MasterChef Australia - S13E09 - Heston's immunity challenge

Today is the immunity challenge and the contestants cannot believe the first such challenge is happening this late in the season.

The contestants enter the kitchen which is empty but has a lot of screens. The judges are not even in the room – this honestly is a step up from the usual situation.   

There is something funky happening here – disco scenes, psychedelic images (Conor thinks this is a rave), Dan thinks this is Reynold (who is really not big enough to call a superstar). This intro video now goes into the ‘uncomfortably long’ category and no one knows what’s happening. Aaron has spotted Fat Duck written somewhere and now everyone knows it is Heston. These guys really need to work on their build-ups such that the identity of the chef is not obvious from the start.

Alas, the judges are here now. On the bright side, Heston does pop up and immediately makes fun of Jock’s dress sense saying he is dressing like a Scottish lord – someone who should be out shooting pheasants. Jock tells everyone Heston’s exact location in case they want to chase him down and kill him after this challenge.

As expected for a chef of Heston’s stature, he completely ignores non-entities Mel and Andy.  Heston says the challenge is to turn breakfast into dessert. There are 5 screens - contestants have to choose one and will get a breakfast ingredient that must be featured in the dessert. This seems like a really fun challenge – thank god for Heston.  

Pete gets bacon. He is super happy with that – he says if you don’t like bacon, he doesn’t like you. He may be a man of taste after all. He hastily adds that he likes vegetarians, and then corrects himself and because ‘likes’ is a strong word and says that ‘some of them are okay’.

Linda gets tea, Aaron gets cornflakes, Depinder gets avocado and Conor gets …… vegemite. This bit is kinda cruel - why not just give everyone a choice of what they want to do? It’s clear that cooking with vegemite (which btw is disgusting and shouldn’t exist at all in any kitchen) is much tougher than with some of the other ingredients. But on the other hand, why bother with fairness? What is this - a competition with potentially life changing consequences?

Linda is doing a French earl grey ice cream. Jock is disgusted and says bergamot is his least favourite flavour in the universe. This would be a good time to think of using pretty much any other tea.

Pete is making bacon and egg ice cream. Because what says Heston challenge like copy what Heston did exactly?

Aaron is making crunchy nut cornflakes – and seems to have an unhealthy obsession with the last bit of milk left after eating the cereal. Dan, who is clearly way too happy to not be cooking today, thinks serious and cereal sound similar and makes two terrible puns which I won’t defile this blog with.  

Linda is trying to convince jock that earl grey can taste good (which seems kinda foolish). Jock makes the most obvious joke in the book and says “Earl grey is not everyone’s cup of tea”. Andy who has not read a book in his life thinks this is incredibly smart.

Pete says choosing to do bacon and egg ice cream is like challenging Mike Tyson to a fight. Unless your ‘bacon’ is a live pig that’s going to bite off your ear, I don’t see the similarities.  

Depinder, who wasn’t super thrilled with avocado as an ingredient is making it work. She is doing an avocado ice cream with chocolate crumb – and she’s also trying to make it look like an avocado. The judges come to distract her, and having learnt a thing or two from the last few cooks, she immediately tells the judges to fuck off and leave her alone.

Conor is doing a vegemite ice cream with orange. Andy says Conor’s dish will ‘stand out’ because it will be ‘polarizing’ – as if that is a good thing.  Maybe they shouldn’t have given vegemite as in ingredient if they were worried about this.  

Jock again says he hates earl grey – confirming for sure that Linda is not going to win this challenge. To make things even clearer, he offers to help Linda with her ice cream and throws what he thinks is her anglaise on the floor in last ditch desperate attempt to get her to cook something else. Unfortunately for him, Linda is carrying her own anglaise and Jock has only thrown some equipment and some spoons on the ground. In fairness, he immediately feels guilty for this and helps Linda make ice cream using liquid nitrogen.

Pete is now making onion and capsicum dust (I have no idea what that even is). The idiot puts onion and capsicum in the microwave with paper which, of course, catches fire.  

Depinder asks the gantry if she should put her ice cream in the blast chiller. Ghissu Elise who has done nothing of note in the last few episodes, gives a ghissu non-answer and says Depinder should trust her judgment. Even Jock can tell that this is totally unhelpful and tells Elise to cut the motivational bullshit and give a proper answer.

Linda wants to add Chantilly cream in the last 4 mins and for some reason, everyone loses their minds.

Conor is sure of winning if his vegemite works. In fairness, he should be given some leeway because vegemite. 

The Tasting:

Depinder continues to ignore the judges and describes her dish simply as “Avocado” refusing to add any more details. Andy says the dessert is interesting, he loves everything about it, Mel likes that it tasted deeply of avocado, Jock says he likes the whimsical side of trying to make it look like an avocado. Andy asks some question about whether she thought her dish looks like an avocado as if that is a factor in the taste – she refuses to answer this question and Andy’s feelings are hurt that no-one cares about his stupid ideas.  

Linda brings up her tea and strawberry dish. Mel likes it, but she needed more strawberry gel to counter the tea. Jock says the texture of ice cream was great but there was too much tea in the ice cream. He says there was 50% more earl grey than there should have been – though I’m sure internally he meant 100%.

Aaron’s cornflakes are good but the cornflake flavour is a bit subdued as he had to make a second anglaise. Andy adds that he likes the texture – which seems to be the go to compliment today when the actual flavour sucks.

Poor Conor brings up his vegemite dish. Jock says the dish is jarring, because of the sugar in orange. He likes texture of the ice cream (translation – it tasted terrible).

Pete brings his bacon and eggs dessert. He’s added potato crisps which has elevated the dish immensely. Jock loves the bacon-y ice cream and the crispy potatoes were a genius move.

Finally it comes down to Depinder and Pete. Pete wins immunity and will not be cooking on Sunday. Overall a good few cooks for Pete – sad for Depinder to just miss out. She will have to cook in the elimination.

Next up is an elimination with a few guest stars – former contestants. This should be a good episode since these guys will actually be in the kitchen and not on screen. Cheers and see you next time.