[Evan]

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Quickfire: Use a frozen piecrust. "OMG more desert!" All of the sudden people are cooking rabbits, what the hell is going on?


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Pastry dough is just an ingredient. En croute and tarts are classic uses that are not dessert, and some did that. Others did dessert. I liked the idea of the duck lollipop.

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I understand that it's all fair play. I just think it makes the show less interesting to watch when you have one guy making chocolate mouse and someone else making rabbit, then competing against each other. Obviously in an episode like last week you have multiple courses so you end up with desert vs. beef and the like. Quickfires, however, usually have a unifying theme and I thought this one lacked it since some people's dishes barely used the piecrust at all.

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Elimination: Prepare a meal in 3 hours. Okay guys, now that you're all here, do it in half the time!

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Not so unusual for cooks to have to whip something up. Lia shrugged it off, basically, saying it happens all the time.

The whole point is to see how they adjust and change their plans or plow through. Howie did well, despite Tom's (and the guest judge's) reservations.

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I've never worked in a kitchen, so I have no idea if this is common or not. They always impose some sort of restrictions on the dishes (not much money, low cholesterol, etc.) and I just think this is a really lame one. Howie has said that he's not used to cooking under the sort of time constraints that they use on this show, so it's obviously an emphasized point. When you go out and tell them that today they have 3 hours I think it's just stupid to change it after the fact because it can create really unfair situations if one person picked dishes that NEED to cook for more time and others picked dishes where no component can't be rushed.