Top Chef: ready for primetime, yes; daytime, TBD;

Another Wednesday, another Top Chef at 10 PM.  Continuing with last week’s episode ending in tears, they waterworks continue as Alex, a Brillo-headed chef (as Michael called him while we sipped on Barbera d’Asti) weeps as he reads a letter Richard left him (it’s shockingly long for an acquaintance that lasted what–a few weeks?) to Carla and Jamie.  We also learn that he’s missing home and his fiancee (and later on, one of the other chefs mention that he’s getting married in 20 days, which beats out finishing your thesis as the most bone-headed thing I’ve ever heard a groom do right before a wedding).

Oh yes, and Ariane is now a little more confident and wants to keep the momentum from the last challenge going.

Jamie notes that she is the final remaining member of “Team Rainbow” but, in a moment of smugness, suggests it’s because she’s the most talented.  I’m not sure if I like her or not–she’s talented to be sure, but I can’t tell if she’s just self-assured (which you have to be to survive in that world) or really arrogant.  I think she’s in it for the long haul, so hopefully we’ll be able to see more of her as the series progresses.  Her little rainbow bracelet is quite endearing, so the jury is still out.

Besides, it’s time to put the hankies away chefs:  let’s get to the Quickfire!

image from Bravotv.com

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Il pranzo primo in Italia;

One of the last pieces of information my then-brand-spanking-new-mother-in-law relayed to me over the phone as I was scribbling down the directions to Baur B&B was “there will be a bottle of wine waiting for you two.”  And when we arrived late that morning, that was an understatement.

We lugged our bags up to the room, and after some showers (I had to get out all of the gross hairspray and other products from my bridal hairdo, plus wash myself of plane), we ambled over to the kitchen where we had this waiting for us:

Focaccia, tomatoes and basil, figs, Genoan salami, goat cheese (I think), olives, carrots and proscuitto.  And a bottle of Barbera d’Asti.  In other words:  heaven.

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Top Chef: don’t want to be your monkey wrench;

A serious lack of DVR over the weekend and then trying to catch up on other things since we’ve returned kept me from properly revisiting the Thanksgiving episode of Top Chef, but late is better than never, right?   So let’s keep the preliminaries short and just dig in.

That seemed to be the idea behind the editors as well, as we were mercifully spared much of the “set up” stories all reality competitions use to give you an idea of who the focus of the episode will be that week.  Ariane complains about being in the bottom too often, Richard talks about how Team Rainbow will live on, and Stefan congratulates Fabio on his win again.

So we’re quickly taken back to the kitchen and prepare for the Quickfire challenge, which I think is one of my absolute favorites in the history of the series, as it focuses on being able to be quickly adaptable and creative on the fly.  The guest chef is Chicago chef Grant Achatz, who is yet another “molecular gastronomy” chef, but has also battled cancer.  So it does make sense that the challenge is focused around rolling with said punches, given that the poor guy had freaking cancer of the tongue.  Jeezy Creezy.

Drawing knives out of the block, they see that each has a random number, which translates into a page in the Top Chef cookbook, which came out during Season Four and mostly encompasses recipes from the first three seasons.  Their challenge is this:  they have 60 minutes to reinvent the recipe on their page into something new.  The chefs all seem pretty confident at this point, and that swagger that was present in the last episode among the reject chefs came to light here as the current contestants downplayed the difficulty of the recipes they had to work with.  Ah, a chef and his/her ego…

…until Padma excitedly yells “STOP!  STOP!!  We’ve changed our minds!”

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Max e Murphy;

So I lied.  I promised a Top Chef recap, and I’ve yet to deliver, and will remedy this tomorrow.  In the meantime, can I offer some puppies (in spirit, if not in age) as a concession?

I’ve been meaning to write about Max, the dog Michael is referring to when he tells our friends and family back home that “he likes dogs in Italy.”  Max is a very special dog–cheerful, affectionate, intelligent, and loyal as hell.  The fact that the afternoon we set out for our walk and he kept following us (despite many, many attempts at Diana, Michael and I to dissuade him) shows that he is nothing if not smarter than we all give him credit.  He is the one-dog greeting company at Baur B&B, and he’s happy to sit by you so long as you scratch behind his ears.  Michael made such an impression upon him that on our last afternoon at the B&B, Max heard his voice as we arrived at the base of the hill and barked–to which I sad “he totally heard you talk, you with the instantly recognizable voice”–and was proven correct by the yellow Lab torpedo that came out at us halfway up the hill.  He’s a pretty awesome dog, all in all.

While we were there, Michael kept telling Max how much smarter and less slobbery he was compared to my parents’ dog Murphy, who will turn 10 in March.  Michael’s first encounter with Murphy was a few months after we picked him up over that Memorial Day weekend, when he was still technically a puppy, and he came over to work on an AP English project.  Long story short–he came in, Murphy got really excited, and they literally met eye-to-eye when Murphy flung himself into Michael’s arms.  It was pretty fucking hilarious at the time, and the image remains so to this day.

So let me give you some puppeh porn, in the vein of I Can Haz Cheezburger–well, in the actual spirit of the site, as I generated some LOLDog images of both Max and Murphy.

First, I offer the latter, as he is not into getting his picture taken:

And to be fair, one of my favorite Max pictures from our vacation–Diana called up to us and informed us that MIchael’s preferred patio seat had been “taken”:

Some unadulturated pictures after the jump:

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