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The chefs arrive back at the Top Chef Kitchen and take stock of their pantries. For the most part, the chefs are very happy with what’s been provided for them. I say, “for the most part,” because neither Adam nor Doug are pleased with Richard’s shopping. The ingredients are diverse to the point of being random, and Adam has no idea how he’s going to be able to pull together a cohesive dish.

Greg and Padma apparently share similar palettes. He loves what she bought and starts making a Indian-style curry with coconut with her. Yes, for the umpteenth time this season, Greg is making another coconut curry. Hopefully Padma won’t mind, as she and Jasper had some of his coconut curry at the previous day’s SDQ.

Adam is taking a risk. He’s preparing his shrimp by immersing them briefly in some very hot olive oil, leaving them just barely cooked. He’s never done this before but declares that he has to do something to break out of the middle of the pack. Katsuji concurs with Adam’s decision, noting that over the course of the season, Adam has “never been that good, but never that bad either.”

Back with Greg, he’s opened up a strange-looking fruit that has spines sticking out of its exterior. It’s a jack fruit, Greg explains. The interior is bright orange and resembles, in my opinion, an alien placenta with little bell pepper-shaped eggs inside. The “eggs,” Greg explains, smell like bubble gum. He’s going to incorporate them into his curry. Needless to say, the prospect of an Indian curry infused with bubble gum-scented alien placenta eggs starts my mouth watering instantly.

As the clock winds down, Mei is having trouble with her lamb. Apparently, the bones in the rack of lamb are interfering with the cooking. Mei throws the lamb in the oven to try and finish it off, regretting that she didn’t take the lamb off the bone earlier.

Within minutes, the Top Chef superfans are in the kitchen, wandering around, gawking at the kitchen equipment, and chatting up the chefs. I am insanely jealous. I envision all of the likes I would have gotten by attending the event and putting pictures up on Facebook afterwards. Sigh.

The judges arrive and, as they so often do, start judging. Katsuji is first, serving up a harissa-poached shrimp with a Tunisian potato salad with white sangria. Gail loves his potato salad.

Greg again (and again and again) serves up a coconut milk madras curry with chicken and jackfruit (alien eggs) flesh. Tom thinks it’s a good plate, with both sweet and hot elements. Padma fawns all over it. It’s clearly her type of curry.

Adam has his flash marinated shrimp with peppadew peppers. Gail wishes that, when cooking his shrimp, Adam had done it for five seconds longer at a temperature of five degrees hotter. She really doesn’t enjoy the texture they have.

Melissa has incorporated many of the ingredients that Gail bought for her. She serves sautéed shrimp with a harissa yogurt and roasted figs. Richard wishes that Melissa hadn’t played it so safe with her dish and laments a lack of spice. Gail says that Melissa’s shrimp was just on the edge of being too salty - the same flaw as in the previous Elimination Challenge, Gail notes.

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