MasterChef Australia - S13E20 - Curtis Stone Elimination

 Here we go with another elimination. The contestants enter with no aprons which means something very random is planned for today.

Jock wants everyone to bring a spring in their step because they should be happy about one of their friends going home.

The last master they are bringing on to end this Masters week is Curtis Stone. Surely one of the main guys they would have wanted to meet – but since Curtis is in LA, this is going to be another pointless virtual presence type thing.

Today’s elimination will take place in 2 rounds - the first one is all about beef.

First Curtis will basically do what he has done on hundreds of Youtube videos that surely all the participants have already seen before even auditioning for this competition and prepare 8 cuts of beef.

Fusion Dan has made the profound observation that cutting meat is not as easy as the professional butcher is making it look.

Sabina raises her hand and asks what we do if we want to chuck a prize cut like Scotch fillet on the “barbie”. Curtis says we shouldn’t be chucking anything anywhere but lovingly placing the piece on the grill. Unnecessarily touchy but he does go on to answer the question. On a side note, clearly Sabina is the bakra ‘volunteer’ to ask these obviously planted, idiotic questions.

Tommy now makes the profound observation that one can really see that Curtis Stone whose entire life has revolved around beef for 30 years – really knows his way around beef. What exactly were these guys expecting?

Now for some reason, the 16 contestants are being paired up and will cook dishes together. This makes no sense at all if it is really supposed to be a beef challenge – because obviously only one will cook the beef and the other will do some nonsense like puree potatoes or cook carrots. 

But hold on, that is not even the worst part about this challenge – now they have to bid time to decide which cut they get to cook with. This makes no sense at all, since there is no trade-off to balance – its just cuts of meat - either you are going to go steak or gravy. And you have an open pantry so even if don’t get the perfect cut, you have a restaurant level pantry at your disposal to make something work. And since you are in pairs, it’s anyway only half the responsibility.

This reverse time auction only makes sense in the case of a trade-off like in the original format where you have trade-off time vs ingredients which eventually translates to how badly do you want the right protein for the dish you have in mind. Here, its meh.

Amazingly only one person - Sabina - has actually figured out that this system is insanely easy to game. She says lets just stand back and let the others waste time to get their prize cuts.

Fusion Dan and Justin are together, and they are going for the Tenderloin. Kishwar and Pete have quickly bid 35 mins and taken it - they get 65 mins to cook this.

Now Brent has also figured out how to game the system and he wants the short rib anyway, so they are also waiting.

Scotch fillet up for grabs now - one guy starts bidding at 10 mins, and Dan for some reason raises bid straight to 30 mins for some reason. Eric shows how its done and bids 31 mins. Now Jess goes for 40 mins. Suddenly Brent and Tommy bid 41 mins and no ups the bid. They now have a really good cut for meat for 41 mins.

Jock says it’s a bargain. Tommy is lost and he says it happened out of nowhere which is weird since he was one doing all the bidding.

Dan and Justin and Jess and Scott have now realized that they have lost the plot and should have just bid a bit for more the tenderloin. Now they want the sirloin and have a bidding war. Dan and Justin have bid 52 mins!

Now the Oyster blade comes up and Jess bids 51 minutes for it. What is wrong with these people!??

Eric and Aaron get their meat for 27 mins, Amir and Conor get the Knuckle for 20 mins.

Andy has noticed that Sabina and Linda are just chilling and have not bothered to even bid once so far. He tries to pressure saying “Imagine all that you could make with this short rib” and Sabina pulls burn of the episode and says, “Yeah Imagine”. Everyone is now laughing at Andy, and Sabina has got her revenge for being made to ask the stupid question and embarrass herself in front of a top chef …again.  This is the last time Andy interacts with Sabina this episode.

Short rib goes to Tom and Elise for just 10 mins and Sabina and Linda get their gravy beef for free.

Sabina and Linda have the full 100 mins to cook their dish – they decide on making massaman curry with a salad and a roti. This is a great idea since they are using the time well to do a super complex gravy and cooking meat in the cooker for a long time.

Tom and Elise have very helpfully informed us that they are making ribs.

Conor and Amir have the knuckle and they are doing a Greek stew. They have got it in the pressure cooker and hopefully it will get out in time. 

Aaron and Eric have the blade cut with 73 mins - and they are doing a schnitzel. They are worried about the cook on the beef and Andy’s words of wisdom are that there is nowhere to hide in the beef dish as the challenge is all about beef. 

Pete and Kishwar are doing a steak with a red wine sauce. Brent and Tommy are doing a peppercorn crusted steak with the scotch fillet.

Mercifully Jock makes the totally expected “steaks have never been higher” pun out of the way at the beginning of the cook itself.

Jock and Andy attempt a very sad chest bump for some reason.  

Justin and Dan are doing their dish on the hibachi. Jess is doing the dirty grill again – despite it fucking up yesterday – which is how she landed up here today. But hopefully she knows what she did wrong and gets through.

Sabina has released the pressure cooker – the meat is tender and Lidna and Sabina are happy – now they are putting it in the curry to cool.  

Tommy’s almond puree is so grainy, Andy can’t even tell what it is. So now they are scrapping it.

With barely 15 mins to go, Mel is going around asking everyone what their working style is. Because everyone really needs to articulate this while stressing out in the last few minutes of an elimination cook.

Now we have the obligatory shot of Aaron tasting his food and loving it – but this time Eric joins him for some variety.  

Andy announces 8 mins to go and applauds himself. Literally no one else even acknowledges his existence including the judges – he takes it maturely and does better next time. Psych – no he is not happy that no one paid attention to him, the goes over to the judges and cribs about them not giving him attention and then the judges make more fun of him.

Conor and Amir have only 8 mins to go – and there are 5 mins left on their pressure cooker. Jock comes over and says that they have to let the meat cool in the liquid else it will go dry. They open the cooker and it is so good, Amir and Conor just exchange a wordless hi five – wholesome scenes.

Jess has made the dirty grill work and vindicated herself. But oh no! Brent thinks his steak is a touch over.  

At the end of the cook, poor Conor realizes he has not covered the beef in enough liquid on the plate he is serving in – so they might still be in trouble as the dish will be dry by the time it reaches the judges.

The Tasting:

Linda & Sabina’s strategy worked – Jock says the beef is melt in mouth soft and Andy didn’t even use his knife and fork. Scott & Jess’s steak is perfectly cooked, and the Salsa Verde is delicious. Aaron and Eric’s schnitzel is well cooked – medium on inside and crisp on outside. Kishwar and Pete and Elise and Tom both put up good dishes. 

Dan and Justin’s dish is medium and not medium rare. Also, the iceberg is a bad choice for a side. Seems like they may be in elimination.

Conor and Amir’s Kokkinisto with Marouli salad next. As expected, the knuckle is very dry by this point. They are in trouble for sure.

Brent and Tommy’s steak is a bit over – its medium and not medium rare. But everything else is perfect, so I guess they’ve just done enough.

Round 2 now:

We have Conor, Amir, Dan and Justin in round 2.

If you thought Round 1 was idiotic, wait till you see Round 2.

Here the contestants have to show the judges what they have mastered. Why bother with such vague briefs – which can then be twisted to be interpreted randomly basis semantic convenience? Especially for an elimination. Either give a clear brief or give a free rein.  

Justin is making masala spiced, sweet potato tacos – something he has done many times before. This honestly seems like a super simple dish to me for a Masterchef challenge.

Dan wants to show the judges what they haven’t seen before today from him and amazingly has taken the best decision of the 4 – he is making baos (something he has done hundreds of times) and making something MasterChef worthy by using duck. He is a bit worried about the proofing of the dough since normally it takes 2 hours and how he has only 75 mins.

Amir is tailspining a bit. He is running all over the place and keeps forgetting what he needs to get. He is making falafel with tabbouleh and tahini yoghurt. Again, super simple. Falafel seriously?  For a Masterchef elimination?

Conor unfortunately has tried to do something good and how he’s picked up a new skill. And now he’s making ice cream (having mastered it over 3 weeks in this kitchen). This doesn’t seem like a smart move given what the others are doing – i.e. simple shit they’ve done before. Why not just go a nice Greek savoury dish?

He is going to do an orange semolina cake with a green olive ice cream and kataifi for texture.

He has never done this flavour of ice cream before which begs the important questions – Why do this now? Are you stupid? Can you not see the others are literally making simple roast potato and fried chickpea?

As expected, he has screwed this up by using brined green olives – which in the worst case may curdle the anglaise and in the best case, may fuck up the texture of the ice cream.

Dan who was doing well so far has realized he has forgotten to put baking powder in his bao dough – and now he has to start again. Tom helpfully rubs in that this is supposed to be his mastery lol.

Conor has taken ice cream out of churner – it is hard and not as creamy, but it tastes good. He has taken kataifi out of a packet - unlike Hoda who did this by hand by S10. Noob.

Dan’s second batch of bao dough looks great and he seems set to knock this dish out of the park.

Amir is making falafel (again WTF!). Jock comes over and tastes them and asks if he washed his herbs before he put them in. Apparently, there is grit in the falafel.

He is now super stressed and is eating herbs raw and straight from the bunch to check. Andy and Mel come over – and ask him to calm down. Mel says think about what you can do – he thinks and decides he can simply remake the falafel because it is an insanely simple dish and literally takes 5 mins to make since his chickpea are already soaked. Again, this is for an ELIMINATION challenge. 

Justin’s tacos have worked out, Conor is done – his dish really looks nice and inventive.  Amir is frying balls of chickpea with herbs. Everyone is yelling and cheering Amir – he gets everything on the plate but he doesn’t have time to finesse it. One could argue how much could one possibly finesse falafel and tabbouleh salad but we’ll leave that for another day.  

The Tasting - 2

Justin’s blue corn tortilla is perfect, and the masala spiced sweet potato tacos are great. Jock can’t fault it because seriously I do believe Justin will throw himself off cliff if he fucks up even something as basic as this.

Dan’s dish is great – the baos look soft and pillowy and his pan-fried duck with plum sauce is well balanced and also suitably luxe.

Conor’s dish seems alright. Mel says she doesn’t love it but she doesn’t hate it.  Jock says the ice cream is grainy. Andy who has not noticed anything wrong so far, agrees that the ice cream texture seems wrong but the flavours we okay.

In a totally expected random judgment twist - Jock says ice cream is ‘not the work of a master’. So basically, it doesn’t matter how good or bad the dish was – it looks like they will eliminate the guy because his ice cream was merely nicely flavoured but not texturally perfect.

This is exact problem with these kind of challenges – just give a proper brief. 

Amir comes in and tells sad story of how falafels mean so much to him. Amir and Mel are both crying now. Andy is just waiting to start eating. Jock says the falafel tastes like it was made in 6 mins – Andy says its tasty – but again talk of whether it was the work of a master.

On the results, everyone agrees that Justin’s dish was flawless (and super simple). Dan for me wins this challenge as he legit did a good job. Conor has to go home because he tried to cook something nice, whereas Amir made a 6 min dish in 75 mins and apparently can fry things well.

Back to back eliminations for two of the most promising, innovative contestants who brought a lot of personality to the kitchen.

I guess they want this season to be filled with simple shit and boring homely food. Sigh – what a terrible week on MasterChef!