Welcome back Noelle with her riveting recap of last nights episode of Top Chef!  Things are getting exciting as we near the finale…  

Once again Alaskan scenery and cuisine was center stage on Top Chef. This week the top four contestants were docked in Juneau, Alaska. Right off the boat, Padma met the cheftestants at Tracy’s King Crab Shack, right on the dock. This weeks Quickfire was to Create a dish Highlighting crab. Crab is one of Alaska’s mainstays. According to Padma, Alaskan Crab Fishermen bring in over 76 million pounds of crab each year! The cheftestants couldn’t stop sampling the king crab as they were cooking in their little shacks!

Chef Sean Brock joined Padma as the guest judge this week. All the Cheftestants were excited about cooking with the crab. Lizzy made a hearty King Crab Frittata. Brooke kept it simple with a Crab Toast with King Crab Salad and Dungeness crab compound butter. Josh decided to use bacon (yes, again!) and make a quintessential southern dish of Succotash with Butter Poached Crab and Bacon, to try and impress Chef Brock. Sheldon decided to take a chance, and used the innards of the Dungeness crab to make a miso broth. He also used some pine to smoke some asparagus tips and charred his corn, before adding it to his crab meat.

Chef Brock Was really impressed with Sheldon’s dish, saying it highlighted the flavor of the crab wonderfully, and was inventive. He told Brooke he really didn’t want to like her dish, because it was so simple, but in the end he loved it. He liked Lizzy’s idea of a Crab Frittata, but thought her crab got lost in all the other flavors, and the frittata was a little overcooked. Josh’s plan to impress the chef with flavors he knew, backfires. Chef Brock wasn’t as impressed as Josh had hoped. Josh’s sauce was broken, and the bacon overwhelmed the crab. Sheldon walked away from the Quickfire as the challenge winner and $5000 richer!

This week’s elimination challenge was to highlight two of Alaska’s most time honored culinary traditions. Fish and Bread. Specifically Sourdough and Salmon. Padma sent the cheftestants off to their new house for their stay in Juneau, the Jorgenson house. The house was beautiful. While they were looking around, Sheldon jumps out of a closet and scares Brooke! Downstairs in the kitchen, the contestants find their Sourdough starters, provided by a local baker. The starters come from a 3 decades old starter the baker and her husband created in culinary school over thirty years previously! The Cheftestants set about making their bread dough to let it proof overnight. Sheldon adds an Asian twist to his bread by adding green tea and chives. Lizzy decides to make individual rolls. Brooke adds dill to her dough, and plans to grill it as well. Josh makes his dough into black olive croutons, as well as regular bread for his dish the next morning.

The next morning the cheftestants go to the docks to get the Salmon for their recipes. Lizzy fondly remembers fishing with her dad, as the boat pulls up to the dock. The cheftestants are all super excited to get the fish this fresh. There are four types of salmon to choose from: Sockeye, Chum, King, and Coho Salmon. They choose their fish and clean and gut them there on the dock before heading to the Gold Creek Salmon Bake to finish cooking their dishes at the outdoor venue.

Tom checks in on the cheftestants, and we hear that Josh’s wife is dilated and having a few contractions. So Josh is both motivated and a little distracted during this challenge. This week the Cheftestants will be serving their dishes to 200 Juneau locals as well as the judges at the Gold Creek Salmon Bake. We see that there are some bears in the nearby trees! This week the judges will be Padma, Tom, Gail Simmons, Emeril Lagasse, Hugh Acheson, and the guest judge, Chef Sean Brock

Brooke has decided to poach her salmon to order, and serves up Poached Sockeye Salmon in a Seafood Broth with Mustard Seed Caviar and Grilled Dill Sourdough. The judges loved her bread and the broth, but Hugh was not a huge fan of the mustard seed caviar.

Sheldon makes Smoked Salmon with Pea soup to go with his Green Tea and Chive Sourdough. He used seafood broth as his base for the pea soup. Sheldon was the only contestant to use the Chum Salmon, a decision several locals give him flack for. They only use chum to feed the dogs. The judges found his salmon to be a bit Bitter, and Sean Brock didn’t like the way Sheldon was handling the salmon. He thought it was disrespectful to handle the salmon as Sheldon did.

Josh steered clear of bacon for this challenge and turned out a Roasted Garlic and Sourdough bread soup with roasted Sockeye salmon and Black olive Croutons. Most of the locals thought the salmon was cooked perfectly. The judges liked the soup, although they thought it was very strong.

Lizzy wanted to do something different then the other contestants, so she made a Grilled Citrus and Beet Glazed Salmon Slider, with Poppy Seed Butter and Pickles. The judges loved Lizzy’s bread, but found the whole dish to be underwhelming and under seasoned.

The judges table was held outside after dark. Everyone looked a little cold, and you could hear the rain in the background. Overall both the judges and all of the 200 locals were impressed by the Cheftestant’s dishes. All of the judges had both good and bad things to say about each dish, and it is not clear who is really on the top or the bottom.

According to the judges, however, one dish is clearly the winner. Nearly all the locals agreed that Brooke’s dish best celebrated both the Salmon and Sourdough bread. Brooke is the Challenge winner, and wins a trip to Costa Rica, provided by Green Mountain Coffee. Brooke is super excited to go to Costa Rica.

At this point in the competition, just a little mistake can send you home so the other three contestants are not overly confident heading back to Judges table, but it is Lizzy who is eliminated and she goes off to the Last Chance Kitchen.

Next week the remaining Cheftestants have to cook for the Governor of Alaska, another celebrity guest chef, and they get to experience Dog Sledding!