My Kitchen Rules Recap: Oven The Time Of Cholera

We begin with the voiceover guy saying, “PREVIOUSLY ON MY KITCHEN RULES” in a voice that surely indicates a major rupture in his digestive tract. Then we see what previously happened on My Kitchen Rules.

Pat and Louisa will now face off against Matt and Aly in Elimination House, which is a lot like Murder House from American Horror Story, except since Pete lost all that weight the rubber gimp suit is kind of baggy on him.

The voiceover guy describes the competitors as “two of the most-loved teams”, which even by MKR standards is a huge lie. Pat and Louisa are, at best, a team that some viewers might vaguely remember having seen at some point.

“You either cook well tonight or you’re out of the competition,” says Matt, falsely. As this is a contest between the two worst teams, “well” is not the bar you need to clear here. As he’s opposed to Pat and Louisa, the level has been set only an inch above “non-lethal”.

Having entered Elimination House and admired what Pete and Manu have done with the place, the teams now meet Colin Fassnidge, the celebrity chef with more compromising photos of Seven network executives than any other.

Matt and Aly begin their prep, determined to show that the Australian military are better at cooking than they are at not committing war crimes. For dessert they are serving pineapple upside-down cake, a concept they say was invented by Matt’s mum, but with a recipe from Aly’s mum. Which is a bit weird: did Matt’s mum call Aly’s mum up to tell her about her great new idea? Was this before or after Matt and Aly hooked up? Are Matt and Aly brother and sister? All good questions.

Meanwhile Pat and Louisa are just kind of depressing to watch.

Pat says she “definitely feels more comfortable cooking Italian food”. Than what, she doesn’t say. Vomiting up, I guess. Colin pops into the kitchen to hit on Pat, while Louisa admits she’s hot for Irish accents, but as we know, Louisa is down for anything with a Y chromosome.

Meanwhile Matt is getting started with his pie filling. He feels he is representing Australia by making a meat pie, which is an incredibly stupid thing to say for many reasons. In comes Colin to make a weak joke about military ranks and express powerful doubts about the concept of meat pies. Matt says scotch fillet tastes bad when cooked badly. Colin congratulates him on his perspicacity. “Just think ahead: that’s all I’m saying,” says Colin, like a gnome giving advice to the Pevensie children.

Back in the other kitchen, Louisa believes that Matt and Aly must be very competitive because they’re in the military. Pat believes that she is even more competitive, having served in Gaddafi’s Imperial Guard.

With one hour to go, nothing interesting has happened. “There’s no room for error,” says Pat, poor deluded soul.

Speaking of errors, we now cut to Jess and Emma. They are here, along with the rest of Group One, none of whom were good enough to make the top five in Group Two, to hypocritically pass judgment on the sad useless saps currently befouling the kitchens.

Kim and Suong are immediately amazed by the size of the dining room, as they are from the western suburbs and not used to eating without touching another person’s elbows. Steve and Stuss are also impressed: “I think they had the Last Supper here,” says Stuss, who knows nothing about either The Last Supper or jokes.

Meanwhile Aly claims to be pouring maple syrup over her dessert, but is actually pouring golden syrup over her dessert. Whether this is because she can’t read labels, or because she has gone her whole life not knowing the difference between syrups, is hard to tell. She then begins making puff pastry, something she has never done before but thought she should try for the first time in Elimination House. But then she is only competing against Pat and Louisa.

In the other kitchen, Pat is singing “I’m So Excited”, which is just a nightmare.

In the dining room, Nic and Josh think the menus are like the World Cup in some stupid way. Pete informs the teams that Group Two had more tens than any other group in MKR history. Emma is indignant at how intimidating Pete is being, which is a bit rich from someone with those lips.

In the kitchen Louisa explains what the trick with aioli is, which is fairly ironic given she’s pouring the oil into an attachment instead of the actual blender.

In the dining room, Jazzey and Stella describe their experience of Group Two. Stella claims to be in a relationship with Henry the truffle farmer, but could just be talking in her sleep.

In the kitchen, cooking is happening, so there’s not much to say really. Zucchini is involved in some way. Aly wants to show people that vegetables can be yummy, which is a dumb plan because they can’t. In the other kitchen, Pat and Louisa wonder how the Italians are going to react to their food. Not that they know that they’re Italians, but there are always Italians.

Back in the dining room Stella and Jazzey are offended because Jess and Emma said nobody in their group nailed seafood, and in fact Stella and Jazzey nailed their seafood, and the dialogue is absolutely crackling tonight isn’t it.

Matt and Aly have left themselves a lot to do in the final minutes, but as the official motto of the Australian Defence Force says, “Hurry the fuck up with that tuna”.

Entree is served. Matt is really happy about his entree. But he thinks Pat and Louisa’s looks good as well. Matt thinks it’ll be a close fight. Kim thinks the calamari looks good. Aly thinks seeing fourteen unfamiliar faces is daunting. The music editor thinks it’s time for some hyperactive string stings.

Unlike instant restaurants, in Elimination House the judges don’t critique the teams until the end of the night. This is a fairer way to do things, but they don’t do it in the instant restaurants because then the episodes might not overstay their welcome.

“Calamari is calamari,” explains Stuss wisely. “You can either cook it or you can’t.” After this profound explanation of the laws of reality, the guests mutter some angry complaints about the entrees, and we move back to the kitchen, where cooking continues remorselessly to happen.

Back in the dining room, Rachael explains that she doesn’t like pies, because it reminds her of football and she doesn’t know how to eat them. “I’m not a princess,” she emphasises, which is true, because princesses get elocution lessons.

In the kitchen, Matt’s pie filling has been cooking for a while, and Matt and Aly are enjoying spending time together — they are desperate to not get sent home, as they know this will mean they will be once more torn apart to slaughter Australia’s enemies.

Colin comes in to tell Matt and Aly that they suck. Matt and Aly agree to throw massive amounts of spice and salt into their pie filling if Colin will agree to go away.

In the dining room, Suong confesses that she has never eaten pizzaiola, but then, who has? Stella loves the fact that Josh keeps faking an Italian accent, but everyone else holds the correct opinion: that it is annoying. Pete’s eyebrows start ricocheting wildly up and down — he’s about to go into a broth coma.

“The broccolini’s ready to put in the steamer,” says Matt, a man who finds it acceptable to serve broccolini to a human audience. This is what the military does to people.

Colin is in Pat and Louisa’s kitchen, pointing out that they forgot to turn their oven on. As a traditional-style chef, he believes that this is a mistake, and sadly Pat and Louisa bend to his hidebound didacticism and agree to turn it on. Yet with fifteen minutes to go, is there still time for Pat and Louisa to maintain their delusion that they could win?

Pat and Louisa drop their meat in boiling sauce to try to make use of their newfound discovery of the link between cooking and heat.

Meanwhile in the dining room Emma is making her boobs dance and her fellow contestants are suing Channel Seven for creating an unsafe workplace. Rachael claims her party trick is better, but all she can do is stick her leg in the air, which is way less impressive than dancing breasts. Ideally of course you want a woman who can do both.

In the kitchen Pat and Louisa are wandering aimlessly around the room and Colin is saying “OMG” and “emoji face”, so everything is basically fucked.

With time up, amazingly the mains are completed in the nick of time. Matt is happy with his mains. Pat and Louisa are just happy they can lie down for a bit.

Main is served. Alex is angry that he’s been served a pot pie instead of a real pie, and I feel his pain on a very personal level. Roula whispers to Rachael, “I assumed the old lady would’ve known how to cook. Clearly not.” Which is a really bitchy thing to say, but also pretty much true. Roula and Rachael are bitching because the veal in the veal pizzaiola is a chop and the menu didn’t say it was a chop. But it didn’t say it wasn’t a chop. And it didn’t say it would taste good. So they haven’t broken any promises there. Nobody likes the veal, and it’s possible that Pat and Louisa’s bold decision to leave the oven off will come back to haunt them.

It is time to prepare dessert. Matt and Aly’s upside down cakes are too dry. Aly says they need to find a way to bring more moisture to the dish. In the army Matt has learnt a way to do this, but it is not allowed in this timeslot.

Meanwhile Pat is taking her cakes out of the pan — so to speak. Pat bemoans the ugliness of her cakes, but they have no time to make prettier cakes. At least they put the oven on this time, and the cakes are, loosely speaking, cakes.

On the other side Matt reveals that he is taking this seriously. Aly reveals that she is putting several gallons of cream on each plate. Matt, despite his belief that less than a vat of cream is inadequate, encourages her to shrink the portions a tad. He busies himself scattering random pieces of nuts around to create a garbagey effect.

Colin yells at both teams. Dessert is served. “At this point, I’m just worried whether it’s enough,” says Pat, describing both her dessert and her daughter.

The guests eat dessert. The upside down cakes are dry, but they took Steve back to the Big Pineapple, whatever that means. Pat and Louisa’s chocolate ricotta cakes are, depending on who you listen to, floury, inedible, or “Mamma Mia” — I bet Josh isn’t even really Italian.

Time for scoring, that thrilling part of the show when people stand in the yard saying numbers. Some of the numbers they say are three, six, one (that was Stuss and Steve, the arseholes) and probably some others.

The judges give their opinions on the dishes. Their opinions include, “interesting dressing”, “not too bad”, “a five”, “chunky beef pie”, “delicious”, “undercooked”, “I take my hat off”, “a little too salty”, “more syrup in the bottom”, “the process of eating”, “a five”, “baby tomato”, “I don’t mind that”, “it didn’t do it for me”, “a six”, “bekked potettoes”, “tough to eat”, “a two”, “sitting around your dining table with your family”, “very chalky”, “missing a sweetness”, “I’m sorry Pat”, and “a one”.

What it comes down to is Matt and Aly got 67 and Pat and Louisa got 36, which means Matt and Aly are only mediocre rather than horrifically awful, so they get to keep going, while Pat and Louisa must now sit and do the post-dinner interview where they pretend the show’s not over and Pat keeps repeating over and over how devastated she’ll be if she’s eliminated and making it pretty obvious what’s happened.

Tune in tomorrow when someone apparently says bullshit to Colin but then they’ve lied to us before so who knows.

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