Masterchef Recap: Stone Cold Crazy
Power Week continues to live up to its reputation as the most meaningless theme week Masterchef has ever undertaken. It’d have more genuine impact on the competition if one contestant got to wear Maggie Beer around their waist for a week.
Tonight there is a Very Special Guest Chef, or VSGC, in the shape of Curtis Stone, the world-famous foodsmith best-known for lying about how much a meal from Coles costs.
The amateurs get a day release and head out to Sails on the Bay, a beachside restaurant famous for its spectacular vistas of grey, depressing Port Phillip Bay. Today they will be split into teams of two and asked to make a six-course degustation, a culinary term that means “bunch of stuff I guess”.
As there are thirteen amateurs left, the power apron comes into play once more, as Theresa, the current wearer, is given the power to choose one contestant to sit out this challenge, thus sparing them the risk of elimination. Wow, what an amazing power! Getting the chance to grant someone other than yourself a massive advantage over you? Who wouldn’t want a power apron, when it allows you to personally select who benefits from a bonus that you don’t get? It’s such an incredible innovation, this power apron isn’t it? Isn’t it just FANTASTIC? What a COVETED PRIZE this apron is! All contestants just DREAM of getting a power apron, and giving someone else an advantage! This is almost as good as last night, when Anastasia got the chance to give someone else an advantage in a challenge she wasn’t participating in! HOW AMAZING IS IT THAT THIS POWER APRON EXISTS TO ADD SPICE TO THE COMPETITION.
Uh…anyway. Yeah.
In return for Anastasia helping her last night, Theresa helps Anastasia tonight. Anastasia will not have to cook the degustation and will thereby avoid having Curtis Stone leaning over her shoulder rubbing his stubble on the back of her neck.
Curtis’s theme for the degustation is citrus, a tribute to his ancestors who died of scurvy. Each pair will make a different course, and each pair gets assigned a different fruit, and each pair acts like they’re really excited to be handed a fruit by Curtis. “We’re really stoked to get orange!” says Matt the Amateur, in far more enthusiastic a manner than an adult man should respond to an orange.
Elise and Trent have been given mandarin, and are busy peeling prawns for the first course. “Do you wanna do a bunch of jus?” asks Elise sullenly, not bothering to hide how much she loathes working with Trent.
Brett loves lime. Lime is his life. Every day he gives his children several limes. Deep down inside he thinks of himself less as a man than as a lime. Trust me, being given lime as his citrus for fourth course is literally the greatest moment of Brett’s life. He and Mimi are combining the lime with eye fillet, which hardly sounds hygienic.
Second course is Harry and Karmen, and they are working with lemon and fish, which makes much more sense than steak and lime. Harry uses “hero” as a verb and once again we are reminded: Harry is scum.
Trent and Elise are worried that their prawn salad is too simple, being a few rocket leaves, some segmented mandarin and a prawn on top. Their worries seem to be well-founded. Curtis comes over to tell them their salad is too simple. Gary and George ask what’s going on. Curtis tells them Trent and Elise’s salad is too simple. Gary and George have a look and say that it’s too simple. The universe seems to be trying to tell Trent and Elise something, if only they knew what it was. Elise doesn’t care much: she hates Trent so much she’s willing to throw this challenge if it means he might go home.
“This is a degustation, and you need to ask yourself, is that good enough?” asks George, but they can’t answer this question because they don’t know what the first part of the sentence has to do with the second. Curtis suggests they think of something interesting to do with rocket, presumably hinting at the possibility of throwing it away, but instead they make some pesto.
Elena and Theresa are SO EXCITED to get tangelo. Tangelo was JUST WHAT THEY WERE HOPING FOR. Theresa considers it her sacred duty to make a dessert out of tangelo. Elena, for her part, is feeling extremely resentful because Theresa doesn’t deserve to be there.
Elena and Theresa tell Curtis their idea for making a warm dessert and leaving the last course for something lighter. Curtis explains that you’re supposed to do it the other way around you stupid women. Everyone has a good laugh. Theresa decides to make juice explode in people’s mouths. Elena announces that they need more balls.
Meanwhile Elise and Trent are going to cure the prawns in mandarin juice. “Why didn’t we think of this earlier?” asks Elise, but she probably doesn’t want to know the answer as it is extremely insulting to her personally. “You never know, this could be enough to save us,” she says, but to be honest, sometimes you do know, eh.
“Can you hear that noise? That’s our GUESTS arriving!” bellows Curtis, becoming infuriated by the amateurs’ pathetic ineptitude.
Chloe wants to keep it light and fresh for the last course. Curtis explains, as he did to Theresa and Elena, that this is a terrible idea. Chloe and Nicolette take this on board and decide to ignore him. “It’s a risk to go against what Curtis said,” Nicolette acknowledges, but she didn’t get where she is today by not wilfully doing the opposite of what the experienced professional who holds her fate in his hands tells her to.
Service has begun and the judges are delighted to be served Elise and Trent’s sad salad dregs. “I think it’s really pretty,” says Gary, even though it looks like it’s been chewed by cats before being served. The verdict: it ticks the box in terms of mandarin, but they lose marks for being responsible for that phrase existing. One customer thinks the prawns weren’t marinated enough. Another customer thinks the same thing. The customers find the inadequate marination of the prawns outrageous.
Back in the kitchen, Nicolette says “grapefruit” over and over and over again, who knows why.
Time for the second course. “There’s a lot of pressure, it’s like Curtis standing on your head,” says Harry somewhat bizarrely. I mean, I guess if Curtis were standing on your head, you would be feeling a lot of pressure, but…
The judges agree that the second course looks beautiful, or as beautiful as it’s possible for salmon to look without a grizzly bear’s mouth around it. A customer thinks the salmon is beautiful. Another says it’s delicious. Salmon and lemon is apparently much better than prawn and mandarin, or maybe Harry and Karmen are just much better than Elise and Trent (pssst, I know which one is true).
After a relatively smooth first two courses, finally something really fun happens, as Curtis notices Matt the Amateur cooking his duck and completely loses it. “You’ve got like ten minutes!” he explodes. Matt the Amateur stares blankly at him, having never encountered the idea of linear time till now. Matt the Amateur thought they had about half an hour left. He offers no explanation for why he thought this. I assume he just takes the default position that in any given situation, there’s always half an hour left. He’s had a pretty relaxed life up to now.
Curtis is incandescent with rage. “WHAT IS GOING ON?” he screams. Angry Curtis Stone is so much better than happy Curtis Stone, it’s awesome.
Meanwhile Brett is carving up his beef, so to speak. “We’re in a good place,” he says, not having looked out the window. Then we have to listen to Theresa explaining how her tangelo balls explode again. Honestly Theresa, your exploding juice is not as interesting as you think it is.
Fifteen minutes into third course service, Matt the Amateur and Heather are ready to serve. Curtis is muttering darkly with murder on his mind. Matt the Amateur has lost track of which duck went in first. He’s really happy with the way they’ve heroed orange, but he’s worried about the duck, although he should be worried about saying “heroed” because it means he’s a dickhead.
“I love everything about that dish apart from the duck,” says Matt, and once again being bad at cooking has come back to bite a contestant on a cooking show.
In the kitchen, Chloe and Nicolette are pressing on with their plan to serve a terrible idea for the last course. “We both think that a dark chocolate ganache is the right thing to do,” says Chloe, but she should bear in mind that what they both think has proven to be shockingly ill-advised throughout the day.
Curtis pops in to ask Chloe and Nicolette what they’re doing. They explain their idea for a light refreshing gross dessert with dark chocolate. “It’s the last course, it has to be a rich dish,” says Curtis, which is his way of saying, “If you do this I will bury you up to your necks on the beach.”
The kitchen is mad chaos, all the amateurs piled up on top of each other as they hurl their citrus about. “Move your hands faster please,” says Curtis in a stressed voice, knowing that his reputation as an internationally-renowned celebrity chef rests entirely on the performance of these amateur cooks working in an unfamiliar kitchen.
Fourth course is delicious but boring. Brett and Mimi embrace, so happy to be nothing like Matt the Amateur and Heather.
As fifth course approaches, Theresa is still banging on about her tangelo spheres. Apparently they explode in your mouth. Juice etc. Theresa finds it “surreal” that they are serving people in a restaurant. It’s like every day she wakes up with no memory of anything that happened in the past.
George says it’s a “thoughtful” dish, which is pretty amazing for anything that Theresa has been involved in. “I’d like the recipe please!” exclaims a customer, then bursts into laughter, I know not why. Is wanting a recipe some kind of in-joke?
In the kitchen Nicolette and Chloe are preparing the final course, for a very loose definition of the word “preparing”. Their sorbet is dripping out of the ice-cream machine onto the floor. Curtis stalks the kitchen floor with a face like thunder. If this sorbet turns out badly he may burn the restaurant down. And frankly, the sorbet looks like turning out badly. Like, hilariously badly.
Matt thinks it looks wonderful, but “you go from granita to sorbet?” he asks, as if he’s just been asked to eat his own neck. In a shocking twist, refusing to follow Curtis Stone’s advice has turned out to be a bad idea. The judges do not want the sorbet. They hate the sorbet and everything it stands for. Philosophically the sorbet offends them. George’s face is screwed up like he’s been told to eat a rhino penis, or pay penalty rates. The sorbet is over-churned. The sorbet is aerated. The sorbet is a disgrace in the eyes of God.
Time has come to judge. Curtis Stone lies and says everyone did well. “Everything was restaurant-quality,” he says, but as we all know, some restaurants are crap.
The dish of the day was Elena and Theresa’s, which sends a terrible message that exploding juice balls are a correct lifestyle.
Two teams must enter elimination: Trent and Elise, whose prawns were as disgusting as you’d expect prawns to be just from looking at them; and Chloe and Nicolette, who were frankly just bloody stupid.
“I’m proud of all of you,” says Curtis, empty words from an empty man.
Tune in tomorrow night to see Gary order the amateurs to commit arson.
Have you bought Error Australis yet? If not, you’re just postponing your own pleasure! Buy it now!
