Did you catch Chopped Champions last night?  Laureen Pittman did!  Check out her latest recap…

Tonight four veteran champion contenders fought it out in the Chopped kitchen for a spot to compete in the Grand Finale for $50,000 next week.  The competitors: Chef Kris Wessel, from Miami; Chef Helen Park, from New York City; Chef Jean-Louis Gerin, from Greenwich, CT (originally from France and still toting a thick, heavy French accent ) and Chef Rob Evans, from Portland, Maine.

Judges tonight were Aaron Sanchez, Amanda Freitag and Alex Guarnaschelli.  I love Alex.  I love the way she takes a bite and just stares down the chef as she chews.  Total poker  face.  She’s brutally honest, but really gets to the nitty gritty of taste, texture, presentation—she just really tells it like it is.  Good or bad.  Like I said last week, this is what I like about “Chopped.”  Unlike some of the other competitive cooking shows that seem to value clashing personalities, mood swings, and behind-the-scenes drama, “Chopped” sticks to what’s on the plate.   That’s why we cook, right?

The mystery basket for the appetizer round revealed sour apple martini mix, mortadella, white asparagus and fennel.  I  don’t know, but for me, these ingredients just screamed Shaved Fennel Salad with Grilled White Asparagus, Crispy Mortadella and Sour Apple Vinaigrette.  Just sayin’.  And that’s pretty much what Chef Helen did.  Chef Frenchie made a Fennel Coulis, Roasted White Asparagus, with a hunk of seared mortadella, deglazed with the sour apple mix.  He lost me with the hunk o’ mortadella.  The judges loved the coulis and asparagus, but thought the mortadella didn’t “go.”  Too clunky.   But it was Chef Chris that got chopped.  His version of a fennel salad just didn’t cut it.

The entrée  round put calves’ liver front and center.  Ewwww.  The basket also included fava greens, honey wine and  halloumi.  Chef Frenchie kept the ingredients simple: he seared the calves’ liver in butter (how French!), made a sauce marchand with the honey wine, and braised the fava greens.  Chef Rob breaded his liver and the halloumi before he fried them both.  And he made a neat little fritter out of pureed cooked rice, egg, and caramelized onions (hey, wait a minute—none of those ingredients were in the basket!).  Chef Helen made a creative soup-type thingy with the calves’ liver, fideo and caramel sauce with the honey wine and fish sauce.  It sounded weird.  Turns out it was weird, because she was chopped.

So it came down to dessert.  It was the classically trained, traditional Chef Frenchie vs. the more creative, down to earth farm-to-plate Chef Rob.  The ingredients they had to incorporate into their desserts were Maraschino cherries, Greek yogurt, canned espresso and corn nuts.  I don’t think those ingredients are too far out there, do you?  Well, Chef Ron whipped up a trifle, with a homemade cake soaked in the espresso, a yogurt mousse and corn nut crumble topping.  Pretty creative, eh?  Chef Frenchie seemed a little stymied by the corn nuts.  He said he had never tasted them before!  After tasting them, he decided to put together  simple crumble.  Wow—crumble?  A classically trained chef is making a crumble?  It kinda looked more like a slab of granola.  Boring and brown.  So he decided at the last minute to make a chocolate ganache to cover it with.  I was hoping for something sophisticated and elegant from Chef Frenchie.  As expected, his crumble got him chopped.

So Chef Rob Evans won this 4^th installment of Chopped Champions, Season 4 and secured a spot in next weeks’ season finale.  The winner next week will be crowned Champion of Chopped Champions and will walk away with $50,000.  Not bad!  Tune in next week for my review!