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MasterChef Australia - S13E52 - Simpson's Gap Elimination

 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 taken these native ingredients is making hariyali chicken. Sigh – she is making bush tomato quandong chutney and flatbread with the chicken.

Depinder is making an Italian style tomato salad, a warrigal green damper, with a gazpacho – she has never done this before. Jock is pointing out that this is a huge risk – but Depinder is confident she can make it work. Why Pindo why? Just make some curry like Kishwar and save yourself.

Pete is making kangaroo steaks with sauteed warrigal greens, wattleseed oil, crispy fried saltbush, and a quandong sauce.  Andy now has a problem with them using too many native ingredients – and that Pete has to tame them. Pete knows that taking risks usually works for him – so he is cracking on.  

Pete and Justin do their mandatory bro out and are talking about quandong seed necklaces for each other. Meanwhile, Elise is amazed that there is an oven in Simpson’s gap.  

The wind gets violent and things are literally falling all over – this is legit dangerous – but Mel is making stupid puns like “we want you to blow us away”.  

Jock notices the mountain wallabies staring at Pete and Tommy because both are making kangaroo – but no one seems too concerned with an impending attack.

Depinder is feeling confident about her tomato salad and says she is just going to trust her palate and balance the flavours.  

Tommy is stressed that he is spending way too much time on the kangaroo – in the end he has run out of time and just thrown on his tartare with 10 seconds to go – he is not happy.

Pete’s kangaroo is super tender – and he is tasting everything together. He says it tastes good.

Tasting

Kishwar, as is to be expected by now, starts off her introduction of the dish by crying. And now Mel is also crying. Yup – this is a totally fair environment for judging food. Nothing to see here people.

Rayleen says Kishwar has done all the ingredients justice. Everyone seems to have loved it.  Looks like Kishwar is on track for least inspiring finalist ever on MasterChef.

Depinder has taken a leaf out of Kishwar’s book and is also crying. Unfortunately she took the wrong leaf and should have just cooked some basic curry and she would have been home and dry. But she decided to go classy and cook a sophisticated dish – what does she think she is? Some sort of Chef or something?

Anyway, Mel says the tomatoes are lovely and the gazpacho has nice flavour. Andy says its delicious, but he is “not enjoying this because of the native ingredients” which is now a problem. This seems like a really really flimsy reason to judge a dish harshly. Especially after you have litereally described the dish as delicious.

Rayleen really loves Pete’s dish – everything is beautiful. Jock also says all the other stuff lifts the flavour of the kangaroo.

Everyone likes the layers in the tartare that Tommy has thrown together and the lavosh is nice as well.

This is ridiculous, they are seriously going to eliminate one of the best cooks of this season because she didn’t take the easy way out and make some basic bitch curry like Kishwar? And despite the fact that she did produce a delicious dish? Are you kidding me?  Fuck this season.

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