Hell’s Kitchen 4, Episode 8: Smile for the Camera

Welcome another scrumptious episode of Hell’s Kitchen. This episode starts off with a short recap of last week’s episode. You can read my review of it right here.

We join the chefs back in the dorm after last week’s episode when the big showdown between Ben and Matt end up with Ben getting the boot. As you may recall, the red team has been told to select one member to move to the blue team to even out the numbers.

Both teams view this as an opportunity for strategy. Louross, Petrozza, and Bobby all think that if they lose tonight, they will stick together and try to eliminate whichever woman is sent over to join them.

Corey on the red team thinks that sending over their strongest player will still result in the blue team losing but that the woman who joins them will look very good in comparison. She tries to talk Jen into volunteering. Corey tells the cameras that by getting Jen off the team, she (Corey) will get a chance to shine. Jen is not so sure that she wants to take that risk.

Night falls without a decision. The next morning, the chefs assemble and Chef Ramsay asks them for their decision. Jen steps forward and says, essentially, that she was getting too confident on the red team and would like to see how things go with the blue team. The blue team agrees to take her and she changes her jacket.

Ramsay then tells them their challenge for the day. Each member of each team will use some of the twenty ingredients spread out in the kitchen to create a fabulous new meal. But the catch is that each of the twenty ingredients must be used exactly once among the four meals that the team creates. In other words, everything must be used and nothing can be repeated.

He waves his arm and they are off! The red team gets out pen and paper and as a team creates a menu that divides up the ingredients. In the blue kitchen, Jen decides to take charge and tries to assign the ingredients to each person according to a menu that she has made up in her head. The men look at her like she is about to explode and decide to let her go with this idea and see how it turns out.

In the red kitchen, disaster strikes. Matt cuts himself rather badly with a big knife. He says that he cut off about a half inch of his finger. A quick view of the finger indicates that it is bad cut, but not really half an inch. Medics arrive and take care of him.

The red team rallies to continue preparing the dishes without Matt. They are close to finishing when Chef Ramsay returns to the work area to look for the tip of Matt’s finger. They can’t find it and conclude that it has been cooked into the food. Chef Ramsay says that this is now a 21-ingrediant challenge. Eww.

In the blue kitchen, the chefs are working as separate islands. Sous chef Scoot stops the crew and points out that some of them are using duplicate ingredients and that is not allowed. They are obviously not following the rules. Bobby and Jen just give Scott a dirty look – how dare he try to tell them what to do!

Matt returns to the red kitchen all bandaged up and with a rubber glove over the wound. He says that he is in terrible pain but really doesn’t want to lose.

Chef Ramsay counts them down and tells them to stop. The blue team might be in trouble because they didn’t get all their food plated before Ramsay stopped everyone. It seems that Louross cooked some delicious red snapper and at the last moment, Jen didn’t want to serve her veal and tried to make Louross create a Surf-and-Turf combo out of his fish. Nobody communicated and the veal didn’t get served.

Jen whispers to Louross that he should lie and tell Ramsay that he used the veal fat in the fish sauce. Louross has serious reservations about lying to Chef Ramsay. I think I have to agree since I am 99% sure that Chef Ramsay reviews all secret tapes before making any decisions.

Let’s see how this plays out. Chef Ramsay asks both teams if they used all twenty ingredients and they all shout that they did. See? I told you that he already knows that the blue team skipped the veal. I hope for Louross’ sake that he fesses up.

Christina presents red snapper with crab meat and a Hollandaise sauce. She has used five items. Petrozza has a warm crab salad with an onion soufflé. He has also used five ingredients. Ramsay tastes it and calls it perfect. Despite that proclamation, he awards them both a point.

Jen presents a Pancetta-wrapped roasted quail. She has used four ingredients. See? Ramsay is specifically asking them how many ingredients they used because he knows that the blue team won’t total up. Matt presents a pan-roasted quail on a salad. He used six ingredients. Ramsay tastes it and says that the liver flavor has tainted the dish. He awards a point to Jen.

Corey presents braised chicken with artichokes. She has used three ingredients. Ramsay calls it “plain” because she only used three ingredients. Bobby presents walnut-encrusted buffalo mozzarella-chicken. He has used six ingredients. But Bobby has used too much sauce and it ruins the dish. He awards the point to Corey.

And well, well, well, look at what we have. Coming down to the final face-off, the score is all tied up for maximum drama. I’ll bet you didn’t think that it would be physically possible to have a 2-2 tie with just three face-offs. But that’s where we find ourselves.

Anyway, we know who is going to win since Blue didn’t use the veal. Rosann starts and she shows pan-seared veal with onion and potatoes. Ramsay doesn’t like it.