Top Chef ™

Anya: "I'm starting ice cream. When I think of cold and egg, I think ice cream and cake. I want to infuse it with pine needles. We'll find out if it tastes good in ice cream. I make essentially a creme anglaise and add pine needle powder. I wanted to make things from the forest and the fields." 

"I also want to use sea buckthorn. It's just such a beautiful berry that I want to highlight. I only have dehydrated sea buckthorn powder, and I think I'll experiment and throw it in the cake."

Later ... Anya: "My ice cream, it's not as cold as I need it to be. The risk with ice cream still being hot is that when it freezes, it would just become a brick. When the cake comes out of the oven, it's a brick. So I'm now concerned that my ice cream's gonna be a brick and my cake is a brick. Gotta get through it. I'm honestly just freaking out, but at this point, there's no time to fix it."

Later still ... Anya: "I feel really anxious about my dish. The ice cream is too hard. I must melt my ice cream and then refreeze it to make it fluffy. And I have to redo the cake so it's lighter. I'm going to use less flour.  At this point, I'm not thinking. I'm just reacting."

Just before serving: "My ice cream, it is really soft. And the new cake is too hard. I do not want to take this dish to the judges."

Presenting to Judges

"I made a soft serve pine needle ice cream on top of pine needle crumble, beet powder and sea buckthorn cake."