Even though there had been a non-elimination week, it was sort of bittersweet.  This episode promised TWO eliminations.  Even though I have been neutral towards Jillian, we hear how she lives in the basement of her boyfriend’s mother’s house which makes me feel sorry for her and suddenly want her to win.  No one should have to go through living in their mother-in-law’s basement, no matter how well they get along.

The first challenge of the week…it’s fusion time!  Each chef has to create one dish that represents two separate countries.  The countries are chosen at random when the chefs have to pull two flags out of a dome-covered platter.  First up is Nona who gets Greece and Italy.  Jillian ends up with Thailand and Spain.  Russell gets France and India.  Last, but not least, Trev ends up with China and Mexico.  They have 45 minutes to come up with an awesome fusion dish, which sounds really difficult to me.  Right away, Nona, Russell, and Trev are off and running.  Jillian is struggling quite a bit, acting as if she has no clue what Thai or Spanish food is all about.  All of her complaining was for nothing, however, as she aced the challenge.  Luckily, the other three basically sucked.  Nona threw in just about everything she found in the kitchen, Trev can’t season properly, and Russell can’t cook a duck which probably made him cry later while he flexed his muscles to make himself feel better.

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Now that Gail is gone to complete her plan of taking over the world one fish station at a time, there are only 4 chefs left.  The only one who hasn’t made me want to scream at least once is Nona, but there are still a couple of weeks left so that may change.

The challenge the chefs are faced with are that they have to pair up and create one dish together.  Trev is paired up with Jill and Russell is paired up with Nona.  Seems easy, right?  As they’re preparing their dishes, Chef Ramsay is being sneaky and creating a dish of his own.  When they place their dishes in front of him, he tastes both and is able to correctly identify all the incredients in both teams’ dishes.  That almost makes me wonder if he’s tipped off or something.  Maybe he watched the footage ahead of time and saw what they put in it.  Then he makes each chef taste the dish he was slaving over and they have to reproduce it.  The person who creates a dish closest to Ramsay’s wins the challenge.

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