Masterchef Recap: The Graped Crusaders
Previously on Masterchef Australia, Khanh won an immunity pin by defeating a drifter who wandered onto the set.
Tonight on Masterchef, everyone gets pissed.
It’s around this point of the season that the opening titles start to acquire the air of an In Memoriam segment. A moment of silence for those we have lost.
It’s a beautiful day in the Barossa Valley, home of Australia’s problematic relationship with alcohol. George has already divided the amateurs into two teams, an action which for some reason made all them laugh and clap as if he had dangled his keys in front of them.
At Jacob’s Creek vineyard, Matt introduces the teams to Ben, a nervous man who claims to be the chief winemaker but who gives the impression he is terrified of being caught out in a huge lie.
The challenge today will be for each team to cook a bunch of stuff with grapes in. Matt takes way longer to say that than is reasonable.
Reece is leading the blue team because he is the most depressed of the group. Khanh is leading the red team because he is an unreconstructed Stalinist.
The blue team plans their three courses. Kristen has a brilliant idea for dessert, to embody the earthiness of the landscape with chocolate soil. But wouldn’t it be even earthier to use actual soil? Reece is incredibly impressed by Kristen’s idea, because having not watched any cooking show of the last fifteen years, chocolate soil still seems like a fresh idea to him.
“We’re all getting wet today regardless of where we stand,” says Reece. It has started raining, so this is only a threat to a few of the contestants.
Samira explains what she’s making. “I’ve come up with the idea of using beetroot, because I love beetroot,” she says, providing a rare depth of insight into the creative process.
Reece is filling a saucepan with wine, because it’s party time. Meanwhile on the red team, Aldo is in charge of the entree and is busily tearing apart innocent squids who had families once. “I think that the grapes is going to work very well,” he says with unforgivably poor grammar.
“Let’s roast some green grapes,” Sarah mutters to Sashi, their grisly plan starting to take shape. “The thing I am worried about,” she confides to camera,” is that it’s not going to be melty pork.” This is a common concern for women around Sarah’s age, as they hear their biological clock ticking and start to wonder if they’ve left it too late to have melty pork.
On the red team Jess is stirring madly and seems to be happy, so everyone just leaves her to it. Meanwhile her teammate Ben has decided to make meat and three veg to honour the boring and unoriginal nature of the Barossa. He is also going to celebrate grapes which sounds perverted in the extreme.
The blue team has hit a snag: their oven isn’t turned on, which has caused the pork to undergo a process known technically as “not cooking”. It just goes to show, even the most talented cook can sometimes stumble when faced with a challenge as complex and labour-intensive as turning on an oven.
Over on the red team, Gary tells Khanh that he’s worried about the main course because “it sounds like meat and vegetables”. I don’t know why this is worrying him — I’ve watched this show for years and I’ve seen Gary eat meat and vegetables on at least two or three other occasions. In any case, Khanh believes HIS team’s meat and vegetables will be special meat and vegetables, because he has a secret weapon: he knows how to turn the oven on.
Back on the blue team, Samira has chosen to use sapphire grapes, and she doesn’t give a fuck what society thinks — she is following her own bliss. Reece wants the entree to be sticky and flavoursome, just like him.
With ten minutes to go, Khanh is worried his calamari might not have enough char on it, and wondering how his life has come to this. The calamari looks like a thick piece of white paper, which is…apparently not right? It should look like a thick piece of burnt paper? “How are you cutting the calamari?” asks Khanh. Aldo replies that he’s cutting it with a knife and that Khanh should get off his dick. Meanwhile George tells Lisa that she should be cutting faster, and Lisa tells George that he should pay his staff.
No not really.
Over on the blue team, Gina claims the vinaigrette tastes beautiful, but she says it so often you think she might be trying to cover something up. George is yelling at everyone and they’re yelling back. The Barossa makes people angry.
With only seconds to go, Samira knows in her heart that she’s put a beautiful dish on the plate. This feels like pre-emptive self-justification. Samira knows her dish is crap and is trying to claim special insight. Disgusting. Gina chips in to say it’s beautiful again, so yes she is definitely lying.
The judges taste the blue team’s entree and think it tastes like food that is good-tasting. They taste the red team’s entree and think it tastes like utter piss, though I may be paraphrasing here. Basically the problem is that the calamari didn’t have enough char, so Khanh’s worst fears have come to pass and Aldo’s campaign to sabotage Khanh is going really well.
Jess, having gotten bored with her busy work, pops up to put the mousse in the fridge, if you know what I mean. George orders Ben to get his beef in, and Ben immediately sues him. Khanh demands the beef go in the oven, and everyone crosses their fingers that the oven is on.
Over on the blue team, the roasted fennel has come out perfectly. It looks awful, but I guess that’s what perfect roasted fennel looks like. However, “this pork has been a nightmare,” says Reece, as the previous failure to understand the principle behind application of heat to foodstuffs continues to haunt them. Sarah advises that if the pork is no good they shouldn’t put it on the plate. Her teammates note that this might disappoint the diners who receive a pork dish with no pork in it.
Back on the red team, Jenny and Lisa are doing extremely odd things with tiny bits of beetroot. This is how you make meat sophisticated — you put tiny bits of beetroot on top of it.
The judges taste the red team’s main. It’s fine I guess.
The blue team sends out their horrible pork. Gary loves the fennel, which is just about the worst thing you can say about a dish. The pork is repulsive and everyone on the blue team is a disgrace.
The teams get down to finishing their desserts, which means Jess finally feels useful. The red team is counting on her to make a fantastic blue cheese mousse, just in case the blue team’s shitty pork isn’t enough to gain them the win. Khanh orders Jess to put more blue cheese into her blue cheese mousse as the blue cheese mousse isn’t blue cheesy enough. Jess can’t put more blue cheese into her blue cheese mousse, the blue cheese mousse has had as much blue cheese as it can stand. She’s basically Scotty in Star Trek but with blue cheese.
After a quick fireball, the red team successfully bullies the teenage girl into hurling ever more swathes of cheese into her mousse. Meanwhile on the blue team, everything must be going fine because we haven’t seen much of them. Kristen seems extremely happy with her recreation of nature’s most appetising substance: dirt.
The judges look at the blue team’s dessert and like how it looks, which is all that matters really. Gary notes that the chocolate dirt looks just like the actual dirt on the ground nearby, which apparently he’s been wishing he could eat ever since he arrived. So anyway the blue team’s dessert seems fine.
The red team’s dessert comes out, seasoned with Jess’s tears. The judges taste it and are disgusted because the blue cheese mousse didn’t have enough blue cheese in it. Foreshadowing wins yet again.
Judging time. “Take a moment to soak all of this up,” says Gary, handing everyone their own mop and looking darkly on their poor hygiene practices. He tells the amateurs they should be really proud that they managed to produce three courses for sixty guests, while pointedly not telling them they should be proud of how they tasted.
Matt tells the blue team their dessert was good and the red team their dessert sucked balls. He tells the red team their main was and the blue team their dessert was a burning bag of bullshit. George takes over as Matt has reached his word limit. He tells the blue team their entree was better than the red team’s stupid whatever. The blue team hug each other inappropriately and rejoice in the fact that Gina wasn’t lying after all.
Tune in tomorrow, when Khanh will either take responsibility for the loss of the team he captained, or not be a total dickhead and use his pin.
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