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MasterChef Australia - S13E45 - Nick Holloway All in Elimination

Today’s elimination features Nick Holloway (and his glorious beard) from Nu Nu. First up is a taste test – where contestants have to taste 3 dishes and identify as many ingredients as they can.

Everyone can see Nick literally laughing at them – and know this is not going to end well. 

Andy says this is the biggest taste test that Masterchef has ever seen continuing this season’s random hyberbole of everything being the biggest MasterChef has ever seen. 

Nick shows one dish – and then moves it to a side and shows another dish – and then another one. Now he is properly laughing at the contestants.

There are a total of 50 ingredients across these 3 dishes – the bottom five go to Round 2.

Scott says he has a lot of visual cues and writes down stuff that he can see. 

Elise thinks the protein is lamb, Aaron thinks its pork and Depinder thinks its beef. Ok then.

Aaron has already given up – he can’t get his head around this – and by that I mean how the hell he has made it this far in the competition with extremely pedestrian cooking.

Tommy is showing his teacher cred and gaming the system – he is putting down a laundry list of ingredients that could possibly be used to make a curry.

Jock is also saying just write ingredients – its not like any of you have functioning tongues etc.

Minoli is confident she has aced this – which means there is no doubt whatsoever that she is in Round 2. She is happily still eating while everyone else is stressing the fuck out at the end of the 15 minutes.

Highest score goes to Tommy with 30. They don’t bother with the other scores and go straight to the bottom five - Scott (24), Depinder (25), Aaron (26), Minoli (26) and Pete (27).  

In round 2, they have all the 50 ingredients in Nick’s dishes at their disposal and have to create a dish.

In a move that has shocked no one at all - Minoli has gone straight for the pineapple and prawn – she is going Sri Lankan.

Turns out everyone is using pineapple in their dish in some way. In the understatement of the year, Aaron says not the ideal pantry for him.  

Scott thinks this could be the challenge for him  even though he is god at Thai food. For some reason he is going sweet today. He really likes the retro stuff so he’s doing a pavlova roulade.

Pete is going unexpected and making dessert. He is going for curry ice cream. As with all Pete’s dishes this will be either brilliant or utter garbage. Nick tastes the anglaise and says it’s a “brave” move which is code for “this is suicidal you maniac, what the fuck are you doing??”

Pete, as always, acknowledges that his strategy is stupid, and as always, he is going ahead with it anyway. He is himself saying he would not order a curry ice cream lol. 

Depinder is making prawn curry and a few other elements including glutinous rice. Nick says that rice is risky because it doesn’t behave like normal rice.

Minoli is making her own coconut milk from dessicated coconut which is super resourceful and is also cutting a coconut with a SAW – which is insane. Everyone is yelling at her to use a cleaver like a normal person.

Aaron still doesn’t know what the rest of his dish is – other than coconut prawns. Nick is telling him to “cook from your soul – make something really delicious” – which is totally actionable specific advice.

Depinder is saying she doesn’t have time to read the instructions to make the glutinous rice. I mean its only an elimination – what could go wrong. This is what happens when you tell someone for 40 episodes that she is the person to beat. Same thing happened with Sashi in S10 as well – he really struggled to get to get through to the finals. The gantry is also noticing that this is a different, rattled Depinder.

Pete is pairing his curry ice cream with pineapple granita, peanut coconut crumb and he is also making a chutney.   

The gantry is worried about Aaron – who is sticking with his super basic dish. Jock is also worried about Aaron. Now Jock is telling Nick that he’s worried about Aaron. Mel is also worried about Aaron and I really feel they should have used some different words to not make this so comical. Mel straight up says he’s going home unless someone pulls an icarus.

Scott is now rolling his roulade – Jock is here to watch him do it from 3 feet away. His roulade looks beautiful. Minoli is adding chillis to her broth – she is not happy with the spice level.  

Mandatory “Aaron tastes his own food and says it’s awesome” moment of this episode happens.

Pete’s passion fruit curd is not thickening – he’s worried about the balance of his dish and is now finally thinking that he’s an idiot to choosing to do this curry ice cream on elimination day.

Depinder’s rice is super sticky but she is on such a high thanks to the judges constantly chadhaoing her for 40 episodes that she is confident that this is how glutinous rice is meant to be. 

Pete has dropped his crud – he is adding lime zest for fresh element – not sure why he didn’t think of this in the first place.

The Tasting

Minoli -  Nick is already excited about the colour of that broth and thinks it looks and tastes delicious. Andy – like he has said for 500 other dishes this season – says this is the best plate of food Minoli has brought them.

Aaron now -  He’s super nervous that his dish is simple. Andy says your body language isn’t you today – No shit sherlock, it is an elimination bro.

Nick is disappointed with the dish and says it is indicative of how he saw the cook. There is nothing to tie the dish together. It’s just random stuff and even that isn’t great. Like salsa is over seasoned etc. 

Scott -  Jock enjoyed the roulade. Nick also thinks it’s delicious.

Depinder -  She has gone the Poh way and brought some 4 separate dishes. On just smell Nick is saying this is like being transported to another place.  Jock says prawn curry and pineapple curry are amazing but the rice is raw -  it’s like a rice cake. 

Pete – Everyone loves it. Ice cream texture was perfect -  Mel says everything meshed beautifully. Andy says overall dish is  exceptional. Nick says this is suave and elegant – a tight rope dance – he is super impressed.

Results

Minoli and Pete are safe – Pete has proceeded to hug all the judges. Scott is also safe.

As expected, it  comes down to Aaron vs Depinder, and as expected, Aaron is gone.

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