- Hey guys, it's Carla.
I'm here in the Bon
Appetit Test Kitchen today
to have a secret conversation
about Chris Morocco.
Once again, we're going to put Chris's
super taster capabilities to the test.
This is Snoop Dogg's Lobster Thermidor.
We're challenging Chris to
recreate this exact dish
with every ingredient in two days.
He'll be allowed to taste
it, smell it, touch it
but at no point in this
process will he be allowed
to look at this dish.
At the end of the second
day, I'll come back
to taste his final creation
and I'll be the judge.
[upbeat dramatic music]
- Has it happened?
It smelled like lobster.
Aha.
I feel like there's a lot of parts
and a lot of like spindly bits
happening all over the place.
I am feeling a crusher claw
on a pretty big freakin' lobster.
Ugh, I don't know how to do this
without making a total mess.
I'm just separating the claws.
I'm trying not to disturb
everything that's happening.
Here's a section of tail,
so the lobster seems to
have been split in half.
There's no sauce on this plate.
It seems like the meat has been removed
and put back in the shell and then topped
with some kind of bread crumby sitch.
So, I'm getting some garlic
flavor in the breadcrumb there.
Very creamy sauce.
It tastes like there is a bechamel,
which has been turned into a sauce mornay
with the addition of parm.
I'm not getting any heat or
anything like real obvious.
Feel like there's another flavor going on
with those breadcrumbs,
it's a very soft breadcrumb,
it's not super hard and textural.
I don't know if it's just
kind of softening a little bit
because of the steam action
of the moisture underneath it
or our friend, mister brioche.
Okay, I got something there.
That felt like, either a very
large chive or a scallion.
It's just got that parm, like umami,
very focused sharp aroma
and intense flavor.
This is very rich.
I definitely want to explore fully,
whether we're talking about milk or cream
or a combination here.
In my mind, like that's the
kind of thing that I would put,
like a little pinch of cayenne in,
not so much to make it hot
but just to kind of wake
up the flavor a little bit
but is there ever a scenario in which
another lobster has been cooked,
so that you can fill this
one double full of meat.
I'm like really tripped
up by these like onion,
you know, like chives or whatever.
What's going to be in the claw?
What's in the claw man?
We've got straight up
lobster meat in there.
I feel like I'm good here.
I don't know, am I like under
thinking it, over thinking it?
There's no real discernible acidity.
I didn't feel a lemon or
anything on the plate,
which I kind of would have expected
and I couldn't really
pick out any elements
other than sauce, meat,
garlic, breadcrumb,
I want to say it's chive but that's it.
The only thing I can come up
with is Lobster Thermidor.
It's like beef wellington.
It's like, oh beef
wellington, yeah, of course
but like who's had it?
Who actually still serves it?
You know, aside from
Gordon, love you Gordon.
There's nothing that seems
very modern about it.
It's definitely not Guy Fieri.
It's probably not Maangchi.
No idea.
[upbeat music]
Absolutely no idea.
This one, I'm keeping silent.
Bright light.
The list for shopping.
I want to say, that
was like a two pounder.
We have lobster, sauce,
butter, flour, milk
and or cream and then I'm getting parm.
I'm leaving to the side
the question of whether
there is some amount of
pepper, some amount of cayenne,
some amount of paprika,
anything in that world.
I'm gonna call that for a chive.
I wasn't really thinking about
how the breadcrumbs were made.
But are we toasting that in butter?
Throwing a little garlic in there?
What are we doing there?
Let's call it garlic,
butter question mark,
need some bread options.
This is all I've got.
This is a pretty alarmingly short list.
Definitely making me wonder
if I've missed something.
If I have, it's not super
obvious, at least to me.
I'd say, let's go shopping.
[upbeat dramatic music]
I'm going to get some scallions.
I really think I had a chive but safety.
Chives.
I'm just gonna get some garlic
and then I think we're
done in this section.
I believe the garlic is in the breadcrumb
and not in the sauce itself.
Two year old parm.
They don't sell lobsters here.
The rest of the team is sourcing
a couple of lobsters for me.
Never forget.
[dramatic drum and symbol note]
Ben, what's that over there?
I bought dairy, no, come on,
you don't need to see this.
You guys just like want to make sure
you get some like tight
shots of me screwing up
and I don't appreciate it.
I slipped some heavy cream in the basket.
We've got milk at the
kitchen, so that's no problem.
Butter, all right, anybody got
a problem with that, butter?
I didn't taste anything other than parm.
Is it possible there's something
other than parm in there?
Absolutely.
I don't want to go fishing
around in the cheese department
looking for the right,
you know, Swiss cheese,
you know, Alpine, something.
The last thing that I'm really
thinking about is the bread.
The breadcrumbs were very soft.
It's not super open, it's
not super hard and crunchy.
It tastes like it's got a
little bit of richness in there.
Maybe a little butter, maybe egg.
Whatever I do, it's probably
gonna be a little bit wrong,
but first and foremost,
I need to make sure
I get the flavor right.
Gonna check out.
[upbeat music]
We are back from the market
and first thing I'm going
to do is cook the lobster.
So, this is a bigger lobster.
You want to make sure
your lobster's alive.
You do not want to cook and eat
a lobster that has already died.
I err on the side of just
giving them like a very quick,
very, you know, hopefully painless death
before putting them into any water.
So, that's my hot take
on that and it's done.
Usually, I steam my lobsters
but we have a nice pot of
boiling water ready to go here.
I don't want it to be fully cooked
but you need to cook the meat inside
in order to get it to
release from the shell.
After the seven minutes,
I'm gonna put it in ice bath
for one minute just to
kind of cool it down.
I want to be able to pick
this meat right away.
All right, so we got one minute left.
Color's nice and red.
I'm just trying to think
about like the quantity.
I don't know, maybe there
is a second lobster.
- [Crew Member] Are you
are able to tell anything
from looking at it now?
- What, that it's like a Pisces?
Strategy is to cut it in half
without completely maiming it.
The meat is opaque, it's firm
but it hasn't turned like
rubbery or anything yet.
This is gonna separate
beautifully from the shell.
Overall, I'm happy with
how long we cooked it.
I've never actually done this before,
now a good time to bring that up?
So, I just want to kind
of clean out these halves.
I guess the question is like,
how much of like this
stuff does one take out?
And then, here's the tail meat,
that will just pop right out nicety-nice.
What I had this morning was
claw attached to knuckles
attached to lobster body and
then, with our saucy lobster
situation inside of there
with the breadcrumb on top
and then, I'm assuming it was
baked for some amount of time.
I'm just gonna cut this into,
sort of bite size pieces here.
It's not a lot of meat.
It's not like what I was
tasting was packed with lobster.
There was actually quite a
bit of the sauce in there.
Next thing we need to do,
maybe even before the sauce
is we need to talk breadcrumb.
Breadcrumbs are infinitely variable.
All that I was getting
flavor-wise from them
was perhaps butter, garlic and salt.
So, I'm doing side-by-side white bread
straight up and then brioche.
I'm probably way over thinking this.
That feels wrong, like all that
like powdery brioche chaff.
I find that extremely upsetting.
So this is pulsing up the white bread.
Again, like it's just kind of
fracturing into nothingness.
What if we just toast it
and then kind of blitz
it up, I don't know.
I'm going to toast some of
these things side by side
in the oven, get them dried out
and then in the meantime,
we'll work on our sauce.
Don't worry about it, you getting nervous?
Okay, so we're moving on to sauce.
The plan is start with a
roux, turn it into bechamel,
add some cheese, which makes it a mornay.
Do you guys know about blender parm?
Blender parm is where, if you have like
a very powerful blender, like a Vitamix,
rather than grating the
cheese with a grater,
you just cut pieces of parm,
throw it in the blender
and you blend it until it becomes even
kind of pebble like consistency.
A question was asked,
why parm and why now?
It's got so much flavor,
it's got so much umami,
it's got that really sharp
kind of nutty quality to it.
I just don't know what other
cheese would give that to me.
My brain is telling me parm here.
My heart is telling me parm.
Blender parm, done.
Gonna start with a couple tablespoons
of butter for our roux.
A roux is a mixture of fat,
doesn't have to be butter and flour.
When you add liquid to your roux,
the starch in the flour
activates with the heat
being applied and it thickens, that's all.
Wanna melt all the butter
before putting in our flour.
So, I'm gonna do three
tablespoons of butter
to two tablespoons of flour.
I am 83 percent confident
this is the correct direction
to take with that sauce.
So, this is a cup of milk and
I'm gonna do a cup of cream.
I can always add a little
bit more starch at this stage
if I feel like I need
the sauce to be thicker.
So, like as you can see, even
though it looks pretty fluid
in the pot there, it's gonna
set up somewhat tight here.
So, let's throw a pinch of salt in there.
In the back of my head, I'm
still thinking about whether
there's maybe just, I don't know, I just,
I want it to be there, I don't
know that I tasted it there,
a little pinch of cayenne.
Like, does it feel weird to me
to be putting parmesan on lobster?
Like absolutely.
This doesn't really like
feel awesome to me right now.
Just gonna give it a
little tasty-taste here.
All that fat from the cream,
like really takes quite
a bit of other flavors
to kind of get out in front of that.
So, I don't want to overwhelm
it but after all these years,
I'm still known to
shove things in the oven
and just totally [beep] forget about them.
These are a little bit dark, but you know,
there's sugar in this bread,
so it's gonna get dark.
What are you gonna do?
I think I'm getting closer.
I still feel like maybe I'm
missing a little something.
I would have loved for there to have been
some obvious kind of like
lemon or something in that,
in the original dish.
I just, I really wanna be
aware of not projecting onto it
my own culinary baggage, if you will.
I'm gonna just try this.
I like the color a little bit better.
The breadcrumb is something I'm gonna be
really paying attention to
during the second tasting today.
So, I'm just going to sift
out some of this little crap.
I mean, this is like a way that
people do make breadcrumbs.
So, I'm just gonna heat
some butter in that skillet,
just to crisp these breadcrumbs up.
Also get a little bit of garlic in there.
So the breadcrumbs that I
felt like I could taste,
you know, in my mind,
like they're that size.
I didn't taste pieces of
garlic but I tasted garlic.
Hence, I'm just doing a whole clove,
smashed up that I can fish out later.
So, these are going to
see a little bit more heat
in the oven but I
imagine most of the color
whatever we're gonna get on them
is gonna be kind of right here.
Texture feels a little firm,
I don't know about these.
I'm just gonna dry this out a little bit.
This is another piece
of little brioche bun.
[sighs]
Have I mentioned my
favorite film is "Top Gun."
This is brioche.
for this version, what I'm going to do is,
I'm just going to cut it into some pieces
and then from that point, I
can break it down further.
Shall we just agree that at
that point, I'll move on.
Things are going to start to happen
a lot faster from this point.
We're just doing a good bit of butter.
We're going to toast
these up, get them crispy.
A pinch of salt, go with our garlic.
We should start to see some
color up here pretty soon
and then we're going to
basically drop some lobster
into some frickin' sauce
into a lobster carcass.
Maybe I will use about half of this.
Lobster's going into the sauce.
Feels like it wants to be very coated.
There was a lot of sauce
in there, but I don't know.
Now everything's like looking crazy to me.
Technique is, you put the lobster
and the sauce in the shell.
It's looking a little bit crazy right now.
I'm wondering if the
breadcrumb kind of goes on now
or if the breadcrumb might
kinda go on like after?
Think it would probably go on now,
just given how like soft
and everything it was.
I don't really love either
breadcrumb to be totally honest.
I'm gonna get this in the oven.
I suppose you could keep
the lobster in the sauce,
scatter the breadcrumb
over, then the chive
but I don't know, there's
just something about
the interaction between the breadcrumb
and the sauciness of the
lobster that made me feel like,
they had kind of, everything had
sort of been reheated together.
I mean, the bigger breadcrumbs definitely
hold up a little bit better.
Overall, I mean, have
I seen crazier things?
Yeah.
I'm just getting this for the Gram.
Okay anyway.
I mean it definitely
looks incomplete to me.
Some chive doesn't take care of it.
Might have a big problem here.
I'm going all in on chive for the minute
because that's mainly what I perceived.
Last time, I almost went down
a dark hole to ramp-pocalypse.
I'm leaning towards this just
because it stayed way firmer.
Yeah, I'm done.
This is it, this is the dish.
This is my first pass at it.
Looking at it, I still
have that feeling of it
just not feeling quite
complete to my eyes.
I've left unresolved
the question of whether
there was a little
bloom of chili, paprika,
something maybe happening in there.
The lobster's cooked, it's
actually not overcooked.
At the time, it felt like I was putting
a lot of sauce into
our little friend here.
I don't know, now it doesn't seem
like a crazy amount of sauce at all.
Good garlic in the breadcrumb.
Possibly, starting with the firmer bread,
knowing that it's then
gonna soften in the oven
when this thing heats back up.
That might actually be the way to go.
I'm getting a butter, getting the garlic.
The parmesan and the lobster
is like slightly upsetting
but it's kind of delicious too.
I'm cool with the Parm in.
I'm just gonna rethink, you know,
the workflow on the bread there.
[shell cracks]
Claw's cooked.
I'd say I'm 78% on ingredients.
I feel like there's something
lurking around somewhere
that I don't have.
I'm gonna bump myself
down to 72% for technique
because I feel like either
somebody is steaming something
or maybe they're not reheating
the whole thing in the oven,
really hard to know.
Appearance, something still
feels a little incomplete,
but I'd say 75% just from
the standpoint of look,
it's a lobster, two pounds, you know,
split in half, filled with,
you know, kind of mornay,
lobster meat, breadcrumb, chive.
The taste, actually, I'm
giving myself 85 here.
I feel good about the parmesan,
feel pretty good about the breadcrumbs.
I feel good about the
fact that it's a lobster
and that's gotta count
for something, right guys?
Coming in a little cool at 77%
but this first tasting
always leaves a lot of doubt,
a lot of uncertainty and I'm
definitely looking forward
to tasting the original
dish again right now.
See you guys in a few.
[upbeat dramatic music]
Oh God,
I don't have any spoons.
Wait, hold on, cut, action, I need spoons.
Thank you.
So, I guess it is scallion after all.
Thanks for the heads up guys.
Still not picking up any lemon.
There's a little something going on
in those breadcrumbs though.
I'm gonna call it black pepper.
I've got scallion, I've got breadcrumb.
Okay, okay, parsley.
I'm wondering if it was
put into the breadcrumb
or if it's an additional garnish
in addition to the scallion.
Wow, it's cheesy.
I think this is cheesy in
the same way that mine is,
it's just maybe I need
to go up in the parm.
Definitely need to
incorporate parsley somehow.
The possibility of cayenne is really
what I'm kind of picking
up from the sauce.
It's not hot but there's a warmth.
I don't know if like the garlic
has just disappeared or if I made it up.
The breadcrumbs that I did
actually with the brioche,
maybe feel a little bit
closer to being correct.
Not as far off as maybe I thought.
My brain went to, maybe
there's some kind of
like alcohol in there.
You wouldn't add white
wine really to your roux
unless you were adding
like a big quantity.
Otherwise, the roux
could kind of tighten up
and get lumpy on you, so I
don't know that it's that.
Still feeling good about parmesan.
If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but
still feeling good about parm.
Some things to think
about tonight, as always.
I'll be putting this up for Carla
middle of the afternoon tomorrow.
So, clock is ticking on figuring out
what some of the stuff is.
[upbeat dramatic music]
[mumbles in slow motion]
Yeah, no.
I was feeling pretty good yesterday
about the even split between
whole milk and cream.
I think I'm going to
keep rolling with that.
I could see adjusting the
sauce at the very end,
just a little dash of something,
like the cognac or madeira came to mind,
just something kind of
nutty, not super bright.
It could be white wine
but then the question is,
when are you putting it in?
So, if you put it in on top of the roux,
the roux is gonna thicken up right away
and could get really clumpy on you.
I'm gonna break down the
sauce, do a few tests there.
Just making my roux.
Yesterday, I used half
milk and half cream.
I'm going to do the same thing again.
I'd rather spend a little bit of time
messing around with the alcohol.
I split this into two, with
the objective being that
I put two tablespoons into
one pot of the white wine,
so that at the moment that
the cream and the milk
are coming up to a boil,
the wine is in there,
so that it has the
greatest possible chance
of kind of burning off the alcohol.
Doing that makes me
feel very uncomfortable.
So then, this one I'm going
to divide further into two
after the cheese has been added.
Try maybe a little bit of madeira in one,
a little bit of cognac in the other,
just as a finishing element.
So, just doing a tiny little
taste of cayenne in each.
Sticking to the cheese, it
felt right, it tasted right.
I'm just seasoning this with salt here,
bring the flavor up a little bit.
It's incredible how
boring and flat it tastes
without the salt, that
could be it right there.
All right, so that's parm
going into this sauce.
I just want to taste the
sauce first without wine
and then I want to see what makes sense
in terms of an alcohol
addition to this one.
So this is the sauce that
does not have wine in it
or any alcohol of any kind yet.
So, I'm just pouring off a
little bit into each of these.
You know, this is going in raw
and it's not really being cooked.
In this bowl, we have our
mornay sauce with cognac
and in this bowl, we are soon
to have our mornay sauce,
no white wine in either,
with a little madeira.
Madeira is a very light
fortified wine that is oxidized.
So it has like a very nutty quality.
I feel like, it's like maybe
closest to like a sherry.
Hasn't really added any acidity whatsoever
and that like nutty quality of the madeira
is adding this kind of,
almost like a florality to it.
It's a little bit upsetting.
This is our cognac version.
We're just not going to talk about that.
I'm not going to tell
you anything about it.
Just taste that one.
- 19th century France.
That kind of boozy finish,
I don't really want it in any of my food.
- This does taste better and more balanced
than any of the other alcohols,
but I'm just going to reveal,
this is with white wine.
Feel like wine--
- It can top the parmesan?
- [Chris] There is parm in there.
- But then there's more on top?
- I don't think so.
- Oh, I don't know, I was like
- I don't think so.
New show idea, what
[beep] alcohol is this?
- Oh, God.
- Just like,
people just like put a glass
of something in front of you.
You gotta figure it out.
- I don't wanna participate.
- Don't worry, it's
gonna be me and Delaney.
- Oh, yeah, yeah, that's
fine, you and Delaney.
- All right, well,
thanks for coming over man.
- Well, it feels right.
- I'm feeling like white
wine is the answer.
Having just a touch of acidity
and a touch of balancing
effect on the sauce.
When it comes to the bread,
I'm gonna try some of this baguette.
The bread that I was tasting yesterday
seemed to have a somewhat
high proportion of crust.
There are clearly some like very coarse
irregular pieces here.
We're gonna blitz this up.
Pieces are looking better.
In the second tasting yesterday,
I was not taking up a ton of garlic.
This smells like a sourdough baguette.
That's just gonna add
like a little bit of,
you know, tanginess and funkiness
that I don't really want in this.
Let's go for texture and
overall appearance and feel.
Very pleasing sound, you getting this?
[pan sizzling]
Just like so pleasing,
you know, the way like
certain things sound
and then like, the pitch
sort of starts to change
as they get a little bit
like crispier and get darker.
I mean, I think this is it for me.
I don't know how, like, I'm not clear.
I'm not going to sit here
making breadcrumbs all day.
Confidence, I'd say like I'm
at 84 right now, feeling good.
I'm just gonna start my
sauce in the meantime.
There's some chicken
and waffle family meal
happening over there and
I don't intend to miss it.
Yesterday, I felt like I tasted
black pepper for a second.
There's a little something going on
in those breadcrumbs though.
I'm gonna call it black pepper.
It's not super French to put black pepper
in a white creamy sauce.
I just haven't decided
what I wanna do yet, okay.
A little known fact in the
kitchen, the faster you go,
the less chance you have,
the less time you have
frankly, to make mistakes.
I'm gonna put it into an ice
bath just to stop the cooking.
Into my roux, I'm going to
be adding a cup of milk,
a cup of heavy cream.
We're gonna stick with a
quarter cup of white wine.
All that's gonna come up together.
The sourdough's throwing me off.
We're gonna have to remake that for
the one that I do for Carla later.
Did you can see his shorts?
[dramatic drum and symbol note]
As it's heating up, the alcohol's
starting to come out of that.
It just feels a little bit wrong
not to independently
reduce the white wine.
Get it down to a simmer,
calm the heat down.
I'm gonna let that go
for a couple minutes.
Let's deal with our lobster here.
I think it's probably safe to take
the rubber bands off at this point.
So yeah, we're just a
little bit under in here.
Most of the tail is perfectly fine.
We are just taking out the bits and bobs
that we don't need here.
I've now made a bigger cavity,
which is potentially
gonna work against me,
just given that I have
not cooked extra lobster.
This is like moderately cleaned up.
I'm just trying to kind
of hollow out the cavity,
get rid of those gills.
I am a bit worried that
like, having taken that out,
I may get a little bit
more lobster leakage.
All right, let's get
our sauce seasoned up.
A pinch of cayenne,
third of a cup of parm,
season it up.
Felt like I tasted black pepper yesterday,
I'm gonna hedge my bets and do that.
These are just bite
size pieces of lobster.
It's just not a lot of meat.
It just looks a little skimpy.
Now I'm wondering if I
should not have taken,
you know, the gills of the lobster out,
just for the sake of not
opening up extra space
and I'm also just wondering
whether I need to cook
another slightly smaller
lobster on the side.
I am having some leakage over here,
which is something that I feared,
you know, messing around
with the inside of the body.
So, we're doing our breadcrumb.
In at 375, just till those
breadcrumbs are toasty.
Lobster's hot.
Okay, before you see this, just know that,
I feel like I already addressed the fact
that we had some lobster leakage.
It only got worse, okay,
so it's not gonna look like
your passport to flavor town or anything.
In trimming out the inside
of the lobster half,
a few too many things
kind of separated out.
Overall, like looking at
this one in particular,
like that's not half bad.
The parsley, that is what I
sort of maybe was responding to
in thinking that like, maybe
there was some like lemon zest.
Yeah, just threw me off a little bit.
Now, I'm just doing scallion rounds.
The shell doesn't seem full enough,
so I'm not gonna hollow it out next time.
All right, so this is version two,
right here is what I'm going with.
These breadcrumbs are definitely crispier
than what I had at the
end of the day yesterday.
I think I'm feeling happy with the sauce.
I think the white wine is working.
Black pepper is kind of indiscernible.
I'm just getting like a
mouthful of that scallion.
It just like was, God, it just
felt so abrupt, you know, but
tastes good to me, it's cooked.
I think I'm just gonna go back to
a less hollowed-out lobster body.
Not use sourdough.
I feel okay about my decision
to put the black pepper
just in the breadcrumb.
I believe white wine
was the right move here.
I don't think I'm missing
anything in the sauce.
There can always be that like,
sneaky little pinch of this,
dash of that, you know,
but if you can't taste it,
then what's the point right?
Okay, ingredients, 83%.
Technique, a 78 here.
Appearance-wise?
85, that's like my spirit
number, it's a solid B,
you showed up, you got your job done,
you didn't make a
complete ass of yourself.
Taste, 90.
Total score averages out to an 84,
which I'm still calling a B.
I'm about to do the last version,
the one that I need to serve to Carla.
I got to make this one count.
So, gonna get to it.
I refuse to use that sourdough baguette.
So I have to use our
old stale sad baguette,
which is quite old and quite sad.
We're gonna make it work.
[blender whirls]
And then it starts to get
into this thing, right?
Cause like, if I needed a baguette
and they were willing
to go out and buy me one
as opposed to just having one
cause that's like what
they're using in the back
to make the original
dish, what does that say?
Are they just playing like a
real [beep] long game here,
you know, like trying to not let me get
any kind of insight into
what's happening back there?
Sure, we'll get you a baguette.
I know we have to walk out,
like go down the street,
you know, 20 minutes each
way up hill, you know,
but sure, if that's what you
want, you know what I'm saying?
[blender whirls]
All right, I gotta stop
[beep] around, okay.
Flavor-wise, this is gonna
be better than the sourdough.
I don't know, it's like the breadcrumb
has always messed me up,
it's messing me up right now.
Felt like I like really exposed
my soul about it a minute ago.
Black pepper, only
going on the breadcrumb,
not going into the sauce.
Next, I'm gonna do this sauce.
Three tablespoons of
butter, got my dairy there
and then white wine.
Quarter cup, still feels a little wrong.
I'm not gonna wander off and go
start doing something else, okay.
Sauce, I feel like an 83.
I'm requesting a second lobster.
Just be able to bulk it up a little bit.
So, this is a pretty good sized lobster.
Whoa, he's mobile that guy.
[dramatic drum and symbol note]
Little weird.
So, I'm just gonna fit this guy in here.
I was not like the biggest
fan of lobster as a kid.
So, lobster one is the one that
we're basically par-cooking.
It's a good thing this
is lobster number two
because his claw just came off.
So, I'm cutting this lobster in half.
I'm not going to be
removing any of the gill
and all that stuff.
How is it so messy?
Can you imagine like
cooking like 2000 of these,
like in a day?
We are now breaking
down lobster number two,
you guys getting that?
I don't know what happened to that claw
but it's like got some weird
spongy situation happening.
Cayenne pepper.
That is parmesan going in.
Salt and nothing else is going in here.
All right, here we go.
Saucing, that's about half of our sauce.
Here we go, Solo.
Now, it kind of looks
like there's too much meat
but it looks moderately more to me.
I mean, it doesn't look
insane or anything.
It's what you came here for, isn't it?
Let's use some sauce to cover
up the eyeball a little bit,
you know what I'm saying,
it's like it's all good.
Now, I'm feeling like the breadcrumb
probably was like never even toasted.
It was probably just like dumped on there,
but cool, I feel good about that.
[alarm timer beeps]
10 minutes, oh, the suspense.
No leakage, sauce stayed in place,
bread crumbs are crispy,
looking nice and golden.
I think these claws are
certainly going to be cooked
but I just wanted to make sure
everything got hot for Carla.
Dying to know who did
this, by the way, dying.
Aside from Maangchi, like
have I ever even gotten close?
Probably not, right?
Oh, Guy Fieri, all right.
Maybe it's Jacques Pepin,
that would be my hail Mary.
What did we say about the
direction of the claws?
[dramatic drum and symbol note]
You guys are getting in my head.
All right, not too much scallion,
little shower of parsley.
I present to you Jacques
Pepin's Lobster Thermidor
or something like it
or something by somebody else
or maybe not even Lobster Thermidor.
I'm gonna call this an 84.
That's kind of where I
felt I was last time.
This one feels simple in a way that
some of the other dishes didn't.
I feel like I had to hedge some bets
but overall, you know, I
feel pretty good about it.
I certainly don't hate it.
I'm not having like a crisis about it.
Whatever I got right or wrong,
this is the dish I have
to present to Carla.
I think she's on her way down here.
So, we'll see how it goes.
A lot of pain behind these eyes right now.
- Oh, so sorry.
- It's okay.
- Moment of truth.
- Mm-hmm.
- We got two silver boobies here
- Yeah.
- And underneath which,
we've got the dish.
Do you have a guess on who's recipe it is?
- I named Jacques Pepin
- Ha!
- And Lobster Thermidor.
[Carla laughs]
- The second part is good.
- Yeah?
- Yeah, pretty good.
- All right, all right.
- Chris, I wanna present you with
Snoop Dogg's Lobster Thermidor
- No.
Stop!
- Oh my God, they look pretty identical.
Mine smells like weeds though.
- It's a Saltine or something, isn't it?
Or a Ritz cracker?
- It's a cracker.
[beep]
It's a cracker, yeah.
[Chris moans resentfully]
- That really throws me for a loop.
I--
- Do you think you ever
would have guessed Snoop?
- I don't think I ever would
have guessed Snoop Dogg.
- Like even if you had days
to just make lists and lists?
- Days, Carla,
- Yeah [laughs]
- Weeks, months and even years.
- I don't think I would have either.
They look amazingly similar.
- Yeah.
- Like truly.
All right, so I'm just gonna
take a refresher on Snoop's.
- Yup.
- It's a funny thing, what does
thermidor even translate to?
All right, very cheesy.
- Very cheesy.
- Very cheesy.
I'm gonna take a taste of yours.
Yours is much sweeter.
This one is much sharper, much more--
- Cheesy.
- Cheesy.
Foreshadowing.
- What do we got going on over here?
- Nothing maje.
- Tell me, tell me.
- Well, in the mornay, there is a little
garlic and shallot in the butter
- Hmm.
- before the flour goes in.
- Okay, first tasting
yesterday, I got garlic
and that's why I put it in the breadcrumb
- And then, you've also got
some black pepper in your crumb
- In the crumb
- And there's black pepper
in this mornay.
- I put Cayenne in the mornay
because you often see
a little bit of cayenne
in a bechamel kind of based sauce
- And you were picking up some
- And I was picking up just
- Heat, tingly.
- that little bit of heat.
I was like, would a Frenchy
put black pepper in a white sauce?
- Never.
- Never.
- Never, literally never.
- Never in 1000 years.
But Snoop Dogg, not French.
- Does what he wants.
You missed a whole cheese.
- Cheddar?
- No.
Do you have a cold?
- Gruyere?
- Now you got it.
It's equal parts parm and gruyere
- Okay.
- Which is also shocking
but I think also accounts
for some of the texture
the sharpness, there's also
some dry mustard in the mornay.
Cracker crumbs breadcrumbs,
were you going a little
nuts about the texture?
- I was a little bit but this to me,
like read as baguette crust
- Uh-huh.
- That's now like toasted
and it tasted buttery.
- So I put butter.
- Okay, butter.
- So, there is white wine in this, right?
- There is white wine in it.
[Carla laughs]
- That's one lobster.
- Yeah, but--
- It just felt like a little
bit, kind of scamp to me.
- So you used extra lobster meat?
- I did.
- I appreciate it.
- [Chris] Yeah, all right, thank you.
- It's wrong but I like it.
[Chris and Carla laugh]
This is gonna hurt me
more than it hurts you.
[Carla laughs]
It's not that bad.
- I don't know if that's true.
- Ingredients.
- Got the lobster.
- You got the lobster, nailed it
and that is a main ingredient.
I feel like we need to weight
these ingredients a little bit.
So there's 15 [laughs]
- Mustard, low, lobster high.
There's 15 ingredients, right?
- Okay.
- You missed four of them completely.
- Ah!
- You missed the gruyere,
you missed the garlic and the shallot
and you kind of misplaced the cayenne
- Okay.
- but overall,
most of it was there, I'm gonna
give an 80 on ingredients.
Technique, I mean with the
exception of over stuffing
the lobster and spending
way too much time on crumbs,
Snoop goes the step of
rinsing out the lobster shell.
- I thought about it.
At what point are you rinsing flavor away?
Now, you've introduced water to the shell.
- Right, for technique, 95.
- Okay.
Wow, okay.
- I really appreciated
that extra lobster.
Appearance-wise, almost identical.
The biggest thing I think
- Crumb, yeah.
- is the crouton.
Ah, I just feel good
right now with 80 again.
- Okay, wow,
[Carla laughs]
that was not the number I
was expecting but that's--
- Were you thinking I was gonna go lower?
- No, I was thinking higher frankly.
- You're doing well.
- Okay.
- Taste, the taste of the
gruyère is so prominent
that the absence of it makes
a big taste differential,
even though it only represents one.
Let's say 80 again.
- Okay.
- That's fine.
- Okay, I'm back.
I'm back, I'm listening.
[Carla laughs]
- So, 80, 80, 95, 80
- Which saved me.
- That gives us 84.
84 is like no longer a B minus.
- I can live with that.
You know, there's a few things
that could have gone my way
or not gone my way.
- Yeah.
- White wine, definitely went my way.
- Yes.
- parm, you know,
the presence of a good amount of parm
definitely went my way.
- It wasn't like there
wasn't parm in it.
- Right but like the gruyere,
ugh, you know, tasting
certain cheeses blind
just by themselves
- I know.
- Is really hard.
- Yeah.
I think you did a really great job.
You know what's funny,
crackers and cheese.
- Crackers and cheese man.
- The things you left out,
you could have made a cheese board out of.
[Chris laughs]
- Yeah, exactly.
- Now knowing what you do now,
do you have a higher
opinion of Snoop or a lower
or does it stay the same?
- Higher.
- Higher?
- Higher
- Cause you were a fan
going in.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah,
he just left this part out of the song.
It's like, you got your Rolly on the arm,
you're pouring Chandon,
[Carla laughs]
you're eating Lobster [beep] Thermidor,
that really would have helped me out.
But that's fine,
- Next time.
- Maybe that's like in
some like B-side stuff
that I just haven't gotten into yet.
- Great job.
- All right, thanks.
I don't know if I ever
would have gotten cracker,
that and the gruyere,
I'm kicking myself about.
It's just tricky but overall,
I mean I'm not like hating
myself for this, you know.
Guessing the dish, getting
most of the ingredients right,
getting the overall look
and feel right, that's huge.
I feel like it's always
gonna be something, always.
"From Crook To Cook: Platinum Recipes
From Tha Boss Dogg's Kitchen."
Oh yeah, I'm sorry, that food stylist
used more than one
lobster in there, come on.
So, we had ordered some
regular room service,
but then the chef was telling me about
something I should try, Lobster Thermidor
and I'm like, all right, bring it on up.
I'm telling you nephew,
that [beep] was good.
Nephew, is that a thing? [chuckles]
