The episode starts with some bad news - Brent has been exposed to a COVID hotspot and will be back for Sunday’s elimination. To make things fair, he will have to take part in next week’s pressure test.
Jock says this week is all about the skills and knowledge
you need to succeed in MasterChef. Apparently
the judges will be teaching the contestants what they need. What puzzles me is
that the week is dedicated to also testing the contestants on what they need to
win MasterChef – isn’t that what the whole competition is doing?
Aaron really takes his brown-nosing up a notch from last
week by saying there is so much he can learn from the judges. Lol.
Today’s challenge is all about playing to your strengths.
This will be a team challenge for teams of 6 – which makes a lot of sense right
now since there are 19 people. Idiots. That means one person will have to sit
out and hope and pray their team doesn’t take them into elimination.
What’s amazing is that before Brent was ruled out, there
were 20 people which means 2 would have to sit out and that means that this was
an even stupider idea to begin with.
The idea of the challenge is that each team has to nominate
a contestant to cook one of 6 courses and they would be scored against the
other 2 contestants from the other teams who are also cooking those courses.
The dishes to be cooked are mayonnaise (8 mins), Fillet of
fish (15 mins), steak with puree and sauce (30 mins), filled pasta (45 mins),
Curry with side and bread/rice (60 mins) and a baked dessert with ice cream and
a sauce (75 mins). If your dish is the
best, you win a point. I don’t understand why they don’t stack rank the dishes
which would be a fairer way to reflect team efforts as a whole – but then I am
not surprised at all that the judges went for the idiot proof method.
The Blue team has Wynona, Amir, Scott, Elise, Depinder and Tom
– most balanced team in my opinion and my favourite to win today.
The Purple team has Conor, Maja, Kishwar, Eric, Therese, and
Sabina.
Green team has Tommy, Jess, Justin, Linda, Aaron, Dan, and
Pete. The Green team has to get one person to sit out. They are planning the
dishes – it comes down to Dan and Tommy (both of whom are not strong at
dessert) – and Dan chickens out.
Starting with Mayo – we have Wynona for blue, Justin for
Green and Eric for Purple. It’s insane that an 8 minute mayo has the same
weightage as a 60 minute curry with rice and side or a 75 minute baked dessert –
but I’ve long given up on these challenges making sense. This is the quickest
tasting of all time – and long story short, Justin who is the only person who
hasn’t put sugar in his mayo – wins. Green team in the lead with 1 point.
Tommy, who has no clue what he is doing on dessert anyway,
is super thrilled that the green team has a point and is cheering wildly. And
then cheering every team member individually. I don’t blame him, he’s just
trying to contribute by distracting the other teams.
Fish Fillet up next.
Sabina is shown to be from Tassie which means she is half fish.
She is taking this challenge as a personal affront to her abilities and has
already committed to ritual suicide if she doesn’t win. Aaron is worried about
cooking off against the fish queen (which cannot be a nickname Sabina likes). And
Scott is, well, there. At the tasting,
Scott’s dish is overcooked, Aaron is on verge of being over-cooked and Sabina
wins the challenge easily.
Now, it’s Therese’s turn to make loud happy noises and
distract the others around her.
Tommy is all over the place with his dessert. He is attempting
to make a crème brulee tart. He also knows he is cooking off against Tom and
Therese and his chances of winning are miniscule.
Coming to steak now.
Pete from the Green team who is on a high with a few successful
cooks is very happy to cook steak – he doing cauliflower puree and au poivre (fancy
word for pan) sauce. He seems nervous
though and is literally counting out loud and turning the steak every 30
seconds.
Amir is cooking for the Blue team and Conor for the Purple
team. Amir’s steak looks nice and has a pea and mint puree with Madeira sauce –
that looks interesting.
Conor has definitely over-cooked his steak.
Jock is super excited about Steak and now I am getting the feeling
that the judges simple wanted a 6 course meal – and that’s how this challenge
was born.
Unsurprisingly it comes down to Pete and Amir – but Pete’s
steak is better cooked so now the Green team has 2 points, and the Purple team
has 1. Blue has 0 – so much for being my favourites to win.
Now the Blue team is
panicking – with the pasta due in 10 minutes.
So well of course, the judges are literally running to the contestants so
they can trouble them for most of those 10 minutes.
Jock helpfully reminds Elise that her team hasn’t won a
point yet. Wynona says from the gantry that Elise is their bet – and then adds
Depinder and Tom (i.e. the entire remainder of the team) are also their best
bets – which clearly means she has no clue how this ‘best bet’ thing works.
Depinder and Tom have a side bar and agree that they are
getting slammed – and Depinder says it is a must win for her – showing no faith
in Elise (which I don’t blame her for).
Jock and Andy try to unsettle Linda from the Green team by
putting random pressure – but she has learnt the trick and ignores them. Now
Jock tries another approach – and tells her the Green team is leading – she has
no clue about this and is quite happy. Jock walks away satisfied that he
distracted her for at least a few seconds while she was celebrating her team’s
success.
Pasta tasting is a clear win for Elise – whose ricotta ravioli
with fresh tomato is perfect. Linda’s burnt butter sage sauce is not burnt
enough, and Maja’s pasta is too thick.
The Blue team finally has a point – Depinder spontaneously
breaks into a dance which immediately transforms into …..jumping jacks for some
reason. Tom realizes they have a point
and surprises the fuck out of everyone by also breaking into dance. This is
disturbing in the way it would be if T9000 was doing the twist while trying to
kill John Connor.
On the curries, Depinder (Blue) is going desi and cooking a
South Indian chicken curry with pakoras (who has pakoras with south indian curry?
She’s lucky these judges know jack shit about Indian food) and jeera rice.
Jess (Green) ironically has taken on the toughest dish off
the three and is cooking a Sri Lankan curry with pol sambal and coconut roti. I
feel for her as she is on a curry challenge against Depinder and Kishwar.
Kishwar (Purple) cooking a Bengali fish curry with bean and
prawn bharta which she knows is too strong in flavour but is hoping it will set
her apart from the other two.
All the curries were great, but Depinder wins this one (I
suspect because of the quality of the side dish which was also perfect).
Now it’s 2 for Blue (Come from behind on cards?), 2 for
Green and 1 for Purple going into the last dish. If Purple wins (which might
happen because Therese, I have no idea how they will break ties)
On the dessert we have Tom, Tommy and Tomardhan Therese for
the Blue, Green and Purple teams respectively.
Tom is worried because Tommy is dark horse and no one knows
what the hell he will come up and Therese has proved her dessert credentials.
These worries are allayed to some extent since Tommy is
exhausted and totally flustered. His crème anglaise is not thickening up which
means he has nothing to put in his tart. He is looking to his team for help who
are suggesting he make a lemon curd.
This is the time when the judges think they should come,
with 6 minutes to go, to ask Tommy to explain his dish. He politely tells the
judges to fuck off. Dan who chickened out of this challenge is now guiding
Tommy on how to make lemon curd – why didn’t he simply put up his hand to cook
at the beginning? Tommy has now given up and has put his sesame ice cream into
the tart. Poor guy is trying to be optimistic and saying the ice cream tart
might take the world by storm.
Therese has made 2 versions of her flourless chocolate cake –
one dry and one gooey. She is going with the gooey version of her cake.
Tom is happy with his dish – a date pudding-y dessert which I
honestly didn’t pay much attention to as my mind was scarred from the dancing.
The judges now realize they could have the tie and it turns
out they will work out backwards – who was
best, second best, third best for all challenges. Idiots should have just done
this all along.
This tasting is quite straight forward - there is a decision
between 2 dishes because Tommy has missed the brief. The judges find Therese’s
cake undercooked (she should perhaps have told them that’s what she was going for)
and Tom wins the point and challenge for the Blue team. A true come from behind
victory.
The Green team is also safe because they have 2 points.
Purple team has just 1 and goes into the pressure test tomorrow.
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