Elgin Community College-trained chef Zach Laidlaw survived a “curry in a hurry” challenge, and his team did well enough this week to move up to the mid-level kitchen on the next episode of “Next Level Chef.”
On Thursday night’s show, each competing chef had 30 minutes to prepare a curry dish. Laidlaw made a goat curry served with a Caribbean-style johnny cake, a cornmeal pancake.
Laidlaw, 34, noted during the ABC program, which also streams on Hulu, that he has spent time working in the Carribean over the course of his career. He’s currently the executive chef at Hua Momona Farms on Maui, where he runs a greenhouse and oversees a microgreen program.
“I’m doing a modern plating to show the kind of chef I am,” Laidlaw said of his goat curry.
Celebrity chefs Gordon Ramsay and Nyesha Arrington, both of whom are mentoring teams on the show, cited problems with Laidlaw’s dish — the former saying while the goat was cooked beautifully, it was a little sweet and the latter finding the goat under-seasoned and the presentation compartmentalized.
Laidlaw’s teammate, home cook Lauren Smith, prepared a curry that included undercooked pork, deemed one of the two worst curries of the night. Laidlaw and Smith are on the team being mentored by celebrity chef Richard Blais.
Their team competed from the basement-level kitchen, which has inferior equipment and in which the chefs have access only to the ingredients not chosen by the chefs on the better-equipped kitchens on the top two levels.
To stay on the show, Smith had to compete directly against professional chef Ari Pulido, who produced the other dish — a fish curry with too much tumeric — deemed to be the worst.
Both were directed to cook Indian-style butter chicken, with Smith’s version besting Pulido’s and keeping her in the game while Pulido was sent home.
With Smith’s win, Laidlaw’s team moves to the mid-level kitchen for the next episode’s challenge. Arrington’s moves to the basement.
Ramsay’s team will be on the top level next week thanks to a squid dish prepared by Izahya Thomas, which the three celebrity chefs said was the best curry of the night.
For the next episode’s challenge, the remaining competitors will be making tropical island-style fish dishes.
The show was recorded last fall in Ireland. The winner will receive $250,000 and a yearlong internship with the three celebrity chefs.
Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
