MasterChef Australia Recap Rants

 We start with a recap of the season. Jock says they started with home cooks but now they have evolved into cooks who use complex techniques and make world class food. So clearly this doesn’t apply to Kishwar who can make the most basic food in a finale and still get a perfect 30. Now they are recapping some of their biggest mistakes – like eliminating Depinder, Tommy etc. This third round is a pressure test – Kishwar gets in a cry for good luck before the chef even walks in. Today the pressure test will be set by Aussie food legend (and incidentally the person who set the first ever Finale pressure test) Peter Gilmour. He enters with a genial smile on his face carrying TWO cloches. They have to make both dishes simultaneously. There is a savoury and a sweet dish – this is a legit big, finale worthy challenge. The savoury dish is shaved squid with koji butter emulsion, chawanmushi custard and a lot of small delicate garnishes. The dessert is called golden crackle which looks

Here we go – the end of the line. Phew. It’s been a long hard season for those of us who have seen this show for years. We start with a loooooong intro about the 3 contestants. Andy says Pete is basically ready to step out and start a restaurant. Mel says Kishwar has come a long way (by cooking the same stuff over and over again). Mel also adds that no-one expected Justin to be here – I mean who could have predicted this surprise when the judges were randomly eliminating super-star contestants. No one could have possible seen this coming. There are going to be three rounds in the Grand Finale – and for the first time, it will be held across 2 days. Today Round 1 and 2 – tomorrow Round 3. For Round 1 – they start with a mystery box with ingredients chosen by some of the best chefs in the country. A parade of big name chefs who have appeared on the show this season show up – Khanh Nguyen, Martin Benn, Darren Purchase, Alla Wolf Tasker, Kirsten Tibbals etc. Each of them have brought

All the contestants are back to cheer – everyone is kinda dressed up but Pete has shown up in pyjamas. Elise has started crying for some reason as has Sabina (perhaps both are lamenting the drop in standards of this show). Turns out there are going to be 3 people in the Finale – only one person gets eliminated here. So they have to make a 3 course fine dining menu for 20 diners + the judges. They have to showcase the food they like to cook and eat. (Given the brief, I don’t have much scope to make fun of Kishwar today) They have 4 hours to prep. I’m surprised no one is there to help them with the service – normally some famous chef would come to run the pass.   Justin is making cauliflower taco with mussels emulsion for his entrée. I am 100% sure this is going to be a problem for the judges since this is just a taco – not particularly fine dining either. His main sounds impressive – a lamb backstrap with a curry flavoured sauce and carrot puree. For the dessert he is making a brie

In case you missed it we are down to the top 4 now – this is without doubt the least impressive Top 4 ever in MasterChef. Like how have Justin and Kishwar made the top 4? Kishwar is the most unidimensional contestant to ever appear at this stage in the show and this includes Elise F who parfait-ed her way to Fourth place in Season 8. Sigh anyway, on the bright side, it will all be over soon. So back to the episode. They are in white aprons – so maybe this is not an elimination. They walk to the front of the room- there are 2 plinths with jewels in them. Today they are playing for a place in the FINAL! WTF! How can you get people to skip the Semi-final?! Surely a more sensible advantage would be to give a place in the Semi-Final and put the others through an elimination. It makes no sense that someone will reach the final without the giant service challenge that tests if they can actually run a commercial kitchen or not. Sheesh. Anyway, there are 2   rounds – both head to head

The Top 5 enter the kitchen – soon to become a top 4. Andy says “Can you believe you are the top 5” which is a legitimate question and not a rhetorical one since no one expected this bunch to make it here. Today we have a pressure test by Hugh Allen of Vue De Monde. He has been cooking since he was 15 years old apparently. He enters and Justin’s key takeaway is that he looks like a model. Mel seemingly agrees with Justin and asks Hugh how old he is (presumably to check n/2 + 7 scenes). He is 26 years old (she is 39 so it’s a close one). Shady jokes aside, it is quite insane that this guy at 26 is the executive chef at Vue de Monde – the same restaurant Shannon Bennett was at. He lifts the cloche – it looks like a bunch of flowers, not even like a dish. He calls it the the bottlebrush – it has strawberry gum with what looks like a hundred tempered chocolate sticks sticking out of it. There are two other elements- gumnut with wattleseed mousse and a billy button has a passion

The top 6 are in Society today – Martin Benn’s super fancy restaurant in Melbourne. This is a service challenge – the contestants will be running this restaurants first ever service. So no pressure. All of them will cook one course each and have a staggered start. On top of that Martin has assigned a feature ingredient for every course and they will not reveal till the cook enters the kitchen for their respective courses. And there is one more little surprise, today is an elimination. Way to spring it on everyone. But then this is finals week – so every cook will be an elimination. The order of the courses is Pete, Elise, Justin, Kishwar, Sabina and Linda – first 4 savoury and last 2 sweet. Looks bad for Sabina and Linda. Don’t see both of them making it through today. Pete starts cooking – this ingredient is nori. He hasn’t cooked with it before, but since this is super fine dining, I think he will ace this challenge. He thinks it can work with celeriac. He plans to make a crois

We are at the end of this godforsaken season now – finals week. So pretty much every cook will be an elimination. Today’s challenge is called “Fast food, fancy food”. In round 1 – they have to choose a hero ingredient from the pantry for a fast food challenge. Top 3 dishes are safe. The bottom 3 go to round 2 – they have hero the same ingredient in a fancy food dish. They go to the pantry and start picking ingredients Sabina goes for Kingfish. Justin and Kishwar go for the chicken. Elise goes for sardines (??), Pete goes with potatos (WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK PETE?!), Tommy has chosen beef. Tommy has to go all out for this one – since he is not super confident with fancy food. He is doing a classic vietnamese street food dish called bo la lot. Justin is making chicken tacos – he is going with a green Indian curry marinade, he is putting a LOT of chillies. He’s done tacos very well, twice before, so don’t see him screwing this up. As a side note - Andy is in a weird black turt

Here we go – last immunity challenge of this godawful season. This seems to be the lucky dip challenge where you randomly pick 2 cloches out of 60 and cook with whatever is under those. When your reward is so big – straight through to final week – you need a more objective measure – which is why the judges and producers in their infinite wisdom have decided to go for a challenge that almost entirely relies on dumb luck. These cloches have ingredients, cuisines and equipment – they have to pick 2 cloches and combine them. If they aren’t happy with their first two choices – they’ll get a third choice, but they HAVE to give up one of their earlier choices and then they are stuck with the third choice.   Linda goes smelling every cloche – this is looking hilarious – but it might just work.   She picks some strong smell – and she has picked preserved lemon. Again she goes smelling. Tommy is disgusted with this competitive behaviour and suggests she should go with the “vibe”. She may h

As we all struggle with how to continue to watch this TV show without Pindo, here we go with another episode. Today we have the everything box – there is lamb loin, milk, white onion, black pepper, verjuice, bay leaf and black pepper. They have to use everything in their dish. They are putting in one more ingredient – it comes straight from the farm. Farmer John comes straight from his farm with a   …….. Coles crate. He has brought purple cauliflower.   Top 3 dishes today progress to the final immunity challenge for this year and a direct spot into finals week.     Elise is making caramelized lamb and onion tortellini – she is doing a blackberry sauce and is going to stain the lamb purple using the juice as well. It is going to be a weird purple dish.   Tommy is making a Lamb fat roti with a sweet sauce. He says he needs to multi-task. And then duly fucks up his 2 attempts at multi-tasking by burning his caramel. Kishwar is of course making the most basic shit one could pos

 We start with a pretty intense welcoming ceremony by the indigenous people at Simpson’s Gap. Rayleen Brown is the guest today – she is apparently an expert on native ingredients. This elimination is already looking bad for everyone – Pete, Tommy, Kishwar and Depinder. She has brought in some ingredients like warrigal greens, bush tomatoes, native lemongrass, central dessert limes, quandongs etc. And of course, they have to use one or more of the native ingredients and feature those in a dish.   For small eliminations like this, they should only have pressure tests. These kinda abstract eliminations are fine if you have 20 people cooking – but with only 4 – it really does make sense. Too much space for the judges to let their biases come in. Tommy is terrified as this is way outside his comfort zone. He is making kangaroo tartare with a smoked egg yolk – and he is using the native ingredients with a number of things including a sauce to coat the kangaroo.   Kishwar has somehow

 Today the contestants are heading to the Northern Territory – they are literally at Uluru today. Truly spectacular setting. Today is a service challenge – 2 teams have to cook a 3 course fine dining meal for 50 diners. There is a lot of local produce in the pantry today – and naturally they are expected to go Full “Aussie Pride” with this one. They continue the random colours for the teams – today they are orange and yellow. Pete Depinder Tommy Kishwar are in the Orange team; and Justin Linda Sabina and Elise are in the Yellow team. Justin has decided to captain the yellow team and wants all dishes to look simple but be complex and fine dining. They are starting with a beetroot dish by Linda (with a beetroot broth), their main is a pepper crusted Australian Steak with Onion Rings and their dessert is a native ingredient inspired tiramisu which Elise is working on. Justin is doing nothing and is concentrating all his energies on trolling and trash talking Pete – who is the

 Here we go with the double elimination (which is apparently necessary at this top 10 stage for some reason). They have a choice – either go for a black mystery box or go for the black cloche. The mystery box is a regular mystery box but the cloche has an ingredient they must hero.   They all have to vote and whichever gets the most votes – everyone will have to use that in the first round. The best dish from Round 1 will be safe from Round 2, and worst dish goes home. In Round 2, they cook with the thing they didn’t choose in Round 1 and again one more will go home.    In the voting, 7 people chose the mystery box and only 2 went for the cloche. So they will all cook with the mystery box. The box has beef rib eye, a snapper, pumpkin, yuzu, chilli paste, walnuts – it is a pretty good box. Pete is going for the pumpkin – he wants to present this 2 different ways – wedge and puree. He plans to amp up the puree with chilli oil   and maybe something from the green mango. This is su