Culture

‘MasterChef Australia’ Recap: Cube Food Drama And The End Of Brendan And Reece’s Bromance

Still trying to figure out how Emelia had to guess kohlrabi right after Laura got honeydew??

by Michelle Rennex  22 June 2020
masterchef recap cube food tessa

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After four nights off, MasterChef: Back To Win finally returned to our screens last night.

Following a quick chat about their oh-so lucky “elim” shirts, the bottom seven got stuck right into the glorious cube taste test challenge. Luckily for Vegan Reece — who was sent home in Season 10 from this very same challenge — he was standing safe on the gantry thanks to his back-to-back immunity wins.

Sadly, this wasn’t the case for the remaining contestants, who learned that the first four to guess a cube wrong would be heading into the second round cook-off. To make it all that little more cruel, Mel then shared that everyone would have to taste the cubes blindfolded, meaning the entire challenge would rely on the contestants palates and sniffing abilities.

With a whopping 60 perfectly carved cubes on the table, allegedly placed in order of difficulty, the bottom seven had to pick a number out of a bag to determine their tasting order.

Blitzing through the first round, Sweat King Callum, Brendan, Chaotic Poh, Pasta Lover Laura, Dessert King Reynold and Emelia all correctly identified their varying fruits and veggies including carrot, apple, banana, beetroot, orange and tomato.

Sadly for a very nervous Tessa, even though she thought what she had was celery, the cube-shape threw her off and she incorrectly guessed celeriac. Honestly though, considering the easy ass things everyone else got, a literal fucking celery core was a bit slack to give someone in the first round — especially when it came right after an orange and was followed by tomato. What a stitch up.

Looping back to Callum, the Sweat King managed to get pineapple correct. Then, to be as cruel and daggy as humanly possible to real-life angel Brendan, Jock told him his guess of zucchini was incorrect and that the vegetable was actually ~courgette~.

Continuing his reign of terror, Jock then stole Chaotic Poh’s cube as she desperately searched for it on her table. But even with Jock’s tricks, Poh correctly guessed pumpkin. As did Laura with cauliflower, Reynold with lamb, and Emelia with beef.

Getting increasingly more difficult, the remaining six all managed to identify rockmelon, cucumber, bacon, avocado, feta cheese, and radicchio in the third loop. Entering into the fourth round, chicken, salmon, bleu cheese, and cheddar were all guessed correctly until a crushed Reynold stumbled over ham, which he thought was turkey.

I’m going to be honest, after literally half an hour of watching people eat cubes of food, the novelty of it all started to wear off.

So to wrap up the cubes, Brendan confused lime for pomelo as he struggled to remember what citrus had already been guessed.

Then, while battling it out to avoid the last spot, there were some oddly convenient cubes given out like Pasta Lover Laura getting parmesan and Chaotic Poh being given durian. Yet, somehow with everyone left having super-human palates, Callum, Poh, Laura and Emelia took the cubes right down to the final three — something that I don’t think any of the producers ever thought was going to happen.

However, Emelia was the last to stumble at cube 57 of 60 when she confused daikon for kohlrabi, which is understandable because what in the fuck is a kohlrabi? Anyway, despite Pasta Lover Laura literally being given a cube of honeydew before kohlrabi made its grand entrance, Emelia was sent to the second round alongside Dessert King Reynold, Tessa and Brendan.

Finally clearing away the cubes, the judges announced that the second round cook would again be based on flavours — specifically the five basic “tastes” of salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami.

With 60 minutes on the clock, the bottom four were told they had to each cook a balanced sweet or savoury dish, using at least one ingredient from each of the five display pantries and their under-bench staples only.

Deciding to play to their strengths, Tessa thought that the way she was going to stand out was by settling on *checks notes* South-East Asian? And by *re-checks notes* barely cooking at all? Anyway, essentially choosing to serve an hour-long prawn sashimi, Tessa described her dish as a ~scarlet prawn crudo served with a sweet and sour dressing, and prawn head and beef fat oil~.

Similarly, Emelia decided to stick to desserts and served a cube back to the judges in the form of a chocolate and Vegemite parfait, which seemed to absolutely shock Bench Demon Jock, who called it a “bold move”. Pretty strange thing to question though, considering Cadbury literally released Vegemite chocolate that took over the country back in 2015. But sure, what a crazy and wild ~bold move~ that has never been seen before I guess!

Also sure that he wanted to cook what he knew, Brendan was determined to redeem himself for his shitty dumplings from last cook. However, Dumpling King Brendan scrapped his dumpling dreams a few minutes into the cook after realising that he’d struggle to balance his dish with the five essential flavours. So instead Brendan grabbed what he needed to start a Japanese-style lobster noodle served in seafood broth.

Meanwhile, looking absolutely defeated from round one, the Dessert King decided to reluctantly put his savoury hat on. To impress in the second round, Reynold unconfidently settled on duck served with barbecued kale, pickled raspberries and beetroot, and a smokey bone and bacon sauce.

Sounding equally as sad from the gantry above, Vegan Reece tried to shout advice down to his bestie below as he was worried about Brendan’s dish. Also worried was Andy and Jock, who gave the always just so helpful advice that “there was nowhere to hide” and that Brendan should “focus on balancing the flavours” almost as if that’s exactly what the challenge was asking for? So insightful.

Moving back over to self-doubt land, Reynold told Melissa that he was just “free-flowing right now”, which is truly never the vibe anyone should have during an elimination. However, even with the mounting pressure and stress he was feeling, the Dessert King told Mel that he was confident in his flavours.

With 30 minutes to go, Emelia was busy preparing her poached rhubarb, sheep’s milk sorbet and bacon fat caramel to accompany her frozen chocolatey, yeasty cubes. At the same, Tessa started to whip up her prawn head and beef fat oil, as Chaotic Poh shouted advice from the gantry.

After Poh advised Tessa to make sure her beef flavour didn’t overpower the seafood, Tessa decided to butcher the pronunciation of Belacan (dried shrimp paste) before adding a little to her oil to boost the seafood flavours.

Meanwhile, still not 100% in his, Reynold started to slowly gain his confidence back as he had all his pots and pans going. However, even with all his elements cooking away, Reynold had still yet to incorporate any sweet flavours into his dish. So, inspired by some dodgy YouTube video he watched one time, Reynold decided to throw a couple of dates on the hibachi to make a smoked date puree for the first time ever.

Huddled in the corner, where everyone could definitely hear them, the judges started to discuss their fears in the dishes being whipped up. Despite giving the contestants a challenge where they literally have to step out of their comfort zones in order to hit the brief, the judges questioned the cooks decisions to *checks notes* step outside of their comfort zones?

Anyway, continuing with their ~wild~ and ~unsafe~ dishes, Brendan started on his kombu and rocket oil to add the bitterness needed to balance out his dish. Also powering through, as Emelia was finishing off her duck fat caramel, Bench Demon Jock decided to scare her by saying that her sorbet wasn’t fully set yet.

Even though Emelia was already fully aware of this fact and decided to just let it do its thing, Jock said that “not thinking about it is not going to make it churn any faster”. And while that’s true, shockingly, also thinking about it doesn’t make a machine go faster either. Wild thought, I know.

Getting increasingly more frustrated with Brendan’s style of cooking, Vegan Reece just flat out told him to stop. After running back and forth from the bitter pantry to his bench with random greens, Vegan Reece and Chaotic Poh urged Brendan to just taste his elements together to see if they were balanced instead of aiming to just make the most bitter oil known to man.

Taking his guardian angels advice from up above, Brendan decided to leave his oil as it was and instead start cooking his noodles with the remaining five minutes. Meanwhile, Tessa was using her time to plate her dish full of uncooked foods and Emelia was using hers to scoop out the sorbet that fully set after she just left to do its thing. King shit.

As the duck pro completed the final elements to his dish, Pasta Lover Laura shouted from above that Reynold needed to “get that skin nice”. Clearly having gained back all his lost confidence, Reynold shut Laura down by saying “Yeah… I mean, have you guys not been watching my Instagram?” and honestly? Lmao, we love to see it.

First up to taste, Tessa presented her prawn crudo, which the judges felt not only looked beautiful and vibrant, but was layered, complex and balanced in flavour. Jock even threw out the judging buzzword of the season and called the dish ~cOnFidenT CoOkiNg~.

Up next, Reynold brought in his visually stunning duck breast creation. Going in hard, Jock said it wasn’t “the most interesting plate of food [he’s] ever had” but ultimately felt that it hit the brief because the flavours were well-balanced. Similarly, Melissa said the dish was “not joyful” but “delicious”. Ouch.

Continuing on with the savoury dishes, Brendan unconfidently presented his seafood noodles, which he felt might not be perfectly balanced. And the judges agreed. While the noodles themselves were perfectly made and the dish was nice to eat, the flavours were heavily umami and unbalanced as the bitterness, sweetness and sourness got lost.

Last up, Emelia’s Vegemite parfait and bacon fat caramel cube creation was, obviously, a well-balanced smash hit with the judges. I mean, who in the world would’ve thought that the fake outrage over mixing the “weird flavours” of Vegemite and chocolate, even though Cadbury already did that, was unnecessary?

Sadly, however, this meant that we had to say goodbye to sweet angel and Dumpling King, Brendan. And if that wasn’t already a gut-punch enough, watching his bestie Reece’s jaw drop in disbelief, Reynold look down at the floor to stop himself from crying and Melissa’s eyes swell with tears was all too much.

On the next episode of MasterChef: Back To Win, the top seven take part in Mystery Box where they have to use all their ingredients to make both a sweet and savoury dish in just 75 minutes.

MasterChef: Back To Win returns tonight at 7.30pm on Channel Ten. 

Michelle Rennex is a Senior Writer at Junkee who can’t cook, but enjoys judging people like she can. You can follow her on Twitter at @michellerennex.