Masterchef Recap: Beet on the Brat
In the increasingly misogynistic Masterchef saga, four women are put up for elimination, four diverse characters with their own strengths and weaknesses:
- Theresa, whose strength is taking half an hour to think about the dish before she starts cooking, and whose weakness is being unable to stay eliminated.
- Anastasia, whose strength is creepily intense focus and whose weakness is uninteresting hair.
- Heather, whose strength is looking very young and very old at the same time, and whose weakness is I forgot she was on the show.
- Chloe, whose strength is owning a cool shirt and whose weakness is she always looks a bit like she needs to do a wee whenever she’s talking to camera.
Which of these feisty, passionate, food-liking ladies will emerge as a big fat loser in this elimination challenge? “If you want to win this competition, you’ll need to use every skill you have,” says Gary, but of course even if they all do that, one of them will go home, because sometimes every skill you have isn’t enough because you haven’t got many skills because God predetermined that you would be a failure.
With the scene set for an epic showdown, Corey Feldman arrives in the kitchen, having travelled directly from 1987. Corey is going undercover under the name “Flynn McGarry” to hide the fact he has mastered time travel, and has come to the Masterchef kitchen to force several older women to make a Beef Wellington.
“This ain’t no Beef Wellington!” says Theresa, and she is correct: it is in fact a BEET Wellington, which is like a Beef Wellington only it has beetroot instead of beef and is absolutely revolting.
Theresa is stunned at the Beet Wellington, and she is stunned that the guest chef is the same age as her daughter, and she is stunned that she is in a kitchen wearing an apron, and she is stunned that the sun rose that morning. Looks like we’re in for another big night of Theresa talking about things, folks.
Chloe loves beetroot, and what I’ve found interesting in my life is that a lot of people share this preference, which is weird, because Jesus Christ it’s beetroot.
Theresa claims the dish is “really really clever”, with a look on her face that suggests that the dish has murdered her parents or something.
The recipe has 52 steps, which is dangerous for Theresa because her usual method is to read the entire recipe eight times, copy it out in longhand, photocopy it fifty times and post the copies on various lamp posts around the country before starting to cook. This time though, she has decided to not waste time reading the whole recipe. “I’m going to go step by step,” she says, which sounds like as bad an idea as her normal technique is.
George asks Heather if she’s read the entire recipe. “No!” Heather guffaws, finding the notion delightfully comic. George can’t believe she’d be so reckless. Corey doesn’t even care: he only came to Australia for the surfing.
Theresa juices her beetroots and squirts juice everywhere. Harry snaps at her to focus from the balcony. Theresa doesn’t pick up the juicer and throw it at Harry’s dumb scraggly head, but she wants to and so do I.
Anastasia hasn’t even smoked her beetroot yet, having thoroughly absorbed the Just Say No message. The balcony calls out encouragement to her, because she’s feeling really flustered and what helps when you’re flustered is a lot of people yelling at you while you’re trying to concentrate. “She hasn’t even smoked her woodchips yet!” exclaims Elise, which confuses me — isn’t it the beetroot they’re supposed to be smoking? It’s like a Grateful Dead concert in here.
Anastasia loses her temper and starts a fire, the traditional method of creating a diversion in the kitchen. She’s so panicked and confused that even George isn’t willing to stay at her bench to undermine her confidence — he knows she’s screwing up fine without his help.
“I’m so excited to be making puff pastry today,” says Heather, who really does not have a lot going on in her life. She’s carrying a photo of her grandmother, who loved making pastry but probably didn’t find it quite this exciting.
Karmen shouts at Theresa that she doesn’t want her puff pastry to turn into shortcrust, which Theresa would never have known because apparently Karmen thinks she’s an idiot. Theresa swears that she won’t stop until her pastry is right, but this is a poor tactical decision if it turns out that this means she just keeps making pastry for two and a half hours.
Anastasia has caught up, possibly by cheating but I couldn’t speculate. “I hope I don’t make any mistakes,” she says in a rare and exclusive insight into the creative mind.
Heather is getting beetroots and onions ready for charring and putting into boiled water and seriously this whole dish just sounds awful. It’s got so much beetroot in it, and the bits that aren’t beetroot are other root vegetables, and on top of the beetroot is beetroot sauce, and then there’s gelatin for some reason? What kind of world are we living in?
Chloe has a messy bench. “A messy bench can really trip you up,” nods Harry wisely, as if he has the faintest clue what he’s talking about. Chloe loses track of herself and spills a bunch of her sauce. She’s running low on charred beetroot water (ugh) for the sauce.
“Do you have enough water?” asks Gary.
“Yep,” says Chloe.
“You sure?” says Gary.
“Yeah, it’s over there,” says Chloe.
“Measure it,” says Gary, a note of distinct menace creeping into his voice.
She measures it. She doesn’t have enough. Gary and Corey tell her that in order to have enough, she needs to have more than not-enough.
Corey doesn’t actually say much at all, to tell the truth, but to be fair he is VERY stoned.
Chloe decides to take a shortcut because she’s heard that always works out well for people. She doesn’t make more beetroot water (UGH), but instead waters down the water she’s got for her sauce. “I’m just hoping there’s enough flavour in it,” says Matt the Amateur, who quite clearly does not give two shits whether there’s enough flavour in it or not.
Theresa is wrapping her beetroot in pastry, and telling us all about and we’re all falling asleep because Theresa has this way of talking that just makes you want to drift away on clouds of blissful slumber. I think it’s because the producers insist on showing us long takes of her describing very boring cooking tasks in excruciating detail.
Meanwhile, remember Anastasia? She’s still doing stuff. She’d caught up before, but I think she’s fallen behind again. She has a buttload of stuff still to do and no time to do it in, so she gives up on life and just starts arranging large leaves in an attractive pattern.
It has become noticeable that the phrase “Beet Wellington” sounds a lot like “Beef Wellington” said by a person who can’t talk properly.
The balcony dwellers yell at Anastasia that she doesn’t have time to read the recipe. This is extremely helpful as Anastasia now has to use the time she doesn’t have arguing with the people on the balcony. Anastasia loses control of her pastry and her emotions. “I can’t see an end to this,” she says, but actually the problem is she CAN see an end, and it’s really, really close. She breaks down in floods of tears as the crew all high-five each other and yell “MONEY SHOT!”
George comes over to Anastasia. “Look at me!” he barks, for some reason wanting to kick a woman while she’s down. “You don’t need a recipe,” he lies. George urges her to cook by instinct, the worst advice he’s ever given anyone in a long and storied career of giving bad advice to people.
Anastasia, reinvigorated by George’s pathetically feeble pep talk, leaps about the kitchen with new energy, sticking things in ovens and dropping things in pots and wrapping things in plastic. “I’m going freestyle now,” she says, which as far as I can tell means she’s just chucking ingredients together and hoping it turns out to be something vaguely resembling the dish she’s been asked to make. “I’m not going home today,” she vows, raising suspicions of match-fixing.
Corey comes over to see how Theresa is going. She starts to tell him but he makes his disinterest clear and wanders off for a smoke. Theresa needs to make sure her green ball is nice and creamy, or at least that’s her story.
Chloe also desires a creamy green ball, but her ball is turning out too moist. She squeezes her ball until it oozes pink fluid and we’ve really passed into a realm way beyond “food” here.
Anastasia is cooking “by intuition”, or as some may put it, “badly”. If she knows what the fuck she’s doing, she’s not letting on. Meanwhile Theresa has pulled a big pastry turtle out of her oven and apparently it looks the way it should. Theresa’s mind is blown that a 17-year-old came up with this recipe, and she has a point: why would someone so young want to hurt people so badly?
Heather is running out of time, but is comforted by the knowledge that Anastasia is running out of much more time than she is running out of. Anastasia takes her Beet Wellington out of the oven and feels so so happy because her priorities have become irreparably warped this year.
The judges count down the last ten seconds while Corey stares blankly into space. Time is up. The amateurs hug each other with arms of hatred and jealousy.
“Cooking means everything to me, it’s my passion and it’s who I am,” says Anastasia, in an emotional speech the inclusion of which in the episode does not augur well for her.
Matt asks Corey whether he was impressed by the amateurs. Corey mumbles something about thinking everything is really awesome and having the munchies.
Heather serves first. She says she cares a lot, subtly implying that the others do NOT care a lot. I can see what she means. “I had so much fun doing that,” she lies.
“It looks really good,” says Corey about Heather’s dish, although it seems doubtful he even knows where he is at this stage. Everyone loves Heather’s Beet Wellington and she continues her record streak as Teacher’s Pet.
Next is Chloe, who is feeling nervous and looking like she needs a wee. “The sixth time you’ve been here in black,” points out George, disgusted by her fashion choices.
“The one thing I’m still learning is to trust myself,” says Chloe, although the watery sauce on her plate would suggest she should try unlearning that and learn to trust someone who knows what they’re doing instead. Her dish kind of looks like it’s had red cordial poured over it, but that would probably really improve it. Although her dish is flawed, it’s good enough to earn some life-affirming synthesiser noises on the soundtrack — which suddenly turn dark as Corey explains that the sauce is watery and Matt bitches about his insufficiently creamy green ball.
In comes Theresa with a wearisome speech about doing her best. “I hope I’ve done enough,” she adds, which is just a waste of time. Why say it? Does anyone walk in with their dish saying, “I hope I’ve fallen just short”? We could really cut that bit out of every episode and just take for granted that every contestant, in every task, hopes they’ve done enough.
Anyway Theresa’s Beet Wellington is fantastic. Matt says he thinks it’s the closest one yet to Corey’s own. “Yeh,” says Corey, bored out of his tiny mind and in no mood to talk.
In comes Anastasia with her pile of anxious garbage, praying that the flavours are present in this irretrievably ugly dish. “Why are you so upset at the prospect of leaving?” asks George, like some kind of gibbering halfwit. It turns out that Anastasia is upset at the prospect of leaving because she loves cooking and wants to win the competition. Amazing. Great question George you cretin.
The judges taste. “You know what’s interesting?” asks Gary, before going on to say some very uninteresting things. He likes the dish, but Corey notes that the dates aren’t smoked enough and the greens are too salty, which is just nitpicking surely. It all comes down to whose laughable failure is the most laughable. Chloe or Anastasia: which of these panic-stricken young flappers has most severely let herself and her family down?
Oh, turns out it was Anastasia. Her plating was so ramshackle that the taste needed to be perfect, and it wasn’t. I mean it wouldn’t have been anyway because come on, it was Beet Wellington. But it was pretty bad even for Beet Wellington, so off she goes.
And remember when she said, “I’m not going home today”? What a frigging liar.
Anastasia leaves the kitchen expressing a desire to inspire people about organic produce, which is a hard ask given that this is an inherently uninspiring subject. And so Chloe survives yet another elimination, while Corey Feldman wanders home to try and grow a pubic hair.
Tune in tomorrow night when everyone has a nervous breakdown.
Know what’s tastier than a Beet Wellington? My new book, Error Australis. Buy it today for an intellectual feast more satisfying and funnier than anything Corey Feldman ever cooked.
