What happened last night on Chopped?  Read the recap from our contributor, Laureen Pittman.

BREAKFAST, LUNCH & DINNER

Oh Chopped, how I’ve missed you!  I’ve actually been catching up by watching replays of the new episodes, so I’m pretty much up to speed.

I have to say, I’m enjoying this season of Chopped a lot because they are really stirring things up.  They’ve already had two amateur episodes—“Momumental” (featuring moms) and “Amazing Amateurs.”  Last night’s episode was titled “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.”  Instead of the usual three rounds of appetizer, entrée and dessert, the rounds were—you guessed it—breakfast, lunch and dinner. This should be fun.

The competitors were: Chef Fred Eric, owner of Fred 62 in Los Angeles; Chef Natalie Cain, a line chef at Red Rooster in Harlem, NY; Chef Brandon Boudet, owner of 4 restaurants in the Los Angeles area; and Chef Chris Leahy, Executive Chef at Lexington Brass in New York.  The judges for this episode were: Celebrity Chefs Aaron Sanchez, Amanda Freitag and Maneet Chauhan.  So, here goes breakfast!

The items in the mystery basket for breakfast: Black Forest bacon, ricotta pancakes, smoked salmon and prune juice.  All breakfast-type items, but how would the competitors transform the ingredients into a cohesive dish?  Chef Fred was disappointed to see prepared pancakes in the basket, because he loves making fresh pancakes on the weekends with his daughters , so he took the pancakes and chopped them up and toasted them until they were crisp.  He called them “bagel chips,” but they were really pancake chips.  He made a syrup of sorts with the prune juice and added cardamom pods to give the sauce an interesting dimension.  Poor Chef Fred was really a frazzled mess by the end of the first round—his hands were shaking like mad and he had toppled over trays and misplaced his bacon.  Lucky for him, he found it at the last minute (maybe not so lucky—see below)

Chef Natalie deep fried her pancakes to give them texture “like a crouton.”  She topped the pancake crouton with smoked salmon cream and a poached egg.  She finished her dish with a bacon and prune juice reduction.  I’d eat that.

Chef Brandon caramelized his pancakes (coated them with sugar and toasted them in a skillet), made a syrup out of the prune juice and bacon and attempted to top the concoction with a fried egg.  His dish was finessed, except he couldn’t fry the eggs to save his life.  He was using a nonstick pan, but his eggs were sticking like crazy. Burning on the bottom and not cooked on top.  Turn the heat down, man!

Chef Chris made a sauce out of his prune juice and bacon, but the twist on his was that he actually pureed the bacon with the prune juice.  Sounds weird, but it worked.  He didn’t do anything exciting with the pancake itself, but he topped it with a smoked salmon salad.

The judges seemed most impressed with Chef Natalie’s dish—beautiful presentation and the dish was everything they wanted in a breakfast, but her poached egg was unseasoned.  She admitted that she forgot to add any salt to the poaching water.  And egg without salt is just, well, boring.

The judges agreed that Chef Fred was the only one who truly transformed those pre-made pancakes.  They enjoyed his pancake chips immensely.  But unfortunately for him, he was caught on camera rescuing his bacon from underneath a tray that had fallen onto the floor.  Yes, the bacon was on the floor.  There is no 5-second rule in Chopped.  Even if there was, that bacon was sitting on the floor for a good 5 minutes.  He claimed he thought the bacon was sitting on paper, not the floor.  So Chopped showed a slow motion replay that clearly showed the bacon on the ground.  Bye-bye, Chef Fred.

The lunch round mystery basket revealed quiche Lorraine, purple cauliflower, blue shrimp and rose wine.  I was stumped.  Quiche Lorraine?  How in the heck can you transform that?  Well, leave it to the Chopped chefs to come up with some crazy creative stuff.  Chef Natalie made a pureed ham and cheese soup with the quiche and added onions sautéed with the rose wine.  She served the soup with deep fried cauliflower and grilled shrimp.

Chef Brandon made the shrimp the star of his lunch.  He made a traditional New Orleans-style BBQ shrimp with quiche Lorraine deep fried “balls” (he called them beignets), and purple cauliflower steamed in the rose wine.  He even used the shrimp heads—he fried them separately and topped his dish with them.

Chef Chris said he was going to go “hardcore French” with his lunch.  I didn’t get it.  He marinated the shrimp and sautéed it.  Not very exciting.  He was totally stumped with the quiche.  In the end, he took the cauliflower and cooked it in the rose, then he chopped up the quiche and added it to the cauliflower—yuck.  But wait, he’s not done.  Then he pureed the whole mess.  He was giggling the whole time.  He knew it was crazy.  It looked pretty disgusting.

Well, the judges didn’t seem to mind Chef Chris’ cauliflower-quiche puree.  It was Chef Natalie that got chopped.  Her soup was creative, but it had a strong raw wine taste—she didn’t have enough time to cook down the rose before she pureed the soup.  Her fried cauliflower was a little soggy, as well, but that was not her fault.  Chef Brandon was hogging the fryer with his quiche beignets and by the time Chef Natalie got to it, the oil was too cool.  I was disappointed.  I thought Chef Chris was going to get the chop.

Chef Chris and Chef Brandon revealed the ingredients in the dinner basket: chateaubriand, horseradish root, tawny port and stone crab claws.  Wow!  I was envisioning some sort of neato “surf ‘n’ turf” thing.  Chef Chris made a roasted chateaubriand with a tawny port horseradish reduction.  In the end, he turned the tawny port reduction in to a cream sauce and shredded up some cabbage from the pantry to add a vegetable element to his dinner.  The crab, I believe, was mixed with the cabbage and resting on top of the chateaubriand.  I thought the cabbage was an odd choice for a vegetable.  Chef Chris was confident.

Chef Brandon seared his chateaubriand and made two sauces: a peppercorn port reduction and a stone crab, horseradish béarnaise with tarragon.  That sounded delicious to me.  I wanted to eat that for dinner.

In the end, it was Chef Chris that got the final chop from the judges.  Turns out they didn’t “get” the cabbage, either, and the crab claw that he served to the judges had chunks of shell still in it.  That’s a no-no.  Judge Maneet said it best, in her lovely Indian accent: “It completely bummed me out to get a mouthful of crab shell.”

So Chef Brandon is returning to Los Angeles as a Chopped Champion with $10,000 in his pocket.  Congrats to him!  I’m going to have to find his restaurants in L.A. and check one of them out.  Anyone want to join me?

Next week’s Chopped episode features military chefs.  Should be interesting—stay tuned for my review!

I know that some CCC members have been “in talks” with Chopped casting personnel doing interviews, etc.  I’d sure like to see a CCC episode, but I’d love to see any CCC’ers compete on the show.  Good luck and keep us posted!