I love the 'Last Supper' challenge on Top Chef.
The conceit is a simple one: our brave cheftestants must each cook a judge's choice for his final blowout.
The last time they did this challenge a couple of seasons ago, several of the cheftestants, presented with simple favorites like roast chicken, shrimp scampi, and tomatoes Provencal, misunderstood the brief. When one is tasked with cooking an individual's last request, one should not 'dig deep', add one's 'own spin', or decide to 'improve' a dish that has stood the test of generations. The judges want what they want for their last meals, and the chef who improvises does so at his peril.
If Marcus Samuelsson tells you to cook him salmon, spinach and potatoes you ought to know it's because that's what he grew up with, what reminds him of home and maybe even makes him feel loved. You do not then proceed to gild the lily with spinach three different ways and cream with everything. That misses the point. You do not suddenly decide to re-invent Eggs Benedict (Wylie Dufresne's selection that time around) with challah bread and your own version of hollandaise (there's a reason it's a classic, after all). When Jacques Pepin says he wants his squab with peas, dammit, that's what you give him. Carla's risky but oh-so-canny offering - an utterly plain dish of fresh, simple, buttery baby peas - caused, I fancy, her subject to wipe a tear of joy away.
But if it's not the dish you remember, despondency is bound to follow.
Bravo's producers must have realized their error, because last night they didn't allow such room for misunderstanding. Instead of being presented with the name of the judge's terminal dish and then told to go for it, our challengers were able to talk at length to their Chosen Ones and find out the reasons their dishes were so beloved or (in Blais' words) 'get a good read on their soul'.
Why did Wolfgang Puck want goulash, spaetzle, and apple strudel? Because that was his favorite dish from a humble childhood, the one the family ate on special occasions. When describing his memories of this meal, the Austrian artiste's nostalgia was palpable: I imagined this was his birthday treat.
Morimoto's choice of miso soup, rice, pickles and sashimi? It's what his mother used to have ready for him when he got home after baseball practice. Antonia was right when she said this humanized the Great Man in a way that nothing else could. Soup? Pickles? How unexpected - and yet, what else could it have been?
Michelle Bernstein and her fried chicken with dumplings? This one was particularly interesting, I thought. Not because this American standby was reminiscent of her Jewish-Latin upbringing: quite the opposite, in fact. The dish was the centerpiece of one of her earliest restaurant memories: a time her father took her out for something new and gave her a glimpse of a wider world.
Poor Antonia, tasked with Morimoto's boyhood favorite, didn't stand a chance. Would it have been possible, even for the best chef on the planet, to steam rice just like his mother did? Or duplicate her miso soup? What an unattainable goal! With such simple choices (and culturally unfamiliar ones, too) there was little room for error and no room to hide. Chef's disappointment in Antonia's offering was evidenced by his quivering lower lip and downcast eyes: the soup suffered from excessive salt and the delicate raw tuna was too heavily spiced. Even had these been perfection, she made a fatal error by - horrors! - seasoning the rice. I imagine the Iron Chef wanted an utterly plain bowl of superbly-cooked gohan (his mother used to pick over every grain, apparently) - and it's difficult to see how any of our competitors could have pulled it off.
Goulash? Fried chicken? Apple strudel?
Child's play compared to a perfect bowl of rice. Or a bowl of rice prepared by your Okaa-san, which is - of course - the same thing.
Coming soon: I consider what makes food good and, with great angst and introspection, decide that I need a teleporter and a time machine if am to miracle up my last supper.
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