Each week we'll watch Aragona chef Carrie Mashaney represent in the show's New Orleans season.

Previously, on Top Chef: Padma’s mom! Arancini eyeballs! Doomed ‘shrooms!

Padma and John Besh and John Besh’s regally floppy hair swing by the New Orleans house and herd the chefs into a fleet of Toyotas. They’re off to Covey Rise farm where the quickfire awaits. Chefs must cook a dish showcasing the Creole tomato, a fleeting-of-season rarity only grown in the soil of southern Louisiana. Funny how last week was Halloween, now it’s tomato season.

Beyond a brief comment about how she feels at home on a farm because she’s from (wait for it…) Iowa, we get no Carrie at all during the quickfire. Though other chefs seem oddly mystified by how to showcase one of the most seasonally glorious pieces of produce out there. Nina wins with a chilled watermelon-tomato soup.

The chefs spend the night at the farm and Carrie shows some fellow chefs how to whistle using a blade of grass.

The elimination challenge: Cook dinner for Besh and the executive chefs from all eight of his New Orleans restaurants. And do so using seasonal produce (yay) and…Philadelphia cream cheese (wha?). The chefs are turned loose in the kitchen of John Besh’s restaurant La Provence with the best proteins and produce Louisiana farms have to offer, plus a giant pile of cream cheese blocks.

Because this fine product is made with fresh milk and real cream, the kitchen is also stocked with…fresh milk and real cream. But no butter. Which royally sucks. Maybe Carrie can use her bionic arm muscles to churn some?

Carrie cooks next to Bene; they're both doing chicken dishes. Our heroine is pleased with her braised chicken, and even has extra thyme to share. Meanwhile Bene laments that his plate “looks like a wrinkly face.”

The judges sit down with John Besh’s exec chefs for dinner. And, oof, they are not kind to Carrie’s vinegar-braised chicken with cream cheese sauce with chilled cucumber. “It’s awfully dry for a braise,” says one catty exec chef. While Besh praises the vinegar braise as a gutsy move, Gail laments that Carrie's “crunchy, beautiful cucumbers” are lost in the sauce. She pronounces Carrie’s plate “gloopy and soupy.”

Gail, why you gotta be like that? We get a shot of poor Carrie back in the kitchen, still wearing her sky blue apron and giving her dish one last contemplative taste. Awww.

Back in the stew room, the TV fires up election night commentary of out-of-state money's impact on initiative 522 the judges throwing major shade. Overall, John Besh is sad that the produce of his native grounds was treated so shabbily. The words “cream cheese” are spoken way too frequently.

The winner: Nina wins again for her crispy fried zucchini blossoms, stuffed with cream cheese and pureed eggplant. However her joy at winning for the millionth time is tempered by the fact that her two BFFs, Travis and Bene, are on the bottom.

The loser: Bene’s wrinkly vegetables prove his undoing. “You’ve got to take care of the vegetables as much as the meat,” Tom scolds him. I’m not sure if this is food commentary or some sort of euphemistic sex advice, but either way, take heed.

Line of the night: “Good hair. Great restaurants. James Beard awards. I’m intimidated.” Stephanie has a little thing for John Besh.

Next, on Top Chef: Kermit Ruffins! Thank you, Treme, for the crash course in New Orleans music.

Minutiae:

• Wouldn't a cream cheese challenge make way more sense in the Seattle season? Since we put it on our hot dogs and in our sushi rolls and all?
• Top Chef, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH CARRIE? For the love of all that is holy, please give her more time on my television screen.
• Where did Gail find that dress adorned with little radishes? I want this so badly.
• Travis confesses that he struggled to think clearly on the quickfire due to all the heat and sun in his face. He must have had a rough go of it on those three trips to Vietnam.
• Speaking of Travis, I guess the judges decided that the Travis/travesty puns were punishment enough when they let him stay.
• Carrie saves her smack talk for Twitter.