Top Chef ™

Massimo: "I chose short ribs and elderberry. I love elderberries. Pickled, capered, macerated. I love them in umeboshi. They're a very, very refined berry. I feel like it represents me."

Massimo (during cooking): "All right, we're gonna start on cooking down. The elderberries are making a bit of, like, an umiboshi. It's gonna cover the beef tenderloin. We have Canadian beef and wild berries. For me, as a Canadian chef, I want to do it justice and honor and doing a sauce of pickled elderberries and a berry soup with red cabbage. That's going to be a bit more of a puree."

Massimo:  "Umiboshi is like a beautiful salted plum with a bit of sugar, sometimes dehydrated. It's a semi dehydrated puree I'm making basically a leather. I'm cooking from the inspiration of the soil, the terroir, the classic French food that I've been doing, leaning far away from it. It's a total conscious decision to show love for the indigenous community."

Massimo: "I am going to roast my beef fully immersed in olive oil. My beef tenderloin, which is a very lean cut of meat, has to be as fatty as possible to be able to bear the the berries. I'm gonna rest the meat in clarified butter. There should be an osmosis effect. So as the beef is releasing its liquids, it's absorbing the liquids around it. Hopefully I'm gonna have a very fatty tenderloin. Amen."

Presenting to Judges

"We have Alberta beef tenderloin. So elderberries are very, very versatile. So I made an umiboshi, which is on top. I made a pickled elderberry sauce, a bit of a condiment of smoked kohlrabi, and a berry soup puree."