Fabio takes a gander at the challenge and says: "Hung is a guy that loves fish; there is a blanket; there is something square ... yes, fish! There is going to be an aquarium under there!"

Nope -- the square shape is a pile of shelf-stable, prepackaged ingredients: cans, jars, and little cardboard boxes. All of the chefs faces fall, and Jeff calls it "a pile of garbage." (Haha, I loved that part.) Their challenge is to make the best dish from those ingredients, in just 15 minutes. "It's like a mosh pit," Jeff says, as they fight over ingredients. Artichokes and Spam seem to be quite popular.

The chefs all make faces as they smell the food, and I'm starting to get a little annoyed at their snobbery. Radhika says, "We're used to working with natural, flavorful, real ingredients" and mumbles something about "it's something that a housewife ... would use." I don't see the harm, honestly.

This challenge reminded me of the vending machine quickfire challenge from season 2: Use $10 worth of food from a vending machine to make an amuse bouche. I also think it's funny that all the chefs turned their noses up at the canned-food challenge, since canned food can be gourmet -- take Anthony Bourdain's visit to the Espinaler Bodega, a bar that only serves its own canned seafood, on his own show.

Hung's least favorites are Leah's waffles with Cool-Whip, sausage and strawberries; Radhika's spicy red bean dip and grilled bread; and Jamie's uninspired bruschetta with smoked mussels.

He likes Hosea's sweet pea soup with fried spam and pork rinds; Stefan's baked bean and Spam soup and Spam and grilled-cheese sandwich; and Jeff's three-parter of fried conch, coconut sauce and pina colada.

I personally think Ariane's open-faced turkey Spam sandwich with chutney looks horrific, but it must have tasted all right because it fell solidly in the middle. Also non-noteworthy were Fabio's artichoke and chili pepper Easy Mac and Carla's salmon cake.

When Stefan was preparing his Spammerific meal, the song from Monty Python's Spam sketch was running in my head. Also, was anyone else annoyed by how Jamie said "bruschetta"? (brus-KET-ta) It annoys me when people pull out a pronunciation of a word, correct or not, completely different from their regular accent. (I'm looking at you, Giada De Laurentiis.)

Stefan is the winner, and we immediately cut to Hosea saying he wished he hadn't shared some extra Spam with Stefan, who now has immunity and an even bigger head. (My crush is fading as rapidly as it began.) There's also no prize to speak of. Shocking!

Elimination Challenge

The cheftestants pull knives marked with a meat (I am not calling it a protein unless I have to) -- lamb, chicken or pork -- and organize into groups of three, where they plan a meal for 16 people.

Team Lamb is Ariane, Hosea and Leah; Team Chicken is Jamie, Stefan and Carla; and Team Pork is Fabio, Jeff and Radhika. Are you seeing any problems with these teams? Like, oh, say, Hosea and Leah's huge crushes on each other, along with Stefan's crush on lesbian Jamie and Carla's frustration with being caught in the middle? OK, good. Just checking.

Jamie and Stefan start at it from the beginning, and Stefan just laughs later about how she's cute when she's mad. Carla says, "I can't create in that energy, in that friction!" (I heart how Jamie says that Stefan is a know-it-all. Pot, meet kettle.) Carla and Jamie later plot to change the menu, behind Stefan's back, and try to present their new ideas to him at the house. He's not hearing it, and he and Jamie get into a screaming match in which Jamie's the only one screaming. She has a point, though: He has immunity. She wants to get rid of a soup because it's summer (oh, I thought it was just Thanksgiving? And Christmas? Gee, where have I been?).

Jamie has a point, and Stefan was being quite pig-headed. (Hee! I slay me!) But I'm also wondering how much of that confrontation was Carla and how much was Jamie. A plot behind his back doesn't really seem like Carla's style.

Hosea wakes up the next morning second-guessing his team's plans, and he and Leah hash out which cooking technique is most seasonal for lamb. (I don't think I ever considered the notion that there are seasonal cooking techniques, but I could go for that if you just hand me that wine over there...) Ariane is sitting on a bottom bunk, trying to join the conversation, but generally being ignored, though they've decided she's the one to cook the lamb since she was successful before.

When they say seasonal cooking, I think they mean the most appropriate for the season, such as grilling in the summer, instead of slow cooking or braising meat. Or, in the case of Team Chicken, perhaps a cold chicken consomme, instead of a hot chicken soup.

The cheftestants head to go shopping, and Fabio -- he's a quick one, that Fabio! -- says in his thick-and-getting-thicker accent: "Does it look like we're going to the Whole Foods market?" No!

They wind up at Dan Barber's farm, Stone Barns, and his restaurant there, Blue Hill at Stone Barns. The plan is for the cheftestants to "shop" with the farmers by picking out produce and animals, then make lunch for the farmers and their families.

The next five to 10 minutes are gratuitous shots of the farm, the animals, the gorgeous produce, Jamie tickling a chicken, and it's all so pastoral that I nearly fall asleep. It looks like it was a beautiful day (so strange, those seasons!), and the videographers go a little wild with the farm shots.

In one of the new midcommercial clips, Stefan makes a comment about being the only guy among two women teammates and a bunch of hens, and I'll just let you figure that one out. (I want to know how it got past the censors, though!)

Moving on, then! When the chefs return, their meat is laid out, freshly killed. It's a little too vivid for me, but I appreciate the message the producers (and farmers) are trying to send.

I love this idea. It seems that this idea of farm to table has become all the rage since Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma came out (or perhaps that's just when I started noticing it), but it's a wonderful idea. (British chef Gordon Ramsay even got his family in on the act.) I really liked Fabio's quote about killing the animals for food: "You're born, being raised and killed for a purpose. But in that lifetime, you should be treated with respect." As Mary's crush on Stefan diminishes, my love for Fabio grows.

Team Pork menu: seared pork loin, sausage ravioli with pesto, fried green tomatoes, grilled corn salad with bacon, and creme brulee. Radhika will do the creme brulee because she was originally going to do a bread pudding, but the kitchen lacked figs. Can you not do a bread pudding with pretty much anything? (OMG, I said the exact same thing.) She isn't much of an experimenter. Fabio is doing the ravioli, and Jeff is ostensibly doing everything else, as usual. (Where's my parfait?) I think he's been dying to do a fried green tomato since the wedding shower challenge -- didn't he almost make one then? -- that he forgot about his parfait this time.

Team Chicken menu: chicken cutlets, lemon-herb-roasted chicken, chicken ravioli soup, and nectarine and strawberry tartlets. We know Carla's doing the dessert, but there's no clear division of labor here. I was disappointed to see that Carla is doing dessert again, but she's quite good at it, so whatever works?

Team Lamb menu: roasted duo of lamb, heirloom tomato salad, rosemary and garlic roasted potatoes, swiss chard, and summer berry trifle. Ariane is handling the lamb, from butchering to presentation, and Leah winds up with the tomato salad (and the dessert! Remember her complaining about doing just those things, but doing nothing about it?). Hosea does the potatoes and splits a few of the other dishes.

Tom comes into the kitchen to check on things (where has he been?!) and quickly picks up on the problem spots. Fabio is complaining that Radhika isn't doing enough and says she only grilled 10 corn cobs in an hour. Tom asks Carla who the leader of her team is, and she points to Stefan and Jamie agrees. Tom also picks at Ariane's lamb-handling and wonders why she's peeling the meat off the bone, which adds more flavor. Finally, Tom says soup isn't always appropriate in hot weather and that creme brulee doesn't need berries. Fair points.

The last few moments in the kitchen are telling. Ariane has trouble getting her lamb done, and she can't tie it (for even cooking, I later learn -- who knew?), so Leah pitches in to help. Radhika is flipping out because Jeff is pushing it on time with searing some of the pork, and he says, "There's going to be a main entree of pork loin whether I lose a hand or not." Ew.

The food comes out, and I have to say that everything looks fantastic. Maybe it's weather or the farm or the adorable, smiling, corn-fed farmers, but it's downright picturesque. The judges will let us know how it tasted, though.

Tom is particularly upset about the lamb. He thinks that deboning it completely missed the point of the challenge -- "this is no way to honor the lamb" -- and the judges agree that the herb sauce was overwhelming. (Tom has been all about "honoring" the animals lately. Didn't he say a similar thing about Eugene's fish dish last week?) The new(ish) judge, food critic Toby Young, says it's "lamb dressed as mutton." That's his best line all night, and, man, he really had to try for that one. It's painful to listen to his "zingers." Soon after, he says the pesto on Fabio's ravioli was "the big bad wolf that has just blown the house down." (I'll translate: It overwhelmed the delicate sausage ravioli underneath. We are already at the point where we're groaning every time he opens his mouth, though Padma does give him a little smackdown later.)

When the desserts come out, they also look gorgeous. Team Chicken's is a stone fruit tartlet made with thyme, with cream and lemon zest. Team Pork's creme brulee has berries and mint on top, and Team Lamb made a summer trifle with pound cake, Grand Marnier and fresh berries. Tom and Dan Barber (oh, right, he's guest-judging since this whole thing took place at his farm and restaurant) are particularly happy about the thyme in the tartlet, but Dan says he can barely stand to look at the trifle. I'm don't catch what he compares it to, but I think it looks delicious.

I agree, I didn't see anything unappealing about the shortcake -- it looked fine to me, if not a little pedestrian and boring. I'm sure it still tasted good.

Judges Table

Team Chicken -- Stefan, Jamie are Carla -- are the favorites. Carla looks particularly happy and proud to be up there, and I know Maryann was loving her expressions. Carla tells the judges she played mediator, and though I didn't see much of that, it seems to have worked. Everyone winds up satisfied with what they made, depsite Jamie and Stefan's curse-a-thon a few nights before.

I was yelling at the TV when she spoke up when the judges switched from her -- pat on the back, "Good job as usual on the dessert, Carla" --  to Stefan and Jamie. Way to make yourself known, girl! Maybe the mediation was edited out?

The winner? All of them. What is going on here? Is this make-up-the-rules-as-we-go Top Chef? Of course, there are no prizes, so maybe the producers figured it can't hurt. This is like playing Pictionary with my dad. "What do you mean, you're drawing letters?! You can't do that!"

The winners (sigh) send back both of the other teams, probably just for the show of the judges tearing in to them.

Jeff, part of Team Pork, gets some heat for pulling the fat off the pork loin. Dan says it's one of the best parts of these fresh pigs, and the complaint is similar to the one about Ariane deboning the lamb. The judges felt they turned fresh, new meat into sterile, uninspired cuts. (I was always told that you were supposed to remove the gross silver skin. Weird.)

They also ding Fabio's pesto again, and Tom lays in to Radhika for not contributing much.

Team Lamb is in trouble for the lamb, of course. Tom says the butchering was amateurish, and Leah and Hosea begin falling all over themselves to make themselves look good. Leah calls Ariane out in a backhanded way, and Hosea says he has plenty of butchering experience. Then why didn't you do the lamb?, Tom asks. An excellent question. Backstage, Hosea says the judges were "brutal." The little dance between Leah, Hosea and Ariane to avoiding the knife was hilarious. They could take that show on the road.

As the judges confer alone, Padma says several need to be eliminated. New Judge Toby says the pork was "bloodless and anemic" and that he really just wants "to have full-blown, unprotected sex" with a pork dish. No, really, he really said that. Padma looks like she's going to throw up (I did, too), and I'll be taking a blistering-hot shower if you need me. For hours.

Toby says Ariane can't cook, and Hosea and Leah are shown backstage whispering behind their hands. Ooh, alliances and flirting and general backstabbing! I want more, please.

Padma defends Ariane, saying she's made some good things before, and Toby challenges her on the rules. "I don't think you should let pity cloud your judgment," he tells her, and reminds her that they're supposed to be judging this meal, and not previous ones. Finally, we have some clarification on that point! Tom looks pleasantly surprised that Tony read his rulebook, and Padma confirms. You know, I said earlier that Padma gave him the smackdown, but as I'm going back over this in my mind and my notes, I suppose she didn't. Well, then!

Actually you were right, Mary! As they're discussing Ariane, Padma mentions that she feels sorry for her because she said she didn't know how to butcher and the "lovebirds" (Ariane's term) left her high and dry. "I feel sorry for her too," replies Tony, "because she can't cook." At that point, Padma cops a little attitude, informing Tony that Ariane has won some challenges, so obviously she can. That's when Tony mentions the "What have you cooked for me lately" rule. I'm glad they finally said that head-on.

The cheftestants come back in, Tom rehashes their mistakes and goes into a somewhat spiritual little speech about "a connection the chefs have to the earth and to the table."

The loser is Ariane. (It should have been Leah!) Padma tells her very sincerely, "It's been a pleasure having you here," and I'm thinking Padma feels some sort of connection to Ariane. Ariane's backstage rant is surprisingly cutting. She says Leah wasn't a good team player and that Hosea is a wimp (!). She finishes with "what goes around comes around," that ageold comeuppance, not unlike "I'm rubber and you're glue."

You win, Ariane, but oh, that's right, you also lost. I'm not particularly sad to see her go, though I was impressed with the way she changed her poor-me tune after the first few episodes.

Next week: Restaurant wars! Oh, boy!