwhelming. This last ep, with the bottom 5 of a not especially strong top 7 cooking, was inevitably going to include some mediocre performances, but I didn't expect the overall performance to be as weak as it was. Also, for what it's worth, there's a bit more conversation on reddit than here, and the overall vibe there is kind (although nobody was that impressed with the latest episode), so I'm as likely to comment there as here. [eta: @misgabi13 - sorry you've been feeling piled on a bit - I hope I haven't contributed. I'm always interested in what you have to say 😉.]
  12. Still an ad for using sunscreen before it's too late.
  13. The criticisms of Larissa & Anushka's dish seemed more like things that could be an issue if everybody else excelled, rather than major problems. Since they were first up, with nothing yet to compare them to, the potential limitations got mentioned to counter the initial high praise. I personally thought it looked the best of the three successful dishes, but I guess those not particularly appetizing looking zucchini purees were good. They also erred a bit in calling it mushrooms on toast since, as they said, it was actually toast[ed breadcrumbs etc] on mushrooms. It seemed the issue with Derek & Simon's dish was that they did very little with the figs themselves. There were slices in the cake, and there was a fresh fig on the plate, and that was about it. I would guess it was fairly close between the top three, though; really only Tim & Tessa had a miss. Not looking forward to the elimination - this stage of the competition is frustrating, as contenders get tossed while people who probably should have gone home a while ago still hang around. It's past the stage where I can root for an underdog to exceed expectations; at this point, I only want the contenders to stick around, and instead we've got an elimination filled with people who could plausibly win.
  14. Apparently they got permission in court yesterday to see Kaiser on his birthday - the Radar photographer asked them about it as they were leaving.
  15. It is apparently thinner, more vinegary, and not as sweet.
  16. Aren't they due back in court tomorrow on the custody matter? Happy Birthday, David! Enjoy not getting your way in court!
  17. I don't object to Larissa's use of panna cottas, etc (& she does a lot of different things). She seems to have a real mastery of flavors, & that's why her versions get praised. It's a bit like a savory cook being a master of sauces & broths. Glad Tessa won, though. I don't really want to see anyone get a pin at this stage but apparently it will take a perfect score (it's probably the guest chef who's done it, but Tessa or Simon wouldn't shock me at this point. Nicole is still a bit of a mystery to me.)
  18. Perhaps they will also sell you the cellphone case & the coordinating pillow in the background. If not, I think it's still the notion that the various black and white patterned items in the photo complement the jumpsuit, and that the photographer didn't want just a smile for the camera pic, but something that looked a bit more "natural." What's more natural than to be looking at your phone these days? 🙂
  19. Sorry to see Sandeep go! His exit interview is a little heartbreaking; I wish we could have seen what he might have done without the injury. https://10daily.com.au/entertainment/tv/a190620rywkd/masterchef-how-sandeeps-back-injury-broke-his-spirits-20190620 Sounds like only Derek's & Anushka's dishes were successful, although there were some intriguing ideas in everyone's efforts (not that I'll ever make my own beetroot molasses, or verjuice, but kheer & puri? maybe, just with less saffron & without the silver leaf). Great challenge concept, both for highlighting our over-reliance on processed sugar, and in forcing them to think on the spot.
  20. Hmm - I wish Derek could have used it to save his ice cream! I suppose it wasn't an option. How many times has he done something he clearly didn't have time for? At least 3, I think. Not looking forward to tomorrow - I like all three, & a dessert challenge on sweet week is bound to be something even more annoying than your average dessert challenge. I'd guess the composition of the immunity contest bodes well for Larissa - she has to be the favorite against Tim, Anushka, & Ben.
  21. I actually forgot this was on last night & only just watched it - so glad to see Sebastian won! It really was a gorgeous collection, and I loved that last look in particular. Hester's was better than I expected, although as always it made me think of Harajuku girls (for this reason I thought the clashing plaid was actually a good choice, because it broke it up a bit.) Nothing of hers was literally wearable or revolutionary, but it certainly projected attitude, from which actual designs could conceivably be derived. Hester working with DvF is an interesting idea. Some of you liked the way Garo's started out - I didn't, as some of the early looks made me think of Robert Palmer videos (a lot of his work is tasteless to me in this way, so it's not the first time that evocation came to mind.). There was some good stuff scattered in there, though, particularly that one shorter dress that they remarked on. As for the dress that had to be altered to fit Kate - I wonder whether he only had a couple of larger-sized options. I have no idea what he's thinking when he talks about his futuristic galaxy mind or whatever it was that he said, but he definitely showed over the course of the season that he can make clothes that flatter the wearer. If some of it is not to my taste, well, so be it.
  22. I wonder if Abbey & Larissa's intense study sessions were actually a big part of their problem today - seems it's contributing to feeling the pressure & not trusting themselves. At least Larissa was able to apply the lesson learned in her very first disaster cook, with the panna cotta that melted into a puddle - way back then she was told that it tasted great & could just have been served as a custard instead.
  23. No, he brought his Mom & his sister. Ben, who was up just a little before him, brought his boyfriend, though.
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