Top Chef ™
Baker:
Season:
Week:
Challenge Type:
"Last Bowl of Hotpot"
Shuai: "Growing up in Beijing, I ate a lot of hot pot in winter. I'm taking a lot of the winter style vegetables. Squash, sweet potato, and celery root. Gonna make an egg tofu with that. My hot pot broth. And then making this nice, dark, flavorful mushroom broth to kind of bring it all together. Tastes very good. It's very concentrated right now."
"I'm smashing some baked sweet potatoes. This just brings me so many memories of winter in Beijing with my grandma, my grandpa, having rosy cheeks and eating, like, hot sweet potato on the road. Dumpling wrappers. I like collard greens. And representative of where I live now, which is the south, turning that into a dumpling that's wrapped in collard greens, I feel like brings my two worlds together."
Shuai: "Instead of bonito in my mushroom dashi, I'm using dulse seaweed. It's slightly smoky, so I'm hoping it will give, like, that same kind of bonito-y kind of vibe to the dashi."
Presenting to Judges
Shuai: "So today I made a "last bowl of hot pot" with Montreal hard squash, sweet potato dumplings made with collard green wrappers, fried gnocchi, mushrooms. The broth itself is a mushroom dashi, and then celery root in the egg as well."
Judges
"I could drink this broth just as my morning water."
"It was magnificent. It's deep and rich. I'll remember forever the squash."
"That crunchiness and softness of the squash. I love the contrast in one dish."
"I agree that, you know, there's so much going on, so much work in this bowl. I mean, the celery root, tofu and the beggar's purse, just beautifully done. And all the components in here are reflective of winter."
