Masterchef Recap: Colour Me Badd
Like a man who, after struggling through the desert for days with no food or water, just when all seems lost, finds a loaded gun, we have reached the end of Heston Week. One day this will all seem like a dream. A dream about a horrible thing that happened once.
The potential eliminees arrive at Masterchef HQ in their black aprons, all eager to discover who will cook the most ineptly and thereby win the prize of a blessed release from the remorseless torment of Masterchef.
The judges greet them by turning out the lights, raising expectations that a murder is about to take place. Instead, they just project a rainbow on the wall. Theresa refers to it as “the most beautiful rainbow”, but a more objective assessment would probably be that it is a less beautiful rainbow than any rainbow which is actually a real rainbow.
The meaning of the rainbow is that apparently colour plays an enormous part in food. Like earlier in the week, when memory played an enormous part in food. Or that other time when ferris wheels played an enormous part in food. When Heston is around, everything plays an enormous part in food except for taste. Apparently Heston is even now working on complex experiments to figure out ways to turn foods different colours or some stupid crap.
The point is, everyone is going to be given a different colour to cook with, and the colours are selected by having the amateurs pull a knife out of a knife block, combining random chance with the temptation to stab George. Obviously this challenge is grossly unfair, because Matt the Amateur has been given blue, and we already know from George Carlin that there are no blue foods: but nobody ever said that Masterchef was fair. Or at least nobody ever said Masterchef was fair to Matt the Amateur.
They rush to the pantry to pick ingredients. Matt stands in the pantry staring blankly at various foods. Then he has the brainwave that most of us had several minutes ago: the sea is blue, and some kinds of food come out of the sea.
Meanwhile Chloe has decided not to take indigo literally, but rather to take it as a metaphor for her grandmother. So she’s going to make a grandmother out of ice cream or something, I don’t know, Heston Week has been going so long it’s hard to focus. She really hopes her dish makes sense, which is the kind of thing people say when they have no clue about how to make a dish make sense.
Theresa, aware as ever of her time constraints, starts drawing pictures of the dish she wants to make. She’s been given red, so she decides to make something with a twist, red being the traditional colour of twists. She is also making a parfait because this is 2016, the year when every Masterchef contestant fell prey to the burrowing brain worms that cause one to constantly think of parfaits.
Theresa notes that 75 minutes isn’t really enough time to do what she wants to do, but because it’s elimination, she wants to take a risk. This decision is based on her experiences of the previous night, when she tried to make something that she didn’t have enough time to make and was put into elimination because she didn’t have enough time to make it. Say what you like about Theresa, but nobody could ever accuse her of learning from her mistakes. Not to mention the objective fact that elimination is the one time when risk-taking is to be actively discouraged.
But at least Theresa has confidence, however unjustified. Confidence is scarce at Chloe’s bench, as the perpetually nervous young woman tries to explain her concept of grandmotherly indigo vibes to Heston. Heston asks her what it’ll look like. Chloe had no idea: nobody told her there would be follow-up questions. She begins to panic. Although to be honest she began to panic twenty years ago and she hasn’t stopped.
Brett is making a green ants’ nest and god only knows, really.
Trent is making violet chicken, having missed a prime opportunity to make a violet crumble, the idiot. Heston tastes Trent’s sauce and only just avoids vomiting. Apparently it smells amazing, which is lucky because it looks like the bowels of hell.
Yellow always makes Heather think of lemons, so she’s making something called a “lemon sultana delicious”. But she wants to put a modern twist on it, because aren’t we all just so sick of boring old lemon sultana deliciouses day in and day out? Like Theresa, she also wants to take a risk. I have no idea where this obsession with taking risks came from: taking risks is punished severely in the Masterchef kitchen and always has been. Heston and George stop by to let her know that flavour is important, which is news to me, based on every occasion I’ve ever seen Heston do anything.
Theresa’s raspberry parfait is looking good, and she is apparently feeling no shame whatsoever about her disgraceful decision to make a parfait. As a karmic punishment, she spills liquid nitrogen into her parfait and great clouds of nitrogen vapour billow around the kitchen, making the scene strongly reminiscent of a bombsite, which is quite apt.
Elena is talking a lot about how emotional the colour orange makes her, which isn’t a very interesting subject.
Meanwhile Trent’s chicken looks like it’s suffering a hideous skin disease, but the women on the balcony keep telling him how good it smells, so I guess it’s OK. Not that I have ever trusted balcony wisdom.
Chloe has realised that her weird “winter garden” idea won’t really cut the indigo mustard, so she’s decided to put it on an indigo plate, which she hopes will trick the judges into thinking she’s done something clever. She is also using liquid nitrogen because it’s Heston Week and everyone assumes that Heston only likes food made using liquid nitrogen, in which assumption they are probably correct.
Theresa’s dome has come out beautifully, in a depressingly predictable outcome. She is so happy, almost crying with joy. The births of her children are knocked down a place on the list of happiest moments of Theresa’s life.
Meanwhile Elena knows she’s done the right thing with her orange whatever or something I guess.
Back to Heather’s lemon sultana delicious, a recipe she got from her mum, making this technically plagiarism. She too is going to use liquid nitrogen because obviously it’s all about originality on this show.
Matt the Amateur is making a rockpool. Not an actual rockpool, but a bunch of seafood that you might find in a rockpool if the rockpool was full of toxic chemicals that killed all the animals and stripped their skins off. Matt the Professional visits his bench to ask him what the blue element of the rockpool is, apparently too dense to realise that a rockpool has water in it. Matt the Professional tells Matt the Amateur that he needs to make his dish look blue, which is a FLAGRANT SHIFTING OF THE GOALPOSTS THE ORIGINAL TASK WAS TO USE THE COLOUR AS AN INSPIRATION NOBODY EVER SAID IT HAD TO LOOK BLUE MATT YOU DEVIOUS BASTARD.
Anyway Matt the Amateur runs to the pantry to find something blue to satisfy Preston’s deliberately malicious whims, and finds some blue mussels. They’re not really blue either, but I guess they’ve got blue in their name so whatever, it was stupid to ask someone to make blue food in the first place.
Back at Brett’s bench, he’s still making his ants’ nest, so good luck to him I suppose.
With two minutes to go, Theresa still has to cut out her white chocolate dots — because she’s doing a toadstool thing I guess? Ugh. Anyway, she’s absolutely frantic. Goodness who’d have predicted that Theresa would be pressed for time? Sometimes developments simply come out of the blue. Unless you’re Matt of course.
Chloe’s dish isn’t working. She has no indigo plate. There is no indigo on her plate. She runs a real risk of not fulfilling the requirements of this eminently stupid challenge. But if it’s any consolation, Heather has also completely stuffed up, her lemon sultana delicious having collapsed under the weight of its own despair. Too late to worry now though — time is up and judgment must be made.
Elena serves first, accompanying her orange food with a story about her father being a scuba diver and a photograph of her sister, which is cheating, really — if you can’t rely on your food alone, get the hell out of this kitchen. Then again, it is Heston Week, so naturally extraneous irrelevance will be rewarded. Heston says Elena’s dish is the best dish he’s had all week, testament to the poor skills of the Masterchef top ten.
Next is Chloe, who is happy with her flavours but not with the colour of her plate, or the colour of her food, or her level of self-esteem. Her only chance lies in convincing the judges that “indigo” is actually a synonym for “white”.
“Where’s the indigo?” asks George. Chloe obviously should say, “In my heart, George. In ALL our hearts.” But she’s just not quick enough a thinker. She just explains how the dish is supposed to evoke a night sky, which is a difficult case to make when everything is bright white. Matt has his head in his hands, his very moral core outraged and disgusted by this woman who has displayed the revolting temerity to serve him non-indigo food. All the judges can’t believe how low Chloe has sunk. But shouldn’t they wait to see whether the food tastes like indigo? No, they prejudge. Gary likes the sorbet, but “I like the sorbet” has always been code for “this is bullshit”.
Brett serves his ants’ nest and good on him.
Trent’s leprous chicken is quite a hit.
We move on from the two least interesting competitors to Matt the Amateur, who has served his rockpool to a muted reaction. The judges ask where the concept of blue comes in, even though it’s pretty obvious because it’s a frigging rockpool, you know? Water? Heard of it? Also the blue mussels, although because they’re not blue it’s a bit iffy. But they like it. Sort of.
In comes Theresa with her little toadstool which looks good but is a parfait so it can go to hell. George expresses wonder that since she’s returned to the competition she’s been so much more confident and energetic. “Forget the cooking for a minute,” he says, which is appropriate because it’s Heston Week. Everyone loves her bloody parfait, what a surprise.
Here’s Heather with her collapsed lemon sultana delicious, into which she claims to have put her heart and soul, implying that her heart and soul are collapsed and unimpressive. “You need to hope that when we taste that, it makes us think lemon,” says George, “because right now, I’m confused.” Since when is George’s state of confusion a relevant criterion? Are amateurs now expected to not only prepare delicious food, but to prevent George becoming confused? Because that is quite simply a task beyond even the greatest of chefs.
Also, the dish is called a lemon delicious, you should be thinking lemon before you taste it. It’s not hard. Dumbass.
George doesn’t get the idea. Gary doesn’t know what’s on his plate. Matt objects to the derailment of the lemon. Heston doesn’t say anything because he wants to go home and isn’t paying attention anymore. The judges agree the dish should be called “lemon disastrous”, which is needlessly cruel.
Scoring time. Theresa is complimented on a great dish. Brett is complimented on hardly being in tonight’s episode. Elena is told that Heston believed her dish belonged in a Michelin-starred restaurant. But she’s told by Matt, because Heston just refuses to talk anymore.
Compliments over, the insults begin. Matt the Amateur, Chloe and Heather are brought forward, leaving Trent in the coveted position of Person Who Is Neither Good Enough Nor Bad Enough To Mention. Matt the Amateur is slammed for his saltiness. Chloe is slammed for her…I don’t know, something. Heather is slammed for her whole dish being a horrible trainwreck, which means she’s going home and Chloe’s blood pressure dips slightly for a few more minutes.
“I’ve loved it,” says Heather. A postscript informs us that she has since started “Hay Day Foods”, selling flavoured butters, so there’s a warning for the dark roads that Masterchef can lead down.
Then we start the Masterclass, and everyone falls asleep. Tune in next week, when sanity resumes.
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