Masterchef Recap: Kiss The Dirt

Previously, on Masterchef, Heston showed up to abduct the entire show and take it to his secret riverside hideaway, where the top twelve cooked things inspired by the Murray, such as water and silt.

Today, in the week that piles gimmick upon gimmick — Heston, the elements, hats — they must make things inspired by the earth. Basically what the judges are looking for is food with dirt in it.

The amateurs arrive at some big silos with pictures on them. It looks like a surrealist nightmare, but apparently it’s a place called “Brim”. The silos celebrate the farmers of northwest Victoria, which is nice because nobody else ever will. Gary is extremely excited by the silos and the others humour him.

Matt, dressed in a salmon pink suit that is bound to come out second-best to the dust blowing around, informs the amateurs that today is Earth Day, but instead of promoting conservation, they will be celebrating the degradation of the natural environment via the wasteful squandering of resources in their ego-driven food tournament. He doesn’t quite put it like that.

George informs the amateurs that today they will be cooking in pears. That’s a tough challenge — how much can you do with pears, really?

Oh wait, in PAIRS. They’ll be cooking in pairs.

Each pair will cook a main and dessert inspired by earth. Whichever pair most poorly embodies the magic of dirt will go into the elimination at the end of Heston Wank — I mean Week.

“Your oven’s your best friend today,” says George, as always denying the value of human relationships.

Nicole and Karlie are doing nothing to dispel the rumours they are the same person by teaming up. A massive argument develops about lamb, but is quickly resolved when both women agree that they’re blonde and pretty and that’s the main thing.

Meanwhile Eliza has been teamed with Tamara, which is a bit suspicious — why has the random selection process kept all the blondes together? Tamara has an idea for a dish inspired by a termite mound — I guess that could be an ant pie, or some kind of rotted wood sorbet. But it doesn’t matter much, because Gary walks by her bench to let her know how shitty her idea is, and Tamara is left wondering what the hell she’s going to do. At least she’s got Eliza to help her today, which is of no comfort whatsoever.

Elsewhere, there is a closeup of Coles brand eggs, which are the Best eggs.

Michelle is inspired by pebbles, and is making chocolate soil, how original. Her partner Eloise tells Gary she is thinking of panko crumb, but George tells her to be inspired by what actually grows in the region — so I guess she should make some sort of edible silo-painter.

There is disaster at Nicole’s stove as her burner goes out in the wind. She needs a Plan B. The obvious solution suggests itself — set fire to the silos and flee in the bus — but instead she fiddles around with the oven.

Meanwhile Sam, who is paired with Callan and already fearing his growing madness, stammers about rocks, while Callan tells the judges of his insane plan to put chocolate on beef. “That makes me think yuk,” says Gary with appropriately earthy honesty. Callan, ever the thinker, considers that possibly making a disgusting dish is tactically weak, and rushes off to find a better meat to pair with his weird chocolate. Sam tells him to look for kangaroo, but there is no kangaroo — why would there be kangaroo in a challenge about using the resources of the Australian land? Callan finds some lamb instead, which is great because everyone knows how delicious chocolate lamb is.

Meanwhile Arum and Ben aren’t doing anything very interesting. Saltbush lamb. Everyone’s making saltbush lamb. Since yesterday the whole team has gone mad for saltbush and I don’t even know what it is. Is it like Nutbush?

Nicole and Karlie need to re-plan their dish, because when they planned it the first time they didn’t take into account the fact that when you’re outside the air moves. “This wind is ridiculous!” Nicole fumes, threatening to lodge a complaint with the Ombudsman.

As the depressed giants on the silos gaze down, Matt and Heston give Eloise some advice on how to flip her duck, a revolting euphemism that they should be ashamed of using. They move on to Eliza and Tamara, the latter of whom is over at the liquid nitrogen, carrying out her plot to destroy them all.

Sam’s dessert is inspired by the environment but also it has beetroot in it, so it’s a kind of dystopian dessert, like Mad Max. Meanwhile Sam’s pan is taking too long to heat up, an increasingly common problem for young men today.

With twenty minutes to go, Nicole remains worried about her parsnips. Matt suggests she take a radical turn. Nicole considers turning her rack of lamb into a parfait, but decides to plough on with her original terrible idea. Karlie helps her out with the parsnip chips and puree, just another two Masterchef contestats fallen victim to the popular delusion that parsnips are anything but a path to destruction.

Gary asks Heston what he’s happy with. Heston takes a while to answer, because he’s honest. George breaks in to point out that making sauce in a pressure cooker, as Nicole is doing, is clever. Everyone agrees that teacher’s pet Michelle is still the teacher’s pet.

With time rapidly running out, Arum says he’s “falling behind where I’d like to be”. It’s unclear whether he means in this particular challenge, or it’s just his presence in Masterchef in the first place that has made him reflect on life in general. Ben is concerned about Arum because he looks stressed and his accent is slightly annoying. Arum can’t get the lid off his pressure cooker, which is a powerful metaphor in my view.

Meanwhile the sauce for Eloise’s duck has turned out beautifully, and her duck is cooked beautifully, and her hair looks beautiful, even in the wind. It’s Eloise’s day all over.

With five minutes to go, the judges shout “come on”, as if that could possibly help anyone. Callan tastes his sauce. It’s not thickening properly. He has to put more chocolate in, which will help because when it comes to lamb, the chocolatier the better. Also his lamb is still raw, which is sub-optimal, but maybe he can dip it in liquid nitrogen or wrap it in orange peel or something.

Oh, time is up. The judges taste the windblown, flystruck dishes. Eloise’s duck is a big hit. George calls it “a restaurant-quality dish cooked on the side of the road”, but lots of restaurant-quality dishes are cooked on the side of roads. In fact most restaurants are on the side of a road. Eloise’s partner was Michelle, who made chocolate pebbles and some dirt. The judges love it, because they always love everything Michelle does.

Next, Eliza’s saltbush lamb. “It’s a really simple dish, there’s nothing wrong with that,” says Gary, but he wouldn’t have to say that unless there was something wrong with it. The judges are forced by the keyboards on the soundtrack to say nice things though. Alongside it is Tamara’s termite mound, specifically designed to not only taste as good as a termite mound, but be as good for you as one also. Heston thinks it’s fantastic because it has popping candy which makes it feel alive in your mouth, just like eating real termites, which apparently Heston thinks is a great thing to do.

Up steps Callan with his catastrophic lamb. But first, applications for Masterchef 2018 are open. I’m in!

And back to Callan, whose lamb sucks and chocolate sauce is disgusting. Heston declares himself “confused”, which is a bit rich coming from him. Luckily, Sam’s dessert is much better, so Callan might be saved by his partner, although Heston thinks the dessert might be a little bit too earthy, and Sam regrets putting dead cicadas in. George goes out of his way to let Callan know how much better Sam’s dish was than his, lest Callan forget to feel bad about himself for even a second.

Arum steps up with yet more lamb, and it’s yet more terrible lamb. His partner is Ben, who has served coffee ice-cream with some dirt etc. It’s much much better, so Arum too might’ve been saved by his partner — but whose dish will be not quite bad enough to overwhelm the quite-goodness of the other’s dish in comparison with the other two?

Or will Karlie and Nicole be worse than all of them? Nah, they’re fine. George says Nicole’s lamb is “honest”, because he has sunstroke. Karlie has made rice and fennel ice-cream, and is therefore immediately sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

No, actually it’s fine. Her terrible terrible ice-cream is fine. Everyone is suffering the notorious Brim Madness.

Arum is really frustrated with himself, and so he should be, all the time, for a range of reasons.

“Another epic location,” says George, which is one way to describe some silos in a field. He goes on to describe the contestants’ dishes as “beautiful and delicious”, but the elephant in the room is the fact that Callan and Arum’s dishes tasted less good than the literal earth underneath their feet.

“There was a lot of really good cooking today,” says Matt, just to rub in how shit the exceptions were. The dishes of the day belong to Karlie and Nicole, who as the best cooks in this challenge win nothing at all.

On to the important bit: the losers. Who are Sam and Callan, because Callan made the mistake of putting chocolate on lamb, and Sam made the mistake of letting himself be put in a team with Callan.

Tune in tomorrow, when the entire cast is eaten by a sandworm.

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