A quick meal for a crazy week!

This time of year is nutso for me. A Tae Kwon Do tournament for all the guys in the household last weekend. One son's baseball season is in full swing. The other son's rock band has a big gig tomorrow (his band is the youngest band competing in the Battle of the Bands at the Water Street Music Hall). CRB has a big gig next week. I'm working part-time at Wickham Farms, and gearing up to be PTA president next year. You get the picture...

These are the weeks when I barely have time to put dinner on the table. This is the perfect time to throw together a quick meal, like Creamy Chicken Marsala Pizza, a finalist from the recent Pillsbury Bake-off contest. I made it recently and can report that it comes together quickly and has yummy classic flavors. It's one of those "I wish I had thought of that" recipes. The base: a tube of refrigerated Pillsbury pizza dough.

There are people look down their noses at such products, such as this blogger, who devoted a blog post to putting down the participants of the Pillsbury Bake-off contest.

"Kudos to all the participants," she sniffs. "Hey, at least they’re spending time in the kitchen rather than idling in the takeout lane at McDonald’s."

Nice.

Just to set the record straight, I can and do make my own pizza crust. Do a search of this blog and you'll find plenty of examples of "from scratch" pizza crusts, yeast breads, quick breads, cookies, and so on. But there are days where I'd rather spend that time helping my son with his pitching. Or watching both sons compete in Tae Kwon Do (my younger son won his division in board breaking, by the way). Or practicing for my band's gig.

A couple of years ago I spent a much greater part of my life devoted to food -- cooking, blogging, and developing recipes for cooking contests. It was my most successful year in the world of cooking contests, but it didn't work for me. As much as I love food, I didn't find it healthy or interesting to put that much of a focus on it. If that's the kind of life that blogger wants, good for her. She can have it. My life is often hectic and it's not perfect, but it works for me.

Bananas for bananas!

My kids: "I'm huunnnggry.... what can I have for a snack?"

My usual response: "Have a banana."

I think they are nature's perfect snack food -- a sweet, satisfying treat in a handy package. Unfortunately, my kids don't always heed my recommendation and the bananas get black and squishy on the counter. That's when they are perfect for banana bread. In fact, I have some in that state right now and I have a new recipe for banana muffins in the queue for today.

Until I get those muffins made, the Banana Bread Round-up at Not Quite Nigella has 79 ideas for what you can do with your over ripe bananas. In fact, she is asking people to vote for their favorite! The recipe I contributed is probably my favorite banana bread so far, with six bananas packed into one loaf. If people could actually taste my entry, I think I'd have a shot at it. But my photo isn't a work of art, as usual, so I'm not holding my breath. Whether or not you want to vote, pop over there for some great ideas!

Top Chef Chicago, Episode 10

Some bloggers have noticed that the second person interviewed in Top Chef episodes seems to be the one who gets cut. This episode's second interview: Richard. NOOOOOO!!!!!

The Quick Fire: to make a sexy salad. Guest judge: sexy Sam, from season 2. Verrry nice to see him again. My pal Jenny got to see him in person and I was soooo jealous. (This is a photo she took of him.) My favorite comment on Jenny's blog post: "Oh have mercy Sam is a beautiful beast," by Flutter. Yep, what she said. He and Padma standing next together proves that God played favorites when he was passing out sexy.

Where was I? (fanning myself ...) Oh yeah, a salad. A sexy salad. And they have 45 minutes to make one, which seems to be a lot of time until I remember I couldn't didn't come close to turning out an un-sexy one in 30 minutes last week (see previous post). In the end, the one that catches my eye: Antonia's poached egg wild mushroom salad with a bacon vinaigrette and squash blossoms. When the yolk is pierced with a fork, the yellow goo runs over the salad. Dang, that does look sexy and delicious. Antonia is growing on me. She cooks well and has a droll sense of humor with a good chortle-y laugh.

Andrew is NOT growing on me but his salad with mangoes, strawberries, raspberries and Sriracha looks colorful and sounds interesting -- sweet and heat. Not sexy though. Maybe he should have saved his culinary boner for this week.

Antonia does wind up in the top three, along with Dale (Asian poached chicken salad), as well as Spike (Vietnamese beef salad with mint in it). Spike gets the win.

The bottom three: Richard, Stephanie and Lisa. It proves that Richard is human, after all. Stephanie ran into trouble and didn't finish -- the Quickfire doesn't seem to be her strength, but don't count her out. Lisa's salad had squid, lobster and banana -- flavors I can't quite imagine together.

They wheel out a big table full of the junk food that Chicago cops eat for lunch every day. Lisa comments that it looks good, and I kind of agree. I don't think Lisa is all bad, and neither is Dale. They both have intense moments, which I've been known to have, so I can kind of relate to them. Andrew and Spike, on the other hand, come across as borderline demented.

I thought the chefs might have to do a healthy twist on one of the junk food items, but no, they have to make healthy, hearty boxed lunches for Chicago cops. I like that they featured Chicago's finest, but it wasn't a terribly exciting challenge. Maybe they want to give the chefs something that's not terribly taxing after the wedding marathon.

Spike gets 10 extra minutes to shop -- and he rubs every one's noses in it. He also gets to pick a fruit, vegetable, grain and protein that his opponents can't use -- definitely a bigger advantage than last week's bride or groom choice. He selects chicken, tomato, bread and lettuce as the ingredients his opponents can't use -- talk about mundane ingredients. This means the chefs will have to think outside the box, so to speak. I wonder what Richard, who has proven himself to be a classy competitor, would have done. Toss them a soft ball? I'm guessing he'd pick a terrific dish for himself and then choose items that wouldn't duplicate the flavors. I wonder if Spike considered that if, by some wild stretch of the imagination, he made it to the end, he'd most likely need some of these people on his team.

Then they serve the lunches to the cops. Richard is mocked out for saying over and over, "do you like burritos?" Give the guy a break. He's just trying to make a dish with some unfamiliar ingredients seem more approachable.

The top two:
- Dale, for Bison "lettuce" wraps (using Napa cabbage) because Bison is very lean. Although I haven't tasted Bison, that was a good idea because Chicago cops will probably like red meat. I'm not a fan of the lettuce wrap, only because it's messy and awkward to eat, but they were a clever way to get around not being able to use bread.
- Stephanie, for a barley and butternut squash soup with meatballs. Going with a soup was a good idea. I love barley, especially in soup. I'd try the recipe (in the fall) if I trusted the accuracy of the recipes on the Bravo site.

Dale wins, and his prize is a fancy bottle of wine. He's definitely one of the stronger chefs. And has anyone noticed that his personality is much nicer when he's not taking part in a team challenge?

The bottom three:
- Lisa, for a shrimp stir-fry with undercooked shrimp and rice. She claimed that someone turned up her heat to sabotage her. Don't you think the cameras or another competitor would have noticed? She also points out to the judges that Andrew's dish didn't have a grain, a requirement of the challenge -- ironic, considering she was on the team that substituted chorizo for the required Polish sausage a few episodes back.
- Spike, for an uninspired chicken salad. Oh, how satisfying that he landed in the bottom three after the way he handled his Quickfire win.
- Andrew, for a mock sushi that didn't satisfy the cops or the judges. He blamed the judges' attitudes about healthy food, which never seems to be a smart strategy. I would argue that that Andrew's attempt had a higher level of creativity and difficulty than Spike's pedestrian chicken salad, so I would have preferred to have seen Spike cut. But I'm not terribly disappointed to see the guy who coined the term "culinary boner" pack his knives and go. And I vow that the term "boner" will never be used again on this blog. Ugh.

Next week: Restaurant wars! Yeah!

P.S. A couple of Rochester restaurants -- Dinosaur BBQ and California Rollin' -- are mentioned on this week's Team Top Chef Blog! The blogger defends sushi as a concept that, when creatively executed, can meet the definition of "hearty." Apparently California Rollin' serves a Dinosaur BBQ tempura roll with tuna and drizzled with Dinosaur BBQ sauce -- which pretty much typifies Rochester's approach to fusion cuisine. The blogger raves about it so even though it doesn't immediately appeal to me, I might have to give it a try. (I checked California Rollin's menu and didn't see the roll the blogger mentioned ... but I still want to check out California Rollin')

My "Iron Chef" experience

It is a long way from participating in the Pillsbury Bake-off to competing across from the ladies' bathrooms at the 102-year-old Rochester Public Market. But that's what I did on Saturday ... and I'm hard pressed to say which was more stressful.

The contest: an "Iron Chef"-type format in which ingredients are not known in advance, and contestants have 30 minutes to prepare a dish from them. The prize: various items valued at $750 and a chance to compete as part of a team in Slice, Dice and Spice NY. My biggest fear: in a fit of hysteria, I would put nothing on the plate at the end of my allotted time.

My fears were grounded in the fact that I am a "recipe" cook. I rarely just throw stuff together. Even when I create a recipe for a cooking contest, I combine the techniques and flavors from a few different recipes. I start my process by writing a recipe on paper, and then I tinker -- and it usually takes a whole lot of tinkering before most of my creations are contest ready. So why did I do this particular contest? Well, I have spent a fair amount of time armchair quarterbacking shows like "Iron Chef America" and "Top Chef." I wanted to see how I'd do if I was in the action.

I plan to do a separate post about the Public Market, but it's like markets in any other city -- there's a huge assortment of produce, flowers, and other assorted items. I was warned in advance that about 35 thousand people were expected to be there that day, and parking would be a problem. As a result, I grabbed a $2 parking spot a few blocks away from the market, and hoofed it the rest of the way. I got to the market almost an hour in advance of my scheduled cooking time of 1:50 p.m. (I was told to be there at 1:35 to look at the ingredients and decide what to make.)

I scoped out where the contest would be held, and spotted it between the market office building and the rest rooms. I had been told they wanted the contestants to stay away from the contest area until it was close to their time to cook, so I wandered around the public market for awhile.

I haven't been there for a good 15 years for a couple of reasons: one, my Porter Farms CSA keeps me pretty well stocked with veggies throughout the summer and fall, and two, because I hate crowds. And man, the market was jammed. I found the combination of the crowd, the yelling vendors, and the sheer number of items to choose from to be overwhelming. I managed to buy two pounds of strawberries ($2 each) and wandered back to the contest area. When I got there, trying not to catch a glance at the ingredients, I found Michael Warren Thomas, who was running the contest, and he told me to come back in an hour. Groan .... if there had been an area to sit and read read the morning paper, that would have been just fine. But seating at the public market is a precious commodity, limited to a few crowded picnic tables around some of the food vendors. And it's not in a yuppy part of town where I could escape to a coffee shop. So it was back to wandering through the crowds. This time I bought some lettuce (50 cents each), garlic cloves (5 for $1 - a great score, until I saw that they were from China), a basil and a sage plant ($1 each), some cinnamon coated nuts, some garlic chives and a big artichoke. I also ate a couple of yummy empanadas. By 2:30 p.m., I noticed that some of the vendors were starting to pack it up for the day.

When I returned to the contest area, they still weren't ready for me and didn't want me hanging around. I mentioned to a nice man (Jim) that I was concerned that the area would be deserted when I was walking back to my car. He gave me a parking pass, so I walked to my car and moved it to a spot close to the cooking area.

After all of this, I was beat. Plus, I had band practice that night and wanted to get in some time on my guitar to prepare for it. I completely understand that a first-time contest isn't going to run like clockwork, so I wasn't miffed about that, but at that point I was ready to head for home.

But after a few minutes, Michael gave me an ok to look at the ingredients I had to work with (I had been told ahead of time that I didn't need to use them all):

Some wines
3 mustards -- one smelled very beer-y, one like a Dijon, and one with horseradish
Olive oil
Honey
Salt & pepper

Rosemary
Sage
Chives
Thyme
Garlic

Pasta, shaped like orzo

Potatoes
Asparagus
Tomatoes (I was dismayed at this out-of-season ingredient)
Mixed baby greens
Onions

A square flat bread, like for pressed sandwiches

Cheddar cheese
Swiss cheese
Fresh mozzarella
Butter
Heavy cream
Eggs

Every time I thought of something to do with the ingredients, I'd arrive at a mental road block. No meat/poultry. No vinegar for a vinaigrette. No fruit for a sauce for French Toast. No sugar for caramelizing the onions.

Since the greens looked to be the best fresh ingredient, my strategy was a salad, even though I would have liked to have had some vinegar to use. I'd use the greens and asparagus and maybe boil an egg for a garnish. I would brush the flat bread with some herb-infused oil and throw it on the grill and cut it up to to make croutons. Maybe accompany it with a cheesy toast type thing.

The two techniques that I thought would set me apart would be used in my vinaigrette. I thought that if I roasted the tomatoes on the grill, I'd bring out what little flavor they had, and I could puree them and could use that as the acid in my vinaigrette. I would also roast garlic in olive oil on the stove and use the garlic and the garlicky oil in the vinaigrette. I'd also add some herbs and maybe some wine or honey to the vinaigrette.

I peeled a bulb of garlic and put it in olive oil on the stove, planning to roast it until it was soft and brown.

I put the tomatoes on the grill. I also put asparagus in the in boiling water (they had water boiling on the stove) for a few minutes until it was crisp-tender and put it on ice to stop the cooking.

I checked on my tomatoes and nothing was happening. Those firm red balls were as hard and red as they were when I put them on the heat. Michael was as helpful could be but the heat didn't seem to be working right. It was pretty breezy where we were so maybe the wind was either diluting the heat or moving it around.

At this point I was about 15 minutes into the competition and I decided that the salad wasn't going to happen. So I was left with some blanched asparagus, some garlicky oil (it was clear it wasn't going to fully roast in the time I had left), and the original ingredients. I decided to switch to making a panini.

I thought I'd try to caramelize some onions (not really possible in 10 minutes) and put them on the heat to saute.

I pureed some of the roasted garlic with some thyme and spread it on the bread. I topped it with fresh mozzarella, the asparagus (halved lengthwise), and sliced tomato that I had seasoned with salt and pepper.

In a last-ditch effort to imitate the flavor of caramelized onions, I squirted some honey on the onions on the stove. I tasted. Bleeeccchh. Those went in the trash.

More mozzarella went on top. (Why didn't I use the other cheeses? I just wasn't sure how they'd work against the garlic.) I melted some butter with the oil that had been used to roast garlic and spread it on the bread (no pastry brush, used a plastic tasting spoon to spread it around). I grilled it using the pot that had been used to boil water to press on it like a panini.

At this point my 30 minutes were about up. It went fast. Michael told me that since I had trouble with my heat, I could have a little more time. At this point, I should have done a bare-bones salad to go with my panini, using wine in place of vinegar in a vinaigrette. But at this point I wanted this to be over with. So all I served was the panini. No garnish or anything.

I cut it in half, and then Michael told me to cut those pieces in half again so that he and I could taste it. As I did, some onlookers came by and asked if they could taste, so I cut my piece up and gave it to them (which probably was a no-no by New York's ridiculously stringent health department regulations). So I committed the biggest sin you can make on Top Chef -- I DIDN'T TASTE IT! I have utterly no idea what it tasted like. I was given a chance to explain the dish to one of the judges (market vendors) and I was so embarrassed by what I turned in that I didn't put any energy into explaining it.

In the end, I don't think I choked so much as gave up. I was tired and the crazy cooking conditions got the best of me. As I drove away, I thought about all the great egg dishes I could have made. But with the crazy heat? I don't know how that would have gone either.

Unsurprisingly, my fancy pants grilled cheese didn't get me the win. But I actually received a cool consolation prize -- two tickets to Slice, Dice and Spice NY! I had wanted to go, but the $50 price tag held me back. It's tonight. I'm taking my friend, Karen, who competed in the Pillsbury Bake-off contest (and won her category) in 2006. We can armchair quarterback the teams competing in the finals -- probably just as much fun as competing. Plus they'll have food and wine to sample (since wine makes me break out in hives --boo-hoo --Karen can describe the wines to me).

In the end, I'm glad I gave it a go. If I had a chance to do it again, would I? Heck, yeah. But I'd bring a fold-up chair and a good book and find a quiet corner of the market while I was waiting.

It's LiveSTRONG Day!

Today, the food blogging community is supporting LiveSTRONG Day with a blog event called a Taste of Yellow. LiveSTRONG Day is the Lance Armstrong Foundation's one-day initiative to raise awareness and funds for the cancer fight.

Maybe you'll want to commemorate the day by cooking something yellow. If so, you'll have 179 recipes to choose from at the LIVESTRONG A Taste of Yellow Roundup. Most of them, including my no-knead batter bread in the second part of the roundup, are probably a better choice than this one. But since I took a decent photo of the recipe, I thought I'd tell you about it.

When I selected the recipe to make for this event, I wanted a really good one. To that end, I thought I'd take on Banana Bread with Salted Caramel Sauce & Meringue, which garnered Chef Stephanie Izard high marks from the judges in this season of Top Chef.

I started with the bread. The batter was thicker than any other banana bread recipe I've made. But the thing that concerned me most was the full teaspoon of salt it called for. Despite my doubts, I dumped it in.

After the bread was done, I tasted a corner. It was dense and not as moist as my favorite banana breads. But bear in mind this was served as finger food on the show, so it had to be fairly sturdy. And, unsurprisingly, it was distinctly salty. On the show, it was served with a salted caramel sauce, so maybe the salt in the bread punched up the salty flavor of the sauce. Or maybe that teaspoon of the salt was a typo on the Bravo Web site, because it's hard to imagine that the judges complimented the bread I tasted.

I decided it wasn't fair to judge the recipe unless I had all of the elements of it, so I studied the recipe for the next steps -- the meringue and the caramel sauce. And then I got really perplexed.

The caramel sauce called for egg whites, sugar, water, and corn syrup. I thought that was odd, because I've never seen a caramel sauce recipe with egg whites. And the recipe called caramel meringue had no egg whites -- a key component in meringues -- and it didn't call for the mixture to be heated until it browned -- which is how a caramel flavor is achieved. Then it dawned on me that someone mixed up the titles -- the egg white mixture was the meringue, and it wasn't meant to be caramel flavored. The other mixture was the sauce. (They have since corrected the switched titles, although the meringue is still called "caramel meringue" and the teaspoon of salt remains in the bread.)

After that, I decided I didn't have enough faith in the recipe to expend the energy to make the meringue and sauce. But I wondered if a caramel icing might make the saltiness of the bread less pronounced. I used my go-to caramel icing and poured it on the bread. It helped somewhat; my salt-loving son gobbled it up. But honestly, I would make any other banana bread I've posted on this blog over this one.

Caramel icing

3 Tablespoons butter
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
3 Tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup powdered sugar

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the sugar and the milk. Bring to a boil and continue to boil for 1 minute. Remove from the heat, add the vanilla and gradually mix in the powdered sugar.

My original directions say this icing hardens up quickly so you need to work fast, and if it hardens up too quickly, add some more milk to thin it out. I haven’t found this to be the case – in fact, I find that I need to let it cool off long enough to thicken a bit, so it doesn’t run right off the cake. This makes a lot of icing – I drizzle it in layers on top of the cake.

Banana Bread
From Stephanie Izard on the Top Chef Web site.
This makes a dense, salty bread so I would at least change the amount of salt.

1/3 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
3 ripe bananas
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt (I would use only a pinch)
2 cups flour

Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixer, cream together butter and sugar; then add in bananas and vanilla. Combine dry ingredients and slowly add to batter. Mix to combine. Butter or pan spray in 9x9 inch pan. Bake for approximately 25 to 30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean when tested.

Top Chef Chicago, episode 9

This episode began with the women remarking that this is the first time that four women have made it to the top eight. So you just know a woman will be eliminated in this episode.

First, the Quickfire challenge: a culinary skills relay race, a favorite challenge from past seasons. They draw knives to choose teams. On one side: Dale, Nikki, Spike and Lisa. On the other: Richard, Stephanie, Antonia and Andrew. This season's tasks: to peel and supreme five oranges, to clean and turn an artichoke such that a neat heart and stem remain, to clean and filet a gigantic monkfish, and to make a quart of mayonnaise. The hot potato is the mayo.

Nikki and others say they haven't made mayo since chef's school, because they usually make it in a Robot Coupe. This is the second time in the show I've heard the chefs talk about a Robot Coupe. Since the line is subtitled, I have enough information to Google Robot Coupe. I find out it's a commercial food processor. Did Robot Coupe pay for that product placement? I can't decide. If they did, they are one of the smarter marketers in this show, because the chefs mentioning the product intrigued me enough to look it up. If those comments were accompanied by a three-second close-up of an actual Robot Coupe, I would have been annoyed by what was clearly a paid placement. Glad should take notes.

But I digress. Back to the relay race. First, Lisa and Antonia face off on the orange task. Lisa gets her team off to a huge lead and it looks like the apparent underdog team will prevail. Next up are Spike and Andrew on the artichokes. Spike breaks an artichoke and blows his team's lead. When it's time for Dale and Richard to cut into the monkfish (a fierce looking creature), it's neck and neck. Dale and Richard finish in a dead heat. Then it's on to mayo, and Stephanie prevails over Nikki. Major celebration! Wahoo -- maybe this will help Stephanie get her mojo back! Dale slams a locker and yells the f-word. I probably should think that's terrible but it does show that he's a fierce competitor.

The prize for the Quickfire isn't immunity. No, it's supposedly a chance to get an advantage in the elimination challenge. They introduce two guests -- a couple getting married the next day. Each team will serve 125 guests -- one, the bride's guests, and the other, the groom's guests. The winning Quickfire team gets to decide who to work with, the bride or the groom. They are given no information about either person. Huh? That's the prize for the Quickfire? I don't like the implication at all -- in other words, let's all stay away from Bridezilla.

Richard announces that it's the bride's day and they'll pick the bride. That is so cool. I can't decide if he's a master strategist or just a nice guy, but I love that.

When I saw the preview about the wedding, my first reaction was to wonder what kind of crazy couple would have their wedding catered as a reality show challenge. Then they mentioned that the two of them own a restaurant and wedding location! Ah ha! They are using their wedding as PR for their business. How very romantic.

The teams will be working through the night to cater the wedding the next day. Come on -- what purpose does that serve? I stopped watching Survivor because I felt too guilty watching the contestants starve for my entertainment. I don't want to feel guilty about watching Top Chef, too.

Andrew has a "culinary boner" about working all night. What a wonderful picture that puts in my head. Ugh.

The bride and groom meet with their teams, and it turns out that the groom likes Italian food. This makes Nikki grin from ear to ear. She hits it off with the groom right away, and remarks that they have a similar palate. Plus, everyone likes Italian, don't they? Maybe the weaker team will pull it off.

The bride likes potatoes, pasta, pizza, chicken "if it's fried," steak and blue cheese. She is from Georgia and Richard lives in Atlanta, so that teams seems to have a good client as well. They decide their theme is meat and potatoes/the Midwest meets the South/comfort food. Sounds like an unexciting theme for a wedding buffet. I'm thinking the groom's team has the advantage when it comes to theme.

And, by the way, the teams get to make wedding cakes, too! One for the bride and one for the groom. I wonder if the couple had to pay for any of this. Sounds like a steal to me.

The bride's team seems to work well together. The only fly in the ointment is Andrew, who seems to be either jealous of or threatened by Richard. Or maybe his culinary boner is lasting for hours, like in the Viagara ads, and it's making him grumpy. (Yeah, that was terrible. I couldn't resist.)

The groom's team isn't feeling the love. They look to Nikki, the resident expert in Italian cooking, for leadership and direction, but she isn't giving it. I see trouble brewing for Nikki. Dale becomes more and more irritated as the night goes on, but channels his pent-up frustration into working like a dog.

To me the people who take on the cakes are the brave ones. Lisa is doing the chocolate-hazelnut groom's cake. The cake is rectangular and squat but looks and sounds delicious. Stephanie does the wedding cake, chocolate with lemon, and smartly uses flowers to decorate it. Looks gorgeous, but chocolate and lemon -- ewwww! I do not like chocolate and citrus together.

The guest judge is Gale Gand -- finally! As Stephanie said, she is one of the top pastry chefs in Chicago, so she should be there. I was lucky enough to be around her for a couple of hours a few years ago (terrible picture of me but I couldn't resist), and found her to be a friendly, down-to-earth person. I would be very surprised if she wasn't fair and kind toward those chefs.

The wedding is at a pretty location. Wonder if the bride and groom own it? I'll bet they do!

The bride's food seems to be well received. The filet and brisket get favorable remarks. The least favorite dish is Andrew's chicken nuggets. Seems as though they got kind of ... flaccid, maybe? ... as they sat in the chafing dishes.

The groom's food isn't faring so well. Nikki's homemade pasta is too sweet and "not good." The roasted veggies are unoriginal.

After it was all over, the chefs are the picture of exhaustion. Do you think they could have let the chefs go to sleep and had judge's table the next morning? No, let's continue torturing the chefs. Or maybe the chefs wouldn't have been able to sleep, waiting for the judges' table. Either way, I felt sorry for them.

The bride's team gets grilled first. Here's what's cool about Richard. The judges didn't care for the taste of the star anise that was in the team's creamed spinach. Even though Andrew made it, Richard owned up to having suggested the star anise. No matter, the team won. And the winner was Richard, for his leadership and cooking. Richard chose to give the win to Stephanie for making the wedding cake. Shrewd or nice? I'm not sure, but I agree that Stephanie deserved it. The prize: $2,000 to spend at Crate & Barrel. I wonder if how Richard's wife reacted when she saw that episode. If I were her, I might have told Richard he'd have to wait a while longer before they got started on making Baby Blaises! Product placement or no, Crate & Barrel rocks!

The groom's team loses. They ask who was the team leader and Nikki washes her hands of all responsibility. "In no way am I playing executive chef for this," she says. Dale is frustrated because he felt like he did more than his share of the work. They showed some debate but the decision was a no brainer. They chose the person who should have stepped up to being the leader -- Nikki. I agree with the decision 100%. Arrivederci, Nikki.

This is where the show gets interesting. Richard is clearly the front runner, but unlike many chefs from previous seasons, he comes across as a personable guy. It would be very satisfying to see Richard win this thing. In fact, I'm beginning to think that any other result -- other than maybe Stephanie coming from behind -- would be a major disappointment. Go Richard and Stephanie! Let the nice chefs finish first!