Top Chef: Miami, episode ... oh, who can keep track?: Cooking for the French CIA!

Tom: "What happened to Eric Three Thousand? He's supposed to be blogging this show but he just hasn't been Top Blogger material lately. This is supposed to be a blog! I just don't think he's ready. I'm very disappointed."

Padma: "Oh, calm down, Tom! Haven't you been paying attention? Eric has been very busy remodeling and moving into a house. Give him a break!"

Thank you Padma, you big tramp. That's very nice of you to defend me. It's true; I've spent most of this month remodeling and we just moved in yesterday, although the house isn't completely ready yet. There's still some touch-up painting throughout the house and my bathroom is not suitable for human use at this point but we slept at the new place for the first time last night! Although it is supposedly bigger than our old apartment, we still can't seem to find space for things. I'm sure it will get better once we have things put away. Anyway, I'll have some remodeling posts in the near future; I promise. Until then, you can check out some pictures over on Other Eric's blog Everything Eric. You may have to scroll down through lots of Big Brother recaps but there are a few pictures there.

So here's a quick Top Chef recap:

We start the episode with everyone saying that he or she is going to the finals:

Dale: "I'm a big gay chef and I'm going to the finals!"

Other Eric: "Uh oh; he's going home."

Sara: "I'm a big cheesy chef and I'm going to the finals!"

Other Eric: "Uh oh; I think that means she's going home."

Brian: "I love fish and I'm going to the finals!"

Other Eric: "You know what that means. He's going home."

Hung: "I'm the greatest and I'm going to win this."

Other Eric: "Ooh, I think ..."

Yeah, we get it! they are all going home!

Casey: "Hey, I didn't even get to say how I'm not classically trained but that I'm still going to the finals."

Well, she's definitely going home tonight.

Other Eric: "See, now you're doing it!"

CJ: "What about me? I only have one testicle but I'm going to win!"

OK, who let CJ out of New Jersey?

For the quickfire, the chefs have to duplicate Sirio Maccioni's fish-wrapped-in-potato dish that is so special you can't even get it on Le Cirque's regular menu:

Hung: "Every chef should be able to make this dish."

If every chef could make that dish, it wouldn't be special, would it? Dope.

Anyway, Hung wins, though Casey's was pretty good. I think hers wasn't visually as good a match as Hung's:

Sirio Maccioni: "I'm Italian so I like the pretty ladies and I would love to give the win to Casey but because I don't think the pretty ladies should be the chefs I have to give it to Hung."

Fair enough. Dale is complaining about Hung not being nice:

Dale: "We asked Hung to tell us exactly how to cook the fish so that we could try to do it better than he did but he's such a jerk he wouldn't tell us."

WHY THE HELL WOULD HE?!! He's trying to win this competition! Sheesh!

For the elimination challenge the chefs have to create an amazing dish based on the very basic ingredients of chicken, onion, and potato. They are cooking for the French Culinary Institute of America. That's not really what it's called but it's something like that.

Chefs: "They couldn't fly us to Paris for this challenge? Cheapskates."

Dale hangs out all day with Casey at the farmer's market:

Dale: "I don't care if becoming best friends with Casey means I'll be going home. She's so fabulous I can't help myself!"

So Sara made chicken-onion-potato couscous that didn't go over very well. Brian made chicken and lobster pot pie (just kidding; it was really chicken and sausage). The judges liked it but didn't think it emphasized the chicken enough. Hung made poached chicken with fried skin and a potato puff. Apparently it didn't puff enough but his dish was still popular. Casey made coc au vin:

Tom: "It's not coc au vin because she used chicken."

OMG! We know it's supposed to be a cock! But who the hell is going to go buy a rooster and cook it for 12 hours to make a real coc au vin. Who cares if it's chicken? If it's poultry cooked in wine and it tastes good, call it whatever you want! Get your head out of your ass, Tom.

Dale makes some mess with a dish in two parts but both parts are the same except the sauce is just slightly different and nobody can figure out why.

Dale: "No dish is going to be perfect the first time you make it."

So, here's an idea: MAKE SOMETHING YOU'VE MADE BEFORE!

Dale: "I've never made a chicken dish before so I had to invent something new."

Right. Seriously, I understand the importance of innovation and that some of the challenges call on the chefs to use techniques or ingredients to which they are unaccustomed. But they should have some signature dishes practiced enough that they can pull them off without constantly saying it's the first time they've made them.

Hung wins! Congratulations, Hung!

Sara goes home. Noooooooo! I can't believe they sent her home just because Gail's chicken was raw. I mean, a little Salmonella never hurt anyone, right? What? It has? Oh, well, never mind, then.

Top Chef: Miami, episode something: Shakes on a Plane!

Padma: "OK, everyone, I want you to make me a delicious, first class fruit smoothie for breakfast and you have to serve it to me on a Boeing 747."

Samuel L. Jackson: "I've had it with these motherfucking shakes on this motherfucking plane!"

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Obviously the smoothies had nothing to do with the airline food. For the quickfire Padma runs in to the chefs' bedrooms demanding breakfast, though she has clearly already had a full serving of cocaine. Competition kitchens are set up in the living room of the hotel room. I don't know how the chefs slept through that. Anyway, the chefs all state how much Padma loves alcohol, marscarpone cheese and other healthy foods.

Hung wins:

Padma: "That truffle oil on the floor was delicious!"

He wins Padma's cookbook.

Tom: "Her what?"

Yes, her cookbook. Apparently filled with recipes she ripped out of other cookbooks. Hung also wins the opportunity to hand out airline tickets to the other chefs. The chefs are all excited about getting to fly somewhere:

CJ: "Could it be Japan? Or maybe Tokyo? Does that make sense? No, they don't have food in Tokyo."

The chefs get off the fake plane and Padma is standing there in a fake airport, where she didn't have to go through security:

Padma: "Welcome to New York! Or 'Newark,' as the locals call it!"

Casie: "Oh, my god! We're not in New York! We're in New Jersey! What have we done to deserve this?"

Chefs: "We can see New York over there, mocking us! We're going to be stuck in this airport forever, just like Tom Hanks in that movie nobody went to see!"

Padma: "Oh, calm down! You'll get to New York. Well, most of you will. It's true, one of you will have to stay in New Jersey for the rest of your life. You knew the risks when you entered this competition."

The elimination challenge is totally cool! They had to make airplane food and heat and serve it on the plane! Fun! The only thing that would have made it better is if the plane were actually airborn when they had to serve the food. I'm the only person in the world who loves airline food. I like getting lots of little servings of food. That's why I also like bento boxes. The chefs meet their plane and a bunch of flight attendants in a big hanger. Even bigger than the one used for the Barney's sale. The chefs act like they've never seen flight attendants before.

Dale: "Well, there were a lot of them!"

Alright. There were a lot of them. Big deal. They seemed to like most of the food. The judges didn't like it all, though. The judges included Anthony Bourdain but not Gail or Ted:

Gail and Ted: "We are not allowed to enter the state of New Jersey. Not since that incident in 2004. We can't talk about it."

The judges didn't like Sara's salmon dish very much, although the flight attendants seemed to like it:

Tom: "That was the worst dish of the competition."

CJ's fish with mint sauce and broccolini was a disaster:

Tom: "That was the worst dish in the history of the show."

Sara: "How can his dish be the worst in the history of the show but mine be the worst dish of this competition?"

That's a good question. Anyway, Brian's dish was also pretty disgusting:

Brian: "I promise I will never make lobster again."

I don't believe you.

Everyone loved Casey's and Hung's dishes. Casey wins! Again! She wins business class tickets to anywhere the airline flies!

Casey: "last week it was a laptop, now it's tickets worth thousands of dollars ... why don't I ever win a signed cookbook? It's so unfair."

SPAM!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eric said that was all I really needed to write this week and, you know, it really does say it all. This episode was SPAMtastic!

Oh, alright, I'll mention a few other things. Here's how the episode started:

CJ: "I miss Tre."

Dale: "I miss Tre."

Brian: "I miss my dog."

And, by the way, Hung is insane:

Hung: "You are so closed-minded that you don't appreciate my Smurf village."

Frank: "You know what that dish was missing? Stuffed mushrooms for the Smurfs to sit on."

He's right. That would have been perfect for T.G.I. Fridays.

Anyway, Brian made the most delicious sounding and looking SPAM dish and won the quickfire. I am definitely going to try to make that. Hopefully this episode has made a few more people appreciate the glory of SPAM!

In other news, Sara did another great job in the elimination challenge and I think she's going to the final. Casey did well, too. They are still pathetic with the desserts, though. Brian wasn't that great a team leader. He should have been more proactive in trying to create a better menu. There were just too many dishes and several of them were boring. I'm starting to question Hung's skills, in addition to his sanity:

Hung: "What was wrong with those dishes? Those dishes were classics! They were making those dishes twenty thousand years ago and they are still fresh! Those dishes are also really popular on the moon. You people are idiots!"

I think Sara or Casey won a computer. Congratulations, Sara or Casey!

Howie: "I finally decided to be a team player this week and it backfired. I'm pulling myself from the competition."

Padma: "That's very interesting. Well, I'm sorry, Howie, but we are already eliminating you."

Howie: "You can't do that because I quit!"

Padma: "Nope, you're fired."

Howie: "I quit first!"

You get the point. Howie is gone.

Thanks again, everyone, for your kind comments on my last post! The house is a disaster but it's coming along. And thank you in advance for understanding that my blog is going to be a little lacking for a while.