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Plantain Funnel Cake
As seen on TV
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Who made this dish?
Plantain Funnel Cake with Flambeed Plantains
BOTTOM DISH, team Africa. Peter piped a funnel cake batter made with plantain, then flambeed plantains with rum in the style of bananas Foster for the visual moment, serving it with puffed coconut, chantilly cream and a strawberry coulis. His argument for virality was nostalgia and accessibility: state fair funnel cakes made from ingredients anyone has at home. The judges found the plate unattractive, greasy and over fried, and felt he wasted the flambe by not performing it at the pass. Peter survived the elimination.
Dialogue:
{Peter}: "Hello, Joe. Hello, Chef."
{Peter}: "So I'm going to make a plantain funnel cake with a strawberry coulis, but I'm also going to do, for the virality, a flambe plantain with rum."
{Peter}: "Exactly, exactly."
{Peter}: "It has that nostalgia of, you know, funnel cakes. People go to state fairs, and they also have the ability to be recreated."
{Peter}: "Okay, there's the flambe. I'm firing with it now. Oh, wow."
{Peter}: "Yes, Chef, I am."
{Peter}: "Peter, back in the bottom. So close to top 10, it just doesn't feel great. I put myself on my plate tonight. I stand behind my dish, and I'm ready to ride for it or die for it."
{Peter}: "So we have a plantain funnel cake, flambe plantains, puffed coconut, chantilly cream, and a strawberry coulis. But I think of our dishes, you have the experience of going to state fairs and getting funnel cakes. Humble ingredients that you can grab from your home or anywhere you need. It's able to be used by anybody."
JUDGES IN THE KITCHEN
{Tiffany Derry}: "Rum, like a bananas Foster?"
{Tiffany Derry}: "I legitimately love a funnel cake, so I don't know if that's a good thing for you."
{Joe Bastianich}: "How does this dish go viral?"
{Joe Bastianich}: "It has to be accessible."
{Nick DiGiovanni}: "Bananas flambe is one of the best things you can use in the kitchen as a tool to go viral. I work a flambe into videos that don't even need a flambe."
{Gordon Ramsay}: "Peter, presentation wise, you happy with that?"
JUDGES AT THE TASTING
{Gordon Ramsay}: "The plantain funnel cake, smart idea, but it does not look attractive. That's the issue."
{Joe Bastianich}: "So, Peter, I mean, as a simple dish, it's a little bit greasy. The difference between the puff and the funnel cake, I have a hard time distinguishing on my palate. It's kind of like the same thing."
{Tiffany Derry}: "If you're gonna flambe and you're going to have something go viral, I almost wish you would have just lit that sucker on fire for us. And we enjoyed the sauce from the plantains and the rum and, you know, threw some cinnamon on top of the sparks to see all of that kind of happening in the flambe. And then we would have had more of a viral sensation. But here, it feels a bit flat."
{Gordon Ramsay}: "There are elements on here that could work. Let's get that absolutely clear. It just needs to be rethought out."
{Nick DiGiovanni}: "I like the funnel cake, but if you were to redo it, I would tell you, make some sort of, like, banana cream, put it through the funnel cake, and highlight the plantains themselves."
AT THE ELIMINATION
{Gordon Ramsay}: "Peter's. Why so much fried food on there, which is the biggest turnoff?"
{Nick DiGiovanni}: "It's too much."
{Tiffany Derry}: "It didn't feel viral enough."
{Joe Bastianich}: "It didn't do enough. Peter's a smart guy. He's a better cook than that dish."
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