-
brought to you by Hidden Valley Ranch.
Okay, guys, you're this close to joining the competition.
[dramatic music]
Kwame, you're looking-- you look really focused there.
- Yes. - Good, good.
One of you will be rejoining the competition,
and when you do, there will be ten challenges left.
Claudette, why do you want to get back in?
- To prove to myself and my children
that I can do this.
- Kwame?
- I want my mom to stop working.
She still works six days a week as a chef,
and I don't want her to work anymore,
and she's really old.
Well, sorry, Mom, but she's old.
[laughter]
She's, um-- she doesn't need to be working
as much as she does, so... - Gotcha. I understand.
I had the same conversation with my mom
when she was getting up there.
- Lee Anne? - Nest egg.
- Nest egg? - Yeah.
- So it's all about the money?
- This is fun. - I'm joking.
[laughter]
♪ ♪
Intuition is really key as a chef.
You just showed me that you can cook with your head.
♪ ♪
Now it's time to cook with your guts...
These guts.
Oh, what do we have here?
Oh, boy.
So we have some livers, honeycomb tripe.
We have pork kidneys.
We have chicken hearts
and lots of guts.
These may not be the most glamorous parts of the body,
but it's what's on the inside that counts, right?
Each of you can only use one of these proteins,
so once one is picked, they're off the table.
This is the last challenge, so one of you
will go directly into the competition.
- I'm up against, like, two masters of their craft.
Cooking next to Lee Anne and also Claudette,
it's nerve-racking, but I want to win.
- You have 40 minutes,
and your time starts now.
[rock music]
- I go straight for the chicken hearts.
I know that they can cook relatively quickly,
and I can develop a lot of flavor.
- Only three chefs remain,
but one will make it to the final round.
- What did you get?
- I got chicken livers. - Oh, nice.
- Today I'm making a chicken liver
picadillo tetela
with a chintextle salsa.
A tetela is a triangular-shaped filled tortilla,
and I know that Tom's gonna want to eat that
and keep eating it.
- Lee Anne, what did you grab?
- I got the beef liver.
A lot of our parents grew up eating liver and onions.
I know my mom did,
and I was always kind of like, "Ew, liver,"
but I've learned to appreciate offal meats.
Not "awful," but O-F-F-A-L,
which are the innards.
- Where are you going, flavor-wise?
- I am going to Puerto Rico. - Ooh.
- I'm doing a sofrito.
- I'm kind of noticing a pattern
with how Kwame cooks,
and I'm not really scared
to cook against him.
Whoo-wee!
Cooking with liver is tricky,
because you have to avoid it being metal-tasting,
so I'm adding the fresh cherries and apples
and a little bit of acid with vinegar.
- Are you going Asian with it, Lee Anne?
- I'm gonna do dumplings,
since I have this cookbook about dumplings.
[laughter]
I'm super excited, because I know
I have not used my secret weapon yet.
I'm confident that if I make Tom my dumplings,
I can win the whole thing.
- Silky. We want silky.
♪ ♪
My masa dough is a little too dry.
If the dough crumbles, it's just not a tetela.
At that point, it's just kind of like the, you know,
filling in between two tortillas.
I still have enough time on the clock
to execute this properly,
but I need to make sure that the dough doesn't crumble.
[sighs] It's fine. It's fine.
This flour absorbs a sh-- ton.
- Are you making tortillas again?
- Nah, I'm making something better.
♪ ♪
- Hi, Tom. - Hey, how you doing?
- Good. - I smell ginger.
- I'm making dumplings for you. - Dumplings?
Liver dumplings? - Yeah.
- What's in the dumplings?
- I'm gonna start garlic, cabbage, ginger, beef liver.
I'm gonna add a little bit of ground beef, scallion.
- Okay. - So it's like a classic
Asian-style dumpling, a little Shaoxing--
- And the liver's going in-- - Liver is gonna be
in the dumpling. - In the dumpling.
- And then I'm gonna make a liver sauce.
- Liver sauce.
- Lee Anne is the dumpling specialist,
and she's making dumplings,
so the expectation
could be super high.
For Tom, it's got to be perfect.
- Is this recipe in the dumpling cookbook?
- It is not, but I literally make hundreds
and hundreds of dumplings every single day, so...
- Hundreds of dumplings every single day?
- Yep. - You don't have to make
a hundred right now. - No, I only
have to make six, so... - Okay.
Kwame, what are you-- what are you doing?
Kwame's got one of his stews going over here.
- I'm going to Puerto Rico on this one.
- You're going to Puerto Rico on this one?
- I'm doing a chicken heart sofrito.
Lots of garlic, olive oil, tomatoes,
a little bit of jalapeño, cilantro.
Grill the chicken hearts. - And you have chicken hearts?
- Yes, Chef. - So grilled chicken hearts,
like, skewered, or-- - Yes, Chef.
- Nice. Are they marinating in anything, or are they
gonna go straight-up? - They will be.
Cooking chicken hearts is very risky.
They're so small, so there's nothing to give.
You can't hide behind anything if you don't cook it properly.
If you leave 'em on the grill for too long,
you're screwed.
- Claudette. - Chef.
- You're working the fryer over here.
- Bringing you back to Oaxaca for a little tetela.
- So what's the technique? I haven't seen this before.
- So one of the mother sauces in Oaxaca, the chintextle--
so you get dried chilies, usually the pasilla mixe.
- Half the time Claudette is talking about her dishes,
I don't know what is going on.
Like, I wish there was a translator there
telling me exactly what she's talking about.
She's making things I've never even heard of,
and it smells delicious.
- Claudette, what's, uh-- what's going on over there?
What do you got? - My old trusty chintextle.
- Oh, that explains it.
[laughter]
- Filling: shallots, garlic.
- So we have Mexico, Puerto Rico, and...
- China. - China.
All right.
Got some guts.
This is your last chance.
One of you will be joining the competition.
♪ ♪
Okay, chefs, ten minutes left. Ten minutes.
- Thank you, Chef. - Thank you.
♪ ♪
- Whoo!
- There's a million things that are driving me back
to get into this competition.
It goes from Mexico to my children to myself.
I'm not gonna let myself go down today.
I'm hungry to get back.
♪ ♪
- Oh, look at these guys.
- Holy sh--! - What is going on?
- Whoa! Army of cooks. - Hey.
- What?
- I want to know what's going on here.
First I see Kwame,
and then I look over and I see Lee Anne Wong,
and I'm like, "These veterans are back."
And then I see Claudette.
What in the hell is going on right now?
- This is weird. - Dude, what's going on?
- I'm so confused. I'm ready to cook,
but they're cooking already. What's this mean?
- Welcome to "Last Chance Kitchen."
[all cheering]
Whoever wins this competition
is going back into the competition
right now.
- What? - Oh, sh--.
- It's absolutely nuts.
I'm pooping my pants.
- You guys should be worried about whoever
comes back to the house.
- I am so scared a veteran is gonna come back
into this competition and wipe us all out.
- So right now, the challenge
is about using your intuition and your guts,
and so they have livers and kidneys
and all kinds of stuff.
♪ ♪
- The people that walk in are just a distraction.
I have to focus on my dish,
because this is my chance to get back on the show
so I can be with them.
- I see you, Kwame!
Good to see you, brother.
- Good to see you too, man. - My man.
- I'll see them later. I'll say hi later
when I'm there with them, but for now,
it's all about focusing on the dish.
- Are you feeling pressure? - The pressure is on for sure.
- The pressure's on. You got about six minutes left.
- Where are my cheerleaders? - Whoo!
- Come on, Claudette! - Go, Claudette!
- Yeah! - Let's go, Claudette!
- There you go. There you go.
- Mexico in the house.
- A few of the faces in the crowd
are a little shocked to see me here.
They don't want me back in the house.
I'm a threat to several of them,
but at the same time, it feels good.
Like, I want to kind of flip them all off.
♪ ♪
- You got this! - Yes.
- Five minutes, chefs.
Five minutes. - Thank you.
- Somebody needs to get Lee Anne a little whiskey
just to give her some superpowers.
- I can't. I'm preggo, sorry.
- Oh! - Oh, congratulations.
Cooking for two.
- This is frightening. - Yeah.
- Lee Anne is a badass.
I am so frightened that she's gonna
come back into the house and destroy all of us.
- She banged them out, man, I'm telling you.
That the vet right there. That's season one.
- Before, veterans were gonna compete,
and then you walked in, and there was a bunch of potatoes,
and I was like, what, is she, like,
the potato queen of Colorado or something?
- I have to say, I mean, you guys are doing well,
but some of the best food I've had all season so far
has been right here in LCK.
- Oh! - Oh, man.
- These guys are cooking strong right now.
- After cooking with all three,
who's the most dangerous up here?
- I mean, they're all a threat in their own right.
They're all so different, you know what I mean?
- I'd rather have Claudette back at this point.
I don't want any of these veterans
that have done this before back in the game.
- I'm getting hungry. - How much longer?
- 1:40. - Oh, sh--.
- Oh, I'm shaking. I never shake.
I think I want one of those "Top Chef" coats.
I'm looking at these chefs,
and I'm like, "They look sharp."
I wouldn't mind putting one of those jackets on again.
- 30 seconds. - Kwame has his little plates.
- Little covered dishes. - Let's get a countdown, huh?
all: Five, four, three, two, one!
- Time's up.
[cheers and applause]
- [whistles]
[dramatic music]
- Hey, Claudette. - Hey, Chef. How are you?
- Good. No sweat, huh? - No sweat.
So we have a picadillo tetela,
apple salad, and the chintextle sauce.
- What's in the sauce? - Chile morita,
onions, garlic,
and I used anchovies this time.
- Mm-hmm. It's good, thanks.
- Thank you, Chef.
- Kwame. - Chef.
So here you have a chicken heart sofrito
with crispy shallots,
crispy confit potatoes, chicken heart gremolata.
- Lot of different textures-- the potatoes,
the shallots, the sauce. - Mm-hmm.
I had a lot of Puerto Rican, Dominican babysitters
growing up in the Bronx, and they would make me
dishes like this.
- Thank you. - You're welcome.
- Hi, Tom. - Hey, Lee Anne. So...
- So you got beef liver dumplings.
- Should I eat my hands-- should I use my hands here?
- You can use your hands. Make sure you drag it
through the chili oil. - Yeah, I want some of that.
- And the vinegar, the black vinegar,
that little bit of acidity.
- What's in the liver sauce? - Garlic, shallots,
ginger, Shaoxing.
- Thanks. Wow.
♪ ♪
We've got a really diverse group of contestants here,
and I got to say, eating all these dishes,
they're so different.
What I liked about the dishes
is, they were all offal forward.
- [chuckles] - Which was good,
because you don't want to shy away from it.
You know, Lee Anne's dumplings were perfect.
They were cooked nicely.
Developed a lot of flavor.
The only negative, I thought the liver sauce
was on the thick side, 'cause it was hard
to dip in and actually get it.
- Sure. - But good flavor.
Kwame, I liked it--a lot of little different things.
I thought the hearts had great flavor.
You wanted to cook the hearts rare.
They were rare.
Good dish of textures and flavors.
You know, you have a tendency
of putting these things in small bowls.
Sometimes you want to let that breathe a little bit.
It's easier to see everything,
easier to eat everything.
Claudette. Boy, that sauce was just--
there's so much going on.
The filling was really, really great,
and I think the apples did work.
It may have been slightly anchovy forward.
On the first bite, it was salty,
but then as I started digging through it,
it just started to just grow
and grow and grow.
The flavor continued to constantly
just change as I was eating,
and I didn't spend a whole lot of time with it.
Chefs, this is a tough one.
Before I make my decision,
I think I need to bring somebody else in here
to check this out.
- Hi. - Hi, Padma.
- I see you have a chef's coat there.
- I do, for one lucky person.
♪ ♪
- Chefs, all the food I thought was really delicious.
Tiny little things here and there
that I can nitpick on.
♪ ♪
The dishes were so good,
so I'm gonna have to go with my gut instinct here.