Nick DiGiovanni

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?

Never.

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.

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.

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.