Drama-filled season finale of Chopped Teen throws the chefs and the audience a few curveballs
The second season finale of Chopped Teen features a few culinary curveballs that kept the four contestants on their toes when competing for the $25,000 grand prize.
The finale starts out with a dramatic reintroduction of the four young finalists: Yazmene, Peter, Alexina and Veronica. Yazmene, 16, enters the room by throwing eggs at the camera and boasting her cooking chops through a yolk-covered lens. Veronica, 15, makes her grand entrance by viciously chopping a watermelon to prove that she’s a fierce competitor. Alexina, 14, simply wags her finger while saying that the other competitors don’t know who they are dealing with. Peter, 13, had my favorite entrance by far, where he holds two blow torches together while wearing a bow tie. It was so cute and so vicious at the same time.
via giphy.com
Since it is the finale of the teen tournament, the contestants face ingredients that seem a little too sophisticated for chefs their age. The appetizer round features tuna in oil, sugar snap peas, fruit candy squares and gnocchi.
Veronica does NOT want to make a simple gnocchi like her other competitors, so she chooses to cook a sugar snap pea pesto with tuna golden raisin meatballs, and she wants to incorporate the basket items by using the lemon flavored candies to flavor her pesto, a very wise move I thought. However, when she thinks everything is going smoothly, she BURNS her meatballs and panics. She scrapes off a little bit of the burnt edges and still ends up proud of her creation.
The judges do not like the burnt meatballs, but they praise her for her use of the candy. Host Ted Allen suggests that she splurge a little bit of the prize money on a Glee box set if she won, which felt like a very forced comment made by a man trying to relate to a 14-year-old girl.
via giphy.com
Yazmene decides to make a sugar snap pea gnocchi with jalapeno sauce and tuna. She has previous restaurant experience and feels very confident in the kitchen. She stays relatively calm throughout the appetizer round, and there is little drama for her, which kind of disappointed me, as I LIVE for watching drama on teenage cooking shows.
via reactiongifs.com
Judge Amanda Freitag loves the “tuna noodle casserole” flavor in Yazmene’s dish, although all the judges agree they missed her signature spiciness that she’s added to her food in the past.
Alexina declares that she felt very at home in the Chopped kitchen. She thought that making a traditional gnocchi would be too easy and decides that making roasted sugar snap peas with a tuna gnocchi salad spread would be a great way to showcase the ingredients.The judges praise her flavors and presentation. She handled the basket ingredients with confidence while she teased her fellow competitors.
“Peter’s bow tie makes him look stylish, but his bow isn’t as cute as mine,” she said while pointing to her glitter bow that is tied around her ponytail.
via reactiongifs.com
Peter declares that his cooking style is much like his fashion sense: “relaxed formal.” Peter made an Asian sugar snap pea stir fry with gnocchi and sweet mint cream sauce. He starts this round a little shaky, calling on Yazmene for assistance to open his jars because he can apparently never open jars. He also doesn’t end the appetizer round on a strong note, as the judges choose to chop him because his dish is so sweet — it had a dessert feel to it. However, he proclaims that this will definitely not be the last we see of him.
The entrée round presents the contestants with chanterelle mushrooms, baby planet carrots, corn beef hash and tilefish.
“I knew it!” Veronica yelled when she saw the tilefish. I am still puzzled by this.
via reactiongifs.com
Yazmene, with her previous experience filleting fish, handles the ingredients with ease. She chooses to make a smoked paprika tilefish with carrot cream sauce, white wine mushrooms and a crispy hash. She is not a big fan of the hash to say the least, stating that she’s used to cooking homemade corned beef hash and not the canned variety that reminds her of “cat food.”
via reactiongifs.com
The judges were not huge fans of her carrot cream sauce and said it lacked cohesiveness. However, they loved her presentation and crispy hash.
Veronica was very thrown off by the fish, even though she had supposedly expected it. She makes a salty spicy pepper crusted tilefish with a warm spinach hash and mushroom salad and sweet carrot puree. She energetically dances her way through the second round, even though she seems wary of everything she was making. The judges think her dish is delicious, however, they are confused by the fact that she throws a plain piece of bread on the plate. Veronica told the audience about her love for Broadway and that her ultimate dream is to win a Tony Award, but that her parents thinks she belongs in the military. Yikes.
via reactiongifs.com
Alexina sticks with her roots this round and makes a white wine fish salad with roasted carrots and mushrooms that were inspired by her mother and grandmother. “All I’ve ever seen in my life is hard working woman,” she proclaimed. It was very inspiring.
“On the plus side, we all look super sexy in these red jackets,” Veronica said to the other girls during deliberation in an attempt to lighten the mood. Alexina reciprocates by saying, “Yeah, we all look on fleek.” God, I love this show.
via giphy.com
The fatal flaw in Alexina’s dish is that she really only includes the carrots on one of the judges plates, which leads to her getting chopped. I was surprised by this, because I thought she was a strong competitor who would make it to the end. But as the judges say, basket items CANNOT be missed.
via reactiongifs.com
Yazmene and Veronica face off as they are presented with their final basket items: coconut chips, a shirley temple, quail eggs and chocolate wafer cake. Yazmene has pastry experience and made a berry bouchée with raspberry sauce and whipped cream. Veronica wanted to channel the cake-and-ice-cream experience that she said “has a special place in my heart” and created a vanilla cupcake with coconut ice cream and chocolate drizzle.
Yazmene made use of the basket ingredients by throwing the shirley temple (that she said she wasn’t a fan of) and coconut chips into her berry filling. At the last minute, she melted the chocolate wafer to be used as a dipping sauce. Once her dish is finished, she loves everything about her professional-looking presentation.
Previously on Chopped, Veronica was famous for eyeballing her ingredients, and it was not any different during the finale. She threw all of the necessary elements of a cake into a bowl and gets started on her ice cream. Her first batch of chocolate drizzle gets messed up and requires her to remake it. She is very disappointed with her presentation, for she globbed the chocolate all over the plate.
via giphy.com
The judges agree with the contestants' opinions about their own dishes, loving Veronica’s use of basket ingredients but not her presentation and vice versa for Yazmene. To my disappointment, while the judges deliberate, the two girls don’t even ARM WRESTLE as other contestants have done in the past. I guess you never know you love something until it’s gone.
via reactiongifs.com
A melancholy track of angels singing played in the background while Alex Guarnaschelli announced that Yazmene had been chopped, although the decision was very close. Veronica yelled and jumped up and down, giving a speech fit for the Emmys. The other competitors are brought back out to congratulate Veronica, and they are all surprised with $1,000 gift cards to foodnetwork.com so they can buy the stand-mixers of their dreams.
@_alexdarus
ad019914@ohio.edu
