Food Network Star 7/17/11

We're trying out some new technology over here at SnarkFood, seeing if we can save some trees by recording our reactions instead of writing them down.

The episode is just beginning and already Penny is making people uncomfortable.  Let me take a moment and be shocked.  OK, moment over. I realized that Will, the person on Hell's Kitchen that I thought I recognized from another show, was just reminding me of Jeff from FNS.  Whitney's losing confidence again, and she's on the phone with her boyfriend.  He's telling her to just be herself and let the great person that she is shine through, and I decide that I officially love him.  He earns major Boyfriend Points for that move.  Dave remembers that Whitney had been getting advice from her mom a couple of episodes before.

Today marks Midterms for our lovely (and not-so-lovely) contestants, with a double elimination coming at the end.  Camera Challenge is for each contestant to make their signature dish and demo it on camera.  There's a twist this time, though: each contestant is given a specific thing to work on during their demo.  Suzie is told that she needs to focus. Jyll is told to surprise them and decides to surprise herself in the process.  Mary Beth needs to own her food and talk about it like it belongs to someone else.  Vic is told to be more of an expert.  His show is currently called "Mama's Boy" and has a shit-tastic bib-based logo. Chris is making gnocchi...not sure that's gonna end well. Penny sets something besides men's hearts on fire at the end of prep.  Dave points out that she has the ability to be relatable like she was in the Fourth of July episode, but she doesn't really use that ability.  During prep, Jeff appears to be having too much fun with the Slap Chop.  Uh oh, he's sauteeing peas...I hope he learned from Carissa not to pea on the floor.  "Or make any ball jokes," Dave adds.  

During demo, Jyll goes from not having a plan to having one that falls somewhat flat.  Whitney shines as she talks about her yellow gazpacho.  I comment, "Whitney was in a sorority?  We're not surprised!"  She's always been perky.  Here comes Chris with gluey gnocchi, trying to tell the viewers how to do everything in one minute.  Although he tried to do too much and wasn't able to focus, he did manage to end his spiel perfectly on the one-minute mark.  Jeff tries to be warmer by lowering his voice and succeeds only in putting us to sleep.  Mary Beth can't tell us what's uniquely hers about her spaghetti and meatballs.  Suzie demonstrates making tortillas but needs some more focus.  Dave comments that she's teaching us to eat a raw tortilla, but she did actually put it in the pan for a bit.  Penny isn't descriptive enough in her demo, telling the viewer to "put this in here."  What's this and where's here?  Once again, Penny's food is great and her personality sucks.  The selection committee tells her that's not gonna fly at Food Network, but the question is, how desperate are they for a Middle Eastern chef?  Vic is so busy telling us about the ingredients of his food that he doesn't get any actual cooking done.  Suddenly it hits Dave, "Speaking of sending people home, where's Susie been?"  Maybe they want to avoid confusion between contestant-Suzie and judge-Susie?

Dave is surprised at Whitney being named the clear winner.  I comment that the judges loved her food, and Dave replies, "Well, maybe I need to rewind and lick the tv then!"  I don't think he'd enjoy that very much...too much dust to go with the little zap.  Dave, can you describe how a little zap tastes?  Whitney wasn't necessarily the best on camera, but she did the best job at doing exactly what the judges told her to focus on.  As we cut to commercial, we see a clip where Mary Beth actually has her arm around Penny.  I guess forcing them together worked!

As we come back from commercial, there's a knock at the door of the house, and Jeff comments that, "No one ever knocks on our door except the pizza guy."  I guess after all that cooking on camera they don't want to cook at home, but I could see off-camera cooking being an effective intimidation technique if done well.  The contestants are told they are making one course each for the judges (including Susie this time) and Wolfgang Puck.  They are limited to the ingredients that are in the house at the time, leading Dave to call it the Five Ingredient Fix Challenge.  Whitney assigns the courses, and Chris hopes he doesn't get dessert...which of course he does.  Let's hope he can do better than the cakes for the dessert channel.  Penny and Mary Beth go shopping with Whitney and find it to be a Universal Female Bonding Experience.

Suzie improvises on her cheese course based on her knowledge that a kind of Latin American cheese can actually be approximated with feta.  Chris decides to bake cake without any recipe but the one for disaster.  Even when I've created my own recipe for a baked good, I've at least started with a couple of recipes and combined them together, and even then it didn't come out quite right the first time.  This isn't the time to try and slide by on "not quite right!"  Whitney lets people do what they want rather than taking control as the team leader...that didn't end well for Jyll and I doubt it'll end well for Whitney either. 

Since Mary Beth is going shopping, Chris can get at least some of his baking done before Mary Beth needs the oven if he moves his butt.  Chris accuses other contestants of sabotage for changing the oven temperature.  Chris, the Paranoia Help Line is free, Penny's off of it!  Besides, if you're working without a recipe, you have no right to bitch about what temperature the oven is.  Jyll is having issues with her risotto and refuses Whitney's advice, which is interesting given her later wail of, "Why didn't anyone stop me?" 
Mary Beth thinks her dish will be great because she writes about food so well.  You know, I'm a food blogger now, too, but that doesn't mean I can cook well enough to be the next Food Network star.  With five minutes left, Jeff puts on his headband.  Uh oh, that means everything he did up till now will be ruined because he didn't have his Mojo Monk Headband on!  Dave comments, "Hey, if that's all he needs to get his confidence up, more power to him."  That's true, but still, if you give us something to snark on, we're going to snark on it.  At the end of their cooking time, the contestants cheer and open a bottle of champagne.  Jyll, I'm not sure you should be the one opening that champagne, thinking about that risotto, hon.  Dave points out, "It did look better than some of those risottos I saw last night on Hell's Kitchen, though."  True, but that's not saying much.

Jeff comes back with a perfect presentation of his beef carpaccio.  Vic presents well, although he has a stance like a drill sergeant.  Mary Beth owns her dish and talks it up, but her food doesn't live up to the star billing.  Even Bobby says it has a little too much cayenne pepper.  Penny is surprisingly warm and teaches us a bit of Farsi in her presentation, which I enjoy because the last time I learned any Farsi it was in Not Without my Daughter in middle school.  Jyll gets a crash course in making risotto from Wolfgang Puck.  A sweet corn risotto does sound good, but it needs to actually be made right.  I do like Puck taking the time to show her how to do it, even if she is embarrassed, rather than just telling her, "This sucks and you're screwed."  Puck tells Jyll to always use a small pan, which is interesting given how much success I had making risotto in a wok.  Jyll holds it together and keeps herself from bursting into tears like Alicia, and Susie says it still seems fake to her.  Jyll, don't give up after one bomb...at least you didn't break/cut your finger on camera like Mario Batali.  Whitney continues her improvement in what will hopefully be enough to keep her safe.  Suzie wows the crowd with her feta-filled chile relleno.  Chris says twice during his presentation that he's not very familiar with dessert, and Bobby puts his finger to his head like a gun.  I'm sure that Chris is going home, and Dave adds, "Chris, why don't you just throw yourself in the pool while you're at it?"  Hey, if it's as hot there as it has been here... 

At least when Julia Child apologized on camera, it was with the idea of brushing the food off and going on.  "No excuses!"  Unlike Chris, Suzie did not apologize for her food even when she didn't have the right ingredients, even when she was being interrogated by the judges after the dessert battle about her churro pancakes.  Dave agrees that Chris is going home but adds, "Jyll, Jyll, I like you a lot, girl, but you're in trouble."  Good thing for Jyll that, since it's midterms, they're looking at everything so far and not just performance in this episode.  They keep showing Jyll with her face in her hands, but we think that's in surprise at not getting sent home.  Honey, just keep it together in the evaluation room and don't be like Alicia.  They also keep showing the judges saying, "You're going home," and then cutting to a shot of Vic, which almost guarantees that they're not cutting him. 

Whitney is told in evaluation that she still needs to reach out more.  She's made progress and won't go home this weekend, but she won't win either.  Suzie is asked to share more about herself and cries as she tells the group about her upbringing and how hard she had to work to get to and through culinary school.  At this point, I think Suzie's the frontrunner.  We get reminded about Jeff's All-Bran joke...I really didn't need to be reminded of it.  He gets asked about why he didn't make a sandwich and replied that he wanted to please Wolfgang Puck instead of doing a sandwich.  What I would have loved to see would have been the carpaccio wrapped around something and called an Inside-Out Sandwich.  Penny is told to open up and let more of herself out, and Dave wonders whether there is anything else in there to let out.  Aside from drama?  I'm not sure.  Giada just looks annoyed at Chris, and Bobby smacks him down like a red-headed stepchild for the lobster wrap.  As he continues, Bobby even sounds like the parent of a recalcitrant teenager!  As they get ready to eliminate people, Dave and I both think Chris and Mary Beth are heading out the door.  Jyll, Chris, Mary Beth, and Penny are the ones up for elimination.  Dave comments that at least Chris has gotten better from "Get the %^&* off my tv."  Still, I do hope he gets the *(%& off my tv for good tonight.  Bobby comments in the private deliberations about Chris coming off as confident.  To me, Chris doesn't come across as confident so much as brash.  Chris is sent home and then we get to see whether Penny and Mary Beth get to say BFFs or not.  We think that next they'll tell Penny she's safe, but instead they tell Mary Beth she's safe.  Dave notices that Bobby looks like he doesn't agree with that decision. "That's just the most miserable expression I've ever seen on his face, even when he was getting his ass whipped by Morimoto in Iron Chef Japan.  He doesn't want to see Penny go.  He loves her food and doesn't want to let her go."  Yep, Penny goes home.  She says, "I'm glad I got an opportunity to bring my culture and my food to the Food Network."  Penny, you showed that the Food Network needs your culture and your food.  They just need someone who's not a bitch to do it.  Dave disagrees about her being a bitch, saying she just needs to open up.  "The closest she ever got to being open was back at the beginning of the season when she was trying to sex things up with Stilettos in the Kitchen, and that was just a disaster conceptually."

So, six of them left.  Is there anyone other than Suzie or Vic that looks like they could be a winner in this group?  Dave thinks that Jyll doesn't stand out enough, especially when compared to Melissa d'Arabian.  I want Suzie to win at this point.  I like Vic a lot, but in terms of bringing something new, Vic is like Guy Fieri and Michael Symon rolled into one.  I don't know if that one woman who had a Latin American cooking show is off the air now or just relegated to weekend mornings, but I like the way Suzie does it.  Vic makes American food.  He does it special, he does it Vegas-style, but he makes American food.  There's not enough ethnic food on the Food Network.  There's plenty of things where I can learn new techniques, but I would learn a lot more that's new to me from someone like Suzie or Penny (I would say Debbie, but I already know that soy sauce and garlic are Korean!).  Mary Beth still looks to Dave like she'll be the next one to go.  Whitney's improving, but she won't last to the end.  Jeff's doing something new that's not on Food Network now, but he's not a frontrunner.  Dave thinks he could end up as a dark horse, but we have seen the dark horse win before...look at Aaron McCargo, Jr.

Next week they're on Rachel Ray and we see from the preview that Mary Beth likes a good bone.  Not sure what to make of that, but we'll see.