Tournament of Champions ™
Baker:
Season:
Week:
Challenge Type:
Masago Arare King Crab
Masago Arare Tempura King Crab Leg with Sweet Chili Water Chestnut Cream
The randomizer generated:
Protein: Live king crab;
Produce: Fresh water chestnut;
Equipment: Pressure cooker;
Style: Breakfast and dinner;
Wild card: Sticky
For dinner, Bryan gave the crab leg center stage. Bryan Voltaggio: "For dinner, what I want to do is center barrel cut of the crab leg. I want it to be front and center on this dish. Crispy tempura fried." He built a sauce around the water chestnut as the base.
Bryan Voltaggio: "Chestnuts are in for my base for my, like, aioli. For dinner, I'm going to make a sauce using water chestnut as the base. I'm going to puree that super smooth with lots of cream and garlic. I'm going to add sweet chili sauce to that to add another tacky or sticky element to the dish. It's going to be like spicy crab. The legs, it's going to be that dinner portion." His tempura got a textural upgrade from toasted rice pearls.
Bryan Voltaggio: "Tempura batter is pretty simple. I'm using flour. I'm using baking powder. I'm adding club soda to it. But the cool thing I'm going to do, for textural element, is I'm going to roll it into these crispy little rice pearls right before I put it into the fryer."
{Voiceover}: "Masago arare. They're essentially rice balls. These are toasted." On plating: Bryan Voltaggio: "For the dinner plate, the first thing I'm gonna do is put down my water chestnut sweet chili sauce. Then over the top, I'm gonna put this crispy crab. Next I'm gonna finish it with the crab sauce caramel."
Voiceover: "I'd like to invite you to dinner. This is masago arare tempura of king crab leg with sweet chili water chestnut cream. The sticky and creamy sweet chili sauce on the bottom is made of water chestnuts and allium cream that was blended together, and then a little bit of sweet chili sauce was added to that. Again, sticky and creamy. The crab fat caramel was drizzled to finish on top."
Mei Lin (on both plates): "The king crab was cooked perfectly. Water chestnuts I can taste throughout both of these dishes. The pressure cooker was obviously used in making these amazingly delicious sauces."
David Chang: "But is this too thick of a crust? I mean, I don't think it needed the masago arare. It might have been better with just putting that glaze on that without the frying. So I don't know. I'm really wrestling with this right now. This is not an easy decision for me, but I love the dish."
Combined finale score (breakfast plus dinner): 84. Winner of TOC 7.
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