Masterchef Recap: Going to the Mattresses
The amateurs finally leave the picturesque streets and wholesome family entertainment of San Francisco behind, and head for California’s famous Napa Valley, setting of the film Sideways, maybe: I haven’t seen Sideways but I think it might’ve been set in the Napa Valley. Because it’s about wine, right? I wonder why it’s called Sideways. I guess I’ll never know.
Anyway.
After the opening credits, during which we must just pause to note that Chloe looked happier slamming that dough down that she did at any point of her time in the actual competition, we once again see how curiously compliant Masterchef contestants are when ordered to get into a black van. When the fascists take over the reality show stars will be the first to submit.
The amateurs are driven to a beautiful estate, dominated by an old mansion whose staff are so negligent it is covered with vines. This is Inglenook Estate, owned by Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary director of Peggy Sue Got Married. Don’t expect Coppola to actually appear in the show, though: the fact that his debts have forced him to take Masterchef’s money is no doubt demeaning enough.
Two experts who we’ve never heard of and in whom we will never have any interest have provided the finest produce for today’s challenge, including what George calls “bee pollen”. That’s not right, surely? Bees collect pollen, they don’t produce it. Is George wrong or is the Napa Valley selling us a lie?
Anyway.
Elena, Trent, Mimi and Matt the Amateur must make a dish celebrating the grape. The best cook of the day will proceed directly to finals week — as usual the greatest reward for a passionate amateur cook is being allowed to stop cooking for as long as possible.
The amateurs get to work in the fragrant air of Inglenook, the vineyard providing a majestic backdrop and flies constantly going up their noses. The ideal dish to celebrate grapes is, of course, wine: what the judges are desperately hoping for is that all four amateurs just give them a big box of wine and let them go mad. Sadly, all of them have decided to make food instead.
George and Gary wander to Trent’s bench to congratulate him on finding his identity. Earlier in the week Trent hadn’t found his identity, but then he cooked a steak and now he’s cooking a quail and everyone is orgasming over his identity, so I guess Trent’s identity is “a man who increases the temperature of animal flesh”.
Mimi is making a sorbet, also known as “the coward’s parfait”. Parfait of course is known as “the idiot’s semifreddo”, and a semifreddo is known as a major character in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy, so it all comes full circle really.
Matt the Amateur is making a jus, which is just typical of him. He describes in detail how to make a jus, and although that might sound fairly boring, it’s actually surprising how much more boring it is than you’d expect. His plan to combine chicken jus and rack of lamb in an unholy avian-mammal hybrid dish hits a snag when Gary and George visit him and notice that he isn’t using any grapes in his dish. Matt the Amateur has, in the first ten minutes, completely forgotten what the task is, and he is crestfallen, but to be fair to Matt the Amateur, he is quite dim.
It seems disastrous that Matt the Amateur has started making a dish with no grapes in it, but suddenly a brainwave hits: he’ll put grapes in it! Crisis over.
With less than an hour to go, Mimi realises she’s got a problem, which is rather slow of her, as we figured that out weeks ago. Her problem is something about her sorbet not being dark enough or not setting or some goddamn thing, so she puts grape juice in it, and that seems to satisfy her, so I guess we can stop worrying about Mimi’s fractured psyche for a few more minutes.
Elena is thinking about how she can use vine leaves — experts recommend that the best way to use vine leaves is to wrap garbage in before throwing it in the bin. Instead, Elena decides to cook it, which seems like a terrible mistake to me, but then I am neither a chef nor a lunatic.
Gary and George have a discussion about the amateurs’ dishes and what they think of them, and the consensus seems to be that Gary and George would really like to fight each other but their contracts don’t allow it. They also agree that if Mimi’s sorbet sets, her dish could stand out because it’s the only dessert, although I think that after the first half of this season was 95% desserts — and 95% of those were parfaits — any dessert at all should be severely penalised.
It’s time for Mimi’s sorbet to go into the freezer. She still has to make cake and blue cheese cream and really it all seems a bit much. What’s wrong with a nice parma, I say.
Elena gets her vine leaves out of the oven and they start to crumble to dust, which surprisingly is what she was aiming for. I guess her time in the two-Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn, with its emphasis on forest-floor litter and mushroom-ruining, has really taught her a thing or two about making people eat things that aren’t technically food.
Gary and George don’t love Elena’s idea of a lavender-infused goat’s cheese, but that’s only because it’s ridiculous. Why does everyone use goat’s cheese now anyway? What’s wrong with cow’s cheese? I feel like cow’s cheese was good enough for our grandparents AKA the Greatest Generation. Even switching it up to sheep’s cheese once in a while would at least break the monotony, but it’s like everyone on TV is in the pocket of Big Goat.
Trent’s got the texture that he wants, but I think he’s just talking about his dish. Meanwhile Mimi’s sponge is cooling down and regretting its previous bad temper.
At this point we get a prolonged close-up of the Qantas logo on Mimi’s sleeve, just in case we forgot who’s paying for this freaking thing.
Elena has most of her elements done and is feeling a lot happier, which is nice to see, because frankly, I want Elena to be happy. She deserves it. Gary comes to her bench to stick his dirty greasy fat finger right in her sauce like some kind of savage. Now her whole dish is going to taste like the grime under Gary’s nails. Great.
Meanwhile Matt the Amateur takes his lamb out of the oven, and he says it’s pretty soft, which is disappointing coming from a man who was in a prime position to promote a more inclusive model of masculinity to the TV-watching population.
Mimi has her head in the freezer, a peculiarly inefficient method of suicide. Her sorbet hasn’t set, which she blames on the alcohol, but I think at some point sorbet has to take responsibility for its own behaviour.
“Five minutes to go!” yells Matt, who has marked this very special occasion in Masterchef history by dressing as a grape. Mimi is arranging her elements on the plate, but will leave the sorbet till the last second, a tactic that never works.
Meanwhile George is doing that thing where he bullies everyone into shouting “Yes George” at him. He’s been doing it all season and eventually one of these amateurs is going to go him with a filleting knife.
All Elena has to do is glaze the quail. If you know what I mean.
With ten seconds to go, Mimi’s sorbet has miraculously set, and she will be able to serve a dish. Matt the Amateur has bigger worries — his lamb might be undercooked, thus rendering his entire life till now a waste.
As the judges prepare to taste, Gary muses that he doesn’t think they’ve seen as good a food in this competition so far, and the viewer muses that that sentence doesn’t make much sense. Matt thinks it’s the combination of the produce and the location and possibly the fact that given the mysterious art of “practising”, logically the food is going to get better as time progresses now isn’t it you halfwits.
I’m kind of sick of people saying “produce”, to be honest. They’re really overplaying their hand with the produce thing. Anyway if you wanted to really challenge the amateurs you’d give them crappy produce. This “great produce” stuff is just making it easy for them. But I digress.
The judges taste Trent’s dish, which is quail with something unpleasant smeared on the plate next to it. The quail breast is cooked perfectly, but it’s just another reminder why cooking quail is such a pointless endeavour: it’s got about as much meat on it as former Australian fast bowler Bruce Reid.
Matt the Amateur comes in to serve his lamb and tell the story about how his wife told him he’d be slammed for his plating and so he is desperate to stay in the competition and not have to go back to the terrible lack of support he suffers from in his marriage.
Who tells their spouse they’ll be slammed for their plating? Who takes notice of their spouse’s plating? This is no basis for a happy long-term relationship.
Anyway.
Matt the Amateur’s lamb is cooked perfectly, which seems to really disappoint Gary. George shovels in a hunk of meat and then wipes up the gravy with his finger. For god’s sake can’t they cut George’s table manners out of the final edit?
Mimi is feeling pretty excited because her dish is heroing grapes and red wine, causing another portion of her eternal soul to turn black and die forever due to use of the word “heroing”. She tells the judges how happy she is when she finishes a dish. “It’s a beautiful thing, Mimi,” Gary says in the tones of someone about to tell their patient they have a week to live. George tells Mimi she has incredible power, and obviously everyone’s gone mad because it’s just a sorbet.
Gary, suspecting poison, sniffs the sorbet carefully before tasting. The judges are very impressed with how grapey Mimi’s dish is, and say the word “pops” a bit more often than is strictly necessary.
Here comes Elena, hoping that the lavender flavour doesn’t overpower the dish, but it seems pretty likely that it will, because the first three dishes haven’t had anything to criticise, so the lavender is definitely about to cop it in the neck.
But before the judges taste Elena’s quail, she obviously has to undergo a tedious interrogation about her feelings and whether it’s dawned on her that she’s one dish away from finals week and then she might win and then she might, you know, release a line of sauces and guest host The Project etc. She answers like a relatively normal human being without saying “heroing” so I think a big tick for Elena.
The judges are impressed with the dehydrated vine leaves and the frenching of the bone, and I wonder if the young eager foodies they once were are now ashamed of what they’ve become.
“How bloody good is that?” asks Gary as the Masterchef Happy Times String Quartet breaks into the Feelgood Sonata. “Everything about it is joy,” says Matt, possibly laying it on a bit thick but then what do you expect from a man in a Violet Beauregarde costume. Unexpectedly the lavender hasn’t overwhelmed Elena’s quail, which is an impressive feat because technically lavender shouldn’t be in food at all unless you are the sort of person who eats perfume.
Gary tells the amateurs they’ve done the Napa Valley location proud but if you ask me the location probably couldn’t care less. Everyone has done very well, but the brutally unjust and arbitrary rules of Masterchef dictate that there can only be one winner. The judges agree that one dish stood above the rest, and it’s no coincidence that that dish belonged to Elena, who is going to win the whole thing as we know.
Tune in tomorrow, when the amateurs go to Skywalker Ranch and have to slow-roast a Bantha.
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