MasterChef Australia - S13E28 - Basic Cooking Tools Mystery Box

 Mystery Box day today. 

Kishwar says she loves these challenges because you can be creative with mystery boxes – which is why she always cooks a curry in every challenge.  

These boxes are bigger than usual. The contestants lift the lids and find that the mystery box is filled with basic kitchen items. They can only cook with this stuff.  They have an open pantry and full access to the garden. This is a nice challenge.

The top 5 go to the immunity challenge tomorrow.

Kishwar – who loves to be creative in these challenges – has the thought of cooking a crab curry, but ditches the idea since the crabs won’t fit in the saucepan she has.

Tom is doing a chocolate fondant with no measuring scales – maybe try something savoury? You can’t win on just desserts you know.

Depinder is making an Indian dessert  - which we will not see again in the episode.

Sabina is doing a pickled mussels dish – this is something she always cooks with and is now trying to make it MasterChef worthy.

Justin meanwhile is stressed and has no clue what to make because what could you possibly cook in a saucepan with an open pantry. Chutfatang.

Kishwar is now making khichadi. Okay, I take it back, this is even worse than curry. She does have some fish and eggplant with it – but khichadi? Really?

Amir has gone for the crabs despite the pan being waaay too small and is now using glad wrap as a rolling pin.

Brent is having fun and making pickling sauce in the oven.  He says this is like McGwyer – he has clearly missed the point of McGwyer which is to escape from your captors and not to humour them like this.

Pete is doing lamb with sauce and turnip. He wants the turnip to be very thin slices which will be presented like a flower. He says he wishes he had a mandoline slicer, Mel asks if he wants a mandoline, he says yes, he would like a mandoline – in a type of interaction that is either the contestants refusing to remember the order of scripted lines or the judges genuinely being really stupid and sticking to the lines even when  they are clearly not applicable anymore. 

He says the turnip is the star of the lamb dish (which makes no sense at all) and says it’s really, really important for the turnip works out. Maybe he should not have chosen an element that requires a mandoline. But he has an idea – he has cut the turnip into halves and is making super thin slices. This is actually working.

Fusion Dan says the narrower the brief, the better for him as he has minimal scope to do fusion. Now he’s doing a braised octopus with a Korean chilli sauce – I wouldn’t call this fusion since it is literally two elements and it’s not like no one eats octopus in Korea. But Fusion Dan is a stickler for branding and insists this is fusion and that he is becoming more sophisticated.

Elise is making her grandmom’s malanzane. Jock says his grandma makes an amazing one and asks whether this version of a home dish made by someone else in a different continent will compare or not.  He thinks this is putting pressure on Elise who has long realized the golden rule of this kitchen to simply ignore nonsense like this.

Linda is doing a Laotian dish called pun seen which looks amazing.

Justin, who is fast approaching Dan as most irritating contestant, is still crying about not having a stick blender – and we are literally halfway through the cook. He is struggling to explain his ideas to the judges. Jock is disgusted by the idea of grapes and celery.

Tommy is making banh xeo – a Vietnamese turmeric pancake – and in true Tommy fashion he has proclaimed himself the banh xeo king at home – and then he says he doesn’t know if this title is self-proclaimed. His banh xeo is sticking to the pan –sheesh they haven’t even given these guys a non-stick pan! Mel has now come over and is stuffing her face with his components (Edit - okay that sounded way dirtier than I thought it would) and is asking him to figure out the issue. His genius idea is to throw in a half a litre of oil and miraculously this works.

Fusion Dan takes out his octopus arms which have been poaching for 30 mins out of the pan and tries to kill Tom for good measure. 

Linda is now trying to make vermicelli noodles – which are not turning out well. She is stressed and says if she doesn’t have vermicelli noodles – it wont be Laotian. Which is really nothing to stress about as these judges don’t have a clue about Laotian dishes.

She is now going omelette – which has a noodle texture apparently?

Kishwar has made 4 things again – why do they tolerate this shit. Same thing with Poh last year. They should ideally disqualify people for making more than one dish.

Justin is just chucking random stuff on the plate – he has quail, some grapes, celery and a sauce. Total givvup scenes.   

The Tasting:

Sabina – Mussels with tarragon dill mayo and bread. Mel says “way to flex those mussels” winning worst pun of the day. Jock is surprisingly passionate about the pickle on the mussels. Overall  very strong dish.

Dan – Octopus with a Korean chilli sauce. Apparently his husband Paul hates octopus and  HOW IS NO ONE SEEING THE PAUL THE OCTOPUS JOKE RIGHT THERE IN YOUR FACE? Anyway, Jock says it’s delicious. Andy says this is the best dish – like he has said this is his best dish some 15 times before this.

Justin brings his garbage half dish. He is smiling for some reason. Mel is either miraculously liking this or is outright laughing at him WHILE tasting. All the judges are stunned into silence by how bad that was. Jock says the usual “I’m not angry, I’m disappointed” dad line. He says Justin is not doing enough homework – he nails the protein, but destroys everything with all the other elements.  

Justin says THIS tasting is a wake up call. I mean what the fuck were you doing for the last 27 episodes?

Kishwar has brought niramish, khichadi, pan fried fish. Oh good god, she’s crying again. Mel who I am convinced is a sympathetic cry-er also is crying.  Jock loves it. Everyone loves the eggplant. Andy thinks the standout was khichadi proving he has no idea what he’s talking about (yet again).  

Pete’s Lamb Turnip dish is amazing. Looks great – super refined. Jock says that dish is as good as you can find in any top restaurant and adds it’s a very “grown up chef” dish. Surely in the top five.

Elise’s Melanzane is not as good as Jock’s grandma’s – but Jock likes it all the same. Mel – in one of the most absurd reviews ever -  says this is “sexy food given how naked this dish is”. Don’t ask me, I have no clue what the hell that means.  

Amir’s Moroccan Chilli Crab was cooked in a pan too small and there simply isn’t enough sauce.

We don’t find out about Brent’s dish much except that Jock didn’t like the look of it.

Tom’s chocolate fondant is grainy because he didn’t have scales. Jock highlights this was the absolutely wrong thing to cook today.  

Linda’s Pun Seen.  No one is convinced on the omelette, and Linda is already crying. But this emotional blackmail was kinda unnecessary as everyone loves it .

Tommy’s banh xeo has turned out very well. Everyone loves the dish – I mean who wouldn’t like banh xeo or pretty much anything Vietnamese  for that matter. Just give this guy the trophy already.

Coming to the results - Dan, Elise, Pete, Linda, and (ugh) Kishwar have made it. Unbelievable that a guy made perfect banh xeo without a non-stick pan and had to lose to fucking khichadi!