Can I impress a top chef Judge? Let’s find out. [Intense music] Now we make a lot of weird, delicious food on this show, and you might be asking yourself, does any of it actually taste good? I may have surrounded myself with sycophantic yes, people who lie to my face and yours. So to alleviate any doubts we have invited a real professional to give their unbiased opinion. So everyone, please put your hands together. For Top Chef, judge, and executive producer Gail Simmons. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, it’s such a pleasure to see you. Thank you for having me. Likewise. I am nervous. I’m incredibly nervous. You should be. I’ve, Ooh God. I thought you were gonna make me feel better, but nope. I kinda love that. The Top Chef Kitchen is not the place to work out your baggage. I’m all bark and no bite. I swear. I have been watching Top Chef all 22 seasons since I was a kid, and now I feel– I was a kid too, by the way. You truly were. We’re both still kids, I think. Totally. In a sense. But I’m absolutely honored that you will be judging my food today. I’m excited. You know, people think that I, um, am like really stuffy and really take food seriously, but like I just want delicious food and I’ll take it anyway I can get it. Well, you will get it anyway you can get it today because– Famous last words. Because we will be cooking a three course fine dining meal with exclusively Dollar Tree ingredients. Excellent. I listen, I think, I think any chef can cook good food with any ingredient. Right. Even if that ingredient is a beautiful, uh, Spanish chorizo seco. Um, it’s a Slim Jim and it’s a, but it’s a smoked snack stick. See. What’s amazing is that it doesn’t actually even say meat in the name. Legally, legally, they cannot call it that. But it has six grams of protein and I, I do secretly enjoy. This is gonna sound terrible. Um, I do secretly enjoy meat stick. I listen, I get meat sticks anyway I can get ’em. Yeah, well. So we got Slim Jim, we have Lunchables. We do have some Top Ramen, but it is my job to transform these ingredients into something completely unrecognizable and something worthy of the top Chef judges table. Do you think that I can do it? Shrimp scampy. Sorry, I got very distracted. Um, do I think you could do it? Yeah. I, I’m concerned, I’m actually confident in you. You don’t need to use expensive ingredients to make good food. But I am of the mind that you want to buy the best quality ingredients that you can afford. Ultra processed foods can be, um, manipulated in order to take the form that they’re in because you know, some of the things that will be seeing today, for example, like have a shelf life of a million years, a lot of people might not know this about me, but if I could have one wish in the world, it’d be world peace. If I could have two wishes in the world, it would be world peace, and then I would get to compete on a season of Top Chef. And I’ve thought about this a lot. How long would I last on Top Chef? Three episodes max. However. However, those three episodes would be the greatest day of my life. So this is effectively my audition tape, cooking for the legend Gail Simmons. I am very familiar with Josh’s style of cuisine. Because I’m a fan of Mythical Kitchen and I have watched Josh evolve over the years, um, with his style and cook so many different things. I sort of love the ethos of what he does because I think there’s just like a lot of room to play and make new creations and make them like accessible and delicious. I’m gonna start dicing up Lunchables ham coins. God dang it. Why do we always have to this? A great chef can cook with any ingredients, which is why we are making Croquetas estilo cubano and instant mashed potatoes, Lunchables and, God, I don’t know what else we’re we’re, we’re gonna figure it out. We’re using packaged gravy later in this recipe, but for now, Cuban style croquettes. This is something that when I was in Miami, I ate a lot of, shout out to my boy Seth Gonzalez for showing me around town. It’s like a ham and cheese and potato. Uh, normally it’ll be like a big plank that’s deep fried. But Gail is Canadian and they recently did a poutine challenge on Top Chef. And so I wanna try and turn these freaking Lunchable Croquettes into poutine. This. If we, y’all, if we pull this off, this is seriously going to be like our greatest culinary achievement ever. I’m excited. Um, I’m gonna add the water. into dehydrated mashed potatoes. Let’s give this a stir. We need to get some flavor in here. So I’m gonna add some garlic powder. God dangit. The only dollar tree salt is inexplicably this fancy salt cracker, which this, I don’t know, like. I’m creating my own salt well. Because when you are cracking the salt, you guys know this, you can’t actually tell how much salt you’re adding ’cause you’re distracted by the noise. It’s like daredevil, the superhero who’s deaf. And so he can fight really good. He’s blind and deaf. Going to add a little bit of flour in there just to give it some sort of binder. And then in go the ham coins, that is maybe a phrase that has never been said in the history of Top Chef. Not having tasted Josh’s food, but knowing a little bit about his cooking and about the Mythical Kitchen he cooks in. I would say he could. Hold his own for a few challenges. You know the issue often for people who don’t spend all their time in professional kitchens, it’s about the quantities and the sort of endurance of working in a professional kitchen and, and the volume. That’s…. the real key. Gail. I did CrossFit. I got endurance. Sorry. All right. Okay. He does CrossFit and he has endurance, so like that’s not an issue. I don’t actually necessarily mean endurance of your physical fitness because obviously he’s so fit and incredibly in shape. In other sentences, never uttered on Top Chef, I gotta squeeze my sack of potato mush. Okay. Oh man. All right, so the goal is to get this into roughly french fry shaped things that we are then going to freeze and fry. That’s looking, look at that. Oh, is this a good idea? You know, you know when they ask like, uh, top Chef contestants, I don’t know. How much top do you watch Top Chef? Do you guys watch Top Chef? It’s by far the greatest cooking competition show. Ever made and it’s ’cause they don’t allow producers to get into it. ’cause when Tom Colicchio signed on to Top Chef, he was like, only the judges got a say on who moves on. So it’s the only cooking competition. I, it’s like the only cooking competition that still like really holds weight. Like if you’re a Top Chef winner, you’re getting restaurant deals. Like I love Master Chef, love all of the Gordon Ramsey programming, but Top Chef like really stands above it. And so guys, if I can get on. Imagine getting this at a restaurant. Go and make the gravy. Going to make the gravy. So, uh, gravy poutine. Poutine has a brown gravy on it. We don’t have freshly braised beef bones. No, no, no. But what we do got is some store-bought beef broth from the Dollar Tree, and we certainly don’t have butter for a roux, but what we do got is this imitation butter like product that is– Oh, okay. There we go. That’s pretty solid. Uh, that is just a bunch of hydrogenated vegetable oils. Uh. I’m just gonna dump the flour and we’ll figure that out. And we’re just gonna make a roux, we’re gonna try and get a bit of a dark roux going here, as dark as this will get us. Roux of course, is a mixture of fat and flour. That is the basis of a lot of different French mother sauces. Uh, you can make a blonde roux, which would be for like a bechamel. You can make a, what I call it like a, like a rouxmaron or something like a nice little brown roux. We’re going nice, dark, dark Cajun roux here trying to really develop some of those flavors. So. We’re gonna let that go. Mean. Meanwhile, they also didn’t have any eggs. Typical dredging situation. You go flour, egg breadcrumb for schnitzel or whatever the — you’re doing. Uh, yeah. Don’t got that. So we’re gonna try and dip it straight into milk. And see if it’s gonna work. This is the old milk fried Croquette, so we’re gonna put this into seasoned flour. Who’s dining the best, Chef? Restaurant Wars. In Restaurant wars. Okay, here’s the thing. Front of house, I feel like everyone always messes up front of house, so like, oh, I’m worried about bothering the diners and touching the tables too much. No, no, no. I’m there. I’m at every single table. I’m cracking jokes. I’m making Kristen Kish, Tom and Gail laugh, you know what I mean? Doesn’t matter if, if the food is 40 minutes late because every single Restaurant Wars are like, we’re 40 minutes behind. Diners have been sitting for three hours and they haven’t gotten appetizers. Doesn’t matter. ’cause I’m there keeping ’em company, I’m pouring free wine. I’m sneaking my own. Franzi, a sunset, blush, boxed wine in, pourin’ at every table. They’re gonna love it. That’s all it takes, people. That is hospitality 1 0 1. Give me a free drink. Give me a little bite of something to keep me going. Just don’t forget about me. Judges, what we have for you today is– Just one of us. A play. Sorry. Muscle memory, on poutine, uh, there is, uh, our multiple tableside elements to it. Um, if I could have some room. Yes please. Thank you so much. You do you, sweet Jesus. Little bit melted. Beautiful. Thank you. And may I do the tableside gravy-ing? I love a tableside gravy-ing. Lovely. So what we have here is a Cuban croquetas poutine. We have taken the dehydrated instant mashed potatoes. We have mixed that up with a brunoise of Lunchables ham and cheese mixed with a little bit of flour, breaded and fried it. Um, there were no eggs, so we did just use milk for a part of the breading. We have topped it with not necessarily authentic squeaky cheese curds understood, but it is pulled string cheese. Um, the color is, is really quite beautiful on that, on that gravy. You can’t deny its roasted nature and it doesn’t smell so bad. Ah, I mean, there was a lot of work here, Josh. Thank you so much. We aim to please. Okay. I like the, the cheese pull. Mm-hmm. I can read blowtorch your food at any moment if you like. Thank you. A tableside blowtorching. That was a first for me. So, you know. For me as well. Um, have you tasted this? I have not tasted the full dish yet. May I? So you didn’t please, you didn’t, um, you didn’t taste your food. Is that what you’re telling me? That is correct, chef. Just checking. I mean, it’s not bad. It’s not bad. I mean, I’ve gone back for third. For thirds. Is it evocative of poutine? You said you don’t love when people– No, no, not at all. No. I mean it has the elements visually. I get the reference and appreciate it. Yeah, because Canada is the underdog and I just appreciate anyone who wants to take time to delve into our food culture. I think your culture is beautiful. Thank you. And the Canadian jump, Seato is fantastic. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. But I actually really enjoy the croquette and using the instant mashed potatoes is like. And the Lunchables is not a bad idea. Thank you so much. I think you did a better job than most without socod, if you know what I mean. I sure do. Uh, ultimately, do you think this is a successful dish? You know, you gave us a point of reference of the poutine, but it doesn’t really taste like that. We have this ve we, all of us here have this reference for that. Then, you know, it kind of feels like it didn’t hit that mark. Mm-hmm. You know, if you really wanna get technical. But I love the croquetta and it’s also like kind of delicious. Gail, I will say the winner of the poutine challenge was not fried at all, and it was just a wet fondant potato, but somehow that was more evocative of poutine than this. Well, that challenge was to totally turn it around, right? Like not give us traditional poutine. Put me in the confessional. I wanna talk smack on Gail. Yeah. Put me in the talk again. Yeah, that’s fine. That’s how it goes. Tell you what you, you guys better get a good look at Gail socks when she walks in. Because when she leaves, they’re gonna be knocked. Whew. Clean off by this dish. We’re beating the top chef curse today. It is the curse of the risotto. Cursed no more! Risotto’s, actually not that difficult to make. It’s just that it needs to be served at a very specific consistency at temperature and quickly after it’s made. It can’t sit around and it, you know, can’t. Be left without care. So Josh, if you can do that today, I am all for it. So we’re gonna add a lot of fat to this because we wanna toast the rice in the fat that’s gonna prevent it from like kind of clumping together. You’re gonna get a nice toast on it. So we’re gonna let that go. Meanwhile, chorizo seco de Espana. What? What is stopping this from being a fancy charcuterie meat? Right? What a different blend of spices. You know, you’re saying, oh, Josh, this is all the parts of the pork that they don’t want, and they just send to the slim Jim factory. What do you think charcuterie is? That’s all it is. It was the part they had to eat the whole damn animal. Back in Italy, they had no refrigeration. They’re like, we’re gonna hang it up, mix it up with spices, let it mold over. Slim Jim is legitimately just Spanish chorizo seco sold in gas stations across America. All right. We’re gonna sort of split this like a vanilla bean, and then you just. Scoop out the insides. Okay. Slim Jims goin’ in the pot. I, I think we’ve made one salad in the mythical kitchen and we have now made two slim Jim Risottos. That’s, that’s crazy. That is a crazy ratio to have right there. If this wasn’t obvious, this risotto is inspired by the flavors of paella. I will add some tomatoes in there. I’ll let these cook down a little bit just because I wanna reduce that juice. Get a little bit of char on the tomatoes. Get a little bit of cook. There’s been a sort of chekov’s grape juice here the whole time. No one has address. Don’t worry. I’m getting to it. Uh, the ramen, it’s a little flavor packet in here. I said inspired by paella and not paella valenciana. Which has of course, uh, chicken and snails in it. No, this is your normal, you know, like a cruise ship paella that’s on like the buffet table. This is just like dehydrated shrimp and MSG. In a typical risto, you would deglaze the rice and the aromatics with white wine. What is white wine made out of? Well, grapes, this is white grape peach because they had no pure white grape. This is all just pear juice though, right? No apple, peach and grape. Well into the pot. So what you do with a risotto is you continually stir in broth until it’s risotto. You continually stir in broth as you gradually cook the rice, which draws out starch from the outside of the rice, creating a creaminess effect. So normally with a risotto, you would use a quality olive oil. We got some margarine in there in soybean oil. That’s gonna give it a lot less, uh, complexity. Also, Taylor. Taylor, Winnie, look, look in the bottom of the pan, you see that? You see that in the bottom of the pan. Mm-hmm. So in paella they call that socarrat. Socarrat means soul of the pan. That’s where all the flavor is. It’s hap, it’s all happening. Well. Now everybody on top Chef says that they can make risotto in exactly 17 minutes. ’cause risotto only takes exactly to 17 minutes and it’ll be a 20 minute challenge. And then they got five minutes left and the risotto’s not cooking. They go, all I can do is sit here and stir more. And they do. And the risotto is always either one. Here’s the thing. I think I actually know how to make a risotto because of how bad all the top chef risottos were. ’cause they have a couple problems. One, they never leave themselves enough time, uh, and also they never season their stock. And then two, they always plate it too stodgy on the plate. A risotto should be able to run on the plate because the risotto is going to look very liquidy when you plate it. However, by the time it gets to the diner, the rice is going to reabsorb some of that liquid. So we’re gonna plate this risotto wet as frick, and by the time it gets to Gail, it’s gonna be perfect. Ah, God dammit. We’re gonna make a slim Jim Water tweel. So tuile is, is French for like fancy crispy little thingy thing. There’s a lot of different ways to make a tuile. You can use egg white blend stuff up with flavors, spread that, uh, cook it at a low temp and as some crispy. What we are going to do is taking inspiration from like the, the lacy skirt on dumplings. So we’re gonna make actually like a flour tuile. So we have. This Slim Jim Water here. More of a Slim Jim tea, if you will. And then we’re gonna go ahead and add some oil to that. That oil is actually going to allow the water to sort of like bubble up and almost fry through that flour. Someone’s, all that water’s evaporated. What you’re left with is like crispy flour and oil. Please let this work. Okay. Whisk. Surely this isn’t going to work. It’s a Slim Jim Water tuile. What the hell are we talking about? Shoot, I freaked it. We did it. So we have our Slim Jim tuile. We got all the sea food we could. We had to find shrimp inside a frozen shrimp fettuccine Alfredo bag, and then we washed them off. Guys, make sure, make sure judge gets a lot of shrimp. There’s still a little bit of Alfredo stuck to the shrimp, but that’s good. We’re gonna want that. Judges. Singular what we have for you today. Wow. This is a risotto inspired by the flavors of paella. Now we use that beautiful Spanish chorizo seco, rendered out the fat. We resalaid the rice in the Slim Jim fat, de glazed it in Dollar Tree’s, finest. Um, sort of an unfermented wine. It is white grape juice, technically. Unfermented wine. Mm-hmm. Is a nice, uh, way to put it. A Vin Coto. I, I would say, uh, and then. We took the shrimp out of the frozen fettuccine Alfredo and then, uh, we rinse that off and added that to our risotto. And, uh, we have made a chive dusted Slim Jim Water tuile. So it’s a slim Jim Water. I would maybe call it a Slim Jim tea if we’re being exact. It’s a, it’s like a slim Jim water cornstarch lace on the, on the dumpling. Alright, I’m going in, please. You know, the flavor is very reminiscent of paella. Like I, I definitely mm-hmm. Am enjoying that flavor. There’s a lot going on. Thank you. It’s a complex dish. Indeed. I love the Slim Jim Water tuile. That is forever now burned in my memory, but it’s sort of brilliant. Thank you. You know, and, and, and is it risotto? That’s the question. Yeah. Yeah. What, what is not risotto about it? Well, you know, it’s, it, the, the rice is really mushy. Yeah. Yeah. But better than completely raw. Although I would argue that real Italian risotto is more aldente. Then Americans think I’m getting the tomato. I’m getting that sort of like roasted texture and taste and um, yeah, I mean, I’m not, you want get in there? Oh, let me, let me jump in. Lemme jump in. I think you should taste yourself. I wanna see if you can taste the peach juice. So it was actually a white grape and peach juice cocktail. Interesting. Well that’s a bold combination. If I, if I was served that shrimp at a restaurant. I likely would not go back to that restaurant, you know. Perhaps. But hey Gail, it’s free food. Come on. Yeah, I’m fine with, I keep eating more of it. Like I can’t, this is the problem. I’m a bit like a goldfish. I get that. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. I, you know, I think that there’s some culinary innovation here. Really, really slim Jim Water for the win. Have I gotten myself in hot water talking about Basque separatist movements in the past? Absolutely. That’s why I won’t be talking about it now. I’ll only be talking about the basques in their lovely cheesecake that they love to burn. That’s a thing. Basque burnt cheesecake and it’s utterly delicious. The problem is it typically uses a fair amount of eggs. They ain’t got any eggs, so we’re making an egg less basque burnt cheesecake. Do they deserve sovereignty? That’s not for me to decide, apparently. Uh, so we are going to make a basque burnt cheesecake and we are also going to make an espresso caramel. What is espresso? If not for finely ground coffee. And this is instant coffee. It makes 32 cups. In fact, we got a little bit of the foil from the wrapping in there. I’ll take that up. There we go. Boom. Top chef. We’re gonna add a heaping tablespoon of that right into our water. We’re going to whisk that to dissolve. I love instant coffee. That is the thing that I think the rest of the world really got right. You know, that’s all I have to say about that. All right, cool. You’re gonna go ahead. Sorry. I was gonna make another joke about basque. Then now, in Basque Country, they do not make this with Philadelphia cream cheese. Maybe they should. Philadelphia cream cheese, I believe was founded in Indianapolis. Can someone fact check? That we’re gonna add sugar. I’m gonna start beating this together, creaming it up. We’ve softened the cream cheese. Now I’m gonna soften it some more. That’s nice. Now we could just serve that by itself. Cream cheese beaten with sugar, but we’re not gonna do that now. They got a lot of canned milk products at the Dollar Tree, which is why we’re adding evaporated milk to that. Speaking of canned milk products, sweet and condensed. Yep. Nailed it. I don’t buy it. Search Philadelphia cream cheese, Indianapolis. See what, what, what we find. Yeah, so it’s an egg endless cheesecake. And so a common substitute might be evaporated milk powder. But we’re using straight coffee. Make creamer. Do I know what’s in it? Not exactly. We’re dumping in about a half. Cut. Woo. Pure Colombian. Bam bam. Right there. Alright, cool. Whip it. Whip it. Real good. Instacart, Philadelphia Cream cheese from Indianapolis. See, I told you, That’s pretty good. Judge, it feels wrong. Judges, for our final dish. Dessert. We have a basque burnt cheesecake. Now this is an egg less cheesecake on account of they ain’t got any eggs. But we did our best along with an espresso, brown sugar, caramel, a little bit of cracked sea salt on top. Wanted to end you on something. Uh, extremely heavy. Hmm. It’s dense. It’s, oh boy, is it dense? Mm-hmm. You can feel the density as the spoon moves through it. Mm-hmm. I’ll say the caramel. The caramel, the consistency on it, I’m not super mad about, but there is a unique corn syrupy quality that there definitely is, is coming from. I wonder if I can kind of do that. There we go. Mm-hmm. Yes. There’s, there’s, um, an un…. Traditional gloop. Mm-hmm. Well, that’s the butter style sticks you see. Correct? I think that’s what it is. Um, it sticks to the palette in a way that most cheesecakes don’t. Yes. Uh, cement, like one might call it. Mm-hmm. Um, kinda like a poly denture glue situation. But the flavors. You said it, not me. I’m my own worst critic. Uh, the flavors, how are we feeling about it? I think the flavor’s really nice. Thank you. I, it’s like lingering probably from all the preservatives. Definitely uhhuh. But not in a clawing way. It’s not too sweet that it hurts. And it looks beautiful. Thank you so much. We have a half a cheesecake we can send you home with. It weighs nine pounds. Thank you. Hundred percent. It’s a small child. Yeah, absolutely. Gail, how do you think these dishes would’ve measured up against actual dishes you’ve eaten on Top Chef? In a quickfire situation, I think all three of these dishes would’ve stacked up. The poutine, can’t take back. The eye back, can’t take back. Sorry. Sorry. No, I, truthfully, they were made with thought and purpose and there was nothing egregiously terrible about them. And if we had required you to cook with these outlandish ingredients, I think you nailed it. I, that truly, truly means, yeah, the world’s me. Ultimately, how many episodes do you think I could last on Top Chef? Like imagine it’s a really down year. The ones where you don’t really have a front run or you’re like, oh, they all said no ’cause they don’t wanna leave their restaurants. You know, I say episode six, at least. That’s huge. That’s what I, and I think epi episode, if you make it past episode five, you will definitely be a contestant that everyone remembers for a long time. Absolutely. And I’m gonna come in, I’m gonna cause a lot of drama. Oh, great. I’m, I’m not gonna cut any contestants hair against their will. Been there, done that. Those are the olden days. Definitely not gonna do that, but Oh, I’m gonna be crying all the time. Stealing meeson plus. I’m gonna be a mess. Gale. Amazing. Absolute mess. You’re gonna fit right in. Uh, truly. Thank you so much. This is really like a dream come true for me. I’ve been an absolute top chef, super fan, a huge, super fan of yours particularly. So that means a lot. And also I don’t get to have so much fun with my food. You know what I mean? And I think you guys do the best job of it here. Thank you so much. You are welcome back anytime. Be careful what you offer. I can make a reservation for any time. I know some people. You gotta drink the complimentary Melort shot. She did deny the Melort shot. That is terribly rude. It should be mandatory drinking with your food. Everyone make sure you check out Top Chef. I am fully freaking locked in this year. Team Tristan, let’s go. God, I hope he doesn’t get eliminated next episode. We’ll see y’all next time. Thank you. Mark your calendars from May 15th at 5:00 PM Pacific. It’s the Sporked Live taste-test-a-thon. Subscribe to Sporked today so you don’t miss out.