Masterchef Recap: Advantage Nobody

Tonight! The challenge that all Masterchef fans have been waiting for assuming they don’t really enjoy high stakes or drama. That’s right: the contest for “the advantage”. Who knows? It’s a mystery. All Gary will tell us is that it is “game-changing”, which going on past experience with Masterchef probably means “small, disappointing and effectively useless”.

To gain this game-changing uselessness, the final four will cook off against each other in pairs, and then the winners of each pair will cook against each other. To determine the pairs, the word “winter” has been printed on two knives, and the word “summer” has been printed on two knives, which is almost certainly the plot of at least one episode of Midsomer Murders. The knives announce their decision: Sashi versus Khanh, Jess versus Ben.

Jess says there’s a lot of pressure on her because Ben has “lots of great ideas”, so clearly she’s confused about which one Ben is. Once she finds out, she’ll be relieved. Jess is making a PB&J opera cake, which I think is some kind of cake or something. This is her “winter theme”, because in winter everyone, I dunno, goes to the opera?

For his part, Ben is making a crab bisque, perfect for those chilly winter nights when you crave a hot bowl of soup to pour over your face. He is using every part of the crab, which he honours as a noble adversary.

Sashi is cooking pan-seared barramundi, which is a very summery dish because…I suppose…pan-searing involves making things hot, which is what happens in summer? George demands to know why his dish represents summer. Sashi demands to know what “At Swisse, ingredients make all the difference” fucking means. They agree to disagree.

Khanh’s summer dish is a granita. From memory, a granita is a sort of sweet biscuit from Arnott’s, but on Masterchef a granita is some kind of weird frozen drink thing. Khanh’s making his with absinthe, AKA “the green fairy” AKA “Kylie Minogue” AKA “Dannii Minogue”, which makes it extremely summery as evidenced by the video clip for Dannii’s 1993 smash hit “This Is It”.

Time is travelling fast, which is unusual for Masterchef, but then you remember there is a whole second round to go and you know this’ll drag just as much as any other episode.

Matt visits Jess, who tells him how she’s using fresh raspberries for her winter dish. Matt asks her if she thinks raspberries grow in winter. Jess stares at him, obviously surprised to discover that raspberries grow at all — she thought they were a kind of shellfish. Jess immediately decides to instead make a raspberry jelly, the kind you see growing all over the place in winter.

Khanh is thinking about parties and plotting how best to get the judges blind drunk, which he sees as his best chance of winning. “What have you got left to do?” Matt asks him. Khanh has a lot left to do — settle down, buy a house, raise a family, invest his super wisely — but Matt advises him to concentrate on cooking just for the moment.

Time is no longer moving fast. There is an awful lot of, like, cooking going on. They’re cooking all over the place. Jess is looking in the blast chiller and finding that her jelly isn’t set. She decides to make a raspberry cream, just like the raspberry creams we all love to eat on freezing winter days.

Sashi turns his fish over and over, desperately trying to find some clue as to the identity of the killer. He puts the fish in a little bowl with some grilled fennel to make sure it is thoroughly humiliated.

Meanwhile Ben appears to be drinking gravy. He might have cracked.

Khanh drains his sago, and he does it right out in the open where everyone can see. Shameless.

With ten seconds to go, the final four put the finishing touches on their dishes and also duck into the green room to get their hair and makeup touched up.

Khanh puts his granita forward for tasting first. “This granita has melted so quickly,” says George, as if Khanh is responsible for the laws of thermodynamics. Things melt, George. There’s lights, there’s judge-breath, it’s a hot environment. Get over it. Ironically, he’s making a fuss about the granita turning to liquid, and yet will happily eat soup, which is all liquid, without saying anything.

Matt also blames Khanh for the granita melting, and it’s all terribly unfair. He complains about the absinthe being too strong, which proves that Matt just doesn’t like to party.

Khanh’s mortal enemy, Sashi, steps up with his vanquished barramundi. He pours a very liquidy sauce all over it, yet no judges complain that the sauce has melted. Racism? All the judges love Sashi’s fish, especially because it’s ligh on the absinthe, and Sashi’s victory over his hated enemy Khanh seems assured.

Jess steps up. “I’ve made a PB&J opera cake,” she says.

“PB&J? I’m terrible with abbreviations,” says Gary.

“PB&J?” says Jess.

“PB&J,” says Gary.

“PB&J,” Jess agrees.

“PB&J!” Gary cries.

This goes on for AGES. Finally Jess figures out what Gary is asking, and explains what PB&J means, which proves to be a mistake, because Gary opines that the PB&J opera cake doesn’t have any PB&J in it. Then Matt says that the PB&J opera cake isn’t actually an opera cake, and Jess is pretty much screwed.

Ben steps up and serves his bisque, explaining that it’s a great thing to eat on a winter night while getting good and drunk. Interestingly, his bisque looks like a mass of intestinal worms sitting in a bowl of blood garnished with human ears, but it apparently tastes nothing like a David Lynch film at all. The judges love it, and have no opinions that it’s not actually a bisque or that squid ink doesn’t grow in winter. So Jess has been pummelled in this one. The judges go on and on about how great Ben’s bisque is, almost as long as Jess and Gary said “PB&J” for.

And so the second round will be…

Sashi versus Ben, for the *cough* “advantage”.

Sashi and Ben have sixty minutes to cook a dish representing “autumn”. What could this mean? They should cook leaves? Only time will tell. Lots of time.

“When I think of autumn, I resonate with those beautiful colours of the leaves,” says Ben, possibly sarcastically, it’s hard to tell with him. Hard to believe he actually means that though. Sashi says he is inspired by the “trees and colours” — everyone is so cliched about autumn. Why not think outside the box and cook an edible firework?

Ben has taken a lot of time in the pantry, but has come up with a great idea: leave the pantry. Once he’s done that, he begins cooking a fish. He’s doing some other stuff too, but that’s the nub of it: a fish. Gary and George are concerned about his intention to use tarragon, because tarragon smells like grass. I don’t know either: I guess it’s some kind of foodie secret language.

Ben runs back to the pantry for some “me” time. He begins sniffing all the produce to see which ones smell the least like grass. Meanwhile Sashi is chopping up cauliflower, to punish it for tasting so awful. Sashi is making a lamb curry, to signify everyone’s favourite autumn activity: slaughtering lambs.

Gary visits Ben at his new home in the pantry. “I think I’ve now got the autumn theme nailed,” he says, carrying a bowl of small brown things. He is going to make some parsnip chips, which sounds like a terrible idea, but we know these judges are pretty weird, so maybe they’ll like these disgusting chips.

Suddenly, Sashi drops a bombshell by running to the pantry, encroaching on Ben’s turf. He runs around gasping, “honey, honey”, so he might be looking for honey, or a girlfriend.

“To make the parsnip chips I fry them in oil until they’re crisp and golden,” says Ben. Really, Masterchef? We really needed to keep that line in the show? That was crucial information? Bloody hell.

Sashi’s marsala paste is ready, and his diabolical plan is close to fulfilment. The awakening is at hand. Viggo the Carpathian stands ready.

Meanwhile, Ben is explaining that he takes a lot of pride in cooking fish, because he could never find anything else to take pride in.

Sashi can smell the smokiness coming from the cauliflower. It reminds him of autumn: the season of death and decay, the season of endings and bitter parting. Sashi’s cauliflower drives him into a deep depression.

Ben is happy with his parsnip chips, and declares his dish “an autumn version of fish and chips”, as if regular fish and chips is something nobody eats in autumn. There is genuine doubt at this stage over whether Ben knows what autumn is.

Time is up. The judges demand to be fed like the angry gods of old. Ben serves his trout and gross parsnip chips. He says he’s happy with it, but he says it sorrowfully, feeling homesick for the pantry.

The judges taste. “I love it,” says Gary, the crawly little suck. “You’ve got an amazing way with fish,” says Matt, a vile accusation that Ben somehow takes as a compliment.

Sashi serves up his spicy autumn sadness. “Why is this autumn?” asks George. Sashi answers to the best of his ability even though the correct response is, “I don’t fucking know George, why is anything autumn? What the fuck even is this dumb challenge?”

The judges taste. “I’m confused,” says George, as Gary reads him the Fair Work Act. “Protein protein, amazing. Puree puree, amazing. Sauce sauce, amazing,” George goes on, causing onlookers to worry he’s entered some kind of fugue state. The other judges seem to like it though.

But who will win…

the ADVANTAGE?

Oh it’s Ben.

“Are you more surprised, are we more surprised?” chuckles Gary, acknowledging how unexpected it is that Ben is good at anything. And then…the ADVANTAGE is revealed.

And it is…

Ben gets to choose which course he gets to cook in tomorrow’s restaurant challenge.

Wow. That’s huge. I am stunned by the sheer magnitude of this advantage. How can anyone beat Ben now? That was totally worth waiting for. How much more M. Night Shyamalanish can this ever-twisting-and-turning show get?

Ben leaves the kitchen arm in arm with his defeated comrades, who are in good spirits after learning how crappy the prize they missed out on is.

Tune in tomorrow, when the final four go to Bondi to drip sweat into food they are giving to members of the public.

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