Masterchef Recap: Hot or Not?
Having returned to Australia, where colours seem duller and all life’s possibilities have died, the amateurs embark on Finals Week, often referred to as “Australia’s Mardi Gras”. This is probably a good opportunity to watch the opening credits, reflect on all the amateurs who have left us, and think about how incompetent they were.
Arriving at the Masterchef kitchen, each remaining amateur reveals that they would quite like to win Masterchef and that losing Masterchef would, in an ideal world, not be something that happens.
“You are this country’s top amateur cooks,” says Gary, an assertion with virtually no evidence to back it up. “You all deserve to be here,” adds Matt, although morally speaking this is clearly not the case.
And so to the mystery box. Inside the box is “some of the hottest ingredients being used around the world,” says Matt, but it doesn’t seem all that hot to me. There is Peruvian alcohol, green-tea powder, and other such irritating hipster crap. Notably, there is camel’s milk, a popular ingredient with many people who are dying of thirst in a desert. “I didn’t even know camel’s milk was fit for human consumption,” says Matt the Amateur, but what he doesn’t realise is: it isn’t.
George now informs the amateurs that “the sky is just the start”, a cryptic and baffling remark the meaning of which nobody will ever know. He may be sending a coded message to his North Korean paymasters for all I know. He tells them there’s a pantry full of staples under their benches, but god knows how that’s supposed to help them.
Harry wants to push himself. They’re always saying that, this lot. They all want to push themselves. Someone should clue them in on the concept of “knowing your limitations”.
Mimi says something but I kind of tuned out so I don’t know what it was.
Trent is excited about the camel’s milk and has an idea for a sauce that he hopes will perfectly capture the spirit of not having anything except camel’s milk to drink.
Elena is experienced curing fish in alcohol, and it’s sad to see yet another young Australian who believes alcohol is a cure. She also loves to “play with form and shape and textures”, so I guess she’s completely forgotten that this is is a cooking competition and is instead creating some kind of avant-garde sculpture. Gary pops by her bench to tell her that she’s interesting, which I guess is technically true.
Meanwhile Elise is whipping some eggs and what’s worse, telling us about it, as if it’s some kind of anecdote. She’s combining the eggs with the gross-looking green hipster powder, hoping that it will create the kind of flavour that makes you question the existence of god.
Here, Matt once again yells that they have “the hottest ingredients”. Why does he have to keep putting it like that? He knows that “hot” is an adjective often applied to food in a literal sense, right? He can’t say “most fashionable” if that’s what he means? It sounds stupid to say “you have the hottest ingredients in the world” when that includes cold fish and camel milk.
Matt the Amateur is using kohlrabi leaves, but in a surprise twist, as food. He thinks it’s important to have a textural element. All of these people missed their vocation as lino-cutters.
Mimi is doing something right now. Don’t know what it is really.
Trent shamelessly declares himself ready to experiment with camel’s milk. Pervert. Matt asks him if he likes the flavour of camel’s milk. After a tense pause during which it becomes extremely clear that he has not tasted it, Trent lies that he does. Matt advises him to, I don’t know, do something. Taste his fish or something I think. It’s blackfish, which I thought was killer whale, but I don’t think Masterchef would have people cook killer whale on camera, so it must be something else.
Mimi talks a bit more.
Matt the Amateur is making custard with camel’s milk and has no idea what’s going to happen. You do not have time to be screwing around with this chemistry set bullshit, Matt the Amateur. “The last thing I want to do is waste time on something that’s going to be a complete flop,” he says, but he goes ahead and does it anyway. His camel’s milk gloop is too sweet, but a dash of vinegar and all his stupid dreams have come true.
Oh there’s Harry, he’s still around.
Everyone is very concerned about winning this Mystery Box challenge, suffering the collective amnesia that hits everyone every Sunday that causes them to believe the advantage gained from the Mystery Box challenge will be worth having.
Elena needs something to tie her dish together, and that will be the sauce that has a name that I don’t know how to spell. Most of the things they’re using in this challenge I don’t know how to spell. The fish is called something weird too. Kobiah? Kobea? Kobeear?
Oh for fuck’s sake Elise is making a fucking parfait. Goddamn you Elise, goddamn you to hell. At this stage a parfait is no longer just an uninspired dessert choice, it is an act of violence against audience sensibilities. If parfaits were named a terrorist group tomorrow I’d applaud.
Time is running out and everyone is working very frantically and Elena hates her sauce which is called gotcha-bear or something and Harry’s fish isn’t hot enough and I am having trouble focusing on anything because of how angry I am at Elise.
Time for tasting, and Gary says the ingredients are “the hottest” again and that is REALLY pissing me off, because you can’t go around using figures of speech in reference to things that are usually described using those figures of speech in their literal sense you just CAN NOT.
Sorry. There’s a lot of anger in me because of this episode.
Matt the Amateur serves first and everyone loves his whatchamcallit and Matt loves how far he’s come but let’s tone it down guys, leave some hyperbole in the barrel, it’s only the Mystery Box.
Discordant percussion accompanies Elena’s dish, which has pleasing textures but a hard dressing. Like actually hard. Rigid. She says her dish is “kind of a first draft”, and takes it back for editing.
Trent thinks his dish might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and indeed it is not a cup of tea at all. It is cobia — hey, that’s how you spell it! — with camel’s milk butter and kohlrabi and various other offensive odours. They like it, but the music doesn’t get quite motivational enough for him to feel confident.
Mimi has cooked some stuff and the judges eat it I guess.
Elise serves her stupid motherfucking parfait and adds “kohlrabi” to the now disturbingly long list of words she can’t pronounce. “You’re a master of parfaits, why not exploit the fact in Finals Week,” says Gary, in what sounds like an extremely sarcastic fashion. The judges compliment her parfait, and in doing so are very incorrect.
Lastly comes Harry, in more ways than one. He’s very worried about his fish not being cooked perfectly, which shows you what this show does to people: it breaks their minds. George asks him if he’s worried about the cooking of the fish, and it’s like der, of course he is, haven’t you been watching? The Casio strings button gets quite the workout as the judges cut open the fish and inspect it. But then the soundtrack turns all uplifting because the fish is cooked perfectly, as usually happens when someone is worried about whether they’ve cooked the fish right, unless you’re watching MKR, in which case worrying about fish means you’re about to burst into tears and set off a smoke alarm.
Gary says his lips are tingling. George says “allegant”. Matt says Harry’s dish is a dirty street fighter and apparently means this as a compliment. “What a wonderful tasting,” he adds — more sarcasm. And oh em gee Harry has won the Mystery Box challenge and will gain the MASSIVE advantage of…
Well, not much, obviously.
Harry is taken into the pantry and beaten to a bloody — sorry, drifted away there. He’s taken into the pantry and told that the Mystery Box was about the “hottest ingredients” — Jesus CHRIST — but the invention test will be about the “hottest cooking methods”: he must choose between smoking, a water bath, and liquid nitrogen. And liquid nitrogen is a very COLD cooking method, so…you see? You see how it’s an inappropriate adjective? I know you see.
Anyway Harry chooses liquid nitrogen and everyone freaks out, except Elise, who presumably soaks her gusset in excitement because yay she gets to do yet another dessert and avoid any kind of variation for another day.
Harry gets right to work on making something that I think is called a “duck-wah”. Some kind of effects pedal, I think. He’s also making a fennel sorbet, which is just ridiculous. Just RIDICULOUS.
“This challenge is going to test them,” Matt tells his fellow judges just so they’re clear. And he’s right: Elena is so tested that she has retreated into the soothing routine of obsessive cucumber-peeling. Meanwhile Mimi is making some dirt.
Matt the Amateur is folding though almond meal, which I find reprehensible behaviour. Disaster strikes when Gary and George notice that his frangipan cake batter has split, as in the old line, “Why don’t you make like frangipan cake batter, and split?” But Matt the Amateur can’t split: he is trapped in the kitchen with no time to make more batter and his only hope is to hurl the liquid nitrogen at the judges and flee the country.
Elise is adding saffron to her anglaise when Gary and George come over, George wearing his best “I honestly thought my life would be going better than this by now” expression. The judges think Elise’s anglaise tastes too saffrony, but Elise, who has always been a positive thinker, takes the attitude: fuck the judges.
Meanwhile Elena wants every part of her dish to celebrate the cucumber, which means she has truly lost her mind. There’s a reason “celebrate the cucumber” has never entered the lexicon as a common phrase.
Mimi keeps adding mint, but the flavour of the mint is not coming through, and neither is Mimi’s.
Trent is pushing the savoury flavour in his ice-ream. Ugh.
Elise sets her ice-cream with the liquid nitrogen, which is cheating isn’t it, really. I mean this whole challenge is just a cheating challenge. Liquid nitrogen shouldn’t be allowed in kitchens, it’s like steroids. Also everyone puts on goggles when they use it, which is pretentious.
Matt the Amateur’s mousse comes out of the liquid nitrogen hideous and malformed and he is ableist enough to find this distressing. Things are looking bad for Matt the Amateur, and not just because of the goggles.
Gary yells that the amateurs are “on thin ice”, which I think he thinks is a pun. He says it really deliberately, like it’s a pun. Like we’re supposed to really slap our knees over it. But it doesn’t really work because liquid nitrogen isn’t really ice.
Time is running out and everyone is plating up and putting on goggles and putting things in nitrogen and thinking they’re just like Heston but actually they’re not because they still have souls.
Matt the Amateur is unhappy with his cake, so he cuts it in half. He immediately regrets this as it looks like crap. He will have to try to cover it up with leaves and regret.
Time is up, and Harry almost swears but just manages to avoid it and therefore can still get a job hosting Play School.
Gary makes a pointless speech where he uses the term “hottest” inappropriately once more. Elena then steps up with her dish, which to all appearances is pieces of raw cucumber with cottage cheese on top, drowned in dishwater. George says he loves it of course, the little suckup. “This is what modern cooking is all about,” says Matt, not realising what a savage insult this is.
Mimi is next with what she calls “Forage Mint Slice”, which is basically moss. Matt asks her whether she pureed the mint in order to infuse the cream, perfectly ready, if she answers in the affirmative, to hand her over to the authorities. Mimi confesses that she did, and Matt struggles to contain his rage. The judges agree that pureeing the mint was the action of a fool and a charlatan and send Mimi away in disgrace.
Next is Trent, whose dish is quite boring and has awful yucky ice-cream. Gary declares it “very edible”, which I hope makes Trent feel great about himself.
Elise serves her mousse which at least isn’t a fucking parfait but it looks quite a lot like a parfait so fuck that. The judges love her ice-cream but think it’s missing “freshness”. “How did I forget that?” Elise berates herself, but to be fair it’s an easy thing to forget, being a vague and abstract concept that doesn’t really mean anything.
Matt the Amateur steps up, to be told by Gary that he’s served a cake you might buy at a shop to take home for tea. Which sounds like a compliment — professional standard, right? A commercially viable cake! Nope, it wasn’t — “I think you’re in a bit of trouble,” says Gary, not bothering to disguise his glee. Matt and George concur that Matt the Amateur is a big fat loser. “Thanks guys,” says Matt the Amateur for some reason.
Lastly, Harry, who has served various colours of things on a grey slab. God only knows what’s actually in there, but the judges love it. “It’s beyond delicious,” says Gary, but you can’t be “beyond delicious”. “Beyond delicious” is just “not delicious”. George says it shows why Harry is in the top six, with the unspoken addendum that nobody knows why Matt the Amateur is in the top six.
Unsurprisingly, Harry, whose dish made the judges lose control of their reproductive functions, is safe, and so is Elena, who made cucumber at least vaguely appealing, which is more than anyone else has ever done.
Matt the Amateur is in the bottom three, as we all suspected when the judges told him they hated him. Because Elise used liquid nitrogen for positive purposes rather than executing rogue agents, she is safe and Mimi and Trent join M the A in the bottom three. They are up for elimination. George revs them up by asking them a series of nonsensical questions like, “Have you grown one hundred percent?” To survive Finals Week they will have to figure out what the crywanking bollocks George is on about and explain it in a short essay.
Tune in tomorrow, when Trent, Mimi and Matt the Amateur must build a sea urchin from scratch.
Looking for inspiration in the kitchen? Why not just order a pizza, so you’ll have more time to read Error Australis, which you bought today?
