My Kitchen Rules Recap: Imperfect Matcha
Betty is on MKR to chase her food dream. David is on MKR to chase Betty. If there is one ironclad rule of this show, it is that when a man and a woman team up and present themselves as “just friends”, the man is desperately hoping that the show is a pathway to her pants. If there is another ironclad rule of this show, it is that Pete Evans is a hypocritical jackass.
We begin with David and Betty eating breakfast together. Betty photographs her meal and posts it online — remember how she’s a “social media influencer”? Sweet Jesus, David is REALLY committed to losing his virginity to keep hanging around with this person.
Betty and David will be serving food “that their mothers have taught them”, which is really original, in the sense that a Masterchef contestant making a parfait is original. Pete and Manu peruse the menu. “It ticks all the boxes for me,” says Pete, after checking whether cavemen ate barramundi broth. Apparently they did.
Meanwhile David and Betty are shopping, and David is about to crash the car into a pillar in the carpark. While they shop they banter back and forth and say “hashtag” out loud — they have obviously heard that Tyson is the most-hated contestant and are intent on usurping that title.
The instant restaurant is called “Anchor and Palms”, which has some kind of deep meaning but I can’t be bothered listening to what it is. Something to do with boats I suppose. David and Betty set the table and then get to cooking, in that boring way that MKR contestants have.
Incidentally, David and Betty have this weird thing where they call each other “bro” and “sis”. This is meant to signify that they are DEFINITELY just friends and NOT involved romantically. Instead it comes across as a weird sexual head-game. And Betty clearly instituted this practice in order to keep David’s advances at bay, while David is going along with it in order to keep the flame of hope alive.
The guests arrive. Karen and Ros are hoping that David and Betty set “a new bar for us to aspire to”. She might mean in cooking terms, or in midwifery. Who knows? The door opens and everyone screams, because you know how normal people scream at each other literally every time they see each other? At least the screaming is more normal than Amy and Tyson, who express deep confusion at the human custom of “hugging” — Amy professes herself baffled by the earthling desire for physical contact. She thinks yearningly of life back home, where interpersonal relations are simple and communication is performed purely through the exchange of brain vibrations.
The guests enjoy getting to know Caz and Damo, or at least as much as it’s possible to enjoy this. Everyone takes turns telling the table what they do for a living. Except Tyson. Tyson just stares blankly at the others, having briefly forgotten how this human larynx works, probably because he was distracted by planning how he will tear the flesh from their bones later on.
Or maybe he just doesn’t want them to know he’s an Uber driver.
Pete and Manu show up, to the strains of a really weird song. I don’t know who chooses the soundtrack of this show, but they’ve never seen even one episode.
David and Betty unveil their menu. Bek’s (yeah, did I mention? Apparently it’s spelt Bek. She has so many layers) mouth is watering, but that’s really just a physiological thing, don’t take it as any kind of endorsement.
“I don’t really cook South-East Asian food,” says Tyson, which is as huge a surprise as if you found out that he wears three pairs of underpants at once. You get the feeling he’d really be happier if he didn’t have to acknowledge the existence of Asia, let alone eat its food.
“These buns are stressing me out,” says Betty in the kitchen. David, gazing wistfully at her from behind, agrees. But while the buns were a worry, the pork has turned out beautifully, and David feels the omens are good.
In the dining room, Kyle and Bek can’t take their eyes off each other, or their insistent gonads in their pants. Other guests make jokes about Kyle and Bek getting married, which is a terribly quaint way to react: the atmosphere is less matrimonial than that of an extended sweaty Bek-Kyle hornfest. They’re one smouldering look away from sweeping the table clear and jumping onto it.
Entree is served. “It’s not what I was expecting,” says Tim, which is weird because he had a menu. “I would Instagram that,” says Ash, like a total knobend. “The bun wasn’t fluffy at all,” Amy whines, having heard tales of humans and their fluffy buns and allowed herself the unforgivable indulgence of anticipation.
Meanwhile on Channel Ten Steve Price is eating something disgusting and you may write your own joke.
David is concerned about the steamed bun. “It has to be perfect,” says Betty, but it doesn’t really — Caz and Damo only got 62. Pete reckons the bun is pretty good though: even though it betrays his most cherished principles, he liked the entree. Manu is much more negative about the dish — “it would’ve been nice to see a little bit more technique from you guys,” he says mournfully, the way you might talk to your child after it accidentally burns your house down.
Overall, the entree goes down pretty well with the guests, apart from — haha, as if you need to be told who the exception is. “I don’t think it’s as strong as I was expecting,” says Amy, which is pretty rich from someone who chose Tyson as her teammate. “A bit of a miss,” says Tyson, referring to the entree and not to his haircut.
In the kitchen, Betty and David are making Betty’s mum’s favourite dish. “This is for you Mum,” says Betty, but it’s not — Betty’s mum isn’t getting any of it. She’s not even there. But it’s good to know that if they stuff this dish up, it will absolutely be a direct insult to Betty’s mum.
Meanwhile Tyson is slagging of Bek and Ash’s food knowledge. “My gut feel is that Bek and Ash are fairly naive,” he says, lying shamelessly — he has no gut. Food is deposited directly into his cud-pouch. He then bangs on for way too long about broth and vegetables and all kinds of foodie wank that nobody cares about, having misread his how-to-talk-to-humans manual and come to the conclusion that people are interested in his views on broth.
Amy and Tyson are now made to feel distinctly uncomfortable by another reminder of the existence of emotions, as Bek asks Kyle how many children he wants. While she talks she twirls her hair, which would be adorable if it weren’t for the fact it causes Karen and Ros to twirl their hair too, which is just horrific.
Amy now gets the chance to declare her hatred for children and the elderly, which is not surprising as where she comes from infants are grown in tubes and everyone is painlessly exterminated at the age of 40. Back in the kitchen Betty is making rice cakes and it’s as tedious as that sounds. “These rice cakes give me a headache,” she says, and that’s actually pretty common — usually the headaches are induced by the gnawing hunger caused by eating them, rather than by the cooking process, though.
David and Betty have fixated on the rice cakes so much that they’ve overcooked their okra or something. Everything has gone to hell and they don’t know how to fix it and Betty’s mum is no doubt deeply ashamed of her loser daughter.
Back in the dining room, people are telling their fortunes by shaking sticks and looking in a book and oh fuck it’s one of those “Extras” they do to make you think the ad break is over when it’s not I HATE WHEN THEY DO THAT.
In the kitchen, David and Betty’s main course is a disaster: tardy rice cakes and slimy okra and also it’s a dish containing rice cakes and okra. They dilute the broth and cook some more okra and you can tell it won’t work but kudos to them for not just running screaming into the night I suppose. I mean, not really — I’d love it if someone did that.
In the dining room the guests are talking, and Tyson is almost breaking under the strain. He sneers at Caz’s description of the pressure of cooking on the show — he finds her weakness despicable, the stench of humanity is thick in his nostrils.
Back in the kitchen Betty takes a selfie, for fuck’s sake.
Main is served. Karen and Ros talk some nonsense about Instagram. The guests seem to think the dish looks great, but Tyson is revolted by the presence of okra, and to be fair okra is pretty gross.
Manu asks Betty why she changed her mum’s recipe. Betty says she didn’t change it, she just added elements — which seems a pretty good definition of “changing it”. Manu demands to know why she thought her mum’s recipe wasn’t good enough for them. Betty is so stunned she cuts to an ad break.
After the break, which lasts about seventy-eight minutes, Manu pulls a Preston on Betty and David by saying, “Well done”. He loves it. Pete loves it too, because I guess okra is paleo, but the broth was too subtle for him: Pete has always loathed subtlety, as you can tell by his tan.
Everyone loves the main course, but hey guess what Amy and Tyson didn’t. The other guests all reel with astonishment.
Dessert involves something called “matcha green tea”, which sounds horrible, especially when described by people who say “hashtag on trend” at the end. Betty’s ice cream is too frozen, which is just one of those cruel ironies. They put the ice cream back in the freezer, which is a weird solution to the problem of something being too frozen. Then David and Betty say “matcha matcha matcha!” for what feels like several minutes, but may just have been a few seconds that were elongated by the sheer unpleasantness.
Dinner-table discussion turns to the issue of why Amy doesn’t like donuts, and then to the issue of why Amy doesn’t like anything else that has ever existed on this planet. Amy is just not sure about all this weird “food” that people insist on “cooking” and putting into their “bodies”.
In the kitchen, Betty is slightly concerned that dessert is a little bit bitter, but that should be right up Amy and Tyson’s alley. They fill their donuts with green tea cream, which isn’t a euphemism much to David’s disappointment. “I am feeling good!” cries Betty, desperately trying to convince herself. They top the donuts with dark chocolate, also known as “bad chocolate”.
Dessert is served. “It’s incredibly green,” says Ash, judgmentally. “I don’t think the affogato looks very good,” says Tyson, predictably. It’s not appealing to him, a trait it shares with every other foodstuff ever prepared in history.
“Are you happy with what you served?” asks Manu, the classic trick question. Betty falls into his trap by saying she is happy, allowing Manu to gleefully pounce and tell her how shitty her dessert was. The ice cream is icy, the donut is dense, and the flavour of the affogato is apparently “savoury” and “seaweedy”, which is definitely not a fun word to hear in relation to a dessert you’ve made.
Everyone hates dessert — it’s so awful that Tyson practically ejaculates with joy. And if he had, it probably would’ve tasted better than dessert. Clearly, David and Betty have used too much matcha, forgetting the time-tested cooking principle: don’t use any matcha.
It is time for the teams to channel their viciousness and envy into a numerical expression. As they discuss the scores, Bek looks like she’s about to cry, although this might be because Kyle kept his clothes on all night. The dessert has cost Betty and David dearly — they score 30 out of 50 from the guests, which is better than Caz and Damo, but could have been so much better if dessert hadn’t been a Class Five Chemical Weapon.
As usual the judges are kinder than most guests, because they do not live their lives in the crippling shadow of fear. But the dessert is the killer, and they get only a two and a one from Manu and Pete. This makes a total of 61, which puts them behind Caz and Damo, one of the most distressing things you can say about a pair of cooks.
Tomorrow night tune in to see Karen and Ros make a whole bunch of midwife jokes: they made one at the end of tonight and it was annoying as hell. The ads say an MKR “record” might be broken. Hope it’s a record for lowest score. That’s the most fun kind of record on MKR.
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