Top Chef ™
Baker:
Season:
Week:
Challenge Type:
Seared Duck Breast with Sheermal
Zubair: "I do love a good butter tart. So I got my duck breast. Duck carries that sweet flavor really well. And then the crust is very butter forward. So I'm thinking mushroom butter crumble on top."
Zubair begins cooking: "I'm making a pecan and cashew korma with my seared duck breast. Then I'm going to make, like, a sweet and savory South Indian condiment with the pecans and raisins. I'm trying to have the same texture as that butter tart. It's going to be awesome."
Zubair: "I have three induction burners in front of me right now. One with my sweet and savory condiment, one with my korma, and one with my wheat berries. My plan is to cook them tender and mix them with the shiitake mushrooms as kind of the grain on the dish."
Presenting to the Judges
Zubair: "One of the best things about that tart was it really kind of like a butter pecan pie. So I made achar using pecans. Underneath is a sheermal, and then the sauce is a cashew and pecan korma, and then seared duck breast."
Judge: "And what is this grain.
Speaker 4: 00:35
So that is wheat berries, and I cooked them, fried them to kind of give some texture.
Judges
"I appreciate the aesthetics of Zubair's dish. I mean, I was very excited. I could see that there's different textures. There's a lot of thought. But I think individually, the components, a lot of them were amiss."
"For me, the duck was just super problematic. For me, it was overcooked. It was over rested. It was almost impossible to chew."
"Yeah. It looks like nobody took a second bite."
"No. I don't want to argue with my knife about the duck. You know, the wheat berries? Not that pleasant."
"A wheat berry is supposed to have bite and some chew, but these wheat berries are under."
"They're hard."
