Masterchef Recap: The Mystery Of Nigella’s Box
Like many people, I find myself subject to powerful and confusing emotions when Nigella Lawson hoves into view. It just goes to show that you can hold someone in utter contempt, you can have no respect whatsoever for anything they do and loathe all that they stand for, and yet still become powerfully aroused whenever you catch sight of them.
And that is the theme of Nigella Week on Masterchef: cooking as the thin veil we draw over our carnal desires. “It’s going to be an amazing week,” says Gary, using that oft-employed adjective that doesn’t actually mean “good” so you’ve always got a bit of cover if things turn out to be awful.
Matt announces that tonight’s Mystery Box has been filled by someone who believes food is to be enjoyed, as opposed to most weeks when it is filled by a deranged tramp who hates food and yet has been condemned by an ancient prophecy to constantly put it into boxes.
Anyway, in walks Nigella and everyone pretends to be surprised and all the men get erections and all the women start ovulating and all the recappers start working up their lines about wanting to fill HER mystery box. Right? Right?
Am I right?
Nigella wants everyone to prepare food that is made to give pleasure, and/or diabetes. Matt tells everyone the really good news: she’s here for the WHOLE WEEK. Which is only fair: if you were a Masterchef contestant and you got a whole week with Marco, but only one night with Nigella, how ripped off would you feel?
So they open the mystery box, and it contained butternut pumpkin, chestnuts, chicken thighs, pippis, ginger and pancetta. Since it’s Nigella, we’ll be focusing mostly on the nuts and the thighs, obviously.
Oh, also there’s cumin, because that is what we’d all love to do to Nigella’s mystery box. God I love food.
“You’ve inspired so many amateurs to reach for the stars,” says Matt to Nigella, and it is true that she is directly responsible for most of the world’s disappointment.
Mimi, who I think just joined the show today, is a little starstruck: Nigella is one of the reasons she wants to be a cook, which is a bit shallow if we’re honest. It’s hard to take seriously someone who enters the food industry just because she saw a woman lick her lips over a bowl of cookie dough.
Anyway Mimi is making a cake and ice cream, even though the cake will be too hot and melt the ice cream, meaning it’s far too difficult to make inside sixty minutes, but having seen all the people who came before her who tried to make dishes they didn’t have enough time for and failed, Mimi is pretty confident that she can defy the laws of physics in ways that they couldn’t.
Heather is making an open filo pumpkin pie, which sounds like the worst thing ever and is.
Meanwhile many other people are running sweatily around the kitchen without doing anything interesting enough to be more than part of a montage.
Harry reveals his mother bought a TV just to watch Nigella: don’t know if that’s an anecdote about how great Nigella is or about how much Harry’s mum sucks. He actually doesn’t specify if that’s his mother’s only TV, or if she has two — one for Nigella and one for every other show — to make sure the different programs don’t contaminate each other.
“I haven’t been tasted in a mystery box yet,” says Elena, with the winsome sadness of every young woman who has yet to find anyone willing to taste her mystery box. But she’s in luck today: we get a clip showing her life as a teacher, meaning she’s definitely going to succeed today or why would we bother? She loves teaching, drawing and painting: in fact Elena loves everything about her life, so why she’s trying to be a cook God only knows. Her food dream is to teach children how to grow their own food, which someone already did in another year, so I think she should be forced to pick another food dream.
Matt and Nigella come over to Zoe’s bench to ask her whether she’s a total idiot, making puff pastry in an hour. Zoe agrees that yes, she is very stupid indeed, and keeps making her puff pastry.
Charlie wants to cram as much flavour as he can into his dish to impress Nigella, which is a coincidence because when we watch Nigella we want to cram as much —
Never mind. Mimi is busily making her semifreddo, which is kind of like ice-cream but with a dumber name. She’s a bit worried she doesn’t have enough time, but this is only because she doesn’t have enough time. Meanwhile Heather is saying some very boring things about filo pastry, and Gary is questioning Zoe further about her idiotic puff pastry idea. Zoe continues to agree that she was utterly mad to attempt it, but also continues to make it.
Jimmy is not sure whether his chicken skin is crispy enough and really acts like a big drama queen about it.
Meanwhile Elena is rolling her tuile around her cylindrical metal parfait mould, just like we would like to roll Nigella around our cylindrical meta parfait mould.
Heather is happy with her open filo pumpkin pie, even though it looks like a lasagna retrieved by insurance investigators after a house fire.
Back to Mimi, who has brought her cake out of the oven and is worried that it will melt her ice cream because she has over the years gained a good working understanding of temperature, mainly from watching the Masterchef opening credits.
“You’ve got thirty seconds!” yells George unhelpfully, as Mimi’s semifreddo melts in her hands — who’d have thought that hands could be hot too?
Time is up, and the amateurs hug each other, even though I’m pretty sure some of them have real problems with others’ hygiene. Mimi is devastated with her cake, which has melted her semifreddo to the point where the kindest thing would be to take it out on Lake Tahoe and shoot it.
Only five dishes are tasted in a mystery box challenge, because the show’s creators were determined to make the start of every week as wasteful as possible. The judges begin by tasting Heather’s irradiated pumpkin lasagna, which they absolutely love because they’ve all been reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy.
Next is Jimmy. “Nigella is going to be eating my food! My food is going to be in her BELLY!” he enthuses, in a disturbingly excited way. I mean yes we all want to put something of ours in her belly, but have a bit of restraint on camera, Jimmy. Nigella thinks Jimmy’s dish is “laidback” so god knows what that means.
Elena serves up her…I don’t know, whatever it is. I think it’s the leftovers of an actual meal. Matt is deeply disappointed in it, anyway. Nigella says the flavours are good, but the overall message of the judges is, “Elena please go back to your classroom and learn to be satisfied with your life.”
Next is Zoe, the mad princess of puff. Nigella thinks her dish is rather nice, and…that’s all, really. Zoe says “the feedback is awesome” which is really depressing.
Charlie is last, and George eats off his knife, causing Nigella to tell him not to eat off his fucking knife. George does it again just to taunt her. I think George should be suspended for this behaviour, and I applaud Nigella for having the guts to say what we’re all thinking, ie George is a pig.
Also the judges say something about Charlie’s dish, I think.
In the end, Heather wins the mystery box challenge, which means she gets the amazing non-advantage of choosing which ingredient will be used in the invention test. She must choose between chocolate, lemons or pistachios. She chooses chocolate because she is not a psychopath.
The task is to use chocolate to make something that is “divine” — ie given by God Himself — and “indulgent” — ie beloved of Satan. It’s tricky, but then Nigella never promised it would be easy to please her. I bet I could though. I bet I could.
“You mustn’t be lazy and think that the chocolate will do all the work for you,” says Nigella, devastating most of the amateurs, who were already writing down a list of instructions for their chocolate and planning a day of gardening.
The obvious route is of course simply to pour melted chocolate over Nigella, but being obvious doesn’t win you invention tests.
“I use chocolate all the time,” says Karmen in that voice she uses when lying. Karmen has struggled before today, but really has done very well given she has never cooked before and only entered the Masterchef kitchen in order to elude the mobsters pursuing her to prevent her testifying against them.
Chloe is making mousse and wearing a spectacular tie-dye t-shirt that makes one instantly hope for her victory. She is trying to replicate a recipe by Reynold though, so we fear for her safety.
“We are looking forward to one thing, and that’s divine indulgence!” shouts Gary, which is unnecessary even by his standards. Also the judges have said “divine indulgence” far too often already.
“Tempering chocolate is hard to do,” says Jimmy, but he goes ahead and tries it anyway, because why play to your strengths, right?
Mimi claims she has never been as embarrassed by a dish as she was by her mystery box debacle, so she begins peeling beetroots as some kind of self-flagellatory penance. She’s making a beetroot sorbet, which is an offence to all notions of propriety and decency.
Meanwhile Anastasia is making a savoury dish with chocolate, which doesn’t even merit a response.
Miles is still around apparently.
“There’s definitely a lot of chocolate going on,” says Karmen, who is surely reading all her lines off a card. She keeps on claiming that she’s an expert with desserts and we keep on not believing her.
Jimmy runs across the kitchen doing an impression of an aeroplane, which is pretty arrogant behaviour from someone who — spoiler alert — has literally no idea how to temper chocolate.
Meanwhile there is too much gelatin in Chloe’s mixture, and she immediately starts doubting herself, as she should, because she has too much gelatin in her mixture, which by the normal understanding of the phrase “too much”, is a bad thing. “What’s that?” asks George about her mousse mixture. “I’ve got no idea,” says Gary, rejoicing, as always, in the misfortune of others. Chloe gives up on her mousse and tries a semifreddo instead, because apparently a semifreddo is the default option for anyone who can’t make proper food.
Harry is making fizzy chocolate, as his food dream is to be the supplier for Royal Show showbags. “You don’t ever really eat fizzy chocolate,” he says, the ignorant pillock.
Meanwhile Jimmy is hoping he can execute his chocolate domes, but he can’t, so let’s not dwell.
Anastasia wants a beautiful, rich, indulgent, chocolate flavour, so it’s bloody stupid of her to be cooking beef. She should be disqualified instantly. As should Miles, who has numerous ingredients but has lost all conception of what cooking actually is.
With three minutes to go an impenetrable fog of gloom has settled over the kitchen. Jimmy gets his chocolate spheres out of the fridge and they suck, in accordance with all expert forecasts. “I’m going to think outside the square here,” he says, momentarily considering the wisdom of a shooting spree. He thinks he’s in trouble, and is.
Anastasia is very happy with her chocolate beef, but does not deserve to be.
Mimi is unreasonably pleased with her rosemary and beetroot sorbet, ignoring the fact that it is an abomination. Much like Chloe’s dish, which is going to be a melted mess, Chloe having made the mistake of seeing Mimi’s mystery box dish as a triumph.
Mimi’s horrible salty chocolate tart and repellent beetroot sorbet is first to be tasted, and the pretentious gits who have appointed themselves “judges” absolutely love it, and I hate them so much for it.
Beetroot sorbet. Honestly.
Fuck off.
Nigella gives Mimi a kiss. “I’m never washing my cheek,” Mimi says, rendering herself forever unemployable in the food industry.
Chloe serves up her pathetic mess that looks essentially like someone ejaculated into a pile of dirt, and is quickly told that she is a failure and a disgrace to the human race. “You’ve got to stick to what you know,” says George. “People who don’t make mistakes stop learning,” says Nigella, completely refuting George’s point, possibly as revenge for the knife thing.
Anastasia serves her savoury dish even though making a savoury dish should mean nobody is willing to taste it. They do, though, and they all have jumpy little orgasms over it yuk.
Next there is a montage of all the people who aren’t good enough but don’t suck as badly as Chloe either.
Jimmy steps up with his garbage chocolate sphere which he calls “buried chocolate” because it looks like a diorama of a small town that has just been bombed. The judges can’t even hack through his horrible thick “sphere” which isn’t a sphere but a sort of chocolate skullcap. “If you don’t know how to temper chocolate with a proper process…don’t try it,” says George, continuing his campaign to prevent anyone anywhere ever trying anything new. Stay in your box, George says. Line up to have your career chip installed.
Harry brings up his weird fizzy chocolate thingies. “Food is supposed to be a joyous thing,” says Matt, displaying an unsound belief in a deterministic universe. The judges bite in and Nigella is enchanted. We’d all like to enchant Nigella with our fizzy balls.
Miles would rather crawl under the tasting table than stand in front of it, and that’s fine with us. “That’s really not very good at all,” says Gary about Miles’s dish and possibly also his general appearance and grooming. Miles walks back to his bench shattered but relieved that he’s at least not as big a loser as Jimmy.
Up steps Karmen, to sing “I Will Follow Him” and serve her own spin on sweet creamy balls. “This is a dish that belongs in heaven,” says Matt in a homicidal rage. “So yum,” says George, poetically. Karmen is so thrilled that she almost displays an emotion.
The top three, obviously, are Karmen, Harry and Mimi, who has grown from the semifreddo-annihilating idiot we once knew, to a strong, confident woman.
The bottom three, naturally, are Jimmy, Miles, and Chloe, who is a double loser because Miles gives her a hug. George gives them an inspirational speech that means absolutely nothing, and then everyone has to go back to the house and stare angrily at each other all night.
Tune in tomorrow night, when Nigella gives us a look at what’s under her cloches.
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