Come on, guys. You can do this.
Whoo! What are we going to do? What are we going to do?
-[Ted] Clock starts now. -Behind you one more time.
Stroganoff tacos.
What the hell is that? Is that even a thing?
There's fried gluten with peanuts.
My palate doesn't know where to go.
-[Dan] Oh, Lord. -[Chantiel] It's a little weird.
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Let's go.
-This is really tight. -That pan is hot.
[Tiffani] Get it off the heat. Get it off the heat!
-Ooh. -[Ted] Wrap it up, chefs.
-Running out of time. -That was really 20 minutes?
-[Ted] Five, four... -Come on, guys.
-I never made a dish like this one before. -[Ted] ...two, one.
See what the judges say, that's all that really matters, right?
[Ted] Whose dish is on the chopping block?
[Kevin] Here we go.
This Southern boy, he's bringing skills,
discipline and determination.
I'm ready to show you what I got.
I grew up in the South.
My food is sophisticated Southern, but not pretentious.
I like that. I think it looks good.
I'll let it ride.
I started my career in fine dining,
but the past five years,
I've been working as a culinary instructor
at a high school, inspiring the next generation of chefs.
I've not been on the line every day,
so I want to prove that I've got the chops and the skills to compete.
Shoot, I'd pay for that.
I give out grades all day, so if you want to beat me,
bring your A game.
[Dan] I'm dangerous, I'm confident,
and I can take on anything that comes my way.
After high school, I went off to the Culinary Institute of America.
From there, I worked the Waldorf Astoria Hotel,
and now I own three restaurants and a food truck.
The menus are constantly changing
and there are really no limits to what I can serve.
I'm really, really, really experienced.
You can just make the check out to Dan Kardos and just send it to me.
I got this.
[Chantiel] I am Chantiel Melson.
I am the sous chef at Seasons Bar and Grill in Knoxville, Tennessee.
I am the next Chopped champion because I can do anything I set my mind to do.
I cook contemporary American cuisine.
That's amazing.
I love exploring the playfulness of food.
I like every dish I make to be a spectacle.
I've been working on the line for about 16 years now.
I'm a badass chef.
Shout out to all my competitors.
You better look out. I'm definitely coming for you.
I want the camera to smell the curry.
[Mamba] I'm Mamba Hamissi, the chef owner of Baobab Fare in Detroit.
I was born and raised in Burundi
and I serve authentic East African food.
It's a lot of spices. It's a lot of flavor.
This is ugali.
I came to the United States as a refugee.
Life in Africa is a war.
It is hunger, there is everything you can imagine
which challenge you.
So nothing is impossible for me.
I'm here to win for Burundi.
I'm here to win to all the refugees
around the world to show them this can be possible.
-[Ted] Hello, chefs. -[all] Hello.
[Ted] The time for you to shine in the Chopped kitchen is now.
Can you do this?
-Yes. -Yes.
[Mamba] Yes, we can. That's why we're here.
I'm here to win it for...
For me, for my family, for my... My whole country.
-Yeah. -[Ted] Excellent.
Appetizer baskets are packed.
Open them up.
You've got fried gluten with peanuts.
Fried gluten with peanuts.
Fried gluten peanuts? What the hell are these?
[Ted] There's also scallops.
Scallops, I like that.
[Mamba] This is surprising.
This is my first time, I think, using scallops.
-I'm not used to. -[Ted] Leeks.
These are nice. These are nice. I can work with this.
It smells like cinnamon, eggnog.
[Ted] And a chai tea latte.
-Wow. -Whoo!
What are we going to do? What are we going to do?
The crazy short 20 minutes first round starts now.
-[Kevin] Oh, there they go. -[Chantiel] All right. Here we go.
-20 minutes. -[Mamba] All right.
Tiffani, Marc, you were joined by a special guest judge,
the host of Food Network's Chef Boot Camp, Cliff Crooks.
-Welcome, Cliff. -Thank you.
You know, I'm excited for scallops.
I'm, like, "Oh, this is going to be absolutely great."
And then there's fried gluten and peanuts and...
And all of a sudden, my palate doesn't know where to go.
[Tiffani] It's a meat substitute.
So, it's essentially seitan...
-Seitan. -Some people call it Satan when it's in the basket.
That's who I pray to every day.
So it's essentially like pieces of almost like tofu skin
that have been fried.
They're chewy. It's like a new umami bomb.
[Dan] First thing I'm gonna do is see what these peanuts are all about.
Fried gluten peanuts, I'm kind of realizing
that they're, you know, just like an umami component,
and they could be a good component,
in like, buttery leek sauce.
I'm making fried gluten leek sauce
with pan-roasted scallops.
I grew up in coastal Connecticut, right on the water.
So scallops are a dream ingredient for me.
Get a really hot pan, roast them, baste them... Dunzo.
[Marc] I think scallops are a great appetizer.
The one thing with scallops, you definitely don't want to overcook them.
They'll get rubbery.
So you want to cook them very, very quickly.
Nothing makes me more cranky than an overcooked scallop.
[Cliff] Mamba stated that he's unfamiliar with scallops.
He has never worked with them before,
so it's going to be interesting to see
-if he knows how to properly cook them. -Yeah.
In Burundi, scallops are not common
because they're expensive.
But I really want to show the judges my heritage.
And in Burundi, we make a lot of dishes with corn.
So I'm using corn tortillas to make taco.
I'm making scallop and leeks taco.
I'm seasoning my scallop with ginger, chili powder
and curry powder.
This spices are very common in East Africa.
And then I'm sauteing the leeks with my scallop.
I love leeks. The most flavorful element in the box.
-[Marc] Yes. -[Ted] One of the important things to do
is to get those leeks going right away.
-[Tiffani] Yeah. -[Ted] You need most of those 20 minutes to cook leeks.
Properly.
[Kevin] Leeks have greatest flavors and aromatics.
My mind goes to bacon, scallops,
so I'm making a pan-seared scallop with leek and bacon sauté.
For the fried gluten peanuts, I just decided to dredge them
with a little bit of heavy cream and panko.
Coming around frier.
And decided to give those kind of a flash fry
in hopes of getting some texture.
I started my career in fine dining
by working nights, holidays and weekends. It just didn't fit me.
Coming down.
So I've been working as a culinary instructor.
I also started a personal chef business.
Winning $10,000 would just give me the confidence
and the ability to take things to the next level.
It's a little weird. The fried gluten is definitely umami.
I'm just going to toss it into an apple relish
to see if it provides a different texture.
I'm making pan-seared scallops
with chai-braised leeks and an apple peanut relish.
Winning this competition and being here
is about so much more than me.
Being a gay Black woman in the kitchen is not easy.
I have faced a lot of obstacles and hardships in my career,
and I want to show others out there that
it's okay to be who you are.
That's perfect.
Chefs, less than 10 minutes to go here.
Chef Dan, what's going on down there?
Chef Dan? How are you feeling? What's going on down there?
-I'm great. How are you? -[Tiffani] Hi. How's it going?
Sorry. Sorry.
I got a little, like, peanut leek braise
with a little bit of miso, a little bit of green curry.
I think I'm going to finish it with a little scallion, maybe some sesame.
-I don't know. -[Tiffani] All right.
We're into it. Love to hear it.
[Dan] I own three restaurants.
And on top of all that, I also have a food truck.
I have successful businesses, but a Chopped win to me
would really prove to others
that you don't need to be from a big city.
You can just be a guy from Connecticut who could kick some ass.
[Marc] Have you ever had the chai tea?
-I find it very sweet. -It's very sweet.
-[Cliff] It is very sweet. -[Tiffani] This is a really traditional black tea,
cardamom, cinnamon, lots of sugar
and lots of, like, dairy products in this.
So this isn't like a neutral tea.
This is a punch in the sugar face.
You... You just described all the flavors
you do not want in your appetizer.
-Correct. -[Cliff] True.
[Mamba] For my taco filling, I'm using scallop, leeks
and fried gluten.
Reduce them with the chai tea latte.
I hope the spices from the chai will highlight my taco.
[Ted] I could swear I saw Chef Mamba buttering tortillas,
which is not something I've ever seen in my life.
[Tiffani] Buttering a tortilla and not having seen that
before, it lives in one of two categories.
It's not going to work, or I'm going to put it
in my back pocket and keep it forever.
-Yeah. -[Ted] Right.
[Kevin] I'm basting the scallops in butter and thyme.
I'm watching my leeks and they're starting to cook down.
I look over and Chantiel hasn't even started her leeks.
Five minutes to go, chefs.
[Chantiel] I look at the clock and I realize
that I spent way too much time working on my apple relish.
I have to get these leeks into the sauté pan
as soon as possible.
Chantiel is just now getting her leeks in the pan.
You really need a lot more time to cook leeks.
That makes me very nervous.
[Chantiel] I have to cook these leeks quickly.
There's no way I'm serving these judges raw leeks.
Chantiel is just now getting her leeks in the pan.
That makes me very nervous.
[Chantiel] I'm adding the chai latte to my leeks
because I know that it will braise them.
Less than two minutes left, chefs.
[Dan] So I'm adding some of the chai tea latte to my leek sauce.
I'm also adding honey because I feel like
even though the chai tea is really sweet,
I feel like it's a little too acidic.
So I want to add a little bit of sweetness to kind of, like,
bring it back down and mellow it out.
And to play off the flavor of the green curry.
In African cooking, most of the time
you have to have hot sauce.
So I grab ketchup and hot sauce.
I mixed them together.
I love plating food. It's a point of pride, and so...
The chai tea, I'm thinking foam.
I begin to aerate the cream and the chai.
[Ted] Wow. Kevin is blending something.
Thirty seconds, chefs.
[Marc] Hey, Kevin is getting that sauce ready. Whatever he's doing.
[Ted] But how are you not just plating right now?
-[Cliff] This is really tight. -Come on, guys.
-[Marc] Let's go Kevin. -Wrap it up, chefs.
Running out of time here.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six,
five, four, three, two, one.
Time's up.
[Tiffani] All right.
[Chantiel] Whoo!
That was 20 minutes?
-[Mamba] Yeah. -[Chantiel] That was...
-Good job. -[sighs]
[Dan] That was pretty wild.
I just tried to stick to the plan, execute the dish.
Let's see what happens, see what the judges say.
That's all that really matters, right?
These guys are amazing.
I mean, stiff competition.
I'm worried about whether the leeks are cooked properly,
but I've just got to go with it.
Chefs, you've arrived at the chopping block.
Your first big test here, making appetizers
using fried gluten with peanuts, scallops, leeks, and a chai tea latte.
Chef Dan, what did you make?
I made pan roasted scallops with miso-chai tea leek butter.
What's the spice in here?
A little bit of green curry.
[Marc] I feel like you're able to make it work.
The chai tea might be a little bit strong
because of the sweetness of it.
-[Dan] Sure. -[Marc] Did you add other sweetener?
I did add a little honey.
I just felt like it was getting a little too acidic,
so I kind of wanted to balance the sauce out a little.
I... Maybe I went a little too far with that.
Yeah, I think your balancing would have been better
with more acid than with more sweet,
because that's what I'm missing out here.
-But I'm very happy. -Thank you.
I have a couple of pieces of peanut
which I'm really enjoying.
It's an added textural element.
Scallops are cooked very well. Got a beautiful sear on them.
-I think you had a great deal of success. -Thank you.
Dan, I think there's so much good stuff going on here,
but I don't think you need the green curry, right?
You make that decision with the miso
-and you have that... -Right.
[Tiffani] ...that fried gluten. It's like a soy umami bomb...
-[Dan] Yeah. -...but that's kind of all...
-100%. 100%. -[Tiffani] It's a good dish.
Thank you, Chef Dan. Next up, Chef Chantiel.
I've made a pan-seared scallops
with chai tea braised leeks
and a deconstructed apple and peanut relish.
There are a lot of great elements in this dish.
The scallops are cooked well.
They're definitely seasoned properly.
The cookery on the leek, was concerned about that
because it was like with minutes left,
you're like, "Oh, I'm going to start cooking the leek now."
But somehow you really, really pulled it out and definitely made it work.
[Marc] This is a tough basket.
This is definitely not, not easy to...
To maneuver around.
And I think this chai tea is just so...
So pronounced here.
But I mean, this scallop is cooked perfectly on my plate.
Chantiel, talk to me about the use of the fried gluten.
I kind of just, uh, tossed it with the apples and...
And kind of just let it sit with that mixture.
[Tiffani] Got it, got it, got it.
I like what you were doing,
but a different knife cut would have worked really well for that.
It would have been a little bit more elegant
and also allow some of that fried gluten,
that umami to permeate the apple.
So, chef, what would it mean to you personally to take home a win?
I am, as we can see,
nine times out of ten, any kitchen I work
and I'm the only female, the only lesbian or the only Black person.
So for me, it would just represent that being this way,
you can literally accomplish any goal you set yourself out to do.
You can. And you are.
-Thank you. -Thank you, Chef Chantiel.
Next, we go to Chef Kevin.
I've prepared for you a pan-seared scallop,
a sauté of bacon and leek.
A chai tea foam, and a little bit of crispy fried gluten peanuts.
[Ted] Tell us about how you got started in the kitchen.
Yeah. So I was a high school student
and I took a Home Ec class and something just clicked.
And so I was drawn to the artistry of food
at an early age.
Chef Kevin, when you say that you were really drawn
to the artistry of food,
that's clear in the plating of this.
Like, it's really beautiful.
The bacon is delicious, it's crispy.
And then I think the chai foam is really smart.
The scallops are a little over,
but the plating really takes it to another level.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
[Cliff] I definitely agree with the plating.
It's visually stunning.
There's one thing.
So your pieces of bacon are beautiful and crispy.
Mine aren't.
So it actually mimics the exact same texture as the fried gluten,
-because both are spongy in texture. -Yeah, okay.
They did become little oil sponges and absorbed the oil.
I was trying to get some sort of texture element in there.
I totally get it. I get it.
I think that maybe like if you had julienned them
and really fried the heck out of them,
so they were really, really more petrified almost.
-Yeah. -[Marc] Maybe that would have worked.
Thank you, Chef Kevin.
Finally, Chef Mamba.
I make you taco with leeks and scallop with chai latte.
In Africa, you cannot go without hot sauce.
So I get you guys hot sauce and ketchup.
So then you can dip in if you want.
What did you do with the chai?
I add the chai in the scallop. I put on lemon on top.
I add curry, ginger and just salt.
It's kind of shocking to me because I...
I'm eating the sauce and...
I like it.
The scallop flavor's coming through.
The umami in there is really mind-blowing
in a little bit in a sense.
And I think maybe it's all that acid
that you put in there and adding the curry and cooking that in there.
Wow! I'm kind of blown away.
-The sauce is damn good. -Thank you, chef.
I've never seen a buttered tortilla which...
Which we were all looking at.
Um, texturally, it works.
It definitely works.
Holy moly.
-The tortillas, it's great. -Thanks you, chef.
[Tiffani] It's linking up with the scallops and the chai
and the ginger and the curry.
And it, like, that combination of all of them together,
there's something a little magic about this.
Thank you, chef.
[Tiffani] But there's something about the hot sauce.
I understand that it's a part of your heritage,
but this is really subtle and rich, and it doesn't need this at all. But...
-Thank you, chef. -...there was a lot of good stuff.
[Ted] Where do you work, chef?
I own a restaurant called Baobab Fare.
It's an East African restaurant in Detroit.
I've been in the United States six years.
I came, me and my wife, as refugees.
She was a human rights activist in Burundi.
And then she had to fled the country.
So we live in a shelter for two years
and then we start to create our own restaurant.
-Amazing. -Wow!
[Ted] What would it mean to you to win this competition?
It's going to make me proud
because I want to open the door for other immigrants
and refugees around the world to show them
that this is a country where everybody can,
you know, touch their dreams.
[Ted] All right. Chef Mamba, thank you.
Unfortunately, the first elimination is coming up.
[Chantiel] The judges did have an issue
with the chai tea sauce,
but I deserve to stay
because I have so much more to show the judges.
[Kevin] I'm a little nervous.
In retrospect, I agree with the comments
on the fried gluten.
They got a little soggy, but I did take a chance
on kind of adding some texture and that was the goal there.
So whose dish is on the chopping block?
Chef Chantiel, you've been chopped.
Judges.
Chantiel, the scallops, you killed.
The leeks, you killed.
But the fried gluten wasn't really transformed
and the chai tea latte was too sweet.
And so we had to chop you.
[Marc] Just keep cooking and doing what you love.
That's all you got to do.
[Chantiel] I was hoping that it wouldn't be me,
but I represented for the people
and where I come from very well
and I wouldn't change it.
I'm walking out of here proud.
[Ted] Chef Dan, Chef Kevin, Chef Mamba,
who do you think will be chopped in this round?
-I think both, they're going home. -[all laughing]
-Yeah, right. -[Ted] All right.
The competitive spirit is alive and well in this group.
Turn your attention to the entree basket.
Check it out.
Ooh!
Oh, wow.
[Ted] We've got beef stroganoff tacos.
Stroganoff?
What the hell is that?
Like, is that even a thing?
[Ted] You also have winter truffles.
Bloody Mary olives...
-Bloody Mary olives. -It's pretty good.
[Ted] ...and an ostrich fan fillet.
[Mamba] Never tried before.
What do you think, guys?
-I can do this. -It's good.
Thirty minutes.
Clock starts now.
-[Tiffani] All right, guys. -[Cliff] Let's go!
-Get after it. -Let's go.
Judges, stroganoff tacos?
What's the story with this unique mash up?
[Marc] This is just beef stroganoff
in an egg noodle shell
and it's supposed to look like and resemble a taco.
[Ted] I'm more interested in the ostrich.
I mean just looking at it,
there is no fat whatsoever in there.
[Tiffani] No. This is the upper thigh of an ostrich.
So we're talking about a really large bird that runs around a lot.
It's an incredibly, incredibly lean piece of meat.
[Tiffani] If you overcook it, it's going to be really tough,
hard to eat.
I want to bring everybody's attention to what Mamba is doing.
He's massaging different spices into it.
When you're tasting food from East Africa,
they use a lot of spices to sort of elevate dishes.
-[Tiffani] Yeah. -[Cliff] I think some of that
comes from taking something
that is very, very simple and really trying to flavor it
as much as possible in order to make it delicious.
Yeah.
[Mamba] In East African cuisine, we use a lot of spices.
So I marinate the ostrich with garlic powder,
onion powder, and curry powder and then olive oil.
I'm making Nazi ostrich stroganoff.
Nazi means coconut in Swahili.
It's a coconut rice topped with same milk.
I have to rely on my palate and my sense of flavor
to get through this.
In 2013, my wife's come in America,
but then after a couple months, she knew she was pregnant with twins.
It took me three years to move to the United States.
So I saw my kids for the first time when they were two years old.
I will love to win this for them.
I'm going to show them that their daddy is their superhero.
This beef stroganoff tacos, my mind goes to stock.
I want to make a sauce.
So I'm making a beef stroganoff triple cream sauce
and pan-seared ostrich.
So I'm just taking the meat from the tacos.
I grab some vegetable stock and I decide to let that reduce.
And then I add triple cream cheese
and cold cubes of butter.
Let's see what this is all about here.
I used to cook ostrich quite a few years ago,
and the way that I found to cook ostrich
is to just try to get it to a nice medium rare,
because it's a really lean meat.
So I'm making grilled ostrich, grilled broccoli
and buttery whipped potatoes topped with a truffle stroganoff gravy.
When I was young, my mom was a single parent
and she worked really hard to provide for my sister and I.
I'm really inspired to kind of just like
cook some home style food
because it really reminds me of something
that my mother would have cooked for me when I was a kid.
For me to bring this home to her would really mean a lot.
Less than 20 minutes left, chefs.
[Tiffani] I think Mamba is feeling really confident.
He had a good first round and I think, he even
feels like his feet are underneath him now.
He's cooking with his flavors, which I'm very excited about.
[Cliff] Yeah.
[Mamba] I'm sauteing my ostrich with tomato paste,
oil and red onion.
I'm using the beef stroganoff to mix up this mash, too.
And then I add my olive.
-Kevin, how are you feeling? -Right on track. Right on track.
Bringing this thing together.
I'm making a white bean stew.
And so I grab white beans and crushed tomatoes
and I've pulled some spinach in there.
Because I've taken the non-traditional approach
to my career, I've not been on the line every day.
So only when it means the world,
I mean, it's validation, it's affirmation.
It gives me hope 'cause I field my business
just to come in here and say, I've got the chops to compete,
it would be a great deal.
I'm seeing a lot of passion from these three chefs today.
You know, Mamba's story about his journey here to America.
Kevin, who is fighting not only to prove to himself,
but to show his students.
And Dan is here to compete,
which really means a lot to him.
[Dan] Let's start working on my gravy.
That's the good stuff there.
I'm using the sliced beef stroganoff.
I'm adding beef broth and I'm adding Marsala
because I think it'll add a little bit of sweetness to the sauce.
Chefs, you've got nine minutes left on that clock.
[Marc] These Bloody Mary olives,
they are very, very spicy, green olives.
And I think you could use that basically anywhere.
[Tiffani] Yes. Normal olives are sort of, you know,
just like a brined olives, but the brine is Bloody Mary, so it's spicy.
So it's going to have to be able to tamp down the spice
because you don't want this to take over the basket.
Bloody Mary olives, there's some spice and some heat here.
I decided to add those to the white beans stew.
I'm trying to be focused and create some good flavors.
Five minutes to go, chefs.
The Bloody Mary olives are a little spicy,
but I think the juice from the olives
can add some nice acidity to my sauce.
And I'm also adding the truffles.
This is a truffle, Perigordian truffle.
It's a classic truffle. I mean, it's delicious.
So you can just shave it into most dishes.
Interesting. I never used this before.
[Tiffani] Mamba is now shaving some of his truffles and tasting them raw.
-That's a good... Good move. -Yep. Good move.
Truffles are not common in East African cooking,
but I taste the truffle and it taste like earth and mushrooms.
Mushroom with stroganoff, this makes sense.
So I sliced them very thin on top.
One minute left, chefs.
I just got the truffle.
I decided just to kind of give that a quick shape.
But for some reason, the truffle slicer and I,
we're not getting along.
[Tiffani] Chef Kevin was slicing with truffle slicer.
It wasn't working out.
He started slicing the truffle with his knife
-and it's going on thick. -[Cliff] No, no.
[Ted] Chefs, get this done.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six,
-five, four, three, two, one. -Come on!
-Time's up. -[Tiffani screams]
-Well done. -That was awesome.
Good job.
-Nice job, chef. -Yeah.
[Mamba] I'm feeling very confident.
I feel like it was easy for me.
Yeah, to be honest.
[Dan] I'm proud of this dish.
I think Kevin is the one to beat right now. His dish looks really good.
I had little trouble with the, with the dang, uh, truffle slicer.
So I just kind of improvised in the moment, but I feel good.
Chefs, inside your second basket,
you found beef stroganoff tacos,
winter truffles, Bloody Mary olives
and an ostrich fan fillet.
Chef Kevin, you're up first. Please tell us about your entree.
We have a pan-seared ostrich and we have a white bean stew.
The Bloody Mary olives are in that.
And then we have a reduced triple cream sauce.
-Chef, where are you working? -[Kevin] I'm currently a culinary educator.
I teach at a high school culinary arts,
and we're helping them kind of gain some valuable life skills.
-That is great. -[Tiffani] That's great.
Yeah.
Chef Kevin, I think there's some really good ideas here.
I like the spinach in with the white beans stew.
The use of the olives is really smart.
But then the ostrich, it's...
It's a little raw in the middle.
And then I have the truffles.
These are like, like a country cut of truffle.
You know what I mean? And you want them a lot thinner.
But I think this is a good dish.
I think it tastes great.
Okay. Thank you.
Where's the, um, the Stroganoff?
I put the stroganoff in some stock and reduced that.
It's missing that flavor.
And I think the ostrich needed maybe another five minutes
just so that center isn't that extreme raw bulls-eye.
-Okay. -Thank you, Chef Kevin.
Next up, Chef Mamba.
I make a Nazi ostrich stroganoff,
and then on top of it, I put the truffles.
Are you classically trained as a chef?
[Mamba] No, I'm not.
My mum owned a small restaurant,
so I've been learning everything from her.
So there is no culinary school in Burundi.
But I think my mom, she's a great teacher.
-Clearly. -All right.
You're going to invite his mom to your cooking school.
'Cause if she taught him how to do this...
This is... This is really good.
And you know what the craziest thing to me is?
Is you don't know how to cook with truffles,
but you sliced these so thin and they'd melted on to the dish.
And it's... I mean, it's... This is amazing, dude.
-This is really wild. -Thank you so much, chef.
Chef Mamba, it's so damn good.
The stroganoff is used for the gravy
and essentially the sauce,
and it gives the viscosity and texture
and it also somehow protected your ostrich
from being overcooked and dry.
[Cliff] I'm not going to say anything different
than the other two chefs have said.
It's a very, very good plate of food.
-Thank you, chef. Thank you. -Finally, Chef Dan.
I made a grilled ostrich fan with grilled broccoli,
some buttery whipped potatoes,
a little bit of truffle stroganoff gravy.
The ostrich fan fillet is great.
You know, it's well-seasoned.
I'm actually happy that the truffle is in... Is in the sauce.
It's actually, you know, one of the better uses
of the truffle.
The sauce is a little sweet, um, with the Marsala.
-A little... -Sure.
[Cliff] ...a little, a little bit heavy-handed.
-I love where you were going. -[Dan] Yeah.
Um, but just a little bit of restraint.
I mean, I would bathe in mashed potatoes like this, frankly.
-So thank you. -Thanks. Thank you.
And then the potatoes with the ostrich fan fillet
are really smart, but the sauce is sweet.
Okay.
And maybe the Marsala just needs to come down
a little bit more to like cook some of that residual sugar out of it.
-But I keep going back and eating it. -Thank you.
[Marc] I'm agreeing with everything they're saying.
The mashed potatoes are great, stroganoff sauce, great.
-This is a proper main course. -Thank you.
All right. Chef Dan, thank you.
-Thank you. -Okay.
Who gets to stay for dessert?
I'll tell you soon.
[Mamba] The judges say that my entree was good.
They loved it.
So I'm confident 100% that I'm safe.
[Kevin] Whoo!
Man, my mind's going a million miles an hour.
This wasn't as strong as I had hoped,
but I've shown off technique. I've shown off skill.
And so, you know, I hope to get to continue to do that
in the dessert round.
[Dan] What's worrying me about my dish
is that the sauce was a little sweet,
but hopefully, I can sneak through to the third round.
So, whose dish is on the chopping block?
Chef Kevin, you've been chopped.
Judges.
Chef Kevin, unfortunately, your ostrich fan fillet
was undercooked, and none of us could find
the beef stroganoff taco represented in your dish.
And so we have to chop you.
Thank you, chefs.
[Kevin] Uh, you know, I'm a little disappointed,
but I put my best foot forward.
I'm proud of the effort and ultimately,
it just didn't go my way.
Chef Dan, Chef Mamba, feel like you have momentum on your side?
-I got this. -I came here to win.
Let's hope the dessert basket is kind to you.
Open it up.
-And your third... -Wow.
[Ted] ...and final dishes must include yeast extract spread...
I never used that before.
Yeast extract spread? What are we in, Australia?
Some type of citrus.
[Ted] ...pink variegated lemons...
-Creamy cheese. -[Ted] ...heavy cream...
All right.
[Ted] ...and blueberry pancake pie.
Blueberry pie.
I think I can work with this.
Okay.
Thirty minutes.
Clock starts now.
[Tiffani] All right, guys. Here we go.
Come on.
The chefs have yeast extract spread,
which is essentially brewer's yeast
that's been brought down.
-It's like a very... -Past molasses.
-Past molasses, yeah. -[Cliff] Yeah.
It's, like, if you were to try and spread honey cold,
it's that consistency.
And it is so powerful,
almost like if you would think of almost rancid molasses,
I think you might want to describe it as.
And by the way, people love it
-or they hate it. -[Tiffani] Or they hate it. Yeah.
If you weren't raised on it, you don't love it. That's it.
Yeah, I like it, like some people, in small doses.
Yeah.
[Tiffani] I think it's a layup for a caramel.
You could turn that into a caramel really easily.
[Dan] Yeast extract spread, all right.
I got a nice umami flavor in there,
and I'm just thinking, I can make a nice caramel.
So I'm making yeast extract caramel
with a blueberry pancake pie parfait.
Mamba is a true competitor, a fighter.
But that doesn't mean that I'm not going to try to whip his butt.
[Mamba] Dan is very strong competitor
and I see how experienced he is.
But I feel, at this point,
we have equal chance to win this competition.
In Burundi, sugar is very expensive
and I have very little experience with my dessert,
but we make chapati for breakfast.
Chapati is similar to a crepe.
I'm making a blueberry and strawberry chapati.
For my chapati dough, I'm using egg, flour, yeast extract
and sugar and I'm grinding cardamom
and then I'm seasoning my chapati with cardamom.
If I win $10,000,
I will donate the money to Freedom House.
Freedom House is a shelter in Detroit
where my wife and I, we lived in when our kid was born.
So, that shelter for us is like home.
Twenty minutes to go, chefs.
Judges, the blueberry pancake pie sounds a little weird. Is it?
It's delicious.
It's pretty yum, yum, give me some.
It tastes like exactly what you expect it to taste like.
It is blueberry, pancake, maple.
It tastes like breakfast and dreams.
I'm taking the blueberry pancake pie
and I cut it into pieces
and I put it in the oven to crisp the whole thing up
and use that as a base for my parfait.
Mamba, how are you doing, man?
-I'm doing all right, man. How about you? -I'm all right.
You're the king of surprises today, man.
Can't trust you.
Dude, this guy has every trick under the sun up his sleeve.
He is just like a magician over there.
[Mamba] I get my chapati dough into the pan
and then from my chapati filling,
I'm using the blueberry from the blueberry pie
and then my heavy cream.
And then I add in the juice from the pink lemon.
Ten minutes to go, chefs.
We didn't talk about the pink variegated lemons very much,
but it tastes like a lemon.
[Tiffani] Taste like a lemon.
It looks fancy, tastes like a lemon.
It's... It's something that can charge you
a couple extra bucks for at the grocery store.
-Exactly. -Oh, they got the pink one.
[Dan] So I'm making blueberry sauce.
I stripped the blueberries off of the blueberry pancake pie,
and I put them in the blender
with a little bit of the variegated lemon juice.
I put a little hot water, and I just let it rip.
Five minutes to get it done, chefs.
[Mamba] I go flip-off on my chapati
and it's completely burned.
Guys, Mamba just burned one of his chapatis.
-Whoa. -[Marc] And he's got to start over.
Oh, my God.
[Dan] Mamba is burning his crepes and it's pretty risky
to do what he's doing right now.
-He's running out of time. -That pan is hot.
[Tiffani] Get it off the heat. Get it off the heat.
-Just don't do it again. -Get it off the heat.
Turn the heat down.
[Mamba] I'm panicking right now
and I'm running out of time.
I cannot forgive myself if I mess up.
Mamba just burnt his chapati.
-[Cliff] Whoa. -[Marc] And he's got to start over.
My chapati's burned, I don't want to mess up
with this last dish. I hope I can get enough cooking time.
Right behind, chef. Right behind.
Coming down. Coming down.
Two minute warning, chefs.
[Marc sighs] Wow.
Guys, time to move now.
Heavy cream. This is an absolute gift.
I can make whipped cream here.
So I had a little bit of maple and some vanilla.
One minute to go, chefs.
[Marc] Come on, guys, you can do this.
Let's get all the ingredients.
[Cliff] Let's go, Dan. Let's go, Mamba.
Make sure it's all four.
[Mamba] I'm watching the clock, the time is running.
I'm being nervous because this is not getting ready on time.
[Ted] Final seconds of the final round, chefs.
[Marc] Come on, let's do it.
[Ted] Ten, nine, eight, seven, six,
five, four, three, two, one.
-Time's up. -[Cliff] All right.
[Tiffani] You're a nail-biter.
[Dan] I'm worried about Mamba.
This crepe he's got over there, it looks awesome.
And I'm a little nervous. So let's see what happens.
[Mamba] I worry about what Dan did.
Presentation he has is amazing,
but I'm so proud of me what I did there.
I feel very confident.
Hopefully, it's going to be the best.
Chef Mamba, Chef Dan, for the dessert round,
you got yeast extract spread,
pink variegated lemons,
heavy cream and a blueberry pancake pie.
Chef Dan, what do we have?
I made a blueberry pancake pie parfait,
and I put some of the vegetable spread in the caramel,
and I took some of the blueberries off the top of the pancake pie
and I pureed that with a little bit of the citrus.
Wow. This is very comforting.
It's interesting, the contents in the bottom were hot.
Kind of melted in there
and the coolness of the whipped cream in the top
and the warmth of that caramel,
I thought that was really, really, a really good bite.
And all the flavors work together.
Umm, Chef Dan, where's the lemon?
So I put the lemon in the blueberry puree.
[Tiffani] We give you, like, you know, a $15 fancy lemon,
-we got to see it at some point. -Sure.
It's delicious. It is.
But for me, the pieces of the blueberry pancake pie
are very, very clunky.
I wish there was a fresher component.
So, yes, more of the lemon.
I got it.
[Ted] Thank you, Chef Dan.
Finally, Chef Mamba.
[Mamba] I made for you chapati with blueberries and strawberries.
And then I put inside heavy cream and some lemon in it.
I saw you muddling cardamom.
Yeah, yeah. It was black cardamom.
[Cliff] When you powdered the cardamom, did you...
Did you strain it afterwards
or did it go right into the batter?
No, I tried... I didn't strain it,
but I took it out and I make sure,
like, I have the finest I can.
All right. Well, it's... It's definitely cardamom forward.
It's too much cardamom for me.
And it's taking away from all of the work that you did.
[Marc] Did you get the last one that he made?
-The last crepe? -I did.
[Marc] That's interesting, because I'm not getting as strong a cardamom flavor.
All the cardamom must have soaked to the bottom.
I bet you got 90% of the cardamom.
[Mamba] Yeah, that was settled in the bottom
by the time I was rushing to make that one, that's...
Maybe that's what stay in the bottom.
We're obviously seeing some, I think some inconsistencies with the chapati
and the amount of cardamom in there.
But the chapati itself, I love the thickness.
I love the chew. I love the texture of it.
-That's great. -Thank you, chef.
I like the flavor of the chapati.
And I think using the blueberry pancake pie puree
with the heavy cream,
the lemon makes all the difference in the world
because we have this pan... Blueberry pancake pie that's very rich.
And so the lemon cuts through that and helps out.
I think this is just really smart.
Thank you, chef.
Okay. Chef Mamba, thank you.
Thank you.
The Chopped champion gets $10,000
and bragging rights forever.
We'll find out very soon who the winner is.
Thank you, chefs.
Judges, there was no special theme
for this competition, no wild twists.
But, man, those baskets.
There were some challenging components
in these baskets for sure.
I would say the... The appetizer round
was probably the trickiest for me at least.
Chai tea latte was so sweet.
But I thought Dan did a great job utilizing the chai.
Sort of, you know, sort of balancing it out,
bringing a little bit of heat.
-And he cooked those scallops perfectly. -[Tiffani] Perfectly.
[Marc] But it was really the non-editing
of either the green curry or the miso.
Right.
He needed to really stick to one and emphasize it more.
And then we went to Mamba's dish
and saw what he did with the chai tea.
It was almost as if that dish was enhanced
by the chai tea sauce that he made.
Everything about that dish just sort of blew me away.
We all heard Mamba say,
"I've never worked with scallops before,"
but as it turns out, he delivered a dish
that was... It was pretty freaking delicious.
[Tiffani] Yummy.
I was just disappointed that Mamba gave us that side sauce
with the spice and the tomato,
that really just did not belong.
In the entree round, Dan's... Dan's ostrich,
it was good straight forward food, you know.
[Tiffani] But the Marsala had no business being there.
-[Cliff] Way to sweet. Way to sweet. -[Tiffani] It was so sweet.
Mamba made a dish that was stupendous.
The way he cut up that meat and massaging in the spices and the truffles,
the way he sliced them thin and they warm themselves
on those spices, that was a real home run for me.
I mean, this was a competition that ended up really exciting.
The two very, very deserving candidates
who really gave their all.
Yep.
I want to go home with a win. I feel that I deserve it.
I feel that I, you know, was consistent
and just rock solid all the way through.
I really just want to go home the champ.
I want to win not only to make my family proud.
I want to win to make Burundi proud.
I want to inspire other refugees like me.
So whose dish is on the chopping block?
Chef Dan, you've been chopped. Judges.
[Marc] Dan, in the appetizer round,
we felt like you tried really hard to dampen down
that chai tea latte, but,
you know, you tried to go with the curry or with the miso,
and you kind of needed to pick one direction or another
and really push it a little bit harder.
In the main course, we felt
that the sweetness of the Marsala didn't work.
And in the dessert we really couldn't detect the lemons.
And so we had to chop you.
That's all right.
-You did great. -[Cliff] Thank you.
[Tiffani] We loved having you here.
Thank you.
-[Tiffani] You're great, yeah. -[Marc] Great to meet you.
You know, I wish I could have won, but Mamba deserved it, man.
And I'm really happy for him.
I live to fight another day.
And that means, Chef Mamba, you are the Chopped champion.
-Congratulations. -[Tiffani] Yes! Yes, you are.
Nicely done.
I'm just happy and...
Emotional, you can see it.
I want to say thank you to my wife.
She's the number one believer. Thank you so much.
Keep doing what you're doing.
-Congrats. -[Mamba] Thank you, chef.
This win is not only for me, it's for my wife, my daughters.
-Congratulations. Awesome. -Thank you, chef.
And it's for the refugees
who are coming in this country to start a new life.
I don't know how I can describe the happiness I have.