Top Chef ™
Baker:
Season:
Week:
Challenge Type:
Trout with Potlikker Consommé
Tristen (planning): "Lana will be doing cured and smoked steelhead trout with collard green pot liquor consomme."
Lana: "I really want to do this potlikker consommé. For my ancestors, a lot of black American slaves, pot liquor was sometimes all they had to eat. So I'm using techniques that I've learned at all of these Michelin starred restaurants to make this dish sing. I need to get the smoked ham hock."
Lana (working on the trout): "We're just gonna give them a light cure. Tomorrow, we'll give them a light smoke."
Lana asks Tristen to taste the potlikker consommé. Tristen: "More seasoning. More salt. More acid. Especially because you're going to clarify it, which is going to rip some flavor. So over season."
Presenting to the judges: "So this is going to be your first course this evening. Cured and smoked trout and then a pot liquor consomme. Just a little bit of chiffonade, collard greens, and crispy trout skin."
Judges: "I enjoyed the broth. I wasn't a fan of the greens being raw. And the chiffonade was very hard to eat. I did enjoy the crispy skin."
"The consommé itself was just, I thought, stunning. Beautiful. It's exactly what you wanted. It was potlikker consomme at its best."
Judges Table
"Lana, I loved your dish. It was so, so elegant. It needs to be on a menu at your restaurant. It's a very southern dish that you don't see very often in this elevated platform, but it was beautiful."
