Masterchef Recap: Twisted Sister
Tonight we are promised a “wicked twist”, which probably means something mad and wacky like everyone has to use a spatula, or do something innovative with turnips or something like that. But it is Nigella Week, one of the most ancient of religious holidays, so who knows, the wicked twist might be something brilliant, like everyone’s cooking nude. Or maybe there’ll be no cooking at all, tonight’s episode will just be an hour and a half of Nigella tossing her hair and cleaning blobs of cream off her torso.
Of course it’s nothing as exciting as that. It’s barely as exciting as the turnips.
With elimination looming, we get some extra-special backstory, with Chloe telling the story of how she was bullied at school. Well, she doesn’t really tell the “story” of how she was bullied at school, she just says, “I was bullied at school”. Jimmy’s backstory is that he loves his sister but also wants to crush her dreams, so it’s important to him that he doesn’t get eliminated because his parents can only ever love one of them.
Miles’s backstory is that he’s lucky to be there and doesn’t want to go home, so don’t bother looking for inspiration there.
The two aspiring Masterchefs, and Miles, arrive at the Masterchef kitchen to be told of the wicked twist, which turns out to be…they have to make three dishes instead of one.
That’s it. Three dishes. A crab salad, a lamb thing, and a pannacotta. How fiendishly unexpected! Imagine coming into a kitchen thinking you’d be cooking ONE thing, and then finding out you had to cook THREE things! You sure would shrug pretty vigorously I guess!
Nigella tells the three potential eliminees that although making three things is hard, people have to do it all at home: “You’ve got friends coming for dinner, you don’t want to make them wait three hours”. A good way to get around this problem is to ask your friends to come over later, when you’ve made dinner: but Nigella has not thought of this; her solution is to make everything in one hour, because that’s the maximum amount of time your friends can sit in the living room trying to make small talk.
So that’s what the amateurs have to do: make all three dishes in just one hour. “It’s what we home cooks do ALL the time!” says Nigella, with just the right combination of arrogance and dishonesty. “We” home cooks! “We”! Nigella Lawson said that! To three people who actually ARE home cooks. Get your hand off it, Nigella. Or rather, get your hand ON it, because that’s pretty hot, but stop talking.
The three amateurs immediately set about not following the recipe. Jimmy has mucked up his order of ingredients. Theresa starts shouting at Jimmy from the balcony. Jimmy tells her to shut her face in a much politer fashion than I would if I were him.
Seriously, everyone on the balcony: shut up. You’re not helping. Everyone on the floor wants you to drop dead.
Jimmy reveals his darkest secret: he is 49 years old. Also he enjoys sitting on beaches gazing out to sea, so it is imperative he does not get eliminated today apparently. Whether this is enough to overcome Chloe’s bullying story, only time will tell.
“Come on Jim, just get them in,” says Theresa, like that constitutes actual assistance. “Work fast,” she adds, like a total dick.
Meanwhile, Miles reveals he can’t go home today, because he has several photos of his children. “I feel the kids are with me,” he says, disturbingly.
Over at Chloe’s bench, she’s doing a voiceover about her cooking process, which is unbelievably boring. Honestly you don’t know what tedium is until you’ve heard someone you don’t know explain how they bring peas to a simmer. “I just remember this is a pleasure test,” Chloe says, but actually it’s not, it’s a pressure test, “pleasure test” is just a stupid thing Nigella said and she should not take it seriously at all.
Theresa is still yelling at her brother and the suspicion grows that she is trying to sabotage him. “Don’t second-guess yourself,” she calls, with exquisite irony.
Meanwhile, Miles is moving really fast. “You’re moving really fast,” says Matt, putting his finger on the pulse. But he questions whether Miles is being accurate as well, which is stupid, because they set the task of making three courses in one hour and they will just have to suck it up if it’s not accurate. Which it won’t be, because come on, none of these guys are very good.
We break for an ad for crispy McCain roast potatoes, which look way better than anything being made on the show tonight.
Back in the kitchen and Jimmy is reading the recipe, finding it so gripping he forgets to cook. Nigella and Matt pop by to waste his time, and then wander off having achieved nothing. The buzzer has gone off in Jimmy’s oven and his lamb looks good, though his vision cannot be trusted because of the tears welling in his eyes.
Meanwhile Miles is troubled by the fact that his pan is full of mud. But he’s running out of time, so he pours the mud onto his lamb and hopes for the best.
With ten minutes to go, Chloe hasn’t even started her crab salad yet. She frantically begins it, not realising that the crab salad is a test, to see which of the amateurs will possess the true chef’s instinct that tells them to not serve crab salads. She pours all her dressing onto the crab, against the orders of the recipe, thus guaranteeing her a savage punishment when her transgression is discovered. She frantically tries to make the dressing again, but she might be better off just sticking a note to the plate reading, “I WAS BULLIED AT SCHOOL”.
Therese finally stops yelling, having been struck dumb by her brother’s sheer incompetence. The kitchen goes up in flames as Jimmy contemplates his failure as a cook and as a man.
“Start prioritising, yeah?” says George, causing the amateurs to become paralysed with indecision. Is he asking them a question? Do they have to tell him whether they think prioritising is a good idea or not? It’s a terrible time to be asking riddles, frankly.
Jimmy gets his panna cotta out and it’s not as bad as it could be, although it does look like a morbidly obese Mr Man. He still needs to mix his crabs, although he does have the benefit of the final five minutes of this challenge lasting three hours.
Seconds tick away and panic sets in as the amateurs run aimlessly around the kitchen, the judges repeatedly scream “panna cotta” for no obvious reason, and Jimmy, I am almost certain, says that he is putting urine into his salad dressing.
Suddenly, after the longest countdown in Masterchef history, time is up, and Miles breaks down in tears as he thinks of his children and how he loves to cook for them and how he wants to stay in the kitchen and not see them again. He cheers up when he gets to hug Nigella and press his sweaty, leathery skin against her pure, milky flesh.
The judges sit down to taste Miles’s dishes, and once again he hints that his children’s disembodied spirits are in his head, driving him insane with their incessant chatter. Miles’s crab is bland, Miles’s lamb is tasty, and Miles’s panna cotta has a big lump of sand in it, according to Matt. Which is fine if that’s what you’re going for, but the recipe was very specific that sand should be left out.
Next, Chloe, who is proud of herself for turning her attitude around, after the first few weeks of smoking cigarettes and riding on motorcycles with boys. Nigella quotes Eleanor Roosevelt at her just to make this whole experience more excruciating for everyone. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” Mrs Roosevelt said, but I’m pretty sure agreeing to be on Masterchef constitutes blanket consent to made to feel inferior pretty much all the time.
Chloe’s dishes aren’t perfect, but clearly better than Miles’s sandy muck. “I’ve just eaten a really tasty plate of food,” says Gary, in a state of severe shock.
In comes Jimmy, tense about his food, but relieved to have at least momentarily gotten away from the living hell of his sister’s encouragement. Jimmy tells the judges his dream is to celebrate Tasmanian produce, which is a weird dream and he should be ashamed of it.
“It doesn’t look great, does it?” says Gary, referring to Jimmy’s dishes or possibly to the geopolitical landscape. He tastes the crab salad and adds, “I think he’s in real trouble”. All the judges are devastated because they really really wanted Miles to go home.
Jimmy’s main is extremely undercooked, or to put it more kindly, Extreme Paleo. “I’ve put my knife and fork down for the simple reason that this isn’t a good plate of food,” says George, which is something to be thankful to Jimmy before, because George with a knife and fork in hand is a right gross sight. But despite this service to the community, and despite the fact his panna cotta contains little to no sand, Jimmy is in big trouble.
The judges bring in the three amateurs and deliver Chloe the welcome news that her streak of ridiculous good luck has continued. They tell Miles he erred in putting sand in his dessert, but also tell Jimmy he erred in being terrible at everything. “We love your cooking,” says Gary, and then says that Jimmy’s lamb was “inedible”, which is kind of a mixed message to send.
Matt tells Jimmy it’s the hardest decision they’ve had to make this year, once more emphasising how much they loathe Miles. Jimmy, in tears at the thought of going back to that beach, asks if he can have some hugs. The question backfires when he is forced to hug all of the judges, not just Nigella. He then has to go hug Theresa and pretend he doesn’t blame her entirely for all this. If only she’d shut her yap while he was trying to concentrate. If only she’d pulled her bloody oar out. If only Jimmy’s dream of destroying his sister had come true.
Tune in tomorrow night when Nigella turns up at the Masterchef house to act out her Funny Games fantasies.
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