[Kristen] My nerves are through the roof.
Think, think, think, think, think, think.
[Ted] They're swinging for the fences.
-That was the fastest 20 minutes of my life. -Boom.
Welcome to your nightmare.
[Enrique] I always ask myself, how can I be the best?
This is what we want to see.
[Doug] I want to do something that they've never seen before.
-This sauce is ungodly to look at. -[Adam speaking Spanish]
[gasps]
-[Kristen] I am feeling the pressure. -[Marc] Speed it up.
-Whoo! - [Adam] I could taste it. I could smell the ten grand.
That's probably the best fritter I've had on the Chopped set.
[Kristen] My biggest asset is that I am hyper-focused
and hyper-organized.
When it's go time, it's go time.
♪♪ Hey ♪
[Kristen] I'm the executive chef of The Village Bakeries
in western North Carolina.
I really love rustic but slightly refined dishes.
I look very feminine and sweet,
but I have got some tricks up my sleeve.
♪♪ Hey ♪
[Enrique] I am the chef-owner of El Charlatan Ramen
and Taco Shop in Socorro, Texas.
My style of cooking is Mexican and Asian fusion.
I was James Beard semi-finalist for best chef in Texas.
I think what sets me apart from the competition
is my drive.
My mom always told me that whatever I decided to do,
be the best at it, or otherwise you're wasting your time.
Don't underestimate me. If you do, you'll regret it.
[Doug] I'm the chef de cuisine at Olmsted,
and I'm from Brooklyn, New York.
My style of cooking is very green market focused.
I've been working in professional kitchens since 15 years old.
I was an executive chef by 23.
Now I'm trying to be a Chopped champion by 27.
It's time for some ravioli.
I have a very aggressive timeline,
and I'm sticking to that.
I do hold myself to a pretty high standard,
and I'm here to win.
[Adam] I consider my food New York style,
just a melting pot of the city, you know?
I'm Adam Lajara. I'm a personal chef in Bronx, New York.
I got into cooking because of my grandparents.
They would cook seven days a week.
So there was always something good to eat.
And I definitely like to showcase
my Dominican heritage in my food.
My vibe, focus, headstrong, and determined.
There's gonna be one winner and that's me.
-Hello, chefs. -Hi, Ted.
-Hello. -How you doing?
There are three rounds.
Mandatory mystery ingredients for each course.
If your dish doesn't cut it, you will be chopped.
-I came here to win. -Not today.
Time to take a peek at what's inside these.
Please open your appetizer baskets.
Oh, my...
What is this?
[Ted] Okay, it's sour candy grapes.
Candied grape?
[Ted] You also have Argentinian sausage.
Fennel.
[Ted] Fennel and obi non.
-[Doug] Help me. -[Adam] Obi non Kenobi.
What kind of bread is this? I've never seen this before.
[Kristen] This is crazy.
[Ted] You have 20 minutes to make first courses.
Time starts now.
[Enrique] Go. Off to the races.
Geoffrey, Marc, you are lucky to be joined by food columnist
and cookbook author Alyse Whitney.
-Welcome back, Alyse. -Thank you. Glad to be here.
Judges, you've certainly heard of candied apples.
These are candied grapes. Sour candy at that.
Pretty tasty, don't you think?
The citric acid on the outside gives you that tingly feeling
like a sour candy.
[Doug] Oh, my God, those grapes are sweet.
I think these grapes are something you're gonna have
to tame down, because I think it could really ruin a dish.
A little sugar, wine, you got a beautiful gastrique,
and just let those grapes do their thing.
-Yeah. -Cooked grapes are gorgeous.
I love them.
The sour grapes, I think, would make
an excellent vinaigrette.
So immediately I get the grapes in a pot
with sherry vinegar.
Kristen, what's going on over there?
I am going to give you guys pickled fennel
and sausage salad, some brown butter croutons,
and we're going to use those grapes in a vinaigrette.
-Oh, pickle. -[Geoffrey] Love that.
[Kristen] I know that I have to get the sausage out of its casing,
because if you're doing a salad,
you can't just have, like, a big old hunk of sausage.
[Geoffrey] I love Argentinian sausage.
-It's sort of like a fresher chorizo. -Yeah.
You just have to find out what to do with the obi non,
which is basically a cross between sourdough and pita.
[Doug] This obi non has a great crust on the outside,
like day-old bread.
So I'm going to use the obi non to make a crostini.
A little olive oil, salt, pepper, getting that right into the oven.
I'm making obi non crostini with Argentinian sausage
tossed in a goat milk sour grape crema
topped with a fennel salad.
I've worked in Michelin restaurants.
I've opened up eight different restaurants
throughout the country.
There's been a lot of accolades in that,
but I want to win this $10,000
because I want my own restaurant.
It's always been a dream of mine to put my own food on a plate.
What I really love is Enrique getting a griddle.
-Cast iron. -[Marc] Boom.
[Alyse] Yeah. You're going to get a lot of flavor.
You're going to get instant caramelization on that sausage.
[Enrique] Argentinian style of grilling is something that
we do often back home.
So I'm thinking I could really lean into my Latin background
and tell my story here.
Enrique, what's going on at your station, chef?
[Enrique] I'm making a sandwich.
-[Marc] Great. Thanks. -[Alyse] We love a sandwich.
[Enrique] So I'm making an Argentinian sausage choripan
with chimichurri and warm fennel slaw.
A choripan is a sandwich from Argentina.
I'm definitely taking a risk making a sandwich,
but I know I'm gonna have to do a lot to impress these judges.
-[Adam] It's game time. -Chef Adam.
Oui.
[Alyse] What's going on there? What are you making for us?
[Adam] I'm going to do like a warm fennel salad
with crouton, a little bit of Argentinian sausage.
I'm going to do a little Dijon vinaigrette.
-Oh, okay. -Grape idea.
[Adam] I'm going to take my Argentinian sausage,
and then I add up soy, some fennel fronds,
and brown it up nicely.
I immediately think I have, you know, cook the citric acid off
and make a glaze out of these grapes.
So I decided to saute my candy grapes in butter
just to give it more of a richness.
Ten minutes left, guys. Ten minutes.
[Kristen] RIght behind, right behind, right behind.
Doug is very intense. He works at a Michelin-star restaurant.
-Wow. -[Geoffrey] So if anyone's gonna come up
with a beautiful plate, I think it's him.
[Doug] I definitely don't want to play it safe.
I want to do something that probably
they've never seen before.
[Ted] Chef Doug has just put his grapes in the blender
with goat cheese.
I'm not sure about the sort of sourness of that grape
going with the flavor of goat cheese, but we'll see.
[Doug] I'm going to make a goat cheese and sour grape crema.
I think the goat cheese has a lot of fat,
and hopefully it'll cut through all those sweet grapes.
It tastes like Go-Gurt.
[Enrique] So I'm doing a slaw with the fennel,
mixing it a little bit with some napa cabbage,
a little bit of mirin, and some mayo.
That's good.
[Ted] I love fennel. I think it's a terrific vegetable.
It's a great ingredient.
There's so much you can do with it.
It may be a little polarizing with those anisey notes,
-but for me, delicious. -Behind.
Fennel is definitely one of
my favorite things to pickle.
And I'm throwing it in a pot with a little bit of
champagne vinegar, some sugar, some star anise,
cardamom pods, and coriander.
[Adam] I decide to mandolin the bulbs of fennel
to add a crunch factor into my salad.
I put them in cold water so they get nice and crisp.
-Chefs, five minutes. -Five minutes?
[speaking Spanish]
[in English] Salad, so I make my salad.
I'm grabbing romaine, radicchio, and some arugula.
[Kristen] I look over, and Adam's also doing a salad.
Cool. Battle of the salads. Let's go.
[Adam] Kristen, she's a beast. The competition is on.
It's fierce. We're going at it.
I can feel the energy in the kitchen.
Man, this is intense.
[Ted] Okay, chefs.
Less than four minutes to get this done.
That's crazy.
Kristen, she's doing a salad.
My game plan is to make a salad as well.
I have made a lot of salads.
This is something a no-brainer.
Let's go. Let's make it happen.
For my vinaigrette, I grab Dijon rice vinegar.
I hit it with a little bit of agave for the sweetness,
and then I emulsified it with a little bit of oil.
Money.
[Kristen] For my salad, I choose radicchio
because the color's fantastic,
and I know that it's really going to make the dish pop.
[Doug] I'm using the core of the fennel
and the white wine vinegar to make a vinaigrette.
For my fennel salad, I'm taking the frisee,
jalapeno, red onion, the fennel,
and just mixing that together.
The time in this Chopped kitchen is my enemy.
Just trying to stay calm and stick to my plan.
[Enrique] I'm running out of time, and I just need to make sure
this sausage is cooked.
So I'm just going to blast it with a blowtorch.
[Alyse] Chef Enrique has the grill going,
and he has the blowtorch.
He's going from both sides. I am very impressed.
[Enrique] So I already have the sour grapes on the chimichurri,
but I see the tequila, so I'm thinking to throw them
in a pan with a little bit of tequila and cook them down.
You can use them as a garnish.
[Doug] My sausage is done cooking.
The crema is blended, ready to go.
I'm gonna put the crema with the sausage
and get that onto the crostini.
Oh, boy. One minute. One minute.
-[Alyse] One minute. -[Marc] Let's go. Let's go.
-Let's get it all on the plate. -[Adam] This is wild.
[Kristen] My pickled fennel is still not on my salad.
[Geoffrey] All right, chefs, 15 seconds.
I reached into my hot pot, and I don't care about
my hands right now. I just need to get this fennel on the plate.
[judges] Ten, nine, eight, seven, six,
five, four, three, two, one.
-[Ted] Time's up. -[Alyse] Done, done.
[Geoffrey] Step away.
[exhales] Wow.
That was the fastest 20 minutes of my life.
I think the presentation could have gone better,
but, you know, the technique is what I'm hoping pulls me through.
[Enrique] Twenty minutes, it felt like five, honestly.
Yeah, even, like, my glasses are all fogged up.
Yeah, this is intense.
[Ted] Chefs, you have arrived at the chopping block.
The judges are looking forward to tasty appetizers made with
sour candy grapes, Argentinian sausage,
fennel, and obi non.
Chef Adam, what did you make?
[Adam] Today you have a warm fennel salad with some candy grapes,
Argentinian sausage, Dijon vinaigrette,
and some croutons.
-How did you get into cooking? -My love is from New York City.
I was born and raised in the Upper West Side.
I'm Dominican, and my great-grandpa
used to throw down and make a lot of, like, big soups and stews.
My family, we used to live in this building.
There's about, like, 50 family members
that lived in different apartments.
So I grew up with that background of cooking.
[Geoffrey] Right out of the gate, it's a good salad.
The rice wine vinegar is perfect foil
for this type of sausage.
I also think, even though the croutons are big,
you seasoned them, so they're delicious.
[Alyse] I agree, Chef. The grape,
I think you mellowed it really beautifully.
I think that it ended up complementing the bitterness
of the greens really well.
But I only had one piece of fennel in my salad.
I was sad to only have one little piece.
It's a good salad.
But I do feel like if you're going to move on here,
we give you these ingredients, these four ingredients
in the basket.
You've got to represent them.
The fennel is just really like a whisper here.
-Chef Adam, thank you. -Thank you all.
[Ted] Chef Kristen, please tell the judges what you made.
[Kristen] I made a pickled fennel and Argentinian sausage salad
with a candied grape vinaigrette,
obi non croutons, and shaved pecorino.
I think that the vinaigrette with the grapes,
the champagne vinegar and Dijon mustard
really help to balance out that puckery sweetness
that that grape has.
The croutons have an incredible crunch.
But once again, here, I think fennel's in the basket.
Let's bring the fennel forward.
There's a lot more radicchio here than there is fennel.
You buried the grapes in the vinaigrette,
and the vinaigrette works.
It's nice and acidic. I like it.
It's very well balanced.
-Very nice. -Thank you very much.
I get the sausage, but I think, for me,
it was kind of bland.
It needed, like, garlic and maybe some chili pepper,
something just to, like, wake it up.
Okay.
What would you do with ten grand if you won?
I've been with my husband for almost 15 years now,
and he's been there the entire way to support me.
So if I had the money, I would love to just take him
on an awesome adventure.
That's very nice.
-Chef Kristen, thank you. -Thank you.
[Ted] Chef Doug, what did you make?
Chefs, today I prepared an obi non crostini
with Argentinian sausage, goat's milk, and sour grape crema.
On the top there, we have a little bit
of a fennel vinaigrette salad.
You guys have something against fennel?
-[laughs] -I mean, it's like...
There's more frisee than anything,
and frisee is not a basket.
I love frisee, I love it, but the fennel,
if you put it in the vinaigrette,
I'm not against any of that.
I just would love to see a representation.
The crostini, I mean, it's not much to look at,
but it's actually very tasty once you put it all together.
The sausage is tasty, but I just want more fennel.
[Alyse] I agree with Geoffrey about the fennel,
but the tanginess of the goat cheese paired
with the sweetness of the grape did balance it out.
[Marc] I think you've got the acidity.
Like, you don't put little coins of sausage
on a bruschetta, right?
You would have taken that out of the casing
and maybe put, like, a layer, like a pate on there
so it would stick to the bread.
This is just, you know,
composition-wise, it's not working.
[Ted] Chef Doug, thank you.
Chef Enrique, please tell us about your dish.
[Enrique] I made Argentinian choripan with warm fennel slaw
and garnished with a drunken candied grape.
We don't get a lot of sandwiches here on Chopped.
And you know how to make a sandwich.
-That's obvious. -Thank you.
[Geoffrey] Chimichurri's good. The fennel's really good in there.
Tasting fennel. Hey.
Oh.
And the obi non is nicely grilled, so...
-Nice, nice job. -Thank you.
Yeah, I got to say, I think this is what we want to see.
Creativity.
I'm seeing all the basket ingredients.
And it's interesting, because the sweetness from
the grapes is coming through, and it's not offending me.
It's, like, just the right amount.
And you got it... It's really, this is a really good dish.
[Alyse] Mine, when I picked it up, it was, like,
a little bit too wet to hold, so I ended up
fork and knifing it, which allows me to kind of
pick and choose to build a perfect bite.
But the obi non I think if it was cut thinner,
it would have allowed there to be a better balance,
'cause, like, eat a sandwich is a little difficult.
[Ted] All right, one course done. First elimination coming up.
[Adam] I definitely think Enrique's my biggest competition,
but I still feel confident in my flavors.
Based on the judges' critique, I'm thinking maybe Kristen's
on the chopping block.
I feel like I should have put more fennel in my salad.
You know, it kind of seemed like everybody struggled
with that except for Enrique.
[Ted] So, whose dish is on the chopping block?
Chef Doug, you've been chopped.
Judges?
Chef Doug, we love your idea of a crostini on the obi non.
However, we couldn't taste the fennel that you pureed.
It didn't come through. And we thought architecturally
and structurally, it just didn't make it
to the crostini level that we would have thought.
And so we have to chop you.
Understood. Thank you, chefs. Good luck, chefs.
Obviously, being eliminated first is never fun.
But just being here is such a great honor.
And, you know, I still am going to open that restaurant.
This is just a minor bump in the road.
Chef Adam, Chef Enrique, Chef Kristen,
four new mystery ingredients are here.
Let's go.
Oh, no. What is this?
What is this?
[Ted] And it's a sriracha sundae.
What in the world?
[Kristen] It's just like a terrible red color.
How am I going to make this work?
[Ted] You also have romanesco cauliflower.
-[Kristen] Okay. -Dover sole.
-[Ted] Dover sole fillets. -Sole?
-[Ted] And instant mashed potatoes. -Sweet.
Let's do this. I'm ready.
All right. Sriracha ice cream. [laughs]
[Ted] This is the 30-minute entree round.
And the clock starts now.
-[Marc] Let's go, chefs. -[Alyse] Come on, come on.
Right behind. Coming down.
This is going to be a giant balancing act.
Behind. Right behind.
[Geoffrey] It's going to be part one, how can you cook the sole?
Part two, how do you balance all these huge flavors?
[Marc] We're going to see what happens
with this sriracha ice cream.
It's a little weird.
Oh.
Mmm-mmm.
[Alyse] I took a dip into that ice cream sundae,
and it has cayenne in it.
It has a pepper on top that they can pluck off and use.
It has basil for some freshness.
So maybe a sriracha sauce or soup of some sort.
[Kristen] This sriracha sundae is a lot sweeter than I thought
it was gonna be, almost like cinnamon candy
with sriracha in it.
So I decide let's melt this sundae down
and turn it into a beurre blanc sauce.
I'm making instant mashed potato pan-fried Dover sole
with a sriracha sundae beurre blanc.
We're making some things happen, I think.
For my beurre blanc, I start to whisk in my butter,
the brine from olives, and lemon juice.
[Enrique] The biggest challenge with this ice cream
is taming the sriracha in it.
I can work with it. All right. Ingredients.
Behind.
So I'm thinking maybe I can bury that
sriracha flavor in a mole.
I'm making a pan-seared Dover sole
with sriracha sundae mole.
Mole usually takes hours, even days.
So it's definitely taking a risk.
One of the tricks to getting this mole down in 30 minutes
is toasting your dry ingredients very fast,
very hot.
And you get them in the blender with graham crackers and chocolate.
The graham crackers is actually a cheat code
that my grandma taught me.
It just gives it this sort of thickness that the sauce needs.
-[Marc] Enrique, how you feeling? -I'm good.
-[Geoffrey] You making a mole there? -[Enrique] Yeah, mole.
[Alyse] Mole in 30?
I actually think that while a mole is a genius idea,
pairing it with Dover sole is not.
That fish is so delicate. It's so beautiful.
-What works is butter, capers, almonds. -[Alyse] Yeah.
It's sort of, to me, a faux pas
-to put the "fole" on the fillet. -[Alyse laughing]
Oh, GZ.
[Adam] Growing up, my grandparents being immigrants
from Dominican Republic, they would cook a lot of seafood.
I would see octopus, crab legs.
So when it comes to seafood, I'm very comfortable.
I am making pan seared Dover sole
with sriracha pommes puree.
I'm going to do a saute on my romanesco.
So I'm adding a little bit of mirin, sherry.
I'm going to hit it with some cilantro,
scallions, and some golden raisins.
It's sweet. It's acidic.
I feel fully confident it's going to bring me
to the next round.
Chef, 20 minutes to get this done.
Oh, thank God, those extra ten minutes.
[Marc] So romanesco, it's basically fancy cauliflower, right?
You can boil it, you can roast it.
I mean, you can put it into a food processor
and make cauliflower "rice."
It's great. It's a straightforward ingredient.
[Enrique] So I'm choosing to rice the romanesco because
I want to do something different with it.
And I know, since it's so tough raw,
it can definitely take to the food processor.
Get it in there, get it in there.
[Kristen] I want to do a romanesco bagna cauda.
Bagna cauda is a very traditional Italian condiment.
It's essentially anchovies and olive oil
and a little bit of garlic.
Ten minutes left on our mean old clock.
[Adam] I'm using my instant mashed potatoes,
throw in garlic powder, onion powder,
the hot boiling water, and my sriracha sundae.
We'll lift it up so it can become a beautiful pommes puree.
[Kristen] I see that Adam is blending up his mashed potatoes,
but you're going to end up with, like, really gummy potatoes.
The starches have to be treated with respect.
How's it going, Adam?
It's going good. I'm living. I'm alive. I'm blessed.
-Feeling strong? -[Adam] I'm feeling strong.
I taste it, and it's a bit gummy.
I'm not too happy with it, but the flavor's there,
so I add more water to it.
[Ted] Instant mashed potatoes, to many people,
seemed like a modern marvel when they were invented in the '50s.
And they certainly make that side dish easier to prepare.
[Alyse] I happen to be a connoisseur
-of the instant mashed potatoes. -Wow.
And that was the only way I had mashed potatoes
for most of my life.
I think that they could be a game changer in making
a quick gnocchi, a quick, like, potato leek soup.
And that's why my parents loved it,
because it's just quick and easy.
[Enrique] I gotta do something with the mashed potatoes,
so I think gnocchi.
Add a little bit of salt and hot water.
And I'm choosing to pan fry it in a lot of brown butter.
Did he make gnocchi, like I thought? Chef Enrique.
[Enrique] Yeah.
What's going on in that sizzling butter?
I got a sort of like a makeshift gnocchi.
I told you.
[Kristen] I don't get to work with Dover sole all that often,
but I do know that it's gonna be best very quickly fried.
So I decide that the smartest move is I've taken breadcrumbs
and mixed them with instant mashed potatoes in the crust.
[Adam] Beautiful fillets.
I have worked with Dover sole plenty of times.
This fish is very delicate. It cooks quickly.
So you want a gentle cook on this.
I'm going to use my instant mashed potatoes
again, crush my fish with some pepper, garlic.
And I'm doing lemon, beurre noisette, which you get
when you cook down butter, and it becomes this rich,
nutty sauce.
-Butter, butter, butter. -I see brown butter.
I'm happy about that.
Nothing screams Dover sole like butter.
Voila, oui, oui, siree.
[Enrique] I got all these things going on, and at this point,
I'm thinking, man, what am I going to do with that Dover?
I decided to pan sear the sole
in a little bit of butter.
I'm panicking on the inside because it is a very delicate fish
I have never worked with before.
I just hope this works out.
Okay, chefs, you're just under two and half minutes.
Time's running short.
[Adam] They look good.
[Enrique] I waited too long to cook this Dover sole,
so I'm just going to kick it into turbo drive.
-Here we go with the torch. -[Marc] Minute and a half.
You got to get it all on the plate.
-[Alyse] Ninety seconds. -[Marc] Let's go. Let's go.
Come on. Speed it up.
[Adam] Oh, my God.
-Twenty seconds. -Oh, my gosh.
-[Enrique] Twenty seconds. -[Kristen] Hold on.
Please don't put that near the fish.
No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no.
[Ted] All right. The entree round is winding down, chefs.
[Alyse] Come on. Push through the final moment.
[Adam] You got this, chef. You can do it, baby.
[Ted] Ten, nine, eight, seven, six,
five, four, three, two, one.
-Time's up. Please step back. -[Alyse] Oh, you did it.
Mamma mia.
[Enrique] What I'm most worried about is the way I treated the Dover sole.
For me to have just thrown it in a pan and covered it
with mole might have been a little risky.
[Adam] My dish looks beautiful.
The only thing I'm worried about is the texture
of my pommes puree.
But I'm going to hit the dessert round.
I just got to see who's going to be right next to me.
Chefs, your entree baskets contained a sriracha sundae,
romanesco cauliflower, Dover sole fillets,
and instant mashed potatoes.
Chef Kristen, please tell us about your dish.
[Kristen] I've made an instant mashed potato
pan-fried Dover sole with a sriracha sundae
beurre blanc and romanesco
tossed in bagna cauda.
Um, Chef, where is the bagna cauda?
The romanesco is tossed in it.
I think mine may have been a little lightly tossed.
I'm not getting really the anchovy, the umami.
The romanesco is a little bit bland,
so if I had had a little more sauce, that would have been lovely.
Yeah, sure.
All the flavor was in the bottom of that pan,
'cause you were plating so quickly,
the olives and all that was in the bottom.
I don't have any olives on my plate.
And the sauce is really ungodly to look at,
but you put enough acidity into it
that it's actually working with the fish.
I would never condone anybody to make a sauce
that looked like this, but I know that...
I know the challenges of the basket.
And I think the Dover sole is great.
-I like the way you cooked it. I think you did a good job. -Thank you.
[Geoffrey] But the instant mashed potato didn't get the crust you wanted
because I think that the pan wasn't hot enough.
So unfortunately, the fish that I have
in front of me is overcooked.
-Heard that. -[Ted] Chef Kristen, thank you.
Thank you very much.
[Ted] Next up, Chef Enrique.
[Enrique] I've made a pan seared Dover sole
with instant mashed potato gnocchi
and a sriracha sundae mole,
something I thought I'd never say.
I think this is wildly creative.
And the mole is just... I mean, this is like
a textbook mole, which is almost impossible in 30 minutes.
But it's a really good way to get bits and pieces
of that sriracha sundae in there.
I think that you pulled off a really impressive multi-part meal.
My fish is cooked perfectly.
It has a really nice texture to it.
It is both delicate and meaty.
[Geoffrey] For me, this Dover sole has no business
going anywhere near the mole.
It's great with the romanesco rice,
but the mole just... Holy mole.
It just overwhelms it.
[Marc] The gnocchi, I think, is super creative,
but definitely just tastes like mashed potatoes
that have been seared.
I think you needed some egg, maybe some Parmesan
or something to hold it together.
The romanesco rice is really seasoned perfectly.
I love the flavor of that.
Thank you.
What motivates you to cook and to be here?
One of the biggest motivations is my mom.
She passed away last year in November.
Oh. Sorry.
-Sorry for your loss. -[Enrique] Thank you.
And more importantly, I have a three-year-old daughter
that's going to be watching this show.
And I definitely want to make her proud.
What's her name? Do you want to say hi?
Penelope. Penny.
-My little Penny. -Your little Penny.
So cute.
Thank you, Chef Enrique. Finally, Chef Adam.
[Adam] So I have Dover sole with lemon beurre blanc.
You also have sriracha pommes puree
with sauteed romanesco with golden raisins.
So what made you wake up one day and say,
"I want to be on Chopped?"
My big motivation is my daughter.
I have a little baby girl coming through, a little princess.
-My first one. -Congratulations.
[Adam] Thank you so much.
So that's my motivation.
I have, like, this lift of energy ever since
I knew I'm going to be a dad.
Changes everything, man. It's the best thing ever.
I'm excited. Thank you, Chef.
I think, first of all, the Dover sole,
I love the lemon on there.
I think the seasoning's good.
You're pushing it pretty far with the salt, I think.
-Okay. -[Marc] But it's just there.
I think this romanesco is magnificent,
and I really love the crunch on the outside of the sole
from the instant mashed potato.
I thought it was really smart, and it really delivered
edge to edge.
-Thank you, Chef. -[Alyse] You're welcome.
The taste of the sole, to me, is really delicious.
I wish it was nowhere near this pink
Easter bunny potatoes.
I think you fell victim to this sriracha ice cream.
You mixed it with the mashed potatoes, and it's just,
once again, not a pleasant color, and it's very gummy.
The actual taste, if I close my eyes, is not bad.
It's just gummy.
-Yes. -Thank you, chefs.
We are almost to the third and final round.
And soon, we'll let you know which two chefs
will be cooking in it.
[Kristen] I don't feel like that was my best round.
But I will say that the gumminess of Adam's sauce
may send him home. I don't know.
[Adam] I feel like Kristen's on the chopping block.
The third round is right there. I'm excited.
I could taste it. I could smell the ten grand.
Which two chefs will be making dessert
and whose dish is on the chopping block?
Chef Kristen, you've been chopped.
Judges?
Chef Kristen, the instant mashed potato crust
didn't get the crisp you were hoping for.
And the romanesco, that bagna cauda,
we just missed it because it got stuck at the bottom of the pot.
And so we had to chop you.
Well, thank you very much. It's been an honor to be here.
-Good luck. Good luck, you guys. -Thanks, Chef. Appreciate it.
-Thank you. -Thank you, Chef.
I kind of saw it coming.
I feel like I got in my own way.
It is as difficult as it looks on TV.
[Enrique] Going against Adam now in the final round,
I'm feeling a little nervous.
But I really don't care because I'm here to win,
and that's what I'm going to do.
[Adam] I can taste it.
I'm going to make my future daughter proud.
I have a game plan, so I'm ready to execute it.
Dessert baskets are in front of you.
Open them up.
What the...
Turkish desserts.
[Ted] And you've got assorted baklava.
Baklava goodness.
[Ted] Truffle honey.
[Enrique] Got actual truffle. Was thinking of using truffle.
I believe quince.
[Ted] Quince.
[Enrique] Oh, I grew up with quince.
And we got far far.
-What is this? -[Ted] And far far.
Fried eat snacks.
Oh, man, I don't know.
[Ted] We're giving you a final 30 minutes.
[Adam] Let's make it happen.
Clock starts now.
-[Geoffrey] All right. -[Alyse] Let's go.
[Marc] Let's do this.
I'm excited. How about you? How about a little baklava?
-[Geoffrey] I grew up with baklava. -[Alyse] Yeah.
[Geoffrey] And I ate so much of it.
It's a great Middle Eastern dessert.
[Adam] This is perfect.
[Enrique] All right.
It's made out of filo, and it's sweet,
because it's cinnamon, sugar, honey, butter.
[Marc] When I see something like that that's so sweet,
I'm like, put a creme anglaise on it and dump it in
and do a baklava ice cream.
Like, just because all that flavor is already there.
Just going to say the same thing.
[Enrique] There's a lot of spice in baklava,
and especially a lot of sweetness.
So I'm thinking I want to make an ice cream.
I think it's a good way to highlight the baklava.
I'm making a sopapilla with a baklava ice cream.
A sopapilla is a dessert made with flour,
tortilla, and seasoned with cinnamon and sugar.
My mom used to make the perfect sopapilla,
and I'm just thinking this would make her proud.
So to make my ice cream, I'm making a creme anglaise.
It has sugar. I mix with heavy cream.
I throw in my baklava, and I also add a little bit
of miso to counteract the sweetness of everything.
Let's get it going. Let's get it going.
We have a basket item here that I love,
and that's quince.
It's in the rose family.
It has the most seductive smell,
I think, of any fruit on Earth.
It is dense. It is hard.
It's as if a dried pear combined with,
like, an apricot.
And it's so good cooked down with pork.
But you've got to cook it.
[Adam] Quince is sour, it's tart, and it cannot be eaten raw.
So I know I have to cook it down to a sauce.
I am making ricotta fritters with a quince
truffle honey caramel sauce.
I make my ricotta fritter batter.
Granulated sugar and flour, my eggs,
baking powder, and the ricotta.
Make sure it's thick, but not too thick in consistency.
Get a ice cream scooper to scoop it into the fryer.
-Yeah, what's he frying? -He's making fritters?
These guys are already making fritters?
These were up. No, these were up.
[Enrique] How you doing, papi?
I'm alive, papa. How you feeling, Chefy?
-Let's do it, man. -That's what I like to hear.
[Marc] Adam was saying he has a little baby girl
coming along the way, and Enrique has a baby
who's about three years old.
So they both want to play, you know,
show their kids who they are.
Right behind you.
There's nothing more motivating than being a father.
I got to go out there and make it happen
because I want to give beautiful things to my baby daughter.
Right behind you, Chefy.
I want to win Chopped to represent my mom,
and I want to do it for my daughter, Penny.
I just want her to see her daddy win.
[Ted] Chefs, 20 minutes left on the clock.
Cook, cook, cook, cook, cook, cook.
[Ted] Enrique is making sopapillas that's puffed up
the size of a grapefruit.
And it looks fantastic.
[Enrique] Once I throw my sopapillas out of the fryer,
I get some cinnamon sugar and I dust them with it.
We also have these delightful little puff puffs
that are called far far.
Just a tasty snack for people in India.
I don't know if these competitors know that
-you have to deep fry them. -[Alyse] Yeah.
[Geoffrey] That's far and away the best far far I've seen.
Well, they've come a far, far away in this competition,
-so I'm ready to see-- I know, Ted. -[Ted groans]
You guys make one more far far joke--
-Will you go far, far away? -Argh!
[Enrique] The far far, something that I've seen at my local Indian grocery,
I throw it in the fryer, and then I use
the same cinnamon sugar that I used for the sopapillas,
and I mix that all together.
I start crumbling some baklava in there.
I think this will be a great crunchy component to the ice cream.
Once fried, I take my far far, I put it in the food processor
with the baklava, and I have a beautiful coating
to go with my fritters.
My fritters need a sauce, so I have quince in the truffle honey,
-cook it down. -Think, think, think, think, think, think.
Vanilla.
Adam, how are you doing down there?
[Adam] I feel alive. I feel good. I feel blessed.
-[Marc] Seven? -[Alyse] Seven minutes.
[Marc] That's not much time.
By the way, Enrique still does not have
the ice cream in the machine.
[Enrique] So the clock is ticking, and now that
all my ice cream ingredients are together,
I need to get this over to the ice cream machine
and just pray that I'll have enough time for this to set.
So it is very important for the ice cream to happen
because it's basically, like, the main component of the dish.
I see the time just clicking away,
and I'm a little worried that it might not set in time.
All right, man.
So I'm making a quince and truffle honey syrup.
My syrup's coming down to the right consistency.
I decided to add a little bit of tequila on it.
Less than five minutes to go here.
-Boy. -[Ted] Need to be plating soon.
[Adam] The clock is running.
The last thing I need to do is take my ricotta fritters,
roll them in the baklava and far far.
[Ted] One minute, chefs.
-[Alyse] Oh, my gosh. -[Adam] One minute. One more minute.
Ice cream.
The ice cream looks good.
[Enrique] I'm so relieved.
The ice cream texture is perfect.
-[Ted] Twenty seconds, chefs. -[Geoffrey] Come on, come on, come on.
[Alyse] All right, chefs, come on. You're so close to the finish.
Here we go, chefs. Final seconds of the final round.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six,
-five, four, three, two, one. -[Adam] Oh, yeah.
-[Ted] Time's up. -[Alyse] Oh, yeah.
-[all clapping] -Here you go, jefe.
You killed it.
Beautiful, chef.
Is it yeast or just baking powder?
-Flour tortilla. -Flour tortilla. Oh, sick.
Enrique is a beast, straight up samurai, black belt, assassin.
But I'm confident.
-Man, it's anybody's game. -[Enrique] I feel great.
All the ingredients are there, and they're represented very well,
so I'm pretty confident.
Adam's got some nice fritters, but honestly,
I just let my talent do the talking, and I got this, you know?
This is gonna be the winner dish.
[Ted] Chef Adam, Chef Enrique, you have made
your sweet finales with assorted baklava, quinces,
truffle honey, and far far.
Chef Enrique, take it away.
Finishing off my Latin America road trip,
we did a sopapilla topped with a quince, honey, truffle syrup.
And then next to it, you have a baklava ice cream
topped with a far far crumble.
Nice crunch.
-Thank you. -Really like the contrast of the creamy ice cream,
the crunchy topping, and then when you stuff it
like a little ice cream sandwich inside this
little triangle of joy.
-[Enrique] That's the way to go. -I like it.
[Marc] I mean, first of all, your ice cream's great.
It's really tasty, well-balanced.
The sopapilla, I think this is really, really well done.
I think it's a very creative dessert.
This is a very delicious flavor.
It's very interesting with the miso.
Lovely texture and a real good use of the baklava.
My problem with this dessert is it's painfully sweet.
Candying the quince is great.
Maybe if you add some, like, lemon peel rind
to that and candy that as well so I have, like,
-I have some bitter, something to help. -Got it.
You know, some segments of freshness here.
-Chef Enrique, thank you. -Thank you.
Chef Adam, please tell us about your sweet treats.
So today I made for you guys a ricotta fritter
rolled in far far and baklava, a quince
and truffle honey sauce.
Some brulee quince as well.
I think that this is a successful marriage
between truffle honey and quince.
This is a very good sauce that you've made.
Is there vanilla in it, too?
-There's a tad bit of vanilla in there. -[Alyse] Yeah.
The mouthfeel on this is really unique.
It's not a jelly. It's not a marmalade.
-It's like applesauce. -Yeah, it's kind of like, that's what I thought it was.
-I was like, ooh, quincele sauce. -Yeah.
And these beignets are just beautifully light inside,
and it's a real nice vehicle for the far far crumble
on top.
We have a lot of fritters here, and that's probably
the best fritter I've had on the Chopped set.
Crunchy on the outside, perfect cook on the inside.
[Marc] So the baklava's on here as well, right?
Yeah, I pulsed it with the far far, added some cinnamon.
[Marc] Gives it some texture on the outside.
It gives a little bit of sweetness.
I do love the finishing salt on there, too.
-I got a bite with that, and it was really perfect. -Thank you.
Appreciate you.
Okay, we'll call you back as soon as we know
who's the champion.
Thank you, chefs.
We had a beautiful representation of
the ingredients in the first round.
I thought Chef Adam did a really good job.
It's sort of like a formal thing.
He did a salad, right?
He made beautiful croutons with the obi non
and he made like a sour candy dressing.
And that was great.
But I think that the fennel, which to me was kind of
the star of the dish,
was lost. There was not enough fennel.
[Marc] I think Enrique, right out of the gate, showed us creativity.
That sandwich he made us with that chimichurri
was absolutely delicious.
The Argentinian sauce was charred to perfection.
The fennel and sour grapes that was braised together,
it was excellent. We finally got fennel.
He used the fennel.
[Alyse] It was a beast of a sandwich, though.
It was pretty large and in charge.
But I enjoyed it when I could kind of make
more manageable bites.
And then when you go on to the main course,
because the main course was obviously pretty tricky
because of that sriracha ice cream
-that was in that basket. -[Alyse and Geoffrey groan]
[Alyse] Oh, and those instant mashed potato flakes from Chef Adam?
I don't think I'll soon forget that off-putting red color.
If they had been just hydrated in a bowl instead of
whipped up in the blender... It just made it so gummy.
But I do think that his Dover sole
with that lemon was great.
But then we had Enrique make a mole in 30 minutes.
[Geoffrey] Who in a million years would think of putting
sriracha sundae and turning it into a mole?
I gave him a lot of street cred for that.
And also, he made romesco cauliflower rice with butter.
-That was a good move. -It was really, really tasty.
Did they play well with the Dover sole fillets?
I don't think so.
But it's a very close race.
And it's going to be tough to decide who wins today.
[tense music playing]
[Adam] It was wild, but I made it. I made it through the fire.
I feel grateful, accomplished, satisfied.
I am going to be the Chopped champion.
[Enrique] The Adam dessert was very special,
so it's up in the air now.
I'm just so nervous. I just want my daughter to see her daddy win.
Whose dish is on the chopping block?
Chef Adam, you've been chopped.
Judges?
[Marc] Adam, the dessert, you killed it.
But in the appetizer round, there was a lack of fennel,
which was a basket ingredient.
And then the second course, although you cooked your fish very well,
the instant mashed potatoes and the sriracha sundae,
they got really gummy.
And so we had to chop you.
Thank you for having me. I appreciate you guys.
-Bye, brother. -You killed it, bro.
You killed it, brother.
The hardest part, I was so close,
but walking away from the Chopped kitchen, I feel amazing.
When my daughter sees this, she's going to say
I'm a rock star.
Chef Enrique definitely deserved to win.
It was an honor to compete against him.
He's a beast.
And that means, Chef Enrique Lozano,
you are the Chopped champion.
-Congratulations, Chef. Well done. -[Geoffrey and Alyse] Yeah!
I never thought I'd hear that in my life.
This is amazing. Like, I did it.
Do a victory dance for me.
[Enrique] It's a million emotions at once,
thinking about my mom, thinking about my daughter,
and how happy, you know, she's going to be.
So I'm really excited to see what the future holds.