“When I looked around and saw that everyone was doing a salad, I thought: I better do something different. So I left the Chopped set and enrolled in a three-year graduate course to get my MFA in playwriting.”
“As a mom, when I approach the country pâté, I always think: what would my kids like? What would my kids eat? So I wrapped up the pâté to save for later and for the entree, I will be serving a light Béarnaise from Kraft cheese singles atop a sliced bouquet of crustless white bread Smuckers PB&Js.”
“For my dessert, I really want to showcase my family heritage, so I think I’m going to drink all of this apricot liqueur and stop talking to my mother for the next 15 years.”
“Yes, I did play it safe with my jicama-bologna hash. That’s me. I played it safe with my career, I played it safe with my dull but kind fiancé Garrett, and now I played it safe on Chopped because if you don’t actually try, no one — not even Alex Guarnaschelli herself — can hurt you.”
“I decided to use lavender to elevate my smashed potatoes and hopefully convince my dad back home that being a chef is kind of like being, for instance, a ‘doctor’ of flavor profiles.”
“Sure, my competitors have received French training, but I’ve been in my food truck, crusting the same dorado fish in cornmeal for the past 25 years. I definitely think I’m a force to be reckoned with.”
“When I carefully julienned my purple ninja radishes to turn into a ‘grated cheese type’ topping, I wondered if this would be the sofrito to heal the rift between me and my son.”
“I suspected that I didn’t have enough time to cook my amazing signature saffron risotto in twenty minutes, but I was praised with no impunity as a child, so I genuinely thought an okay saffron risotto would be enough to make it to dessert.”
“When I opened my mystery basket and saw my great-grandmother’s death mask, I thought: How am I going to incorporate this into my merguez choucroute with jelly bean purée?”
“As I tasted the banana baby food in the basket for dessert, I just broke down. Not only did it have absolutely no texture, none, but it conjured up this double, simultaneous memory. Like Proust’s madeleine, like maybe they could both use some sort of green apple component to round it out and add some crunch. I wasn’t thinking about flavor profiles at the time though, I had become utterly distracted by childhood memories of my mother’s absence, watching her leave for the casino as my nanny spoon fed me banana baby food with a side of Honey Nut Cheerios, plated fairly poorly in an over-large Tupperware container. I felt that same longing again to make her stay, to be close to her, to be loved by her. The pain of her recent death hit me suddenly and I collapsed onto the floor. I was emotionally flambéed as I realized, with the pure clarity of ghee, I’ve been repeating this early trauma with my son Greg. I had to do better with him, just as I knew I had to do better with my dessert. I know that’s not an excuse for using the ice cream machine, but nothing else explains that temporary madness.”