According to the blurb the night is more about drama than cooking. Urgh.
Teams are deployed to Brisbane where defence force foodies Matt and Aly are gearing up to impress the troops. But the real battle zone is at the table where rivals open fire.
MKR Tues – Miltary couple cooks
Why do they dress Anna like a child??
Good question LP
Snap LP, that is exactly (and I mean verbatim) what I was about to comment.
Shades of Kylie Mole, for sure….
Just looked up tortilla press – only $30 on eBay. Might have worth investing in one to get consistency.
I know some brands snap easily so google reviews
Obviously they don’t make this that often. If they do, Aly should be using Masa harina.
There is another trick to make tortilla without the press. Use a flat plate to press it out
Ah-ha, thanks LP. Learned a new ingredient today
Be aware, Big H, that masa harina is an absolute pig of a flour to work with when making tortillas. It sticks to your hands, the rolling pin, bench top, cutting board, baking paper, waxed paper, any and every thing, even if you use white flour to dust the surface beforehand. Tortillas need corn meal, which has a consistency between masa and polenta, and is impossible to get here. You and LP could have more success than I, though. I have no patience with any dough thing that doesn’t work for me right away. 🙂
You have to get the right corn meal, not the one for corn bread. If it is masa harina, then it won’t stick.
There is an online company called Fireworksfoods.com.au which sells Mexican foods. They have white cornflour (Harina de Maiz)
Thanks, LP and AnnaB. I used Bob’s Red Mill Masa Harina, but I don’t remember which recipe I used. If you say masa shouldn’t stick, I will give it another try
Von, I also use Bob’s Red Mill brand. Did you use hot water to mix?
Yes, I did, LP, all the recipes I looked at had the masa, hot water, and a little salt as the only ingredients. Maybe I didn’t knead it enough, or maybe it is just me :). I’ll buy some more and try a couple of small mixes…and not on a night when I’m starving and hanging out for tortillas.
I use Pan Masa Harina for my arepas but have yet to make tortillas. My local Supermarket now stocks it, whereas five years ago I had to get it from a specialty Mexican store.
Oh my gosh, we all need to get together and have a Mexican food night. I’m not even joking, right now.
Good idea, Windsong. We could turn it into a competition! Some of us could be bitchy and rude, some of us could be clueless, and some of us could be experts (not me, obviously). Maybe we could film it?
I call dibs on being the flirtatious one.
Uh oh. That’s not ancho chilli, which is what you should use for chocolate.
I really want them to score higher than the Italians ( but very unlikely)
Yeah, I feel like we’re due for a poor team, just to add some variety to proceedings. But I still hope they do well.
Just started here, I quite like the military couple so it’s not looking good for them based on your comments. (And I really don’t like the Italian boys).
I had to laugh when one of the Russians said something along the lines of “They’re in the military so I don’t think they can cook”. The two are not mutually exclusive as far as I know.
We could have a drinking game for when the Russians make sweeping generalisations. It started with Australians are lazy in episode one and there have been quite a few since.
If it weren’t for lazy Australians on their couches , the Russian girls wouldn’t be on TV.
Matt and Aly are just so damn likeable. And good looking. My gosh, their kids will be genetically-blessed. There’s been a few too many references to past relatives, they’re obviously both from Defense Force families, so I think we can cut them some slack this time (and I can’t hold a grudge against either of them).
Anna continues to be the best person ever. Her reactions to the food tend to be more entertaining than the actual food, and I like that even she’s sick of the Henry-related shenanigans.
That pineapple salsa looked so amazing.
“It’s not Mexican!” says the girl from the Chinese restaurant who made ravioli dumplings.
Hadil totally reminds me of Friend’s Janice.
Oh. My. God.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think I would’ve totally still enjoyed the Mexican main, even with the tasteless pork.
Poor Matt and Aly. Didn’t Aly look crushed? Well, we were due a bad team.
The poor Hungarian/Italian mother and daughter. They’re so unremarkable that even channel 7 is focusing their promotional stuff on the Man Eaters and not them, even though they’re cooking tomorrow night.
I think this round has benefited from a lack of cardboard villains. The Russian girls continue to offer super-harsh critiques, but score the highest. If it weren’t for 7’s ham-fisted editing, I think the Russian girls could’ve actually been an interesting team of competitors, but 7 needed their faux-Red Scare villainy. Eugh.
And on the other side of the table, I don’t think the Man Eaters set out to be the villains, but they’re both really getting on my nerves and I hope they leave soon. The rabbit joke was funny, girls. Let it go.
Meanwhile, anyone who doesn’t love Anna is objectively wrong and I can prove it with maths and graphs.
I decided she is my girl crush. Aly is cute too though. 😉 And yeah, the Russians were made to look like the über-villains, but as usual, another team is worse. I remember the same with Zana (?) who was apparently soooo evil. And actually was rather decent. Or remember the Princess and the florist friend who won in the earlier seasons? It is usually the teams who are promoted to be evil, that just turn out to be a bit controversial but not the baddies.
Or our favorite example: Tyson & Amy. What have we waited to see angry angry man and dude, was he chilled 😀
Ah, right. I liked his sister. 🙂
Just sneaked over to Facebook. Looks like the friends and family and Sonya herself are posting in the comments of the MKR FB page. Since when are contestants actually doing that?
Poor Barbie and Ken though, they are way too gorgeous to place on the bottom (well, he not so much, but she is very cute and pretty looking^^).
I think the negative comments are getting to Sonya and Hadil.
When you put yourselves on TV, you will be judged. They may be nice but people are entitle to criticize what they see on TV.
Sadly then, Roula did not show up. Imagine her pseudo-gangstahhh speak while trying to bash commenters who did not like her. 😉
I did watch tonight and found it a bit sad that such a likable couple turned out to be mediocre cooks. Just goes to show how skewiff this show is now.
Their main course looked pretty bad. I would have made white flour tortillas as well, given the numbers needed, but pineapple salsa was just wrong. As for dessert, they really showed their inexperience by loading the chili flakes in the chocolate, and brandy into the cream. No tasting was done, they just kept flinging more and more “flavour” into their poor dessert ingredients. Taste before you add, kids.
I don’t like the Russians much, but that one Jordanian woman is so over the top about trying to deal with the insulter that she is becoming quite pathetic. Grow up and get over it, whatever your name is.
Too bad that such a likable team got a low score.
The Russians and Hadl are very irritating. Every time the Russians smirk when someone fails I want someone to slap them. Hadl needs to just be quiet and chill out.
When Aly was making the tortillas I kept thinking why don’t you have a tortilla press. Would have been faster and tortillas would have been more consistent. Chunks of avocado with nothing added is not guacamole….no seasoning, no tomatoes, no onion, etc?? As for the salsa I don’t think there’s a problem with putting pineapple in it. Even though pineapple is thought of as a tropical fruit it is being grown in Mexico. However did they put any chiles in that? Coriander?
I do not consider the two Asian girls home cooks. They have years of restaurant experience and should not be on MKR. Their comment about the tacos not being Mexican was funny. Did they forget that they made ravioli for their Asian inspired dinner?
I read Matt and Aly applied to be on the show as a prank. They didn’t submit a video of them cooking but still got chosen. I guess they have a good backstory, regarding the defence background. Thus they are there to make up the number.
The fact that channel 7 picked them really means the joke’s on us, doesn’t it?
I remember a show I was on… there were two contestants who had some other commitments and thus we’re classified as easy elimination kill. I suspect the military couple probably could only achieve certain amount of leave and as such are just going to enjoy the short experience for what it is (eg: eat some good food whilst we can).
I think as this team is quite strong the producers are happy to have a “who killed bambi’s mother” team so as not to eliminate any of the attention grabbing set.
Littlepetal is right, I read the same story in the paper this morning. Matt and Aly have zero cooking experience (and Aly actually discovered she was pregnant on the first week of filming. If you watch carefully, you’ll notice she’s avoiding the more-alcoholic foods and courses, like last night’s Brandy, or the White Russian dessert), and Matt admitted that they really didn’t know what they were doing. But Matt applied as a joke, and channel 7 selected them.
Not that we needed any more proof about channel 7’s casting department, but, well, yeah…
I am watching them serve tortillas while eating carnitas (slow-cooked pork that is then fried in its own rendered fat). I did, however, buy the tortillas. Cringed when they served it with lettuce and sour cream. Mine has slaw, avo from my tree (worth more than bitcoin at the moment), chilli sauce and a bit of Greek yoghurt. Why did they not make a slaw?
Juz, thank you for your blog post.Really thank you! Awesome.