Masterchef Recap: Parfait Accompli
Power Week continues, and tonight is the episode that every fan of reality TV hates: the “losers come back and get a second chance” episode. I imagine returning losers are always powerfully resented by the other contestants. After all, anyone who gets eliminated after tonight won’t ever return, but someone who stuffed up before tonight will — thus punishing later eliminatees for having performed better. Justice? On Masterchef there is no such thing.
Elise is feeling nervous, thinking, “what challenge have they got in store for us?” Not much of an insight, given that’s really what everyone thinks every day, but minutes need to be filled. As the amateurs arrive at the kitchen, Anastasia is standing up front, looking smug in her power apron, ready to unleash the power upon her enemies. Matt reveals that the losers are back, and all the non-losers start jumping up and down and screaming as if the people who’ve returned are their actual friends. And have been raised from the dead — you’ve got to assume the amateurs thought everyone who gets eliminated is killed immediately, judging from how exciting it apparently is to see them again.
George asks some of the returners what they’ve been up to since being eliminated and they tell various incredibly boring stories. Basically they’ve been loitering in other people’s restaurants and making a nuisance of themselves. We don’t hear everyone’s stories, because even Masterchef has a limit to how slow-moving the show can be.
Cecilia has not only grown as a cook, but has learnt to believe in herself, which is always a mistake. She will live to regret this.
The task set is for the losers to make one dish from certain preselected ingredients, which will either be good or bad. But there’s a twist: Anastasia can give one loser the ability to choose an extra ingredient. This is because she has the power apron, and demonstrates how lame the power apron is. How does it benefit Anastasia to let Theresa choose coconut? The power apron has done nothing for Anastasia and it is time we stopped telling our children that they should aspire to the power apron. It is a lie and they deserve to know it is a lie.
Having been given the advantage of choosing coconut, Theresa immediately starts burning up cooking time by writing down her recipe. Her dish is winter-themed, as a tribute to her family and their cold cold hearts.
Like Theresa, Charlie is making a dessert, due to the obsessive delusion that he developed in his time on the show that he is a good pastry chef. His greatest skill as a pastry chef is his ability to say “I want to be a pastry chef” several hundred times per minute.
Cecilia is making sorbet, because nobody knows how to make anything but desserts anymore. Miles is making a parfait, because this is the International Year of the Parfait. He’s making it according to a Shannon Bennett recipe, which he claims makes him feel under pressure because he’s making a Shannon recipe, without a recipe, that he has to serve to Shannon. He seems to have forgotten that nobody is holding a gun to his head and forcing him to make a parfait at all, let alone a Shannon Bennett one. In fact everyone would be much happier if he didn’t.
Theresa is also under pressure because she wasted ten minutes writing her recipe down and has suddenly discovered the principle of time and its regular flow in a forward direction. Having started with sixty minutes, she now only has fifty, and she is shocked at this development.
“I know the judges always look for a surprise,” observes Theresa, and considers stuffing her dessert with gunpowder. But she chickens out and does something with raspberries etc.
From the balcony everyone cheers and whistles and generally makes the competitors’ lives as difficult as possible, as Zoe makes a weird thing that is a cross between a mousse and a custard. Which to me sounds like just a mousse that’s been left in the sun for a while, but whatever. Meanwhile Charlie wants to show a lot of technique but doesn’t specify at what.
Quick shots of all the contestants who definitely aren’t coming back because we have barely seen them today are followed by a visit to Miles’s bench by Matt and Shannon to ask him why the hell he felt the need to make a frigging parfait. How many parfaits can the judges make before they place a ban on them?
Cecilia is making her sorbet with beetroot curd like some kind of war criminal. She wants to achieve the right balance between presentation and deliciousness, which seems to suggest that she has to make it slightly less delicious than she could, in order to make it look good. That doesn’t sound like the right way to go about it to me. But I am no chef. Neither is she, of course, but that’s not the point.
Oh, I think Zoe’s dish is called a bavois. In case any of you were interested (it’s OK I know you weren’t).
Miles is feeling comfy and travelling well, so you know something hilariously bad is about to happen to him. Maybe his parfait will explode, or he’ll get sunstroke or something.
Zoe is worried that her tempered chocolate isn’t perfect. She takes it out of the fridge. It is perfect. Everyone cheers. It’s a real feelgood moment that we’d appreciate much more if any of us cared whether Zoe tempered her chocolate properly. Things get much more exciting when Zoe tries to remove her chocolate from the paper and it breaks. I don’t know why anyone ever tries to temper chocolate. It never works and it just makes you look like a fool.
“I can’t believe I’ve done this!” cries Zoe, displaying a surprising lack of self-awareness. She thinks if she cuts out a half-moon it might work, but she’s learning to not be confident about anything she does, which is a positive sign.
“It’s a very different Miles than we saw in the auditions,” says Matt, voicing a suspicion we all have: someone has murdered Miles and stolen his identity.
“One spot left. ONE spot,” says George to the other judges, suspecting that they have forgotten what’s going on. “Yep, it’s huge,” says Shannon, hoping against hope that George will stop talking to him.
“It’s all about that apron!” George now shouts to the losers, who really needed that. Shannon wanders over to Cecilia to tell her she needs one more element. Personally I think she needs one less element, and the element she needs one less of is beetroot.
Meanwhile, “I know it seems kind of weird to use quinoa in a dessert,” says Zoe, and she is correct. It does seem kind of weird. Not weird like Reeves and Mortimer, more weird like Human Centipede. It is an appalling idea.
Miles’s parfait is not properly set, as a punishment from the Parfait Gods for making too many parfaits. One more parfait and the building will burn down.
Meanwhile Charlie is really ecstatic, unfortunately.
“This last five minutes is not only a game changer, it’s a life changer for one of you,” shouts Shannon, so the contestants are left in no doubt that they have an 11-in-12 chance of their lives being left in terrible soul-destroying stasis. Only one of these losers will end the day with hope in their hearts. The misery this show generates is amazing.
As time ticks down, some guy I don’t remember sprinkles something on a plate. I wonder who he was. Guess I’ll never know. Hey ho.
Cecilia burns her fingers rolling up her…little rolly things, I guess. Wheels of some kind. She’s very happy with it but her standards are low. Elise is stunned by Cecilia’s ability to wrap sugar around a sugar thermometer. I’m stunned that there’s such a thing as a sugar thermometer. Elise is so impressed you feel she’s about to offer to give up her place in the competition for Cecilia. Maybe she should: I bet Cecilia wouldn’t waste a power apron.
Charlie’s chocolate is not moving as fast as he’d like. Young people today are very impatient, aren’t they?
The balcony is clapping and cheering and screaming and whooping and nobody really knows why. They don’t seem to be cheering for anyone in particular, they’re just incredibly enthusiastic about general activity.
Theresa’s balls taste too much like rosemary, a common problem for women of her age. She needs them to taste more like raspberries so she gives them a dose of raspberries, running the risk of developing a severe case of raspberry-ball.
Time is running out, especially for the losers who haven’t gotten to speak during this challenge. “You haven’t heard this for a while — TEN SECONDS TO GO!” Gary yells, ignoring the fact that Zoe heard it just yesterday and Miles not that long ago and really they were all here pretty recently.
Time is up, and Charlie has only one concern which is naive of him. Theresa is really proud of what she’s done, which I guess will be some consolation for being on this show.
The first dish to be tasted is Cecilia’s. Cecilia is feeling confident, which is a real turn-off. Shannon can tell Cecilia has worked damn hard, which might be a way of saying she has no talent, I can’t tell with Shannon. “I love that beetroot sauce,” says Gary, the freak.
Next up, Miles, and his frigging parfait. “It’s a shame this hasn’t set,” says Gary gleefully. You can tell non-setting parfaits are his greatest joy in life. Still, all the elements taste great, but do they taste…parfait?
Next is Nidhi, who has also made a GODDAMN PARFAIT. Next is “Nathaniel” (?), who’s made lamb, which is recklessly unconventional in this year’s dessert cult. Next is Con, and that’s three people who are definitely not going to win dealt with nice and quickly.
Up comes Charlie having a panic attack about his chocolate being too thick, although even if it is, he’ll probably take the judges’ criticism as another sign he should be a pastry chef. Miraculously, his chocolate cracks open just how he wanted it. “Anna Polyviou would be so proud,” Gary lies.
Next up is Zoe, whose chocolate-tempering technique is flawless, but who has wasted a good chunk of what could have been a productive life making it so. “I like it,” says Gary, in the tone of voice of a man who doesn’t like it. “I like it,” says George, but qualifies his remarks by explaining that he doesn’t like it. “Gary loves my dessert,” says Zoe proudly, but actually he didn’t say that.
Someone called “Adam” has also made lamb, the mad fool. Jimmy — remember Jimmy? Yeah, sort of, me too — has made something with crumb that Matt likes, but we haven’t seen him all episode so nope, no Jimmy.
Up steps Theresa with her yoghurt rosemary snowball and her stupid story about it being inspired by her family in Canada. Just make the dessert, Theresa. The judges eat while the soundtrack does that thing that sounds sort of like a dial tone. “I love it,” says Gary, looking pointedly at Zoe so she knows what it’s like when he LOVES something. He tells Theresa that she took them to Canada, which is just a stupid thing to say.
Time for the judgment. “Today belonged to two cooks,” says Matt, and by coincidence both of them are actually in the room at the time. They are Cecilia and Theresa, but there can be only one winner from among these losers, and it is…
Oh good an ad break.
There was, apparently, a hair’s-breadth between the two dishes, so presumably the person who put the hair in will be the loser. And that must’ve been Cecilia, because it’s Theresa who has returned to the competition, thus rubbing her brother’s face right in it. “She deserves this,” says Jimmy, even though the very fact she was in this challenge means she doesn’t. And then Theresa gets the power apron, which seems a bit much. The power apron seems to be subject to no kind of rules or system whatsoever.
And so, with a touching moment of inspirational injustice, we finish the Les Revenants episode of Masterchef, and say goodbye to eleven losers we are grateful to see the back of.
Tune in tomorrow night, when Theresa takes her horrific revenge on all.
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