Mystery box day – everyone lifts their lids and reveals that that all have different ingredients and a card saying 10 mins. It is a Barter Box – they can trade ingredients with each other – the time card can be used as a deal sweetener – and they have to use all 4 ingredients that they end up with.
Skills in an outdated form of commerce
that has been mostly useless since a few thousand years, surely must add much
value to chefs. Sure.
It’s a fun challenge but totally
pointless.
Anyway, Tommy and Linda make an easy swap
on vinegar and crab. Elise is using negotiation techniques she has learnt in
law school and being a total asshole about getting the best deal for her
ingredients. She wants to squeeze the 10 mins out of Tommy for the fish sauce –
super racist.
Justin it seems has completely
misunderstood the point of this exercise and has exchanged 2 ingredients he
didn’t want for another 2 ingredients he didn’t want with Aaron. He desperately
wants some protein but instead of asking for one of the 2 proteins Elise has –
he has got more veggies from Linda. Elise is so focused on getting 10 extra
minutes seems to have forgotten that she needs to cook as well. She doesn’t win
this challenge for being the best negotiator.
Finally Tommy gives Elise the extra 10
minutes and the cauliflower for the fish sauce. And Elise has hit her one goal
of getting 10 extra minutes.
The ones with 80 minutes start cooking - Justin,
Elise and Linda.
Elise has celery, cauliflower, king
George whiting and lambchops. Which is totally random combination of
ingredients. Instead of this stupid aggression and showing off her negotiation
skills, she should have swapped one of the proteins – Justin would have given
anything for this.
Elise explains her dish which is going to
be mostly the fish and a lamb sauce. Jock is appalled that she is using
beautiful lamb chops to make a sauce and she plans to throw away the actual
meat. He points out to her face that this was an idiotic barter.
Elise is now explaining how it pains her
to waste this meat – and Jock says don’t do it then. Now Elise is totally
stumped and has to figure out how to change her dish entirely.
In fairness, she is well within her
rights to use the ingredients however she wants. Just because the judges think
the dish should be cooked a certain way, doesn’t mean she needs to listen to it
– or be judged harshly for it.
But then on the other hand, this is over
40 episodes, she should know by now that the judges would pull something like
this.
Linda has played this very well and has a
really nice set of ingredients.
Justin is slow roasting his pumpkin and
plans to add the other vegetables in other textures.
Scott, Minoli, Depinder and Kishwar start with 70 mins
Depinder has killed this barter
thing - she has ended up with raspberries, chilli,
chocolate, and oranges – all amazing ingredients that go very naturally with
each other. She is surely making the top 4. Like 100%.
Kishwar doesn’t have the ingredients to
make a Bengali curry – so no one cares about her and she gets no further coverage at all
this episode.
Aaron, Tommy and Pete start with 60 mins.
Pete has pork chops! He is pairing that
with a blackberry glaze and a sauce using the star anise. He is serving that
with charred cabbage. This sounds really good!
Pete is doing the pork on the hibachi
despite having has no success at all on this previously. His pork immediately catches fire
and there are flames everywhere. Like the dog in the famous meme, Pete
continues to say “its all good” while his bench is in literal flames.
Minoli is doing pasta (gnocchi) with prawns
and figs. Aaron is making tuna carpaccio.
Tommy is super excited and goes to hug Linda.
Linda is like bro let me cook. He is a bit too happy about getting fish sauce.
He is now singing a song about fish sauce.
Justin’s dish is actually coming together
– the pumpkin is nicely cooked. He is adding crispy broccoli on the top for
some texture.
I think it is clear that Justin, Depinder,
Tommy and Pete are winning the four spots for the immunity challenge – since
they are not showing anyone else at all.
Waaaaait a minute, I just noticed there
are only 10 cooks here. Where is Sabina? Was there some additional elimination
that I missed – or did she just bunk this challenge?
The Tasting:
Tommy’s crab pineapple noodle soup is so
good, that Jock is giving a round of applause. Jock says the flavour is world
class. Andy says it’s one of the best things anyone has cooked in this
competition.
Pete’s Pork chops are cooked
perfectly. Jock says the sauce is
delicious and Mel says cooking level is incredible.
Minoli’s gnocchi is surprisingly very
good. Andy says it is a ‘ripper of a
dish’.
Kishwar’s non Bengali curry dish is
predictably meh.
Linda’s chicken is excellent but the broth
is super sweet.
Aaron’s dish is too much and too heavy.
He has put so much mayo, fried capers, crumbs etc that the tuna is lost.
Scott’s dirty grilled meat is literally
dirty.
Elise’s weird dish has lamb chops with a
pickled whiting salad. Mel says she is happy to see lamb being done justice to
– when ideally it should be a concern on how she uses an ingredient. Now, after
making her change her coherent dish idea
- the fuckers are complaining that it
seems like 2 dishes. Jock rubs it in that everything is very well cooked – but
no immunity for her because she made the stupid mistake of listening to the
judges.
Depinder’s dish is predictably amazing.
She is in the top 4 for sure.
Justin’s pumpkin dish. Jock asks him to
give himself a score out of 10 – he says 8.5. Jock says 9.5 –and that 0.5 was
cut only for the plating (again why does this matter?). Jock says he needs him
to be happy about this.
Andy says he is not sure if Justin is
just strolling through the comp because he doesn’t constantly jump or dance or
sing or cry. Justin gets a little annoyed and says boss I’m here after 13
people got eliminated, on the verge of top 10 – things are clearly working.
As expected - Tommy, Pete, Depinder, and Justin
– go into the immunity challenge.
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