Welcome, chefs. Today, we asked you to come up with a twist on a traditional dish from your childhood for the Aspen Food & Wine Classic. We will be judging your dishes based on taste, presentation, and whatever mood we’re in.
Bryce, you’re up first. You made grilled octopus, using a recipe you dug up from your grandmother’s grave. We loved your story, but your octopus was too dry and too wet. It tasted like you never had a childhood. We gave you fourteen seconds to make eighty entrées for two hundred people on the edge of a cliff. What went wrong?
Antonia, your entrée was mushroom balls. We appreciate that it’s connected to your family’s demise at the hooves of a vengeful truffle pig. However, we didn’t like the dish’s texture, taste, flavor, smell, or sound. You brought the ingredients together in a way that makes this dish technically illegal in Chechnya. What went wrong?
Candace, the apples in your tarte tatin weren’t uniform. Some were burnt, some were raw, and some were turduckens. How do you not know the difference between fruit and meat, when you’ve trained under Mark Wahlberg? Your dish tastes like it was prepared by nine different people who have never heard of food before. What went wrong?
Blemphis, we hate you as a person. What went wrong?
Brice, your tomato-basil soup brought me right back to my childhood, which was, unfortunately, a very bad time for me. At age seven, I was in a terrible wagon accident that left me paralyzed from the tongue down for more than a year. My parents forgot that they had a child, so they never fed me, but each day the maid would sneak a little bit of tomato-basil soup into my I.V. One day, she died on top of me, and no one came looking for her body. For a week: the smell of her rotting corpse mixed with the smell of tomato and basil. Your soup reminds me of that soup. What went wrong?
Priyanka, you didn’t plate your dish on time, so all we had to eat was the plate. It was crunchy, but flavorless. What went wrong?
Tandy, your dish was so delicious that it made me forgive my mother. It was sweet but sour, rich but light, tingly but nutty, spicy but carrot, prolific but insane, complex but treacherous. It transcended what food was previously capable of being and taught us all a lesson about humanity. Unfortunately, we liked it too much. Please pack your knives and go.
And, don’t worry, you can always relive your mistakes on “Last Chance Kitchen.” That way, if you fail, at least you’ll know you deserved it.
