My Kitchen Rules Recap: Ob/Gyn and Cheese

Previously, on My Kitchen Rules…the narrator nearly gave himself a hernia. Tonight could be the night to push him over the edge, because what’s more exciting than two middle-aged midwives with delusions of grandeur?

Nothing, I’d say.

Karen and Ros are aiming to become the Jac and Shaz of this year’s MKR crop, but do they have the skill to one day act as spokeswomen for Dettol? Let’s find out, as we travel to Diamond Creek, where Karen and Ros are taking a walk. “I’m so glad we decided to go for a walk this morning,” says one of them: a perfectly normal and natural thing for a person to say to another person I am sure you will agree.

Karen and Ros, when not walking and having spontaneous unscripted chats, deliver babies for a living, a job they hate enough to humiliate themselves on TV attempting to find a new career. It’s important to remember that this is their job, or else you won’t understand the constant blizzard of birth jokes coming your way.

Karen and Ros are off to the shops to encounter a variety of depressed-looking staff roped into their charade. Pete and Manu, meanwhile, peruse the menu. Pete notes that their starter, ricotta gnocchi, isn’t a conventional gnocchi as it’s cheese-based rather than potato-based. I don’t know what different this makes to Pete: according to his supposed “principles”, he doesn’t eat either cheese or potatoes. Fortunately for his dining experience, he is a filthy hypocrite.

Having run around the shops holding hands, Karen and Ros return to a house belonging to person or persons unknown, to set up their instant restaurant, which they have called “Procreations” and decorated with obstetric paraphernalia, so that while the guests eat they are constantly picturing a newborn child forcing its way out of the birth canal. Nothing could be more appetising. There’s a birthing pool. I don’t really see why they haven’t hired a woman to actually give birth during dinner.

I don’t know what it is, but somehow Karen and Ros’s preparation process is even less interesting than usual. Rest the lamb, make the couscous, chop the onion while wearing stupid-looking glasses. It’s as exciting as watching a botanist measure grass. It’s a struggle to stay awake during Ros’s description of vegetable-caramelisation.

The guests arrive. Amy and Tyson, having watched the instructional tapes all night, manage to perform reasonable facsimiles of hugs and kisses. Karen and Ros sit them down and explain their instant restaurants repulsive premise. Everyone is enchanted and nauseated. Amy in particular does not enjoy being reminded of the unhygienic facts of human reproduction.

At the table, David and Betty get to know Damo and Caz while David drinks heavily to blot out the pain of just how vehemently Betty states that she will never ever date him ever for as long as she lives.

Meanwhile in the kitchen Karen and Ros are making gnocchi, but who gives a shit?

In the dining room, Kyle and Bek are attempting to figure out a way to exchange fluids from across the table. “Hashtag get a room,” say David and Betty, poignantly persisting in their delusion that anyone can ever feel love for a person who says “hashtag” out loud.

In the kitchen, Ros is happy with something, god knows what.

Pete and Manu arrive at the instant restaurant and Pete is immediately inspired by the baby-themed environment to start cooking up some bone broth. Karen and Ros recite their boring menu and everyone is bored.

Back in the kitchen, Karen and Ros’s pavlovas have cracked and dried out, and so, if we’re honest, have Karen and Ros. But they don’t have time to go back and make something good, so they press on inadequately and get far too excited about their gnocchi.

In the dining room, Bek says “it has the potential to be a strong entree”, so I guess conversation was flagging so badly that she was willing to say literally anything to break the silence.

Tim notes that Karen and Ros might be better cooks than him because they’ve been cooking for longer. Amy and Tyson note that cooking for a long time doesn’t make you a good cook, and they should know: they’ve only been cooking for a week, and have only had digestive systems for ten days.

Manu invades the kitchen to find out where the fuck his dinner is. He wants the midwives to tell him about their gnocchi: the conversation in the dining room really must be terrible at this stage. Karen and Ros tell Manu that they’re having fun: always a bad sign.

Karen and Ros continue to have body-shaking orgasms over their gnocchi, and finally, after what I swear to god has been six hours of preparation, entree is served.

The judges taste their entrees, and Pete continues to spit in the face of his values. “What would your kids say?” asks Pete. Fortunately Karen restricts her answer to what they would say about the food, but even so, she lies and says they would like it. Pete thinks it was yummy, and confirms that the paleo diet is a terrible way to live. Manu also likes the entree, and begins listing ingredients as a stand-in for analysis.

“Me and Ros have delivered a good first baby!” cries Karen. Because they’re midwives. Remember? Remember how they’re midwives? Hence, you know. The reference.

Betty is worried. David is worried too, but more so than Betty because she’s just worried about how good the food is, while David is worried that he will never sleep with Betty.

All the guests love the gnocchi, except Amy and Tyson, who found it “too cheesy” and “not representative enough of the awful futility of life”. Amy says it’s “not a competition dish”, which is the code word the producers give to each couple that they designate the villains, so everyone will know what fucksticks they are when they say it. Tyson also criticises the way other guests pronounce “jus”, and unleashes hell by smiling, the way a mutant lizard might smile just before evacuating its bowels on your face.

In the kitchen, Karen and Ros are faffing around with their Middle Eastern lamb — a controversial choice in this troubled age: political correctness gone mad? They are disappointed in their dry, unappetising lamb. “I feel like I’m facing the firing squad,” says Karen, who spent many years undercover behind the Iron Curtain.

Manu tells them the lamb was overcooked, which they knew, and that the stuffing was dry and dense, an apt reflection of its makers. He also has no idea what was “middle eastern” about the dish, and judging from their responses, neither do they.

Nobody enjoys the lamb, or finds it Middle Eastern, but you do have to consider that none of the guests are Middle Eastern either, so what the hell would they know?

David is optimistic now that Karen and Ros’s main has failed. “Hashtag true story,” says Betty. Shut the fuck up, Betty.

Several couples are filmed saying how much they’re expecting Tyson to say something awful about the lamb, something we know takes place after the entire meal is over, and that they are saying purely to build anticipation ahead of a surprise twist that isn’t a surprise anyway because we saw it on the ad. What I’m saying is: the careful structuring of an MKR episode is utterly pointless.

Because of course Tyson goes ahead and says that he loved the lamb and it was as tender and juicy as the flesh of the babies he devours nightly to keep himself youthful. And he smiles again, and the angels in heaven poke their own eyes out.

Everyone is shocked by Tyson’s bizarre sudden love for Karen and Ros’s lamb. “This is good food,” he says. “I’d be happy to eat this again”, which he means literally — he wants to regurgitate it and eat it again. Although “happy” is an exaggeration: he can’t technically feel happiness.

He doesn’t really like the lamb, but he doesn’t like it more than he’s liked anything else he’s eaten so far, so maybe it’s just his mutant digestive system that finds it easier to process overcooked meat.

Back to the kitchen, where Karen and Ros are busy “roasting off the fruits”, whatever that means. It will, apparently, “elevate it to the next level”. This sounds wildly unlikely.

David and Betty continue to fret over whether Karen and Ros can top them, and Betty continues to slap David’s hand off her thigh. “I don’t think a pavlova should be a competition dish,” says Betty, bitchily — if we’re going to get into it, I don’t think repellent green-tea-flavoured pus-filled bog-donuts that remind people of the last dead dog they saw in the middle of the freeway should be a competition dish either, Betty, but you seemed happy to serve that up.

Obviously, Karen and Ros have an incredibly low bar to clear when it comes to dessert, and their pavlova does look a lot like an attempt to clear and incredibly low bar. Still, you can’t stuff up a pavlova too badly, can you? I mean…can you? This is MKR, almost anything is possible when it comes to ineptitude.

Manu says the pavlova is kind of crap but also sort of OK I guess. Pete says that it causes autism and cancer and he would never ever eat this poison. Haha, just kidding, he actually stuffs it all in his face and basically says the same as Manu. It’s just OK, which should be enough to put them over the top against David and Betty, creators of the dessert-as-homicide.

The guests eat and Tyson bitches about how much fruit he has in his. And then bitches about everything else. “I can’t work Tyson out,” says Damo, but it’s pretty easy to work Tyson out: he’s a dickhead. David, who is utterly desperate, both as a competitive cook and as a hopeful sex-haver, tries to poison the well by saying the spices in the pavlova made him feel like he was eating lamb. Everyone has a bit of a chuckle over how obvious and pathetic David is — if you’re going to try to play Machiavelli you’ve got to come up with something a bit better than, “This pavlova is all lamby”.

It is time for scores. “Tonight we served two good dishes and one not so good,” says Ros, who has some pretty strong rose-coloured glasses on. As usual, the sixes fly thick and fast as all the couples fail to show appreciation for the fact they just got a free meal. From the guests, Karen and Ros receive 31 out of 50. This surprises them, as they had assumed the guests had noticed how much they suck.

The midwives get two eights from the judges for their entree. Manu pronounces gnocchi as “newquay”. He’s so not French. For main, they get two twos, which seems very harsh — I mean the lamb wasn’t great, but it’s not like they served toxic green bile donuts. For dessert they get two sevens, which gives a total of 65, which puts them top of the mediocre leaderboard, which leaves David and Betty still on the bottom, and David still alone every night.

Tune in tomorrow, when Bek and Ash will cook and Bek will suck Kyle off under the table.

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