- [Nick] Today will be my most difficult cooking challenge yet. I'll be competing against
my girlfriend, Isabelle. We'll have three rounds consisting of an appetizer,
entree, and dessert. But there's just one thing. Isabelle, how often do you cook? - [Isabelle] Never. - [Nick] Never. So I'm giving Isabelle a
huge advantage in each round to level the playing field. If I lose, I'll take her on
a one-week luxury vacation to any destination of her choosing. But if I win, I don't think I'll have a
girlfriend for much longer. - [Isabelle] Let's cook. - [Nick] Round one will
be an appetizer round and I will be blindfolded. I'll be making what I call a
Blindfolded Bloomin' Onion. And it's certainly not gonna be easy but I'm gonna give it my best shot. - [Isabelle] Today I'm
gonna be making a poke bowl. So I've made poke bowls before but never with a full salmon here. I don't really know how to approach this. Look at him. He's so cute. - [Nick] For the Bloomin' Onion, I'm gonna chop off the head of the onion, and the idea is we want the
onion to look like this. So I'm gonna chop down all
of the sides of this onion, being very, very careful
with my fingers as I do it. And when I feel like I've
gone all the way through, I'll open the onion up and
hope that it holds together. The key now for me is gonna be to make the batter for my Bloomin' Onion. We need this to be extremely flavorful, especially because the judge
I'm trying to impress today is none other than my cameraman, Manny. Manny has been locked in a soundproof room and has no idea who has cooked each dish. - [Isabelle] I feel like I'm doing this, you know, semi-correctly. And our first piece. Got some scales in there. We'll fix that later. Now, I'm gonna try to
get the skin off here. Okay, this is a bit
harder than I anticipated. I feel like they make it
look so easy when they do it. - [Nick] I'm so incredibly grateful that I can't see what
the salmon looks like because I think I'd have a heart attack. To season up my Bloomin'
Onion batter here, I don't know exactly what
I've got in my hands, but I'll do my best to just sprinkle in an even amount of all of them. I'm thinking we're probably
well seasoned enough, so I'm gonna go ahead and whisk it all up and set this aside. The last step of my Bloomin'
Onion is making the wet batter. I gotta do this by just pure feel. Come on. Come on. Nice. Then I'll follow this with two eggs. After a nice quick whisk,
our wet batter is complete. - [Isabelle] So I'm gonna
start here with the cucumbers. Oh, that was a good throw. - [Nick] What the (beep) is going on? - [Isabelle] Now we're
going to slice up our mango, and then we're gonna
cut into little cubes. Looking good. Now I'm going to cut the avocado. Honestly, not bad. Not bad. - [Nick] Our very last step is to dredge this Bloomin' Onion. So first, I'll coat the whole
thing in flour and really try to work into every nook
and cranny on my onion. Once I've done my first dredge, I'll toss it into the wet batter and move it around as much as possible to fully coat the whole onion. So far, I'm feeling really
good about this round. To finish, back once more in my dry batter where I really need to open
up every single petal here. I'll shake off all that excess flour, and my Bloomin' Onion is ready to cook. The food's smelling good,
but I'm definitely not, which brings me to
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but only for a limited time, so stock up and save. For safety, since I'll be using hot oil, I'm gonna keep my blindfold
off the rest of this round. So let's get back to cooking. To finish this up, my Bloomin' Onion is gonna go
straight into the frying oil, and now I have to give it the love and care that it deserves. - [Isabelle] Okay, now we
have all of our ingredients, so it's time to plate. So first, we're gonna put
the rice into our bowl. - [Nick] A hundred bucks
she doesn't season the rice, guaranteed, not even salt. - [Isabelle] Now I'm gonna flatten it out and then, of course, gotta use some Osmo. Throw some of this on here. - [Nick] Not even salt. - [Isabelle] Then I'll add
on the rest of my ingredients and top it off with some
special sauce and sesame seeds. And we're done. - [Nick] My Bloomin' Onion is complete. I'll place it down on
the center of my plate, then I'll press in on
that section in the middle and in goes our sauce. Done. - [Isabelle] Do you think it looks good? - [Nick] I actually think
it looks really good. - [Isabelle] Are you feeling
a little nervous now? - [Nick] No, because you
didn't season your rice. - [Manny] Okay, so I don't
know who made which dish, but I'm gonna taste both
and rate them at a time. I'm gonna start with this poke ball. That looks good. I love salmon. Alright. This is what I'll say. I thought all the sauce was definitely gonna be like a spicy mayo, but it tastes like a
thousand island dressing. But the salmon tastes fantastic and fresh, and the bowl looks beautiful. I'm gonna give this a 7.8 out of 10. Okay, now moving on to
this blooming onion. It looks like it's pretty well fried. The coating seems like it's pretty good. I'm trying to pull a piece off but the batter just completely
separates from the onion, so this is not looking
great for whoever made this. I think I'm just gonna have to
try it with just the batter. The batter tastes great, but I'm gonna all bloomin' and no onion. I'm sorry, but this is a four out of 10. - [Nick] Round two. I'm feeling a little
bit sad after that loss, but this one shouldn't be as bad for me. This is the entree round,
and for this round, I get to pick just three
pieces of cooking equipment. For this recipe, I'll
need my potato ricer, only one pan, and it's hard to
cook without a chef's knife. I'll be cooking a recipe
right out of my cookbook, what I call the Yolky Gnocchi. Because I don't have access to an oven, I need to boil my potatoes, which for gnocchi is not
great, but I've got no choice. Once my potatoes are in,
I'll cover them with water, and we'll let these cook
until they're nice and tender. - [Isabelle] We're gonna
do a spaghetti here with some shrimp, and we're
gonna make a nice red sauce. So we're gonna start to season because Nick was making
fun of my rice last round. Garlic powder. Smoked paprika. And this will reduce as we
work on everything else. - [Nick] I just almost grabbed a fork to test if they're fork tender,
and also this pair of tongs but then realized I can't
use either of those. This is a real life game of hot potato. I'll wrap these potatoes in
the towel to let them steam. Oh, shoot. Does a towel count as kitchen equipment? - [Isabelle] Now we're
starting the shrimp. We're gonna put a little
oil in the pan, get it hot, and then we're gonna
stick these bad boys in straight in the pan. - [Nick] Every time she turns
the heat on with the oil, that's what it ends up as. - [Isabelle] Whoops, okay. - [Nick] I don't know how it hasn't become something she's learned after doing this - [Isabelle] Alright, shh. A little bit of garlic powder on top, a little bit of paprika. Whoa, might have been a little too much. They're getting a little
bit smoky in here. - [Nick] Oh, my god. No. - [Isabelle] What's wrong with them? - [Nick] What do you mean
what's wrong with them? - [Isabelle] I seasoned them a little. They're honestly doing great. - [Nick] I'm telling you right now, you're going to set the fire alarm off. - [Isabelle] Should we restart? - [Nick] No! At this point, I'm gonna peel my potatoes, and the idea is that we wanna keep these as light and fluffy as possible. The most difficult part of this is that you wanna peel the potatoes when they're still nice and hot, as I explained in my cookbook, but it becomes difficult to do it without burning your hands. Now it's time for me to use my second piece of kitchen
equipment, the potato ricer, which, in my opinion, you
cannot make gnocchi without. Using my hands now since
I have no other option, I'm gonna go ahead and make a little well in the middle of my potato here, then sprinkle over all of
it with a touch of salt, a very light pinch of ground nutmeg. Then into the center, I'll crack one egg and begin to sprinkle in
some of my all-purpose flour. Now I'll gently begin to mix. Gnocchi is one of my
favorite things to make in the entire world. But I've never done it
with such a minimal amount of kitchen equipment, so
we'll see how it works out. Isabelle, what'd I make
you on Valentine's Day for the entree? - [Isabelle] Gnocchi. - [Nick] And how was it? - [Isabelle] It was quite good. - [Nick] So are you gonna lose this round? - [Isabelle] No. - [Nick] When it comes to
rolling out my gnocchi, this is when I need equipment
number three, the knife. To roll out my dough, I'll hit the cutting board with some flour and cut this dough into about half and begin gently rolling back and forth. With this, I'm looking to
make nice logs of gnocchi. I feel like I got this round in the bag. I'll slice them into
these beautiful pillows. Then once they're cut,
give them a little pinch and that's ready to go. - [Isabelle] Alright. We're just stirring up the
sauce here a little bit. Okay, don't show this. Let's remove this. We're gonna start on the pasta. I'm trying for the perfect al dente. - [Nick] Did you salt the water? Let me guess. No. - [Isabelle] You know, I
should have known that. Nick always goes, "Salt
your water like the ocean." - [Nick] Okay, it's
time to cook our gnocchi because I need this pan
for some other things. Normally, I would not cook
the gnocchi this far ahead but I don't have a choice today. If you don't already know,
"Knife Drop" is out right now. So if you wanna make this
gnocchi like I'm doing right now, make sure to go get yourself a copy. - [Isabelle] Now we're
gonna check the pasta, see if we've reached that al dente. I think only a couple more
minutes and then we're good. - [Nick] Oh my god, I don't
know how to strain these. I didn't think about that. ((gasps)) With the potato ricer. So here's my idea. I'm gonna clean this thing out and I'm gonna use this as a strainer. I don't think anyone has
ever done this before. My gnocchi is complete. So I'll come on over here and try to drop it right into my strainer. Oh, it's working so well! I'll dump these out onto the counter, but they're not done yet. - [Isabelle] Time to strain. I don't know where Nick
keeps his strainers. I think we're gonna use the frying bin. I think this will work. - [Nick] Ready? - [Isabelle] Yeah. - [Nick] Go. - [Isabelle] Oh! Sabotaging me. - [Nick] To finish up, it's time to get our
gnocchi nice and crispy. This to me is my favorite
touch that I put on this dish. The one extremely
difficult part for me here is that I don't have anything to really move these around with, but I'm gonna have to figure
out a way to make it work. These are looking
beautifully golden brown. I want you to hear how
crispy and golden these are. It's time now to plate. My hands are getting burnt
by just touching this. I'll continue layering these up until I've achieved a
beautiful tower of gnocchi. To finish this off, I'll
separate out an egg yolk. And I do have to be extremely careful here as I do this last part. If this doesn't rest perfectly on top, all of our hard work goes to waste. - [Isabelle] The key here
is to make it look pretty and make those spaghetti swirls that you see in all the photos. Looking good. I'm gonna put a nice even layer of sauce. Now I've gotta add on
all of my amazing shrimp, and I'll finish it off
with some Parmesan cheese. Finished product. - [Nick] I hope Isabelle
won't be upset about this, but I am gonna have to
borrow her microplane just to go ahead and finish my dish with a little bit of Parmesan cheese, and I'll finish with just a little bit of this beautifully browned butter. This is my favorite flavor
that you'll have in this dish. - [Manny] Round two entrees. Let's get into it. Alright, right off the bat, I don't really know
about this presentation. It kinda looks like a shrimp bloodbath. It could taste really good
though, so I can't judge it yet. It's better than I thought it would taste. Alright, I'm going for one shrimp. I feel like I have to. It's part of the dish. Oh my god, it tastes so, I don't know what's wrong. 6.3 out of 10. Okay, so moving on to the second dish, I gotta say, the presentation
is pretty impressive. Alright, let's cut this egg yolk. Oh my god, look at that go. Before I even try it, it looks homemade. And if I know Isabelle, I don't think she could
pull anything like this off, so it might be Nick's dish. - [Isabelle] Hey! - [Manny] Sorry, Isabelle. Alright, I have to try this. This looks so good. Hmm, this is really good. 9.3 at of 10. Excellent dish. - [Nick] Round three is the dessert round, the final round of today. I have one win, and
Isabelle has the other. Why are you standing like that?
- [Isabelle] I don't know. - [Nick] Why are you standing like that? - [Isabelle] What do you want me to do? - [Nick] The twist for the dessert round is that I have to cook my whole dessert in an Easy-Bake Oven. Hopefully, we get a dessert good enough that I don't have to take her anywhere in the world for a whole week. - [Isabelle] This one's
gonna be an easy one for me. We're gonna do a Cookie
Monster ice cream sandwich. So right now, we're mixing together our dry ingredients here, our
sugar and our brown sugar, and then also our butter. Here we go. Next, beat in the eggs and vanilla. We have Charles here, good old Charles. Now we're slowly gonna start to combine the dry ingredients into the wet. It's getting thicker. - [Nick] Before we begin,
I'm gonna preheat my oven. And what I love about this,
there's no 350, no 375. It's just off or on. Probably the toughest part is that this is all
we've got to bake things. This is the smallest container ever. For dessert, I'll be
making a blueberry crisp. I'll start with some brown sugar, then a nice drizzle of melted butter, and I'll mix this all up. Now in with some all-purpose flour, and also a little bit of regular sugar, and of course, a nice little splash of our homemade vanilla extract. And once I've mixed this up once more, I'll go ahead and add in
some of these blueberry oats. Now I just wanna mush this together so that we begin to get
that nice crumbly form. I'll spray my baking dish. Now down with some of
these frozen blueberries. And I'll top this all off with my crumble. This is ready to go into our oven. You gotta be kidding me. It looks like to fit this, I'm gonna have to press
it down as best I can, then we can go in. That's good. - [Isabelle] Alright, we're
gonna try to shape this into more of a dough with our hands, and then add the chocolate chips. And I made them pretty big so that they can fit the ice cream inside. Okay, now that we have our three cookies, we're gonna stick them in the oven. In we go. We got here some blue ice cream, and we're gonna fill up this mold here and try to get a perfect
circle with the ice cream to fit in between the cookies. I gotta work fast because it's already melting
out here on the bottom. So we're gonna stick this in the freezer while we wait for the cookies to finish. You got a lot of meat in here. It's bulking season. - [Nick] I'm at the point
where I wanna check on this. So we're supposed to push
it all the way through, and then you stick this in. And theoretically I can just
pick it up and pull it out. Oh. That is not cooked at all. I'm convinced this thing is pretty much doing absolutely nothing. This is about all I can do. To plate my dessert, I'll first go down with a few scoops of my
beautiful blueberry crumble, which, I must say, turned
out better than I thought but is not quite as crispy
as I wanted it to be. I guess that's what happens when you cook in an Easy-Bake Oven. Then I'm gonna go ahead and take a nice scoop
of my vanilla ice cream, which is gonna go right on top of my tart. And we'll finish it with
some nice fresh lemon zest, maybe a little blueberry
juice on top to finish. - [Isabelle] It's time
to plate the dessert. I'm gonna cut around the edge here and make sure it comes out nicely, stick the other cookie right on top here, kinda like an open mouth. And then for the finishing
touch, we're gonna stick two eyes made from white chocolate
right on the top. And here we have our Cookie
Monster ice cream sandwich. Whoo! - [Manny] Alright, dessert round. These are the final dishes. It looks like I have an
ice cream sandwich here. It looks pretty good. I'm gonna take a bite. ((bell dings)) Whoo! It's really cold. It's so thick. I honestly couldn't get a
bite out of the whole thing. Absolutely delicious. Before I give it a rating,
I wanna try the other one. Alright, we got our second dessert here. Honestly looks like a
little bit of a mess. Alright, let's go in for a bite. Compared to our last dish, the presentation is really lacking. However, it's much easier to eat. I think I've made my final decision. Nick, Isabelle, I've tasted all three
of each of your dishes. I've tallied up the results,
and I have a winner. One of you finished with
just under 21 points, and the other, 23.5. Congratulations goes to Isabelle. - [Isabelle] Whoo! - [Manny] Whoo! - [Isabelle] We're going to Japan! - [Manny] Can I come? - [Isabelle] No.
