Skip to main content

MasterChef Australia - S13E54 - Final Immunity Challenge

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 have found a way to game this system. She picks another cloche – and her second pick is lemon verbena – she’s got 2 lemons. Jock is encouraging her to change – because they have to then eat a dish with 2 strong lemon flavours which may suck. Linda says she is sticking with the 2 lemons – worst case she can make them eat a fuck all dish. Which is a win win situation for all.  

Elise’s strategy is to go with lucky numbers. Her first pick is the number 19 – Andy who cannot count beyond 10 is incredulous  that someone would have 19 as their lucky number. The 19th cloche reveals that her first pick is 70% dark chocolate. Her second pick is no. 1 – she needs a dessert leaning ingredient. Its pistachios. Not bad at all. Her challenge to lose now. Ghissu is so ghissu that she is happy that she has passed the “luck” part of the challenge.

Justin is walking through and seeing what stands out of the 56 identical cloches. He goes to the one at the corner because it looks lonely and he wanted to invite it to the party – he does get the hibachi! Well played – and now he goes for the other corner and gets Italian. He says it is very cool – but he just wants a third pick.  Sigh, just as I am starting to not hate Justin, he goes and pulls this shit. He picks one in the middle – he gets sweet – and he puts on cloche like dunce hat in accurate representation of his mental state right now.  

Side note - not sure how sweet is anything really – its not an ingredient, equipment or a cuisine. What the hell does “sweet” even mean in this challenge. Anyway, Justin knows he has made a mistake.  

Sadistic Jock cannot stop laughing.

Finally, after all these shenanigans, they start cooking.

Linda has come back with a duck – she is making a simple homely soup to be had with boiled rice. But she needs to masterchef it up – so she is using lemon verbena in the soup instead of the preserved lemon. She is using the preserved lemon as a glaze for her duck.  

Justin is doing some charred orange granita and a pop corn ice cream. No one is convinced the charred orange granita is going to work. But Justin has decided to ignore all the judges altogether, and stick to his rational thought process that made him give up a winning combination for this sureshot losing one.  

Elise wants to show she can do different things with the chocolate and the pistachio – so she is making pista ice cream. Yup so unique. No one has made pistachio ice cream on this show before. She has decided on a whisy chocolate mousse – but does not have much else of an idea about the dish.  

Elise is adding a smoked olive oil to enhance her chocolate. Justin’s charred orange is bitter – its definitely smokey but not what he imagined.

Elise has by mistake put in Lagavulin (a very smokey whisky) into her chocolate. I am judging her for using Lagavulin for cooking and also judging Jock who doesn’t like smoky whiskies. Jock is concerned about the number of elements on Elise’s dish – which has a lot of conflicting flavours.

Linda’s broth doesn’t have enough oomph – so she is dumping in a lot of salt, sugar, more lemon verbena and vinegar.  Jock is tasting Linda’s broth NOW – with a minute to go. Her duck is also well cooked.

After much stress Justin gets his popsicles out of the moulds.

Elise is tasting everything together – everything tastes nice but she needs to balance the dish as she plates – which is a sure sign that she has fucked this up. Amazingly Linda might be winning this.

Tasting

The very fact that Mel has said “who is going to be the first lucky contestant into finals week” – should tell is that this challenge is a stupid idea.

Justin has done a play on his favourite movie snacks. Mel asks what movie they are watching – disappointingly Justin says Lion King and not something like Fast and the Furious. Jock says he doesn’t get much of either sweet or hibachi – its very savoury. Even though the ice cream is delicious, because it doesn’t “taste sweet” they are fucking him over. Andy says he wanted more Pop Corn flavour – even though that was nothing to do with the brief

Linda has brought out 2 distinct dishes but the judges are insisting it is one dish. Linda is now crying because it reminds her of her grandmother. Everyone seems to have caught on to Kishwar strategy. Jock says she has met the brief -  which is bare minimum these days now that they have thrown out all the good, creative cooks like Conor, Therese, and Depinder.

Elise – Andy says he loves the pistachio ice cream but with the mousse and smoked olive oil it seems like 2 different dishes. Mel also says she’s overdone it. Jock says she didn’t highlight the chocolate enough. Somehow she has managed to pull defeat from the jaws of an easy victory.

No point of any suspense also now - Linda is the clear winner. She wins immunity and a place in finals week.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

MasterChef Australia - S13E20 - Curtis Stone Elimination

 Here we go with another elimination. The contestants enter with no aprons which means something very random is planned for today. Jock wants everyone to bring a spring in their step because they should be happy about one of their friends going home. The last master they are bringing on to end this Masters week is Curtis Stone. Surely one of the main guys they would have wanted to meet – but since Curtis is in LA, this is going to be another pointless virtual presence type thing. Today’s elimination will take place in 2 rounds - the first one is all about beef. First Curtis will basically do what he has done on hundreds of Youtube videos that surely all the participants have already seen before even auditioning for this competition and prepare 8 cuts of beef. Fusion Dan has made the profound observation that cutting meat is not as easy as the professional butcher is making it look. Sabina raises her hand and asks what we do if we want to chuck a prize cut like Scotch fi...

Masterchef Australia - S13E14 - Immunity Challenge

 Given that this is an immunity challenge, this should be a pretty up-beat episode. Andy is not going to be judging today – and this is already my favourite episode of the season so far. Jock and Mel explain the challenge   - it is all about thinking on feet and going with your gut. The table has 10 ingredients that the contestants can see and another 10 surprise ingredients paired with those that they can’t see. They have to choose an ingredient based on what they see and have to feature both the ingredients (including the surprise one) in their dish.   Dan is pumped and says whatever is thrown at him, he’s going to make the best of that situation. In other words, Fusion Dan is back after Jock specifically told him he hates Fusion Dan literally last episode.   Depinder goes first and chooses mango. Her surprise ingredient is chillies – actually a pretty common combo. She then rattles off some 100 ideas he has immediately on what all can be done. Dan has de...

MasterChef Australia - S13E09 - Heston's immunity challenge

Today is the immunity challenge and the contestants cannot believe the first such challenge is happening this late in the season. The contestants enter the kitchen which is empty but has a lot of screens. The judges are not even in the room – this honestly is a step up from the usual situation.    There is something funky happening here – disco scenes, psychedelic images (Conor thinks this is a rave), Dan thinks this is Reynold (who is really not big enough to call a superstar). This intro video now goes into the ‘uncomfortably long’ category and no one knows what’s happening. Aaron has spotted Fat Duck written somewhere and now everyone knows it is Heston. These guys really need to work on their build-ups such that the identity of the chef is not obvious from the start. Alas, the judges are here now. On the bright side, Heston does pop up and immediately makes fun of Jock’s dress sense saying he is dressing like a Scottish lord – someone who should be out shooting pheas...