If you're inviting Danny Wilson to your New Year's Eve party, I wouldn't put that Louisiana standby cream cheese with pepper jelly on the snack table.
Pepper jelly is the secret weapon Wilson brought to his "Superchef Grudge Match" against fellow Baton Rouge chef Jay Ducote on Food Network on Tuesday. In the end, it was the jelly that led to Wilson's loss to Ducote — by just one point.
"It came down to that pepper jelly sauce. Chef Danny, had you gotten that made a little earlier, added a couple more ingredients, the scores could have been different," host Darnell Ferguson said after judges Brian Malarkey and Lee Anne Wong critiqued the pair's dishes.
In the matchup, each chef was tasked with making a Southern catfish special in just 30 minutes. Ducote's secret weapon: hot dogs. They were required to somehow incorporate the jelly and franks into their meals.
Inside the Food Network kitchen, which was unfamiliar to first-time TV competitor Wilson, he created a pepper jelly-glazed fried catfish filet, red beans and rice with hot dog and potato salad. He simply spread the jelly on top of the filets once they were cooked.
In contrast, Ducote infused the hot pepper jelly into the red-eyed gravy topping for his fried catfish and combined chopped hot dogs with sautéed spinach, which he served alongside a hot dog cheddar drop biscuit.
Danny Wilson, left, and Jay Ducote represented Baton Rouge in the Season 2 premiere of 'Superchef Grudge Match' on Tuesday on Food Network.
"What's more Southern than a beautiful cheddar biscuit?" veteran Food Network competitor Ducote asked.
Well, maybe potato salad, as in Wilson's grandmother Vivian's recipe that's so special he named it after her on one of his menus.
With matching scores for taste and presentation, it was Ducote's one higher point for use of ingredients that gained him the top prize — $10,000, bragging rights in his Baton Rouge hometown and Wilson's 7-inch forged traditional Serbian cleaver. Each contestant wagered one of their most treasured knives at the beginning of the show, with the winner taking home the loser's knife at the end.
"I've owned this cleaver for 35 years. Another chef gave it to me when I was working in New York," Wilson said, clearly emotional.
Ducote also offered up a meat cleaver, a 12-inch antique steel one passed down from his grandfather to his father and then to him.
As far as the "grudge" of the show's title, Ducote and Wilson agreed that theirs was a friendly grudge, with both claiming "to be the real deal when it comes to Southern cuisine."
Ducote has carved out a career as a traveling chef, speaker and storyteller, classifying himself as a cultural gastronomist.
Wilson operates Soulshine Food Truck, cooks breakfast and brunch every weekend at Pelican to Mars, directs the kitchen at Brickyard South on weekend nights and is overseeing a new, all-vegan menu at Pelican to Mars on Monday nights.
On Tuesday night's show, the two traded barbs as the contest clock wound down, with Wilson calling Ducote "a tourist in his own town," referencing the latter's frequent travels nationally and abroad as a perennial TV cooking shows contestant and ambassador for the state's cuisine.
"Danny might call me a fraud, but really, I made a name for myself, and he's just jealous," Ducote fired back with a grin.
"I've gained more respect for Jay and realized he's a really great Baton Rouge chef," Wilson commented after the winner was announced. "Maybe I'll stop telling people that Jay can't cook."
Ducote responded, "A knife means a lot to a chef, and at the end of the day, I respect Danny."
