Top Chef All-Stars, Episode 2: Gluten-Free at the Museum

What fun! Our gallant competitors get to spend a night at the American Museum of Natural History and share some quality time with a host of small, squealing, scary, culinarily ignorant Tasmanian devils - creatures the rest of us typically cognominate as 'children'. Tasked during the Quickfire with creating a midnight snack for the young ape-descendant sleepover guests, almost all our chefs went straight for the sugar - just what the doctor ordered for a horde of kids frenzied with excitement at being 1) awake at midnight 2) at the museum 3) on television 4) in the presence of bona-fide pop idol (see below). My guess is the air in the Vertebrate Fossil Halls was turning blue with the curses of all the poor museum volunteer chaperones, forced to watch helplessly as the kids became fatally over-hyped on the cheftestants' sucrose and glucose-filled confections. I loved Dale T's notion of Corn Cakes a la Nyquil, but he chickened out at the last minute and served his treats with dried cherries instead.

Dale also won my heart by admitting complete bafflement at the appearance of the quickfire judge, the redoubtable Joe Jonas (see above), but Spike (having the cultural awareness of a 9-year-old moppet) was able to fill us in on the mystery man's identity. Good old Spike - he can always be relied upon to irritate the viewer no matter what the circumstances! Close proximity to the little ones turbulated his repressed memories and he THd that he was always picked last for team games as a kid. I suppose this explains a lot. Poor Spike - such a plea for sympathy and understanding. Let me take a moment to re-align my attitude ... no, still can't stand him.

At any rate, the kids snarfed their snacks while making a real mess of the dinosaur hall - after they stormed out (bloodstreams thick with chocolate, marshmallows, caramels, and malted milk balls), it looked like a Spinosaurus Aegyptiacus had rampaged through and you could almost see the sticky fingerprints on all those priceless bones. More curses, presumably, this time from the museum's overworked and underpaid custodial staff.

On to the Elimination Challenge: the competitors were divided into two teams and tasked with the production of gluten-free breakfasts for the kids and their adult supervision. Sadly, there was not a Bloody Mary in sight - much to the grownups' chagrin, no doubt, since they all looked in need of a stiff drink after the revelries of the previous night.

Team Brontosaurus, forced to cook nothing but fruit and veg (with grains, supposedly, but I detected only cornmeal), was deemed to have drawn the short straw but defied conventional wisdom by producing several dishes I wanted to eat, including banana parfaits with seasonal fruit and tandoori maple (huh? I would say more on this, but Bravo's appalling website is misbehaving again and I am unable to get details); grits with stewed peppers and salsa verde; gazpacho; and potato gnocchi with leeks, spinach and mushrooms. I thought this last choice was a bit strange - there are so many delightful ways of cooking potatoes at breakfast-time (dumplings do not spring first to my mind) but the boys (and Carla) romped to victory. Their triumph was not entirely without sniping, naturally: Marcel groused that Angelo ruined his plums by cutting them in half (sabotage!) and Fabio added both Spike and Tiffani to the list of People He Despises. By and large their efforts pleased the judges, although not the kids so much - the munchkins seemed rather challenged by the idea of veg for breakfast, although the banana parfaits were a big hit.

Team T-Rex was a colossal hot mess. The girls (and Dale), having congratulated themselves on their cunning selection of carnivore-pleasing ingredients, came to regret their choice upon discovering that there were no herbs or acid available to complement the proteins. Jamie, overcome by shame, attempted to commit ritual suicide but was saved by quick-thinking medics and two stitches to her thumb. Other team-mates, accustomed to ignoring severed limbs, gushing arteries, and even the occasional beheading in their single-minded effort to put food on the table, were unimpressed by her lack of resolve. The GE Monogram ovens asserted their malevolent presence from afar and did untold damage to Tiffany and Antonia's frittatas, while Tre's shrimp sauce for Casey's salmon was lip-pursingly oversalted. The one dish from the team I would have enjoyed eating was also the judge's favorite - Tiffani and Dale L's steak and eggs with hollandaise, a combination with which - unless one is completely incompetent - it is difficult to go wrong.

This left Jen and her strange braised bacon with hard-boiled egg garni. Ignoring the dish's bewildering concept, it was apparently also very poorly executed. The bacon was described as damp and chewy and the eggs were said to be bland and underseasoned. I was horrified by Jen's obnoxious shoulder-shrug and associated 'Do you want to win or do you want to make 150 people happy that you'll never see again?' Having once eaten at her restaurant, I was not pleased to hear this assertion - indeed, it may dissuade me from ever eating there again. Her inexplicable behaviour at the judge's table and profanity-laden off-screen conniption fit were unedifying in the extreme. She was well beyond just having a bad day and I was engaged in the process of deciding I did not like the new All-Star Jen when the judges preempted any rash conclusions by declaring she would not be troubling my TV screen again. It was a very sour way for a worthy chef to leave the competition and it left Moleskine and me with a bad, bad feeling.

Not as bad, perhaps, as the octopus in pantaloons that appears to star in the next episode, but bad enough.

Next up: troubling news on the Spud Front