Barbecue is almost embedded in your soul.
I love the heat, the fire, the intensity.
There's nothing that we love more than putting meat up against the flame.
Strike that match and watch the competition burn.
- I know how to manipulate fire. - Feeling the heat.
These aren't your grandpa's grillers, we expect more.
Ooh, sweaty!
If there isn't fire leaving off these plates,
I'm going to be very disappointed.
Give me, meat, give me fire. That's all I really need.
I'm the new face of fire.
And I'm just an high school math teacher.
- I'm missing class right now. - This is like some cooking...
But sometimes when you play with fire...
You can get burned.
You work hard for everything.
$25,000, I need you to cook like you mean it.
- Yeah, no big deal. - He just looks confused.
- I can't breathe right now. - Oh, God!
Now I don't know what the hell to do.
This tournament is about to get wild.
- You're killing me. - You sound like my mom.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no!
Yes, fire! Bring it.
Chopped is on location for an edgy, fiery,
fierce tournament with innovative
and up-and-coming chefs who are ready to play with fire.
I'm fast, I'm fierce, and I'm a girl who loves to grill.
This is not your grandpa's barbecue.
When it comes to grilling, ladies just do it better.
I live in Tampa, the perfect mix of land and sea.
There's $25,000 on the line and this one means everything to me.
Bring on the flames.
Feel the heat, baby. Feel the heat.
Out grill me? You're out of your mind.
When it comes to my cooking, I'm the Middle East meets West Coast,
perfect flavor combination.
I try to be humble, but I'm a beast behind the grill.
This competition is mine. Let's go!
A grill fire is visceral, it's intense
and it's right in front of you.
I'm from New England, surf and turf is just what we do.
Cooking a piece of fish on the grill highlights its simplicity
and is what makes everything about fish great.
I'm the ultimate grill chef and I'm going to be the MVP in this kitchen.
I don't let the fire control me. I control the fire.
I'm half Mexican, half Venezuelan.
It's just like you get the best out of two worlds.
I'm not the person who's afraid to go big.
You go big or you go home.
Oh, this looks really sexy.
And I'll be the next Chopped champion.
A ferocious foursome, are you ready to play with fire?
- We're ready, chef. - We're so ready.
Excellent. In this competition,
we're testing your ability to innovate cooking with live fire.
We're looking for ingenuity and frankly, we want to be wowed.
If you win, you will advance to this tournament's finale
with a shot at winning $25,000.
- Yes! - Let's go!
But to get to the finale, first you have to survive
this preliminary tournament with a surf and turf theme.
Something from sea and land in every basket.
Appetizer baskets are in front of you.
Check them out!
- Oh, yeah. - Awesome.
There are those surf and turf surprises.
Yes.
- [Ted] You've got scallops... - Scallops, that's my jam.
[Ted] ...lamb chops and surf and turf sushi rolls.
Oh, what am I going to do with that?
[Ted] You also have spinach.
Definitely seen a lot worse.
The extra speedy 20-minute round...
starts now.
All right guys, here we go. First round.
- Start strong. - Let's go.
Let's go.
Alex, Tiffany, you are joined by the acclaimed personal chef Eric Adjepong.
- Welcome back, Eric. - Appreciate it.
Eric, your expertise is West African cuisine
and I have to believe that playing with fire is a part of that.
Huge, huge, huge, component of West African cuisine.
We need the smoke, we need the char.
I just love being around fire. So this is perfect for me.
Surf and turf is a steakhouse classic,
but is having meat and seafood on one plate
an over indulgence or pure genius?
- Yes. Both. - Both.
I mean, it's definitely going to be a very fun challenge
seeing the balance between doing something really delicate
and really giving some really bold flavors.
Obviously, we're playing with fire.
So those are the things I want to look forward to.
And this is a new generation of playing with fire,
so I think we need to understand
what the new generation interpretation of surf and turf can mean.
I see scallops and I'm thinking of myself
as a, you know, a New England guy,
I need to take this one home because if I don't,
I'm going to be mocked to no end.
For my appetizer, I'm going to make grilled baby lamb chops
with seared scallops, spinach salmoriglio and an eggplant citrus mostarda.
I want to deal with the lamb first, so I have time to let it rest as well.
These are so beautiful.
I want the lamb to shine,
so I'm just simply seasoning with salt and pepper
and getting it right onto the grill.
[Alex] Aubrey, what are you making?
Hi, I'm making a little bite of Florida.
I'm new to Florida, but I know that they take their fish dip super seriously.
I'm making a grilled scallop and crab dip crostini
with charred lamb and a spinach and grilled lemon drizzle.
I'm grilling the scallops to add that charred flavor into the fish dip
that everyone knows and loves from the grill.
This basket looks like a dream, it's a nightmare.
Like, I'd never think of lamb and scallops together.
Even in the surf and turf world,
those two guys don't usually come together for the party.
I'm going to say something crazy.
I'm going to say lamb wrapped scallops.
- [Eric] Ooh, okay. - What if you like took the lamb off the bone,
cut it really thin, wrapped the scallop,
tied it, seared both.
Then you have like, you know, you have a classic appetizer.
[Annisha] To prepare my lamb, I'm going to take it off of the bone.
That will allow me to control the temperature.
Annisha, what are you making?
So, I'm making some skewers with lamb and scallop.
And then I'm making a grilled poblano and spinach cream.
I'm going to marinate the skewers with some rosemary...
throw it on the grill and create a really nice char.
[Samir] Looking at this basket, I'm inspired to go Venezuelan.
I'm making Venezuelan cumin grilled lamb chops and scallops
with a spinach salsa de ajo and salsa aji.
So for my salsa aji, I get the avocado, cucumber
and jalapeño out of the sushi roll.
- Samir, what are we making? - Making some Venezuelan flavors.
Got a jalapeño water that's going to be like a brine for one of my salsas.
The freshness and acidity of the salsa aji
is really going to balance the gaminess of that lamb chop.
- John, how are we doing? - I'm doing just great.
I'm working on some seared scallops and a spinach salmoriglio sauce.
Salmoriglio is traditionally a raw parsley sauce.
I'm using the ginger, the wasabi
and the jalapeño from the sushi roll
in with the spinach and the parsley.
That's the surf and turf sushi roll.
We have a little bit of brisket right on top.
There's a little bit of that pickled ginger wasabi
which I think is really, really, smart to use.
We're talking about the fresh faces of fire.
Chef Audrey has done something that I think is so avant-garde.
I've literally never seen it happen.
She's grilled her scallops and then put them in the food processor.
Wow!
- Okay. - I've never seen that.
[Audrey] For my fish dip, I'm hoping that the smoked meat from the top of the sushi roll
will impart some of that smoky flavor that I'm looking for.
So poblano came into this party
for me trying to show a little bit of my background.
I'm hoping that the spinach kind of like mimics
and takes the flavor of the poblano.
Annisha, how are you using the sushi?
I'm picking up the sauce with the rice.
- Okay, sounds good. - Interesting.
- Really smart. - That's really clever.
Very, very, clever. Yeah.
Chefs, less than ten minutes on that clock.
So salsa de ajo is essentially a cilantro aioli with spinach for added color.
Samir just a heads up, there's eight and a half minutes.
Get to that grill when you can.
Respect that clock, chefs.
I'm going to need him to get on that as soon as possible.
I realize I'm running short on time.
I need to get my proteins on this grill, ASAP.
If these lamb chops are not cooked perfectly, I'm going to be screwed.
Guys, we have less than eight minutes on the clock
and Samir is just now getting his lamb on the grill.
These are lamb chops, bone in, takes some time.
- Definitely. - Like, this is not a five minute cook.
I'm very worried.
Samir is just now getting his lamb on the grill.
I'm feeling the heat.
I need to get my butt in gear and get grilling.
Can you char something now? Can you make up for that?
- Yes, I think so. - For sure.
So, if you're going to grill this lamb,
you want to at least give some time for it to rest as well, right?
It's extremely important.
Time's not on his side right now.
- Chef, John. - Yes, ma'am.
How you feeling? Where are your scallops?
My scallops are in the pan and they are perfect.
I love perfect scallops.
Mostarda is a classic Italian compliment.
So it's usually like a very sweet, acidic, dried fruit relish.
That eggplant will be my body and my texture.
I want a pop of green on the top of my crostini,
so I add spinach, grilled lemon for that dreamy drizzle.
So, it's time for me to like flip my skewers,
but they're like kind of like falling apart.
I realized that I had to rethink this presentation.
So now, instead of being a skewer, they're going to be like a bite.
They're going to be a surf and turf bite.
I'm worried about Samir because he's grilling with two minutes to go
and he hasn't plated it.
There's no plating, there's no time for resting.
Samir's putting his lamb chops back in the pan with a minute and fifteen.
That's not good.
- Make sure you have everything that's in the basket. - Thirty seconds.
Does it taste good? Does your dish look better than your competitors?
Are you going to win?
[Ted] Ten, nine, eight, seven,
six, five, four, three, two, one.
Time's up!
Definitely the fastest 20 minutes of my life.
Everybody is really amazing and the high level of talent here
that I'm competing against today.
I'm feeling the heat.
Oh, I'm super anxious.
I'm worried about my other competitors.
I want to know what they did,
so it's just like, feeling a little bit insecure right now.
Chefs, you have arrived at the chopping block.
In your first surf and turf basket,
you got scallops, lamb chops, surf and turf sushi rolls and spinach.
Chef Annisha, please tell us about your dish.
So over here, we have what I like to call surf and turf bites.
I grew up in Tijuana.
We're really close from the ocean,
but at the same time, we're really close to the land.
I grew up like around carne asadas,
but at the same time, it will be my aunt bringing some ceviche or something.
So for me, when I start getting older, grilling was like a thing for guys.
So now, after like my career and all that.
Like, I can see, like, all my cousin's like grilling,
I'm like, "You're doing it wrong."
[Eric] The lamb is cooked really well.
Scallops are cooked really well as well.
This sauce is a knockout.
Really, really, delicious adding the rice was so good.
Helps kind of bridge the gap between both the scallop and the lamb.
Here's the thing, like, you just talked about being from Mexico.
All of your heart just exploded
onto, like, what you love about what you do,
but I don't see you in this.
It's not a bad dish.
It's not linking up with like this person that's standing in front of me
and talking about all the things that you love in the world.
- Got it. - I like all the herbs.
I like the vibrancy, the freshness.
The scallops, I have the full range of cook,
from undercooked to really overcooked.
I don't know that I mind because this is playing with fire
and there's an unevenness to an outdoor cook and a grill that I want.
But I think you can just do a little bit more and I think this is find your sea legs.
Let's put your legs on the turf as well as on the surf.
Thank you, chef.
Next up, chef John. Please tell us about your starter.
Chefs, for today, I've prepared for you a grilled baby lamb chop
with seared scallops over a spinach salmoriglio
with a citrus and eggplant mostarda.
And what did you use from the sushi?
The sushi I used the jalapeño, the ginger and the wasabi, all in the salmoriglio puree.
- The ole wasabi salmoriglio. - Salmoriglio.
It's a classic.
The scallops and the lamb on my plate are perfect.
I get the char, the deep char.
This is like, some cooking, but I'm trying to figure out why they're in a bowl.
Is this a rack of lamb soup?
If you're going to cook this well with the scallop and the lambs, just cook.
- Sure. - I agree.
It's trying to cover too many bases that it never really gets to.
But all the basket ingredients are here and cooked nicely.
The color is just stunning.
Yeah, I just wish I had another touch of salt.
Maybe a little bit of acid to help bring everything together.
Thank you, sir.
Chef Aubrey, please tell us about your dish.
Today, I have prepared for you a grilled scallop and crab dipped crostini
with charred lamb and a spinach and grilled lemon drizzle.
Tell me a little bit more about this green sauce.
- It's spinach. - Yup.
There's a little grilled lemon juice.
The jalapeño from the sushi.
It's my favorite thing. It's so vibrant.
It's tasty. It's seasoned extremely well.
But you called it a charred lamb
and mine is really more like carpaccio.
And then also, I wish I would have saw a little bit more texture from the scallop.
Yeah, I think of all the things that live in the sea,
the thing I would not put in a dip is scallops.
- Okay. - But the bread is grilled really nicely.
You get that crunch and that carries you through the softness of the lamb.
What you need to do is put the dip all the way down,
and the lamb all the way down, and the sauce dotted.
And then every bite I get represents the compilation of your flavors.
- Okay? Stakes, why are you here? - I'm a personal chef.
It would be amazing as a woman in front of the grill, you know,
just to put some respect on my name.
You know, someone explain this grill woman thing to me.
What is that about, I'm getting that today.
Yeah, I mean, you see it everywhere.
Men in front of the grill, dudes in the backyard, drinking beer
and I want to do something a little different.
- Women can do everything. - Everything.
- Absolutely. - Oh, yeah, we can.
Next up, Chef Samir. What have you made for us?
Here, we have cumin grilled lamb chops
and scallop with a spinach salsa de ajo and salsa de aji.
To use the surf and turf sushi in your aioli, it's super smart.
Like, you give us this great kind of garlicky jalapeño cilantro sauce
and then you're giving essentially a salsa on the side
and it's just really, really delicious.
And it's light, which I appreciate in an appetizer.
So, I'm missing the actual taste of the spinach,
which I want only because it's in the basket.
But this is just really good cooking
and just respect, man, for the red wine vinegar.
It's the connector for all this. Nice job.
I'm impressed by this lamb. It's a nice medium rare.
The scallop, I wish I had a harder sear on it,
but other than that, I thought this was a really solid plate.
Thank you, chefs.
Well, those appetizers were only the beginning for three of you.
Thank you, chefs.
I think maybe Chef John's getting chopped
because there is a lot of moving pieces in his dish.
Hopefully, I'll be able to move on.
So who's dish is on the chopping block?
Chef Aubrey, you've been chopped.
Judges.
Chef Aubrey, I think that you were really pushing boundaries
in being inventive in a way that it was very cool,
but the scallop fish dip was just like a little...
it was a little tough to get my head around.
And so, we had to chop you.
Okay. Good luck, guys.
Thank you, chef, best of luck to you.
Even though I got chopped today,
I came here to do something different
and push myself outside of my comfort zone,
and I absolutely got to do that today.
Chef Annisha, Chef John, Chef Samir,
can you make main dishes that make waves and trample the competition?
- Hell, yeah. - That's what I do.
Time to fire up.
You might want to see what's inside these.
Please open your baskets.
[contestants groan]
Sheesh!
[Ted] Ooh, you've got crawfish.
- And they're alive. - Ouch.
- [Ted] Bison T-bone steaks. - Hell, yeah!
[Ted] You also have frozen lima beans.
- Oh, man. - [Ted] And cowboy queso.
Sheesh!
The entree round is 30 minutes.
Clock starts now.
- All right, guys. Let's go! - Let's do this.
So, judges, who invited this giant bowl of cheese
to crash the surf and turf party?
The mean spirited folks here at Chopped here have obviously thought about that.
Oh, my God!
[Alex] Okay, I see my surf and turf and then there's this cowboy cheese.
Yeah, with ground beef inside that cowboy queso, right? It's a game changer, honestly.
It's going to be interesting to see how they play all of that.
The key to making a great surf and turf dish is cohesion
and this is definitely going to be a big challenge for me
because I've never worked with bison steak or crawfish.
For my entree, I'm making grilled bison steak and pasta
with a queso crawfish cream sauce,
grilled crawfish and flash lima beans.
The inspiration behind this dish
is kind of when you go to a steakhouse
and you get that lobster with the steak and that pasta in between them.
I think the pasta is going to be a great vessel
for my queso crawfish cream sauce.
Crawfish, I love that meat. It's honestly one of my favorite things to eat.
Ooh, got me.
You can't just shell a live crawfish
because it's essentially liquid.
- So you have to cook the crawfish to shell them. - Correct.
And the thing to me that distinguishes the crawfish from any other
is there's this freshwater sweetness.
- John, how are we? - Doing all right.
- What does "all right" mean? - Better than these guys.
Coming into round two, I'm confident.
I'm also very nervous.
Big fires, big flame, big flavors.
That's what I'm going for here.
For my entree, I'm to make cardamom spiced bison T-bone steaks
over a lima bean and pancetta succotash
and a gorgonzola compound butter.
My bison steak, I'm seasoning it aggressively,
getting it right on the grill, trying to establish some good char.
I want to show the judges that I'm capable to like throw it out there
with like the Mexican
and the Latino cuisine and all these things.
Annisha, what are you making?
I'm making a traditional Mexican dish that is a tostada.
So for my entree, I'm going to make a mar y tierra tostada with refried lima bean queso.
Mar y tierra is actually a classic Mexican way to say like surf and turf.
I'm doing a mix with the crawfish and the bison.
I'm not sure how I feel about a tostada entree.
To me, it's very appetizery.
Less than 20 minutes to go, chefs.
All right.
[Samir] I get the frozen lima beans out of my blanching water.
[Alex] Samir, what is your plan? You're cooking pasta?
Yes, chef.
- What's the dish? - Thinking like steak and pasta.
Surf and turf pasta.
To make my succotash, I take the blanched lima beans,
toss them right into the pan and get that crawfish meat,
a little bit of citrus in there with some grilled lemon.
Respect to John for just doing the work and shelling that crawfish.
This wasn't a great idea, but let's keep doing this.
The crawfish is really delicious.
It's like baby lobster, but the tricky part here
is that it has just like a tiny little bit of meat.
I do like that Annisha has grilled half of the food on the set
because playing with fire is cute,
but actually cooking with fire and giving us that taste,
that proof, you can see whether someone's cooked with fire.
You can really succeed when you push,
but sometimes when you play with fire...
You can get burned.
[bleep]
What's the time?
- Ten minutes on that clock, chefs. - Ten minutes.
Samir has his steaks on the grill now.
He's done something very smart.
So, we have the bison T-bone, it's like a regular T-bone,
but much smaller and very lean.
He's taken the strip steak off of the bison T-bone.
So, I'm a little concerned that my crawfish may not come through
as much as I want in the cream sauce,
so I go ahead and grill some as well.
After the appetizer round,
seeing that some of the chefs failed to highlight the basket ingredients.
I really want to make sure I get this one on the mark.
- Samir's cut his crawfish down the middle. - [Eric] Right.
- And he's grilling them like you would grill a lobster. - Shell on, yeah.
I've never seen that done with crawfish.
Less than five minutes to go, chefs.
Finish strong, guys.
Fine.
I'm going to use the lima beans as my refried beans.
Tossing your pan, more lima beans are ending up on the ground than in the pan.
We're going to add the flavor
and the creaminess of the cowboy queso,
blend that and make a lima refried bean.
Annisha's probably doing the cleverest way of bringing the lima beans
- and the queso into the conversation. - [Eric] Correct.
[Tiffani] For sure.
The cowboy queso to me is just a total monkey wrench
and I'm going to turn this into a gorgonzola compound butter
to really kind of work with all the flavors in that steak.
- Come on, guys. Finish strong. - You got this.
- Come on. - Let's go, guys.
Make sure you have all four ingredients on the plate.
[Ted] Whose plate is looking best?
- Ten, nine... - [Tiffany] Come on, guys.
- [Ted] eight, seven... - [Tiffany] Make it beautiful.
- [Ted] ...six, five... - [Eric] Finish strong.
- [Ted] ...four, three... - You guys can do this.
- [Ted] two, one... - [Eric] Finish up, finish up.
- [Ted] Time's up. - [Alex] Wow!
Oh, man! That was intense.
I like my dish. I think I nailed it. Yeah.
This basket is definitely a challenge.
I wish I was more confident, but I think that the flavors are here.
That was intense.
Chefs, in your entree basket you got crawfish, bison T-bone steaks,
frozen lima beans and cowboy queso.
Chef Samir, tell us all about it.
For your entree today, I prepared for you a steak and pasta
with a crawfish cream sauce,
a little grilled crawfish on the side and lima beans.
I've eaten all your lima beans, all of them.
They are so American and starchy and gloriously waxy
and disgustingly fabulous and I love them.
- And I think the crawfish are beautifully cooked. - Okay, Chef.
I think it was really creative that you cut the crawfish in half
and grilled them like a half lobster and the bison is cooked really nicely.
I think you get a little bit of that char and beautiful grill marks on it.
But when I think about surf and turf, like,
it's the most expensive thing on a menu,
it's indulgent, it's luxurious and I want that.
Pasta does not meet me at that door.
It just tastes like basket ingredients that just were put together.
I wish the queso was a little bit more pronounced
that way it can hopefully kind of bring everything in together.
I think as a cohesive dish, it really kind of misses the mark.
- Thank you so much, chef. - Chef Samir, thank you.
Next up, chef Annisha. Please tell us about your dish.
So here we have surf and turf tostada.
I did the lima beans as they were refried beans.
Chef Annisha, I think this tastes like a restaurant quality dish to me.
- Thank you, chef. - Textures, so fun.
You get the refried beans.
You get the crisp from the tostada.
You get the crunch from the lettuce.
You get the chew from the bison,
the little pops of crawfish as well.
I love the queso that you have here.
It's really smart cooking. I get acid. I get heat.
I get salt. I get savory. I get umami.
When we talk about the new faces of fire, this is what we mean.
It's so smart and so good,
it's exactly what we were asking you to do
and then we see you and you show up like this is it.
But this is so much pantry, that's my only thing.
I totally agree, but I would hate to eat this much,
and admire you so much,
and see you Chopped for pushing the basket away and going only to the pantry.
- This is really great cooking. - I understand.
Chef, what would it mean to you to win?
Well, so I haven't lived home for the past ten years.
I call my mom and my dad every day.
I'm just trying to make them proud.
- That's basically it. - Chef Annisha, thank you.
Thank you so much.
Finally, Chef John. Please tell us about your main course.
Chefs, I've prepared you a cardamom spiced bison T-bone
over a lima bean pancetta and crawfish succotash with a poblano crema.
Chef John, I do like the texture of your lima beans.
Did you blanch them and then like sear them or...
Yeah, I blanched someone and then tossed them with the pancetta.
Which is really nice technique to do.
So I think that's a really sharp cook.
Yeah, chef. Thank you.
I think just giving us this pure shelled crawfish perfectly cooked,
that's what I wanted.
You really have embraced the surf and turf.
We've got that crawfish and I've got the heft of the steak.
- My steak is an eleven out of ten. It's perfect. - Thank you, chef.
The lemon on the steak is so genius and so cool.
And I love it and I'm stealing that.
But then this gorgonzola queso situation is a stop sign.
Lemon and gorgonzola are not two things that I would ever put together.
Like the acidity of the lemon will increase the funk
and the acidity of the gorgonzola in like the worst way.
- Chef John, thank you. - Thank you.
Hold tight for word. Thank you, chefs.
I did what the judges asked me to do.
What I'm trying to like wrap in my head
is the fact that I overused the pantry,
so that can cost me like being Chopped.
Alex said that my steak was an 11 out of 10,
couldn't have been better feedback.
So, whose dish is on the chopping block?
Chef John, you've been Chopped. Judges.
Chef John, it was really first off a pleasure watching you cook,
taking the theme of playing with fire and really just going for it.
Unfortunately, the case of with the gorgonzola was just unappetizing.
- And so, we have to chop you. - Chefs.
I think that I got in the way of my myself a little bit,
but I would still say on the next generation of food,
there's just so much more I can do and so much more I can offer.
Hopefully, I'll get a chance to come back and do it again.
Chef Annisha, Chef Samir, it's the playing with fire dessert round.
Y'all losing steam or just getting started?
I'm not losing steam, Ted. I'm fired up.
I'm just getting lit here.
The moment has come to get your hands on those baskets.
Open them up.
What is this?
Whoa!
[Ted] And surf and turf strikes again.
You've got chocolate lobster claws and cured beef tongue.
Wow! Beautiful.
[Ted] You also have grilling butter...
My favorite.
[Ted] ...and figs.
We go big or we go home, I guess.
It's your last half hour to prove who deserves to be in the finale.
- Time starts now. - All right, guys.
- [Eric] Let's go, guys. - [Alex] This is it.
[Eric] Last round, guys. Make it good.
Do we not love that Samir takes off for the pantry
as if he's racing three other people there
and Annisha just stands at her thing with her burner like...
That's a tough one.
Judges, a tale of two baskets. Figs, chocolate, butter, yum.
Cured beef tongue in a can...
- Yeah. - Yum?
- Yum, not yum with these things. - Yeah, no.
Honestly, so I mean, the butter, the figs, and... and that chocolate,
you can kind of see something working around that
but that beef tongue is just such an oddball.
[Tiffany] It tastes like corned beef essentially.
The challenge of beef tongue is just as much texture as it is flavor.
So, it's been sitting in a can.
It's got that like fatty kind of congealed like mouth feel.
Oh, my God!
I got to figure out a way to slip this in somehow.
I would make fried ice cream.
I would make chocolate ice cream with the claw
and then I would take that beef tongue
and I would chop it up and fry the living smell out of it.
Put it with maybe some Panco, take that grilling butter with some cinnamon
and roll the ice cream in that.
That actually sounds delicious.
[Samir] Grilling dessert is a great way to intensify the flavors
and sugars in that fruit.
So I'm making a grilled strawberry raspberry cured beef tongue coulis
with grilled figs and a chocolate ganache.
For my grilled strawberry, raspberry coulis,
I'm using the gelee from the cured beef tongue
and the grilling butter.
Grilling butter has a little bit of smoked salt in it,
so it's kind of like a European style higher fat butter
that already has a little bit of smoke, not a lot.
I'm getting the puff pastry from the pantry
and I'm brushing it with that grilling butter
to give it a nice salty smoky flavor
as well as a nice beautiful browning in the oven.
[Tiffany] We have Annisha and Samir, final round.
Samir really playing for like, I think, himself more than anything else,
proving that he belongs.
And I think Annisha is really playing for her family
because she wants them to see her crush this competition.
So, I grew up eating beef tongue.
It's one of my favorite things to eat, honestly.
Beef tongue is like just fat. So desserts have fat.
I'm going to make a beef tongue ice cream.
[Alex] Guys, Annisha is definitely making ice cream.
- She's coming out with cream and eggs. - [Eric] She's got cream
- and eggs. Yep. - Yeah.
[Annisha] For my dessert, I'm doing grilled beef tongue ice cream and grilled fig toast.
I grab the tongue, just put a little bit of sugar
and just throw it on the grill.
Then I'm going to make my ice cream base,
melt the fat and I just put everything on the blender.
-[Annisha] Behind. -[Tiffany] Oh, we have ice cream.
- [Alex] No, we don't. - [Eric] She's going to the ice cream.
We have ice cream dessert. I'm so excited.
[Annisha] I'm taking a big risk with my ice cream.
- What are you making? - You want to know?
Yeah, I want to know.
I'm making a... a beef tongue ice cream.
No, you are not.
I think it's definitely innovating.
I'm crossing the line between savory and sweet,
so I'm trying to break that barrier in a very subtle way.
Not putting the ice cream base with the beef tongue through a strainer
is going to give you like chunky, chunky beef tongue.
[Annisha] Please make it work. Please make it work.
For my chocolate ganache, it's simply going to be
the chocolate from the chocolate lobster claw,
a little bit of that grilling butter and some warm heavy cream.
I see brioche in the pantry.
Sweet, fluffy, throw it on the grill and make it crispy.
The interesting part about this basket, I think, for dessert specifically,
we're still asking them to play with fire.
The fig is the only ingredient on its own you can really grill.
I'm using the grill butter for the fat of my figs
to be able to grill them to perfection.
I'm grilling tequila now.
Five minutes on the clock, chefs.
[Annisha] I go and check out my ice cream, fingers crossed.
I'm going to tell you that this ice cream
is going to have the mouth feel and consistency of vegetable shortening.
I'm going to call it now.
The only thing that is in my head is like, does it have a bad taste?
Just stop it both of you. Stop the ice cream negativity.
This has to work somehow.
I'm going to tell you that this ice cream
is going to have the mouth feel and consistency of vegetable shortening.
I'm going to call it now.
I'm going to say that you're wrong, it's gorgeous.
Okay.
I taste my ice cream and I'm like, "This actually tastes really good."
[Tiffany] Guys, you got this. You're almost there.
We want your excellent, excellent brains right now.
[Samir] For my grilled bruleed figs, I'm going to just halve them,
dust them in sugar and get them on that grill.
On the lobster claws, I'm just going to melt it
and I'm going to make a chocolate sauce.
You've got less than two minutes.
Less than two.
Samir, we've got to start putting things together, right?
- Do you have plates? - Yes, Chef. Right now.
[Alex] Samir just pulled out four pieces of puff pastry.
They've puffed right, they've got the right browning on the outside.
You have only one minute to get this done, chefs.
You will think about this in the shower for the next ten years.
- Come on, you can do this. - [Ted] Five seconds to the final round.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five...
- You got it, man. - [Ted] ...four, three, two, one.
- Time's up! - [Eric] Nice job.
Awesome work, guys.
Feeling good that I got everything on the plate.
I was just a little frustrated with that tongue, to be honest.
Hopefully, it comes through enough for the judges.
I like the way that my dish looks,
but I don't like to feel too confident about it.
Samir is like a very good cook,
so it's like definitely competing with the best of the best.
Let's see what happens.
Chef Annisha, Chef Samir, we asked you to make desserts
using chocolate lobster claws, cured beef tongue, grilling butter and figs.
Chef Samir, what have we here?
[Samir] Chefs, I've prepared for you grilled strawberry raspberry
beef tongue coulis tart with a chocolate ganache,
whipped cream and grilled figs.
[Eric] Chef Samir, the puff pastry itself is cooked well.
The figs are cooked nicely,
but the ganache feels more like an afterthought.
I wish there was more incorporation with all those flavors
- inside the basket a little bit more. - Understood.
There's something kind of cool about the like little wiggles of the chocolate ganache.
It kind of looks like grill marks.
I really love the combination of the chocolate and the figs.
That's where I really, I get the basket.
The puff pastry is beautifully cooked
and it reminds me of the grilling butter in the basket.
So, it's like butter personified.
So that was a good move,
but the beef tongue liquid from the can dripped in
because you don't like it and neither do we.
It's harder to find.
- Chef Samir, thank you. - Thank you, guys.
Finally, Chef Annisha.
Please tell us about your dessert.
So, what we have here is grilled beef tongue ice cream and grilled figs.
- Listen, you took a shot and it worked. - Thank you.
The beef tongue, you can taste a little bit of that,
which is obviously what you needed to do.
The mouth feel and the texture of the ice cream is solid.
I think you really embraced the figs
and I think you got a char on that bread that's really bold,
but you put so much mint in here
that it buries some of the really important flavors
that we need to be tasting that you're getting scored on.
Chef Annisha, this is a master class
on how to lean into an ingredient
that is designed to take you down.
Okay, thank you.
And you did a great job.
I was like, "The ice cream's never going to work.
It's going to like have the texture of vegetable shortening
and there were like chunks of beef tongue."
- I was like... - You did say all that.
I was talking all kinds of beef tongue smack.
I was so wrong.
But there's room for so much more chocolate here, right?
And it's kind of like a little chocolate kiss
and we gave you these giant claws.
- Chef Annisha, thank you. - Thank you.
Now, the judges just have to decide who has won it.
Thank you, chefs.
I think both chefs all day played with fire in very different ways.
Samir's appetizer had these perfectly grilled scallops,
which I don't ever put those three words together.
Annisha's appetizer dish, I thought it was so smart for her
- to use the rice in her puree. - [Tiffany] Yeah.
It gave it a nice body, gave it nice like texture and umptiousness...
But can I say something about Annisha's first course
that's going to sound a little harsh?
It was so boring.
It wasn't her heart. It wasn't her flavors.
It was just like any wedding USA, like...
But when she kind of finally settled in,
especially in that second course,
oh, my gosh, that entree was just to die for.
And she turned those lima beans into refried beans.
- Brilliant. - So clever, so delicious.
But just there was something homey about Samir's pasta and lima that spoke to me.
- [Eric] Sure. - I think one of the things he did
that that was super smart is using crawfish.
He cut it in half and he put it on the grill
and he grilled it like you would grill a half lobster.
I thought that was really nicely done.
I feel good about my chances.
I've been dreaming being a Chopped champion for over ten years now.
I want it so badly, so badly.
I feel like I brought the fire more than Samir,
but whatever happens, I think I did my best
and that's what makes me happy.
So whose dish is on the chopping block?
Chef Samir, you've been chopped. Judges.
Chef Samir, your first dish right out of the gate was a tour de force.
But in your entree round, it just wasn't cohesive.
And so, we had to chop you.
- Okay, thank you, guys. - Good job.
- Thank you, chefs.
I'm definitely disappointed I didn't come out on top.
Hardest thing about this moment is knowing that I came short,
yet I'm happy at least I made it this far.
And that means, Chef Annisha Garcia,
you are the Chopped champion
and you get to come back and play with us again
in the playing with fire finale.
- Tremendous job, chef. - Yeah, thank you.
- Yeah. - Thank you.
I'm just like really happy right now,
but you know that more is coming, which means that's going to be tougher.
Fire is wild.
I don't let the fire control me.
The higher the stakes, the juicier the prize.
My heart is pounding. I can taste it.
[Ted] Which champion can conquer all?
- I don't want to look. - Bring on the smoke.
Bring on the flames. Bring on the heat.
- I'm so excited. - I'm a beast over the fire.
Nothing's off limit when I'm grilling.
My steaks on fire.
Be prepared to get burned.