The Kitchen is putting on the ultimate Tex-Mex feast! To get started, Katie Lee Biegel whips up The Ultimate Queso with Garlic Lime Tortilla Chips, and Sunny Anderson makes her Easy Plantain Planks with Mango and Peach Salsa. Geoffrey Zakarian and Alex Guarnaschelli have the main dishes covered with Chicken Fajitas and Spinach and Mushroom Vegetable Enchiladas. Plus, no Tex-Mex meal would be complete without Jeff Mauro's "Fried" Ice Cream.
Melissa d'Arabian makes a crowd-pleasing Southern meal that stays pleasingly under budget. Her BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches are the stars of the menu, doused in homemade barbeque sauce and piled high with tangy shredded carrots. On the side, Sweet Potato and Bacon Tots are a twist on the familiar potato nuggets, served with a creamy Mustard Dipping Sauce. To drink, Caramelized Banana Shakes are thick and creamy, and not to be missed.
The last two recruits face their final, ultimate challenge: to cook a restaurant-quality meal for a panel of culinary experts, including TV host Sarah Gore, chef Akhtar Nawab and Cooking Channel's Laura Vitale. Anne Burrell and Rachael Ray coach their recruits, who must put all the skills they have learned over the past eight weeks to the test in order to be named the winner and awarded $50,000 for their charity.
This trip, Guy Fieri's getting a taste of every meal from dawn to dusk. In Long Beach, Calif., the gastropub marrying pork belly with octopus and serving up slam dunk short ribs. In Monterey, Calif., the neighborhood spot keepin' it local and going scratch-made for dishes like apple pancakes and a three-pork porchetta. And in Wilson, Wyo., the log cabin-turned restaurant cooking up a banana bread French toast mash-up and classic beef stroganoff.
Brunch is Alex's favorite meal of the week and a great time to have fun with food in the kitchen. Alex starts with some simple popovers, topping them with creamy homemade ricotta. Next, a goopy fried egg paired with some old school ground pork patties. Shaped like mini hamburgers, these spicy pork patties are mixed with chili flakes and fennel seeds, then fried in a skillet. For a refreshing brunch drink, she mixes a grapefruit and vodka cocktail.
The usual rounds are replaced today by breakfast, lunch and dinner. In round one, the chefs attempt to make a glorious morning meal from coffee cake and cream-filled chocolate eggs. Then in the second round, three young, very energetic chefs race to create delicious fish dishes for lunch. But one competitor's recklessness leads to an emergency situation. And the judges are excited to see what the two finalists can do with a divine dinner basket.