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The "Texas Trailblaze-Hers" episode of Top Chef Houston featured trailblazing women in the culinary world and beyond.

Jae Jung and Evelyn Garcia compete on Top Chef Houston episode 6

Forty-four minutes into Episode 6 of Top Chef Houston, it dawned on me why it matters that this popular Bravo series shot its 19th season here. I just want to say that straight up, because I spent the whole first quarter of the hour in chilly disgust.

The Quickfire Challenge this week was brought to us by one of the sponsors of the show, Talenti Gelato. I chafe and moan when confronted with product placement and sponsorship tie-ins. I feel like I’m getting played, like money talks even louder than usual.

So I couldn’t really focus on the sweet-and-salty dessert challenge the way I might have. Had I not known that part of the dangled bait was for the winner’s dessert to serve as inspiration for a new Talenti flavor. Had I not gnashed my teeth when Padma admitted that the whole sweet/salty setup was a tie-in to the company’s “new range of Talenti pairings.”

Forgive me if my attention wandered as our 10 remaining chefs — Ashleigh made a triumphal return after winning Last Chance Kitchen — put together their sweet and salty desserts for guest judges Nini Nguyen and Kelsey Clark, both from Top Chef Kentucky.

Top Chef Kentucky? I had no idea that was even a thing.

Anyway. I gritted my teeth through most of it, my interest reviving only when Evelyn had trouble dislodging her bunuelo from her rosette-shaped frying iron; when Nick declaimed, “You can’t go wrong with pork rinds, right?”; and when Jae described Jackson as running about the kitchen “like a little horse.”

Evelyn landed in the top three again with her partner Jo, and their entry sounded like something I would love: a poached, candied peach with basil cream and a salted almond bunuelo on top.

But the winners of immunity and $10,000 bucks were Ashleigh and Nick, who came up with a gingerbread bundt cake with lemon ice plus “salted molasses buttermilk and a brown butter pork-rind mulberry crumble.” Sounds like a lot, but the judges were buying, and Talenti threw in a $10,000 donation to Chris Williams’ Lucille 1913 Foundation in the team’s honor, as if that would soften the naked commercialism of the whole tawdry interlude.

Thank goodness that the rest of the show was pretty great television. The chefs drew lots to cook dishes inspired by five legendary Texas women who were “ahead of their time”: Selena, Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, Babe Didrickson Zaharias —the champion golfer from Beaumont — and aviatrix Bessie Coleman.

Coleman was the only one I hadn’t heard of, and I enjoyed learning about her Black and Native American background and daring flying career, which took her to France when home proved inhospitable to her ambitions.

The guest judge was Dallas chef Tiffany Derry, who burst onstage with a Good-ol’-Girl laugh and drawl to rival the late Governor Richards’. I perked up immediately.

Houston chef Christine Ha, who won fame as “The Blind Cook” on rival cooking show MasterChef, was on hand to guest-judge too. And wow, the table of Texas women that assembled at Brennan’s lovely, old-school dining room to pass judgment on the dishes was strong as an acre of horseradish.

There was prima ballerina Lauren Anderson, who immediately became the person I would most like to sit next to when — confronted by a subpar dish — she cracked, “We have to be able to say, ‘Your baby is ugly.’”

Other Houstonians were Lori Choi, founder of the I’ll Have What She’s Having women’s health initiative; and former Houston Comets basketball star and Olympian Sheryl Swoopes. Ann Richards’ daughter, Cecile was on hand; as was Selena’s sister and drummer, Suzette Quintanilla, in a dramatic gold necklace.

Behind the scenes in Brennan’s kitchen — the restaurant identified only by the words “Texas Southern Creole” lettered on a wall, seen briefly as the chefs rushed in — I watched sympathetically as Damarr tore his first couple of white-corn tortillas, before Evelyn counseled him to add a little more flour.

Like her, Damarr had drawn Selena as his inspiration. When he chose pozole as a tribute to Selena’s family sensibility, and said he’d learned it from Mexicans who cooked it for family meal at his Chicago restaurant, I remembered Robert Del Grande telling me something similar back in the 1980s. He worked cilantro into Cafe Annie’s famous green mussel soup, inspired by Mexicans in his kitchen line. Thus do foodways inch their way into the mainstream over the decades, first in Houston, then further afield as demographics shift.

I tsk-tsked as Monique decided her fried oysters were too big and cut them in half. I giggled at Buddha’s cheek as he put together a version of Poulet en Vessie — chicken cooked in a pig’s bladder — and called it Poulet en Bessie, after Bessie Coleman. I raised an eyebrow in agreement when Jae noted that two hours was not really enough time to make a gumbo.

Jackson’s stream of word play as he put together a tagliatelle with chicken offal ragu made me roll my eyes, but I loved the notion, corny as it was, of paying tribute to Jordan’s “heart and guts.”

So did that formidable table of judges, it turned out. As Jackson explained his rationale, and the concept dawned, you could see a ripple of appreciation and merriment pass around the table. It looked like so much fun, and it sounded like a dish I would love to try.

As well as both Jackson’s pasta and Buddha’s high-concept chicken rated, with its corn farcie and its potatoes piped in an airplane loop-de-loop figure eight, Evelyn, our homegirl, won the night.

The entire table of 12 — Top Chef stars, past-season guest judges, invited Texas women — voted to determine the winner. “No recounts!”joked Swoopes, to raucous laughter.

They chose Evelyn’s red snapper aguachile/ceviche mashup, its green broth freshened by cucumber, its avocado base laced with orange rind, and its topknot of delicately sliced radishes arranged to honor Evelyn’s favorite Selena song, “Como La Flor.”

“Everything just sang,” Derry told her. “It was bright, it was powerful, it had a crescendo,” added Gail.

Yeah, I emitted a yelp when Evelyn’s made was called, just like last week. That’s two in a row. She’s on a roll.

Monique, who’s been floundering, was not. Her bean salad with fried oyster halves that lost their juices — and “the whole beauty of a fried oyster,” as Tom so aptly put it — got her sent home.

I was left pondering something bigger than who’s up and who’s down on the show. Jo foreshadowed it early on, as she talked to her fiancée back in Austin, and reflected that “I did Top Chef for the visibility. It’s hard being in Texas right now,” said the openly gay contestant. “It’s hard to see your friends being legislated against. But you don’t make a difference in places that are like-minded as you.”

Later, at the Brennan’s table, Choi thanked Padma, Tom and Gail for coming to Houston. “For you to come at this time couldn’t be more important,” she said.

A light bulb went off for me. Texas is easily caricatured these days by outsiders who view the state as a monolith. What they don’t see is the rich diversity of this state I love and have chosen as my home.

But on this episode of Top Chef, they saw it plainly, and joyfully, in a vivid spectrum of colors.

Alison Cook - a two-time James Beard Award winner for restaurant criticism and an M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing award recipient - has been reviewing restaurants and surveying the dining scene for the Houston Chronicle since 2002.

Larhonda Biggles is still seeking justice for her son years after his death at the Harris County jail, which led to the firing of nearly a dozen guards.