MasterChef Australia - S13E21 - Immunity Service Challenge - Tonka

 Here we go – another new week at MasterChef Australia. The judges are waiting outside itself and the contestants are puzzled as to what is happening. Kishwar seems inordinately happy – because fresh start, new week yada yada.

Andy says there is a big announcement i.e. what the hell is happening this week. He says “Bring out the chefs” and some 16 chefs walk out from 4 of the top restaurants in Melbourne.

Tom is excited like anything and is absolutely losing it. Eric also cannot control himself and is hysterical. Kishwar is delusional and is laughing like a mad person adding that she thinks these professional chefs look like they are from the military and they are civilians. 

So the way this week works is that every day this week – there are going to service challenges. Every day one team of 4 contestants cooks off against a team of professional chefs from one of the restaurants.  If the contestants win, the entire team gets immunity for this week.

The contestants are quite intimidated. Jock asks Adam D’Sylva of Tonka if he is intimidated, and he says he isn’t either because a. These are homecooks and he is a chef, b. he really has nothing to prove, its not like his whole life depends on this competition, and c.  really this is just a meaningless time-pass afternoon he has to go through with to give his business publicity – it’s not like he cares about the outcome.

Jock mistakes Adam’s honest answer as being “spicy” and reminds Adam that he lost a pointless challenge around corn to Larissa (who undeservedly won S11). Turns out Tonka will compete today. 

This is nice way to make teams – they pull tokens out of the bag. Four are marked, they will compete. 

Depinder is in two minds about whether she wants to compete against Tonka or not. She says Tonka does modern Indian which is her long term plan as well – which one would be hard pressed to guess given how traditional her dishes are. 

Anyway Elise, Eric, Linda and Depinder pick the marked tokens and are cooking.  

As they walk in – they see the tables set up and Eric thinks feeding 20 people is a daunting task. “Aww that’s cute” say all the contestants in past seasons where service challenge would mean a LOT more people.  

For this challenge, they will toss and the winning team gets to pick 2 cuisines for 2 courses. The choices are Greek, Mexican, Indian, French, Korean etc.

Jock destroys the contestant team’s competitive advantage by telling Adam that Depinder is very good at Indian curries. She is exasperated and wonders why Jock would do such a thing.

Adam loses the toss, and now the contestants get to pick 2 courses. They choose Indian for the main, which is what Tonka wanted as well. The Tonka team chooses French for dessert. And the Contestants choose Mexican for the starter.  This is one fucked up menu. 

Tonka is not happy at all with Mexican – apparently they never cook it.

Jock comes over to the team and says disorganization is going to lead to disaster post which they surprise recruit Linda as their leader. Eric is doing the mexican entrée, Depinder is doing the main and Elise is doing the French dessert. 

Eric suggests to get a white fish – and confidently decides on kingfish, giving the solid and fake impression to his team that he knows what the fuck he is doing, and leading them firmly on the path to potential disaster. Bada hoke politician banega.

Depinder is making prawns curry with rice. Apparently she has making a ghee roast – which itself means that she is going to win this for sure.

Elise is making plum almagnac with vanilla custard.  She explains that her idea of French dessert is doing something really quaint and simple and focus what we love to eat as human beings ….. which she says is custard. For some reason she thinks this is super funny and goes into a snorting laughing fit for a full minute, before the cameraman realizes that she has already told the punchline and nothing more is coming from her.

Over at Tonka, Adam has Chris doing the entrée. They never make Mexican so they are winging it. They decide to make a ‘beef tartare a la Mexicana’ – so a seared beef tartare with chipotle sauce, tortilla crisps and lemon zest. Honestly that sounds really good – modern and inventive.

Gopi is doing the Bengali seafood curry. Adam explains how the Bengali curry is a simple, quick, easy dish (I’m sure all the Bengalis watching this are throwing their shoes at the TV now) – which leads me to believe I don’t think this guy knows what Bengali food is all about.

They are serving the seafood curry with bhatura for some reason (Bengalis and Punjabis are now both throwing their shoes at the TV).

His head pastry chef Kay Lene is doing a sable Breton with pisatachios and raspberries for dessert. Jock comes over and starts to ask stupid questions, she tells him that she is better than him and has worked with Joel Robuchon at a 3 Michelin Star restaurant before this, so he may kindly fuck off with his advice and opinions.

Back with the Contestants now – Eric is struggling to fillet the kingfish. He seems totally flustered and has no idea what he’s doing. Linda says she’s coming over to help. Adam is now sledging Eric and telling him he’s left half the fish on the bone.  But then good guy Adam feels bad about this and comes over and says “I’ll give you a tip”  – and he not only teaches him how to fillet the fish he actually does one entire fish for him. Whattay nice guy!

Someone from gantry is trying to be helpful and is yelling “Work hard” because no one has thought of this so far. 

Depinder is doing good time with her prawn curry but then Mel comes over and goes bro you cannot serve just 2 prawns in a main, what kind of desi are you? So to solve this problem Depinder, throws in a fried eggplant. Like WHAT? Eggplant with ghee roast??

Jock still reeling by the scathing attack on his capabilities by Kay Lene can only manage – “Tonka’s dessert looks French” as a comment.   

Linda sees the guests coming - and finally believes that this is not a prank, they are seriously going to feed actual humans today.

Eric has fucked up the filleting like nobody’s business. He has literally spent 2hrs and 15 mins of the 2.5 hour cook filleting fish. Which means now they have to make the rest of the dish – i.e. a sauce with chillies, jalapeno and coriander and an avocado mousse in 15 mins.  They obviously don’t have time to make the mousse and just use the crème fraiche that Elise has already prepared for her dessert instead. 

Entrée Tasting:

Tonka’s Beef tartare a la Mexicana. Jock, as is the theme this season, hates the experimentation and inventiveness. He says tartare is a French technique and thus the dish is not Mexican.  Even though there are chipotle flavour and the tortilla crisp  - he says he is not “transported to Mexico” which by the way was never the brief.

Contestant’s serve up their cut fish, with 10 minute sauce and crème fraiche. They didn’t get the avocado mousse despite it being printed on their menu. But apparently this dish has taken Jock to Mexico. Amazingly the contestants garbage dish may just win this.

Poor Adam thought through and created a nice restaurant-y dish. He should have just made guacamole and served it with the tortilla crisps and they would have won. I mean who tries to cook good, interesting food in this competition – noob!

Main Tasting:

Tonka’s Bengali curry and bhatura. All the judges are eating this curry with forks and knifes betraying that they have no clue what Bengali curries are all about.  Jock says the sea food is perfectly cooked and the curry is nice. He loves the bhatura, as does Andy. Though both of them didn’t use the bhatura the right way.

Contestant’s Prawn ghee roast. In fairness, a ghee roast is sure to beat a Bengali curry on most days. Her curry is particularly good – Andy says face meltingly good – and he compliments the eggplant on the dish. #facepalm

Dessert tasting:

Contestant’s Plums in almagnac, vanilla custard, crème fraiche sorbet with pistachio praline. Andy says the amount of flavour in the dish is brilliant and Jock says he loves everything about it.  

Tonka’s dessert Sable with pistachios and raspberries. It looks INSANE! Jock says that the dish cooked by someone who worked in a Michelin 3 star restaurant looks like a Michelin star dish.

Jock gives the ultimate compliment and says that he likes the sable more than Scottish shortbread. Mel also agrees it was an absolutely perfect dish.

Results:

This looks surprisingly close. Okay they are calling this “Beat the Brigade” week. Lulz.

The Entrée -  Jock says when he says Mexican he wanted a raw avocado and corn thrown in his face. So Tonka is going to lose this despite definitely having the better, more complete and coherent dish.

Desserts  - The judges liked Elise’s dessert which was cleverly designed and transported them to a French bistro. But Tonka’s was the dish of the day and they win this easily.

Main – This was a curry off. Andy says both teams gave us Indian Prawn curry and compliments the curry made by Tonka. He also says the seafood was perfectly cooked and then says “the star of the show was the bhatura bread”. 

Whenever an Indian comes to your house for a meal and says “The curry was good but the roti was the best thing about this meal” – he is basically telling you that he has never hated a curry more in his life, it is not worth eating, he has surreptitiously fed the curry to the stray dog outside the window and is never coming to your house again. 

It is bleeding obvious that Tonka are losing this now. The Contestants win the curry off and they all get immunity. Everyone is safe from elimination

 

Adam loses again due to idiotic judging. Poor guy – so sportsmanly, personable and overall nice guy. Should have got him as a judge.

Also, this is starting to give me S10 déjà vu – these guys seem to have basically decided that Depinder is going to win this – and will constantly get her to immunity challenges for cooking basic Indian food. If this trend continues, I am likely to lose interest in this season very soon. Fair warning to all of both my readers.