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 fruit mousse.
Hugh says the pressure point is mostly the sticks – game over
if they don’t temper the sticks.
They start off.
Linda says she is not great at following recipes – so she has
laid out a super organized plan which entails her to simultaneously go slow, go
fast, push, read the recipe, follow it to a T, use her intuition, and give it
her all. So, in summary she is surely getting eliminated at the end of this.
Jock says following the recipe to the T is critical – which is
a refreshing bit of honestly and not the usual canned lines like “intuition is
what matters”.
Pete has not tempered chocolate before. I don’t understand
how these guys will practice all sorts of stuff outside of the kitchen but not
something like this which so very often sends people home?
Elise is facing her first pressure test – but she has dealt
with many stressful law exams so she is confident about this.
Everyone seems to be on track so far.
Justin has just realized that his scale is set to ounces and
not grams. And followed the entire recipe in grams. Now he is re-doing all the
elements. What a colossal noob error.
Pete is the first at the liquid nitrogen station. Elise and Kishwar
join him. Elise has not gone hard enough on the sorbet and so it may be too
runny. Kishwar has too hard and her mousse is frozen solid so she doesn’t put
it in a piping bag and spoons it into the moulds.
Justin has somehow caught up and is now at the liquid
nitrogen station.
Pete is telling Mel to not tell him how well he is doing,
but to instead tell him that he is last and sure to go home today. Ah the Michael
Jordan strategy.
Linda is really behind now. She is the last one at the liquid
nitrogen station but her caramel sticks are shattering. She thought she would
catch up here but this is putting her even more behind. Good Guy Jock tells her
how to fix it – and she is done with this element.
Finally we are on to the chocolate tempering. Justin is done
with his strips – but he is doubtful of the temperatures. Elise has tempered
her chocolate correctly but in second colossal noob fail for this episode has
used the wrong side of the comb to make her strips. She doesn’t have time to
fix this and is carrying on with it anyway.
Jock has explained what Linda should do to not have lumps in
her tempered chocolate, and 10 seconds later Linda has announced that she has lumps
in her tempered chocolate. She has no choice but to fix this. Now she is super,
super behind.
Pete’s chocolate twigs are perfect.
Justin’s chocolate twigs are not coming off the acetate.
They are melting straight away. Hugh says the chocolate is not tempered
properly. Now Justin has to decide whether he tempers the chocolate again or
ditches the twigs. But he decides to use a the Kirsten Tibbals cheat version of
tempered chocolate they learnt in the masterclass and he is tempering it again.
Linda has somehow put the wrong green food colouring in her
green glaze – how is this even possible?! They have all their ingredients right
there!
Justin’s super fast tempered choc is done.
They are done – Linda has missed the chocolate cover for the
gumnut. Nearly surely going home.
Tasting
Pete –Jock says he’s done a terrific job. Hugh also says the
bottlebrush was good, flavour-wise it is spot on.
Kishwar – Hugh says really nice job, her mousse is not icy
as they had feared. The gumnut is perfect colour – nearly identical to Hugh’s.
Justin – His tempered chocolate is perfect. Everyoen agrees
he’s done a great job and the flavours are spot on.
Linda – Hasn’t got all the elements on. And her colour is
freaky. Hugh says the bottlebrush is decent and the chocolate sticks are
perfect. But the big problem is the missing element – which has ruined the
texture of the gumnut.
Elise – Her chocolate sticks are not the perfect shape –
also she seems to have too many of them in there. It looks more like porcupine
than bottle brush. Andy points out that the sticks are too long and of
inconsistent thickness. Mel says the plate overall ate well. Jock agrees, but
says it lacked refinement.
It definitely comes down to Elise and Linda. But surely there
is no way Linda is going to survive missing an element on her dish.
Yup – she’s gone. And we are down to the least impressive
top 4 in MasterChef History.
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