It's amore in the 'Top Chef' kitchen

Love was the main ingredient Wednesday on "Top Chef: D.C." Whether it was Angelo and Tamesha, Ed and Tiffany, all the women and Kenny or Kenny and himself, the air was thick with passion.

To start things off, the cheftestants got crabs for this week’s Quickfire Challenge. (To cook with of course! Well, except for Angelo, who said the crabs brought back bad memories from his past when he had been afflicted. Tamesha, you’ve been warned.)

Though local D.C. chef Timothy thought he had this one in the bag, Kenny’s crab three ways blew the competition away, just like he cockily boasted it would, and Angelo’s blue crab broth was close behind. But it was Ed who won immunity by showing a little Thai-influenced dish that had Padma and guest judge Patrick O’Connell of The Inn at Little Washington lauding the fact that he brought out the crab’s natural flavors.

Patrick tried to easily let down the chefs responsible for the bad plates by calling Amanda’s dish a “fascinating gelee” (nice way of saying he was so flabbergasted he didn’t want to take another bite) and Kevin’s blue crab chowder “confused” (or in other words, Patrick was puzzled why Kevin would choose this particular combination).

The chefs then tried to form a plan for the Elimination Challenge, which got everyone all hot and bothered. They were to prepare a family-style dinner with freshly cut ingredients from Ayrshire Farms, an organic and certified humane farm in Virginia.

Angelo and Kenny continued their ongoing battle to be top alpha male. Ultimately, Kenny came up with the solution of having everyone pair up with their partners from last week. The women quickly agreed, eagerly batting their eyes at Kenny, who had eyes only for himself.

The idea also left love-struck Angelo quite pleased, since he would be mixing pots with Tamesha again, but Ed was heartbroken over the fact that he would have to share cooking space with Alex one more time instead of with Tiffany. His longing for her was not unrequited: She wasn’t pleased with being stuck with always-on-the-bottom Timothy.

Tamesha and Angelo got down and dirty with her cherry compote and his duck, respectively. He took out his sexual frustrations while cooking and “made love to the duck,” as he put it. The pair was neither top nor bottom, showing that Angelo’s kryptonite in this competition might be the ladies.

Kevin briefly lost his mojo on the farm because he was so distraught about the fact he had been close to being cut the last two rounds. He wanted to make a cauliflower couscous but had to switch to broccoli after finding his original choice of vegetable was unintentionally dropped on the ground.

Luckily, his partner, Kenny, brought him out of the slumps, and the two made some of the top dishes of the night. Kenny congratulated himself for winning this challenge with his hot and sour curried eggplant. He then probably went home to look in the mirror and tell himself how great of a chef he was.

Stephen’s dish just sounded bad from the get-go. “My goal is to take something as simple as a salad and show how many components you can put into it,” he said. Sadly, Steven, you said it best: You’re just a “forgotten side dish” in this competition since you keep making lackluster meals.

Miraculously, he managed to hold on: Timothy was chopped this week instead. He may have been scratching his head at why, but the judges said that the bland, finely chopped turnip, potato and asparagus he served just failed to wow the senses.