MasterChef Australia S13E04 - The First Elimination

Welcome to the first elimination of S13 of MasterChef Australia - which is happening in the 2nd cook itself for some reason. 

It starts with the usual motivational spiel about how people aren’t ready to go home, they will fight their hardest yada yada.

The judges, sadistic bastards, are looking super happy that one of these contestants will be told to go home. Andy has actually dressed up like anything for this special occasion.

Of course, Elise, Wynona and Therese are not cooking today. Elise puts some serious teacher’s pet vibes by saying that it will help to cook – the contestants fighting it out to survive in this competition will “meet the pantry” etc. In hindsight, it is clear that she has only studied her entire life.

Today’s elimination features a MasterChef classic – the tired pun on an actual English expression. Today it is what came first - chicken or eggs? The elimination will be held in 2 rounds – contestants have to choose to cook with either eggs or chicken and <sigh> hero the ingredient. If they are in the bottom five, they cook again and have to use the ingredient they didn’t use the first time round.

As the contestants start cooking, the judges discuss what they would have made in the same situation. Melissa says she would make a chicken sandwich, Andy says he would do a roast chicken and Jock says he would make an omelette ….just an omelette ….in 75 minutes. I think he’s taking this “keep it simple” thing a bit too far this season. I worry when I actually like Andy’s idea more than Jock’s.

Everyone starts cooking and the producers decide to ignore all the action in the kitchen and spend a lot of time showing us canned footage of the contestants’ intro videos and getting to know them.

The cook does seem to be quite uneventful. And we have to salvage viewership with some terrible non-jokes that lead to cringeworthy moments. Mel says let’s get flopping – and the contestants who have learnt from last season to simply ignore her while they are cooking, don’t react at all. Jock rubs this in – and Andy feeling he needs to do something, claps for no reason. He’s mighty pleased with himself for this value addition.

Everyone seems to be cooking interesting dishes – Brent and his glorious beard are making a middle eastern chicken with rice, Justin is making Lebanese grilled chicken, Pete is making Chicken Ballotine, Eric is making the intriguingly named ‘Strange Flavour Chicken’.

Hot mess Trent is making Cantonese egg tarts. In order to save time and space, let me tell you now itself that he fucks those up, the custard leaks out and overall his cook is a disaster.

Maja is making egg noodles, and Mel tells her that her heroing of the egg is heroic enough, and the eggs need to be heroed more. Amir is also making a pasta dish with egg yolks – it seems super delicate and totally unnecessary in a cook like this.

Linda is making larb gai – which is one those dishes that can be amazing if done well or terrible if the meat is over-cooked.

Amir tries to psyche out Jess with such a cringeworthy moment that the producers actually seemed to have gotten into a coma for about 5 seconds and forgot to even add music to hide the moment’s terrible-ness, let alone just edit it out.

But screw all that, because Depinder is making biryani. Which means either that she will be one of the best dishes for the day or screw it up monumentally. She seems to know what she’s doing so it’s the former hopefully.

As we get to the business end of the cook, Justin is worried his chicken in under. Amir has left the cooking of the eggs to the last possible moment for some reason. And then he goes for a ‘walk’ in the garden and my theory is that he seriously considered making a run for it. Ghissu Elise is having second hand anxiety seeing the lax attitude of Amir.

Coming to the tasting for round 1

Eric, who brown-nosed Mel in the auditions by cooking ‘her favourite dish’ does so again by describing his dish with obviously rehearsed eloquence. Chalo, even if this competition doesn’t work, he can definitely be a food writer at least. His dish is universally loved and he is sureshot safe.

Depinder’s biryani is awesome. Yay! #BMKJ

Brent and Tom put up good dishes. Kishwar gives the judges a Chicken korma and pulao and somehow manages to not cry this time.

Justin’s chicken is ……not undercooked. The judges build up suspense to the point where it was cruel for this guy.

Amir’s dish, as expected is bad, as his egg is not cooked. Dan tries too much and is also told his dish isn’t great. Maja’s experimental carbonara is panned for being experimental.

Yo Yo’s chive omelette is judged to not have enough egg (!) by Jock who said he would do the exact same thing in 75 minutes at the beginning of the cook.

Finally we come to Trent’s terribly sad tart. It’s so bad, that the judges are now feeling sorry and perhaps feeling bad for going at him yesterday.

The bottom five are – Trent (duh), Yo Yo, Amir, Linda and Dan.

Coming to the second round – the cooks have to work with whatever they didn’t use the first time around.  So everyone but Linda is cooking with Chicken.

In the pantry, Jock Reacher is being nice guy and helping everyone with ingredients on the top shelves. 

Trent is making lemon myrtle roast chicken – or from the looks of it – Lemon Myrtle 3-4 ways with chicken on the side. He also has Fighter by Cristina Aguilera running in his head. Which leads me to believe that he most definitely the one going home today.

Yo Yo, who is disgusted to be here (and showing it, despite saying she’s happy to cook again), is making Kung Pao chicken. Mel makes a terrible joke about Chinese cooks and their cleavers – which once again no one cares about.

Andy and Mel decide to unsettle Linda for fun – because this is only the most important cook of the competition for her so far. Damn, these guys suck. Anyway, Linda doesn’t seem fazed – Andy is amazed that his lame intimidating thing didn’t work, and Linda basically tells Andy that he is a child, no one gives a shit about what thinks and he should go to this room post haste. She continues cooking, and Mel the marginally more mature person among the two takes a hint, and runs away to bother someone else.

Dan is making Rou Jia Mou – which is some sort of a Chinese hamburger. I have never heard of it before, but I want it like right now!

Linda has over-cooked the eggs but with 2 mins to go, she poaches her egg and puts it on top of her egg noodles.

Coming to tasting, all the dishes are great including Linda’s – whose poached egg is perfectly cooked, except for Trent.

Trent tries to brown-nose Jock with some spiel about native ingredients. The judges try his dish – Melissa and Jock realise there is way too much lemon myrtle under the skin just by looking at it, Andy has already eaten it and has still not realized this. Once Jock says that there is too much Lemon Myrtle, Andy chimes in with how he’s eaten it and yes, there is too much Lemon Myrtle.

Needless to say, Trent is eliminated. On one hand, I feel bad for the guy, but on the other hand, the hot-mess act was getting a bit old just 2 episodes in and now we can focus on the cooking.

Next up – we have something called Superstar week – not entirely sure this is happening this early in the competition – but let’s see what it holds.

Cheers and see you in Episode 5.