© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

Can anyone say disaster? I think Dana Cowin can, only she pronounces it “cat food.”

Yes, this week’s challenge didn’t go quite as I had planned: a rustic French pork rillette to pair with the French pinot noir I had chosen. For those of you who aren’t familiar with rillette, it’s a rustic French dish similar to a spread-able pâté. It’s traditionally stored in a crock covered in fat and served as a spread with toast points. My first mistake was probably attempting a dish that I’d never done with pork before. I had made several rillettes, always with rabbit, in which case the rabbit is salted overnight, braised in stock or water until tender, shredded and mixed with duck or goose fat. Turns out, there’s a slight difference in technique between rabbit and pork rillette, which is that pork is braised in fat, while rabbit is braised in liquid.

My arguably larger mistake here was attempting this lengthy technique in our limited amount of time. I skipped the salting and curing stages in the interest of brevity, and without this preparation, the meat needed more time to braise, not less. Sometimes you can, in fact, make several mistakes in the course of a disaster. I had never timed a braised dish before, as it’s not a cooking method dictated by time. Mostly braising is used for cooking tougher cuts of meat where heat, time and moisture aid in breaking down the tough connective tisuue and collagens. When it’s done, it’s done, but not a minute sooner.

I’d like to think that when made properly, a pork rillette would have been an excellent pairing for that French Pinot Noir, though of course it’s hard to say. It wasn’t my first choice of the wines we tasted, nor my second, nor my third. I’m not much of a red wine drinker, truth be told, as it more often than not gives me a headache. When I do partake, I enjoy pinot noir and I almost exclusively drink varieties from the Russian River Valley. Ask any Pinot lover and they’ll tell you that the best California Pinot grapes come from the unique blend of Goldridge and Franciscan soil, from the early morning fog, from the warm days, cool nights and afternoon sea breezes you’ll find only in the Russian River Valley, in western Sonoma County. Living in San Francisco, I would never buy a French Pinot Noir. It would be a waste of food miles for it to travel around the globe, when I could get a superior wine two hour’s drive from my house.

My friend Kevin worked for a number of years at Navarro Vineyards and I usually rely on him to help me put food and wine together. Kevin’s terrific at pairing. On the day of this challenge, I certainly wished that I’d paid more attention to Kevin’s choices over the years and asked more questions when I had the chance. With my very little experience drinking French Pinot Noir, I took my first cue in planning the dish from the region itself. I took for granted that a French wine likely pairs with French food and right off the bat, committed myself to making a rillette. There was no going back. I really didn’t have the time to second guess this initial decision again until it was done.

But I knew something had gone wrong when I began mixing the shredded pork with the duck fat. Instead of the pâté-like consistency I knew it should have, the meat was stringy–probably a result of shredding it before the braise had really finished. Despite my best attempts to add more fat, in the form of butter when there was no more duck, I couldn’t smooth it out enough before the time ran out. Now I realize, of course, there was no fixing the texture at that point anyway.

Every chef has had a day in the kitchen when things don’t come out as they’d planned. I still remember, and so does my family, the time I made blueberry muffins when I was seven and I added 1T of baking powder instead of 1t. I’m sure I’ll never live it down. But in the interest of learning from my mistakes on this show, I spent some time researching pork rillette upon my return home and gave it another go. This time, I followed the salting and curing process to the letter and then confit the pork in pork fat. This time, with experience on my side, the dish was a success.

I love that in cooking, there are always lessons to be learned. Don’t rush a salt curing or a braising, cook the pork in fat and perhaps most importantly, don’t experiment with something new while competing on Top Chef. It’s not the proper arena.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

I’ve never done deconstructed food. It doesn’t really interest me. It seems over-thought, with little consideration for pleasure or sustainability–an intellectual style of cooking that lacks character or soul. I understand that to deconstruct is to break down, to dismantle, but I can’t figure why you’d take something apart if it isn’t broken in the first place.

If you asked me, I’d tell you I can cook pretty much anything…so long as my heart is in it. Maybe that’s where this week’s task challenged me: present a classic dish, deconstructed in a new way. In my case, fish and chips. It seemed contradictory, to ask us to be creative, but classic, constructing in deconstructing.

I devoured the best fish and chips I ever had with a friend late at night alongside a cold beer, after working a long shift. I remember it feeling so well-deserved. Fish and chips should always be eaten that way, late at night in a hungry fever, out of a plastic red basket. Doing a deconstructed version not only seems silly, it’s just not food I’d want to eat. It doesn’t hit the spot without the context.

Fish and chips is a traditionally British preparation where the fish is fried in a batter, served with a large pile of fries (“chips”), malt vinegar and lemon. Such simple flavors are hard to deconstruct beyond their already essential components, so I turned to the traditional condiments for inspiration, which as an American, includes tartar sauce and ketchup. In my brainstorming phase, I had no idea we’d be judged by Toby Young, the very British food critic, and he very well could have torn me apart for including the ketchup and tartar elements on my plate. But lucky for me, he noted that Brits also love the sweetness of ketchup and the mayonnaise based tartar sauce with their fish. A small relief!

So in addition to the fish and the potato, I included in my deconstrctionist’s pallette: oil, beer batter, malt vinegar, sugar, tomato, vinegar, mayonnaise (egg + oil), pickles, capers, parsley and lemon. And I had a bit of experience to guide me in selecting the fish, which is always to smell fish before purchasing. Matine had just been eliminated for bad fish, cod specifically, and since my dish traditionally uses cod as well, I inspected the available cod thoroughly with my nose.. It smelled off, and I immediately suspected it to be the same fish that sent Matine packing. Thinking on my feet, I opted for the halibut instead.

I wanted to oil poach the fish instead of frying it, as a twist on the original, and intended to make round chips of potato with parsley pressed between them for the more traditional fries. I planned to do a sabayon with malt powder, crispy bits of beer batter and a string of the remaining ingredients from the ketchup and the relish: sugar and vinegar poached cherry tomatoes, pickled zucchini, a lemon confit and fried capers. It was a fine plan.

I blame a bad quickfire and the potatoes, the chips, of the fish and chips, for my breakdown that day. The chips were an absolute disaster, either soggy or burned to a crisp. And this was without a doubt, my least favorite day in Vegas. I don’t know if it was the lack of sleep, the stress, the feeling of missing my life or the fact that I was being asked to deconstruct my food, but I felt like it was me who was getting deconstructed. I was done. Done with the show, done with the challlenges, done with the people. I wanted to pack up and go back to San Francisco where I loved to cook for people who love to eat my food.

When I entered the kitchen the day of the elimination challenge, Mike Isabella and Mike Voltaggio were plating their food. I watched as Mike Voltaggio carefully placed that Caesar salad on his plate–truly an inspired dish. I will be the first to say, he is a truly talented inventor in the kitchen and was clearly the most comfortable with the deconstruction challenge. Isabella, on the other hand, was still struggling to understand Eggs Florentine. Before I could think too much about any of it, I started to heat the oil for my poach.

Very quickly, the oil was too hot and I had to wait for it to cool down enough to poach, which never actually happened. With ten minutes remaining, I cautiously lowered the fish into the oil. It cooked in a matter of minutes and was very overcooked. Laying out all the ingredients beside the two chips per plate and the overcooked fish, I knew I was in trouble but I placed each part carefully on the plate and lined up every component in a dotted straight line. Effectively, this erased any lingering cohesion among them and that’s how they headed out to the dining room. Looking back, I don’t know why I plated like that. I would never put ingredients meant to be eaten together, so far apart.

This challenge pushed me outside my comfort zone in such a way that I lost sight of myself in that food. I lost my direction, I lost my sensibility, and I ended up breaking my own rules to comply with the rules of the game. I escaped elimination, but left judges’ table feeling broken down, knowing I needed to regain my perspective on food and sense of myself if I had any hopes of sticking around that kitchen.

And I happen to make a great fish and chips. The kind you eat with beer.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

Perhaps this week I should start by explaining the importance of who we were cooking for, because it was a huge deal.

Joel Robuchon was the most influential French chef in the post-nouvelle era for cuisine and is still reknowned for the perfectionism with which he executed his food. He was seen as instrumental in leading French cuisine away from the excesses and excessive reductionism of nouvelle cuisine, and back to a more authentic, bourgeois French cuisine, which aimed to have each ingredient taste of itself. Besides this reputation, he was also named “Chef of the Century” by the French restaurant guide Gault Millau in 1989 and awarded the Meilleur Ouvrier de France (France’s Best Craftsman) in cuisine in 1976.

Daniel Bouloud was Executive Chef at Le Cirque from 1986 to 1992. His tenure saw the restaurant become one of the top rated in the country. Despite all of their accolades, I was most impressed with their humility. Both men are very warm and incredibly kind, despite their exacting methodologies.

Joel spoke to us following the challenge, expressing that he understood the difficulty of the task we were given and offered his respect for our undertaking–preparing traditional French proteins and sauces for a table of some of the best French chefs in the world.

By a coincidence, I am estaging in Michael Mina’s kitchen this week, as the Bouloud Robuchon episode airs. Estage is a French culinary term that basically means to work for free in a kitchen in order to gain experience.

In Michael Mina’s kitchen over the last few days, I’ve been reminded of the things I love about working in a traditional kitchen. The love and the passion and the discipline of the cooks, for one. There are at least twenty people working to create 100 dinners at Michael Mina, and working their butts off to do it. So much finesse goes into each ingredient and it seems everyone is abuzz to get their mise en place, which means to have all the necessary ingredients prepared and ready to combine up to the point of cooking. Cherry tomatoes are fried, peeled and then dried in the oven. Haricot verts are blanched and cut in half lengthwise. Quails are confit (cooked in their own fat), picked and made into rilettes. The myriad of techniques working together can only be described as art. These kinds of kitchens take food to the next level, where the meal is a masterpiece and each ingredient, paint on the canvas.

To work in such a kitchen, you must be committed to your craft, as they demand long hours and grueling schedules. I am sure that Joel Robuchon and Daniel Boulud spent most of their lives in such kitchens, and the experience of working in devotion to such a practice certainly contributed much to their work inventing new and glorious ways to cook food.

At this stage in my career, why would I estage in someone else’s kitchen? Simply, I believe you can never stop learning as a chef. While I often glean information reading books, I find that hands on training is still the best. Famous chefs like Joel and Daniel no doubt continued to refine their knowlege in the kitchen long after they’d grown quite famous. There is no question. The humility they showed us during the classic French challenge seemed to me a true testament to their mastery of our craft–a reverence for the human energy embodied in the meal and the knowledge that such precise execution is never a simple task.

Though I may never be a Joel Robuchon or a Daniel Boulud, I intend to learn as much as I can about all things edible. And to do so with a similar humility for my craft.