Masterchef Recap: A Simple Twist of Fete
The amateurs enter Masterchef headquarters and find three kitchens set up, which is terrifying to most of them, as cooking isn’t really their thing. The amateurs will be separated into teams and made to cook for several thousand fete-goers, with instructions from Gary to not only feed them, but also “put a smile on their faces”: so it’s a bit of multi-tasking. Also they have to make something using jam for some reason.
Matt asks Nigella what she thinks of when she thinks of fetes, and it quickly becomes clear that when Nigella thinks of fetes, she thinks of enormous quantities of alcohol. “Having baked at a lot of fetes I arglebargleglaahhhhhhh buck for your bake mmmm,” she slurs. We are in for an entertaining evening.
George declares that every team needs a sheriff — has everyone been hitting the turps? — and the amateurs are split into red, blue and yellow teams. Gary explains that the kitchens are in HERE, and the stalls at the fete are out THERE, in case anyone thought the stalls were inside the building but invisible.
The teams begin planning their menus, leaning over large pieces of butcher’s paper and saying names of foods frenetically at each other. Harry, captain of the red team, declares that what they need is something people like to eat that is also very expensive, because he doesn’t quite understand…anything, really. He goes on to force his team to make his stupid “brookies” from the night before, the little fascist.
As the cooking begins, the realisation hits Heather that they need to make a lot of food. She got there in the end, I guess. Nigella comes around to ask Heather what the yellow team is making, and ask her if she knows where she can get a kebab on the way home. Heather tells Gary that they’re making cold corn on the cob. Gary explains that this is a very stupid idea. Heather changes tack and decides to make a cold potato salad, which is also a stupid idea but won’t piss Gary off.
Nigella and Gary tell Harry that his brookies are bad and he should feel bad, but Harry is determined to make his brookies against all reason. Or rather, he’s going to make Cecilia make them, even though Cecilia thinks they’re stupid too. Having failed to convince Harry of his own fatal hubris, Nigella staggers woozily on to the blue team’s kitchen, where Matt the Amateur is practically aroused by how many ingredients he’s got.
Nigella and Gary inform each other that today’s challenge is, in fact, a challenge. Nigella waxes lyrical about how idiotic Harry is, because guess what, making a midnight snack for one person and making the same thing for five hundred are quite different tasks. The effort of explaining this takes its toll on Nigella, who has to duck behind the blast freezer to throw up.
Cecilia has a suggestion for Harry and her suggestion is, “Harry you’re a moron.” Meanwhile Matt the Amateur is going into far too much detail about how to make frittatas. Nobody cares, Matt. Things get interesting when, in Matt’s words, “Nigella throws a bit of a spanner in the works”. In her current condition this could easily be literal, but in fact all she’s doing is telling Matt the Amateur that he doesn’t know how to make frittatas properly. The problem is solved by Brett suggesting that they deep-fry the potatoes, and simultaneously revealing that there is someone on the show called “Brett”.
It’s starting to get confusing because one team is using chorizo and another team has a person called Theresa and “chorizo” and “Theresa” sound kind of the same, so one minute Matt the Amateur is putting Theresa in his frittata and the next minute Harry is asking chorizo how much cabbage he needs. And chorizo doesn’t know how much cabbage he needs because she can’t do multiplication. She stares briefly at the calculator in front of her, wondering idly whether it can be used to figure out mathematical problems, but this proves to be a dead end, so she asks Cecilia instead. “Thirty-seven kilos,” says Cecilia. “Holy fuck,” says Theresa. “Jesus shitting Christ,” says Harry, for whom nothing is going right today.
Over on the yellow team Chloe is stirring a massive pot a la the invention room in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, or depending on how the flavour turns out, the big vat that Charlie’s mother washes clothes in in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The yellow team is making “blondies”, which are a sweet snack made from shredded 1930s comic strips. Elena says panickedly that they have jam coming out of their ears, which I’m pretty sure is not true because if it was they’d all be screaming in agony as the jam is extremely hot. Heather orders Elena to cool the jam down. Elena obediently goes to the freezer, puts a tray of jam on the shelf, and breaks the shelf. Things are going very well. The yellows throw away several trays of jam because they have bits of glass in them, which I consider excessively cautious.
We briefly cut to a woman from the blue team who I’ve never seen before, but the action is all in the yellow kitchen, where Heather declares that it’s all looking a bit of a mess, and when you’re right you’re right.
Back to the blue team, where the amateurs debate how much to charge for their food, not realising the smart thing to do would be charge ten cents for everything so nobody even goes to the other teams all day. “Brett” takes the blue team’s dishes to the fete, and finds the other teams haven’t arrived yet, because the yellow team is busy breaking things and the red team is still debating whether to assassinate Harry.
When the red team does show up, Harry takes note of the other teams’ prices and cannily decides to charge more than them, because he knows the best way to attract customers is to make sure your products cost more than your competitors’ products.
Dissatisfied with cupcake sales, “Brett” wanders out into the crowd and starts ruining everyone’s day, badgering them until they buy a cupcake to get rid of him. The judges have turned up, Matt resplendent in a plus-size replica of Prince’s suit, Nigella not actually knowing where she is.
Disaster has struck the red team who have run out of salad. Should’ve used the calculator. Harry runs back to the kitchen to have a bit of a cry.
Meanwhile everyone is having fun at the fete, except for the people who want food, who are spending untold hours standing in line waiting for the hapless amateurs to fumble their way through service. Two young girls say the cupcakes are good, but they’re just kids so what would they know. Meanwhile Nigella tastes the cupcakes and burbles something incoherent about raspberries before demanding another bottle.
The judges try “Mimi’s hedgehog”, which is a saucy euphemism if ever I heard one. As they taste Matt the Amateur’s disgusting frittata, the crowd is busy stroking a goat, and if they are smart, preparing to eat it.
There is much rejoicing in the yellow team as Heather arrives with the blondies and the starving masses are given some sustenance. Back at the judges’ table Nigella claims that there is something “cosy” about the yellow team’s potato salad, and consequently tries to climb inside it and have a bit of a sleep.
Pricing has become a hot-button issue. “Brett” sends Matt the Amateur off to check out the other teams’ prices, and Matt the Amateur is shattered to discover that the red and yellow teams are charging far more for their food than the blue team, because he does not understand economics.
The end of the day is approaching, and thousands of customers are passing out from hunger and heatstroke. A little girl says she likes the chicken salad. Why are all the people offering opinions little girls? Were they the only ones who liked any of the food?
At the judges’ table: “The chicken is quite juicy, isn’t it?” Nigella asks, far too intoxicated to actually know. They enjoy the red team’s cookies. Nigella describes them as “home-baked”, having completely forgotten that they were actually baked in a professional kitchen on a TV show.
All the teams are dropping their prices in an attempt to clear their surplus and make everyone who bought their lunch earlier in the day feel like suckers. It doesn’t make much difference since very few fete-goers are still conscious. And then time is up and everyone cheers for reasons they themselves do not fully understand.
The amateurs have raised almost $18,000 for charity, which is pretty impressive considering none of them had the slightest idea what they were doing, although pretty unimpressive in many other ways.
Gary asks Nigella what she thought of the day, and she thought it was a fabulous day because she hasn’t had to pay for any of her drinks. She enthuses about “all the smiling faces” as she gazes off into the middle distance at god knows what and flaps absent-mindedly at the brim of her hat. But the judges’ opinion, refreshingly, doesn’t matter when it comes to who wins — it’s the yellow team that takes the non-existent prize, their oestrogen-charged mixture of glass-filled jam and mushy potato salad proving a winner. The red team squeaks into second, having overcome the handicap of Harry’s brain.
This means that the blue team loses and will face elimination. Was it their inadequate pricing that lost them the challenge? No, it’s just because they are inadequate human beings.
Tune in tomorrow night when Nigella tries a hair of the dog.
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