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Apart from these obvious choices, the big standouts for me are Daniel's corn-flake crusted zucchini flowers (which sound like they could be an imaginative hit or a disgusting failure), Fabio's brioche with banana cream (which sounds like something sweeter than any breakfast I ever make) and Stefan's huevos racheros (which seem to hinge on the fact that he used a cool little tool to cut the top half of the egg shell off and served his dish in the bottom half of the shell).

Surprisingly, it seems like the chefs that attempted the most creative dishes ended up on the bottom of this challenge, with Rocco neither a fan of Daniel's zucchini nor Fabio's brioche. As for the successful dishes, Rocco likes the bacon-egg-and-cheese from Leah and the excellent breakfast sandwich from Jaime, who has now made a truly delicious Quickfire dish for the second week in a row.

And for the second week in a row, Jaime is edged by Leah for the Quickfire win. She is understandably frustrated.

After the Quickfire Challenge, Padma announces their Elimination Challenge. As I mentioned earlier, the 13 chefs will be creating a dish for a two and a half minute presentation suitable for live TV. The dish must be easy enough that a viewer at home could re-create it and each chef will perform their demonstration one at a time, alone in the kitchen save for the four judges.
Upon learning this, Carla's eyes bug out of her head farther than I'd previously thought possible from a sight-enabled human being. Leah confesses that she's scared of live TV (never fear, girl, you have immunity). Fabio worries about being able to talk in perfect English for the required two and a half minutes on camera.

The chefs head to Whole Foods Market to purchase ingredients for their dishes. Already, warning signals are going off in my brain. Many chefs seem to be making dishes that are far too complicated for a two and a half minute demonstration. Immunity-holding Leah goes for seared duck breast. Alex wants to do crème brûlée. Melissa, sounding like an emphasemic Courtney Love, wants to do shrimp with habanero chilis.

Before we know it, the demonstrations are underway. Ariane with her beefsteak tomato dish is very attractive and likable on camera, though a little nervous. Jaime sounds confident and comfortable but can't finish her duck egg in the allotted time and plates it while it's still raw. Alex, with his crème brûlée, is severely overtime and doesn't even get it in the oven after the two and a half minutes. Fabio is appealingly overbearing with his personality and accent, creating a lovely dish. Daniel tries to set the kitchen on fire with his skirt steak.

And then there's Melissa. Poor Melissa. She introduces the habanero flavor into her dish so liberally that Tom Colicchio must walk off-camera and spit out the astronomically-spicy shrimp. For those of you keeping score at home, so far this season we have one Spit-Out by Padma (Ariane's dessert) and one Spit-Out by Tom (Melissa's shrimp).

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