‘MasterChef Australia’ Recap: Seasoned With Salty Tears

This week, MasterChef Australia’s Team Challenge reminded us that the contestants are all just people with families who love them, and whose hopes and dreams will be systematically crushed to entertain the masses.

In this episode, contestants are split into two teams of five. They have two and a half hours to cook a four-course meal for “40 of the best diners [they] will ever cook for”.

The judges refuse to say precisely who the diners are, but anyone who has seen MasterChef before knows it the contestant’s families.

Each course has to hero one of delicious. magazine’s 2018 picks for Australia’s best produce: Holy Goat Cheese’s goat and cow milk cheese, coral trout from Mark Eather Seafood, Wagyu beef from Mayura Station, and Golden Delicious apples from Moonacres Farm.

Gary’s running the kitchen for this challenge, and overall, the cook goes reasonably smoothly. Everyone seems to have gotten relatively used to the stress and intensity of cooking in MasterChef Team Challenges, like boiling frogs.

However, this doesn’t mean it isn’t without problems.

On Yellow Team, Tati is putting the coral trout into a Thai red curry, adding blue swimmer crab and prawns as well. It’s a lot of elements and a lot of seafood. She also has to fillet and pinbone the fish, which can take long enough for dinosaurs to evolve into birds.

Seeing the struggle, team captain Larissa tells Anushka to finish up her fennel parfait for the dessert and then help Tati with filleting. None of the other desert elements are done, but the fish is the priority as it needs to go out first. This feels like something that will bite them later.

Meanwhile, on Green Team, Prince Harry is doing what I like to call “panic cooking”. Flustered by dealing with both the best ingredients and the “best diners”, he’s started to make enough jus to drown around one hundred people. 

There’s a ridiculous amount of beef bones and vegetables caramelising in two pans, and HRH keeps piling celery on top like a kid making sandcastles. Everything is chopped too big and lacks finesse, but he’s too agitated to see it.

Fortunately, Gary comes by to talk Prince Harry down, cutting beef and carrot into smaller chunks as an example.

“Flavour,” says Gary, pointing to the pieces on his chopping board. “Rubbish,” he says, pointing to the meat and vegetables Prince Harry has in his pans. Gary’s bluntness bludgeons HRH back into Earth’s orbit, helping him settle and refocus.

Overall, Gary does a pretty good job of teaching this episode, helping contestants stay calm, in control and not quit. 

He shows Anushka how to more easily fillet the trout, allowing her to finally return to her dessert with about 10 minutes to go until service. He then heads over to Green Team, where everything’s on track except for Derek’s dessert. His apple sponge cakes have shrunk significantly, and look a bit sad. 

Gary asks Derek and team captain Christina if they have a sauce, and suggests that the apples go in it. I don’t see how this fixes the sponge situation unless they decide to cover it up with sauce and apples, but OK.

Christina suggests a caramel, but Derek is concerned that this will result in too many sweet elements on the dish. He decides instead to poach the apples in apple cider for some acidity, which Christina approves because she trusts him.

However, Derek has a hard time trusting himself, and his tentative confidence is instantly whisked away when Gary comes back around to question every decision he has made in his entire life.

“What are you making? What’s this? Is this supposed to be caramel?” asks Gary. 

“I’ve just poached them in the apple cider,” says Derek, his lovely sunny smile already wavering.

“OK, you just got carried away.”

Derek assures Gary that he will also be making a caramel sauce and stays the course because bravery is not absence of fear but persisting in spite of it. It’s also too late to change the dish now anyway.

Service starts and contestants start to bring the first plates out to their mystery diners. And just as everyone except the contestants suspected, 40 of their loved ones are there, sitting at tables in the MasterChef garden.

“Oh my god!” exclaims Anushka as she spots her son. Nicole screams. Christina kisses her partner while still carrying Green Team’s cheese course. Ben embraces a man I assume is his dad, but he could just be excited by all the emotion going around.

Everyone is hugging and crying, making me wonder if the MasterChef house takes the same isolationist stance as Big Brother.

 

The serving contestants reluctantly return to the kitchen to pick up more plates, as well as tell their teammates who the diners are. “They’re our families, guys!” says Anushka, unable to stop crying.

“Your sister’s there, Derek,” says Christina.

“My sister? From Hong Kong?”

Any semblance of order is immediately abandoned. Everyone hastily finishes what they’re doing, picks up a couple of plates and rushes outside, leaving a bemused Gary standing alone in an empty kitchen.

“I’ve never worked in a kitchen where all the staff just left.”

The challenge isn’t over yet though, and soon the contestants have to go back and continue cooking. Everyone’s distracted, wanting to go back out and spend time with their families, but Anushka’s having the hardest time of it. She’s a physically affectionate person, and being separated from her family seems to have taken a toll.

Team captain Larissa kindly lets Anushka have a moment alone in the pantry to have a bit of a cry and pull herself together; then Yellow Team get back into it. They’re starting to fall behind on their curry, and still need to figure out how to serve the beef. There’s also a mountain of dessert elements that have to be made, as Anushka’s time filleting trout has set them back. 

It doesn’t sound like Yellow Team will get it all finished. Though Simon is caramelising apples, they still need to do the fresh apples, salted caramel sauce, dehydrated and fresh fennel fronds, roasted walnuts and fennel dust. 

Nevertheless, Anushka is determined. It’s her family out there. “There is no way I am going to serve them half a dessert.”

Matt and Gary enjoy the tasting so much that watching them feels indecent. Nearly everything looks and tastes phenomenal.

Green Team serves goat’s cheese tart with rocket salad and vinaigrette, coral trout with grapefruit beurre blanc, seared wagyu beef with parsnip puree and beetroot, and apple sponge with cinnamon ice cream.

The judges are in raptures and consider Tessa’s stunning trout dish in particular as being worthy of a high-end restaurant. However, there’s much more fresh apple on one of the desserts than the other, and it heroes cinnamon more than apple.

Yellow Team’s braised radicchio and goat’s cheese with beetroot, coral trout Thai curry, seared wagyu with cauliflower puree, and fennel parfait with caramelised apples and walnuts are also mostly well received. Anushka somehow manages to get all of her dessert elements done, and they come together beautifully. Tati’s curry uses spices in the refined, elegant manner that the judges had been hoping to see.

Unfortunately, Yellow Team’s anemic beef dish isn’t quite what team captain Larissa had imagined. George puts the beef in his mouth almost aggressively, like a child who is only eating dinner because he was promised ice cream after, and Matt mutters “oh dear” just upon seeing it.  

The meat is undercooked, and the thin slices make it cool too quickly, slightly solidifying the fat instead of leaving it nice and melty. It’s a stark contrast to the heavenly plates preceding it and the biggest disappointment of the night.

Yellow Team members Anushka, Ben, Larissa, Simon and Tati will, therefore, take the black in MasterChef‘s next Elimination Challenge, after which one of them will get to spend much more time with their loved ones.

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Amanda Yeo is a Sydney-based writer, lawyer and MasterChef enthusiast who still thinks Reynold should have gotten an immunity pin for his 30/30 dessert in season seven. Follow her on Twitter: @amandamyeo.