Right then so today is an all-in elimination (except for Depinder who is safe after winning the immunity challenge yesterday).
Sabina and Wynona are confident they are not going home –
which is a sureshot indicator that one of them is about to get eliminated.
While everyone is discussing about how they cannot imagine
anyone else leaving, Ghissu Elise is explaining how her main goal today is to
show the judges she has been taking copious notes around how to win at
MasterChef week.
Andy is back and he seems to have showed up in pyjamas
before someone asked him to put on a coat and call this fashion.
Brent and his glorious beard are back to everyone’s general
happiness.
Mel introduces the challenge saying that today’s lesson is
the most important and most often sends people home – the lesson is “Meet the
brief”.
She says they have a creative, conceptual challenge today –
which is another way of saying “This challenge is going to suck”.
The challenge is to be inspired by one of three classic food
sayings - cool as a cucumber, bring home the bacon, and the proof is in the
pudding. They have to bring not only a dish but also a story that ties the
saying with the dish.
This means one thing for sure - half the episode is going to
spent in getting the contestants to say these food sayings.
Also at this stage I am pretty sure that they won’t care
about the stories but will simply want a dish that features (“heros”) cucumber,
bacon or pudding. In other words, this is exactly like every other challenge.
Wynona is super excited about this as she is with every
single challenge. As expected by everyone in the universe except for the judges
and show runners, EVERYONE is making cucumber granita with various accompaniments
(fish / ice cream / sorbet being most common).
Fusion Dan has given up after Jock’s repeated criticism and
has decided to just throw raw fish into a cucumber broth and give it to the
judges.
Therese is making the usual granita, a sorbet and dill oil.
If I was in place of the judges, I would tell her to go home now itself rather
than have anything with dill[1].
Elise is inspired by pudding and is making a classic sticky
date pudding. So yeah, basically just cook a dish with a name that has a common
word with the sayings seems to be the way to go.
Super diligent Eric has actually written the words “moreish,
yum” on his sheet as he plans to make carbonara. Mel basically tells him that Jock
is a pasta nazi and it has to be in the classico style or he will not like it.
So apparently all pasta related innovations have to be done only if your name
is Laura.
Eric is confident in making this dish and doesn’t thinks
much can go wrong – which means he’s almost certainly going to fuck it up.
Conor is doing a black olive ice cream with … cucumber granita.
At least this dish is interesting.
Brent says he has not cooked for his whole quarantine and
has been ordering in bad food from the hotel where he has been eating burritos
every day. He says this is the one week you don’t want to miss – surely
thinking he should gone to COVID hotspot and missed “superstar” week instead.
Pete wants to give judges something they haven’t had before –
He is going to make cucumber dumplings, cucumber filling, and cucumber broth.
He normally uses kohlrabi, but now he’s using Choko.
Mel says this is a very open ended challenge and they need
to hit the brief – which is patently false because they don’t care about the
sayings – they just want cucumber, bacon and pudding as hero ingredients.
Justin gives some gas about bringing home bacon linking to
eating baos. Tommy says transport the judges to his home – Bun Cha Hanoi – it’s
basically a bacon dish he makes at home.
Kishwar says she knows it’s a black apron day and is thus not
the day to take risks – so that’s why she is going to do exactly that. She
doesn’t want to play safe and chooses now to do something ambitious and decides
on the revolutionary idea of making ….. cucumber granita.
In fairness, she’s making a spicy bonito with spicy tamarind
sauce along with it. Her plan being that she wants the rest of the dish to be
so spicy you want something to cool it down – which could be anything like
water or sugar or milk. But this apparently heroes the granita.
Brent is making ancient grain something but he’s using bacon
fat to make this because everything tastes better with bacon fat. He has put
bacon and bacon fat into everything – it’s a cholesterol bomb.
Wynona is making confit salmon with noodles and pickled
cucumber – amazingly she has managed to focus on the word “cool” and not “as a
cucumber” when she conceptualized her dish. It’s like she has learnt nothing in
this kitchen. She mistook the judges for smart people and not imbeciles who
would obviously look at this “creative” challenge in a close minded, rigid way
expecting her to hero the ingredient that is named, and not actually think
through the meaning of the phrase and give a dish that evokes that.
Jock and Andy are worried that she has only one cucumber
element (even though the challenge is not supposed to be about that feature
ingredient) and Jock says she is not hitting the brief. They knew what she was
making so surely they could have said this with more than 45 mins to go.
Wynona decides to get creative and she has a totally out
there, unique idea to save this dish. She makes a cucumber granita. Sigh, she’s
going home isn’t she?
Mel now goes to multiple contestants and asks them if they
are cool as a cucumber and the contestants are forced to look at camera and say
that yes, they are as cool as a cucumber.
Eric’s what-could-go-wrong-carbonara now has multiple things
going wrong. He has set his chips on fire and in the process of putting out
that flame he has burnt his own finger. And now the pan is too hot for him to
emulsify his carbonara sauce (why leave this to literally the last 3 minutes –
surely the carbonara doesn’t take 90 full minutes to make) but he has not time
so he just chucks in his spaghetti anyway to the obvious physical pain on Jock’s
face.
Aaron is oblivious to the tension in the room and is happily
eating his own dish and is very pleased with himself.
Tommy and Dan discuss how calm they are. This is forming
into a very odd friendship. Fusion Dan and Tominator – who would have thought.
Pete’s dumplings work and his risks have paid off.
Wynona is now, with 1 minute to go, thinking that maybe the
granita doesn’t actually fit in the dish at all. She actually may be in massive
trouble.
The Tasting
Mel likes Conor’s dish a lot. Jock says there seems to be a “bejeweled
clockwork mouse” inside his head. I have no idea what he is referring to – or whether
this is to be taken as a compliment or an insult.
Elise’s pudding is pudding-y and its fine.
Now it is clear that the judges lied at the beginning that
they wanted a story with the dishes - They aren’t actually looking for stories
at all – they just want cucumber or pudding or bacon dishes.
Eric is on verge of tears as Jock is eating his dish. He
says the pan was too hot and the sauce is gluggy but the pasta is good. Mel
says she didn’t like the maple bacon being used and Andy says he is against the
concept of chefs using their brains altogether and Eric should have just stuck
to the most basic recipe and cook nothing else.
Because that is exactly how all restaurants make money – by making
dishes the exact same way as everyone else.
Jess’s dish has too much ginger and Jock can’t taste anything
else.
Aaron’s whiting is overcooked – he should have maybe spent
less time admiring his own salad.
Fusion Dan’s raw fish is fine, but the broth is a muddy fish
broth, not a nice cucumber broth. His one and only cucumber element is
bad.
Brent now brings his heart attack on a plate. I’m reminiscing
how Gary would have reacted to that crackling L.
It looks amazing, and Jock is
particularly happy that he used the bacon oil to make sure the ancient grains
don’t taste like ancient grains at all.
Kishwar’s random explanation actually works. Linda, Justin,
Therese all make good dishes. And Tom makes the granita of the day.
Wynona now. Somehow she’s still smiling through this
disaster of a dish. Ginger broth, noodles and salmon with cucumber granita. Jock
says “I don’t buy the story, not sure if it fulfils the brief”. Apparently
granita on this kind of a dish is a terrible idea (this wasn’t a problem for
Jess or Linda) and now their main problem is that she said it would be refreshing,
but it wasn’t. She should have just stuck to her original dish which would then
made it as bad as Jess. She made her second cardinal mistake of not ignoring
the judges and I feel this will cost her.
Tommy’s Bun Cha Hanoi looks insane. It is so good that Andy
risks COVID and high fives him. Another indication that it’s so good is that
Jock is eating salad[2].
Pete’s dish is another level. Jock says this is how you win MasterChef.
Mel says this is a global, three hat
chef kinda dish. Andy says it was mind-blowing and easily best dish of the day.
Coming to the results
Pete, Tommy, Conor, Kishwar nailed the brief and they are
safe for sure.
The four worst dishes are judged to be Dan, Jess, Eric, and Wynona.
Dan’s one cucumber element was bad. Jess’s dish looked and
tasted great but more ginger than cucumber. Eric screwed up the carbonara but
he did have a fried piece of bacon there. Wynona’s dish was the only one that
was jarring and now she has to go home.
Again – don’t see how overcooked fish or completely fucked
up carbonara or a broth dish with a fucked up broth don’t get called up.
Sad to see Wynona go – she was such a happy addition to the
kitchen.
Let’s see what fresh hell these guys dream up in the
upcoming week.
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