Tag: Elena

MasterChef – Mon, Jun 13 – elimination

The bottom three contestants from the invention test face off in the elimination pressure test. Contestants have just two hours to recreate two of guest chef Ross Lusted’s signature dishes.
Ross appeared on MasterChef last year as one of the immunity challenge guest chefs. His squid and corn dish beat Jessie’s beef and beetroot dish, scoring 10s from George and Matt and an 8 from Cranky Pants.

It’s Elena, Elise and Zoe in the firing line and we are getting a lot of Elena telling emotional stories about her Nanna. Please, don’t send Elena home when we’ve only just started seeing her make the edit.
Anastasia is there at the side of the kitchen in her power apron, as she has some yet to be named power tonight.
Here comes Ross Lusted with two small cloches and Anastasia gets to pick which one the bottom three will cook.

Chicken dumpling, silken chicken and ginger fried rice.
OR
Perfumed stone fruits with elderflower and peach biscuit.

She picks the dessert and Ross says it’s the trickier of the two. It includes nectarine syrup, a see-through Indonesian biscuit made using bicarb (it looks like a super-fine brandy snap) and burnt peach butter made by burning peaches on a hibachi. They have two hours to cook, then five minutes to plate up the dish for the judges.


It looks like Elise has not recovered from her frying challenge brain freeze and she’s panicking, rushing through the recipe, making mistakes. Ross reckons her biscuits will be rough. Her mixture is looking dodgy and Ross comes over to tell her as much. She decides to strain out the lumps and push on.


Ross wanders over to Elena’s bench and says: “That’s the best batter we’ve had all day.” But she’s behind the other girls and is getting a little panicked.
Elise is starting to crack as well and having George bark “Snap out of it” doesn’t help.
Zoe decides she will just make half the sorbet recipe – a move that elicits a frustrated “argh” from Brett on the gantry.
They have to grill 1cm peach slices on the hibachi and Elise’s are of varying thickness, while Zoe’s are much more even. Elena is way behind and not thinking. She’s worried her poaching liquid isn’t boiling, so Brett rightly tells her: “Put a lid on it.”
And then she starts crying and walks to the side. Now, who was that nice chef a while back who came over to give a crying contestant a cuddle? We need him back. Ah, chef Jason of the quail afternoon tea, who was so nice to Brett when he had an emotional moment.
You can tell everyone on the gantry wants to run down and hug her, because George and Gaz are nowhere to be seen. More back story about her grandparents’ stonefruit orchard and she pulls herself together.
Ross says Zoe’s burnt peaches look great, whereas Elise’s are super charcoaled.
And he tells her that her cake is also too dense.
Zoe has been doing really well up until now but her reduced syrup looks very caramelly. Each contestant has to use a massive deli slicer to shave their cakes to create biscuits. Ross supervises so they don’t chop off their fingers.
Elena gets ahead of herself and starts slicing the fruit she’s not meant to cut until the five minutes of plating up. This could mean she loses some of the fresh taste of the fruit, which includes blood plums – my fave.

The judges taste
Elena: Ross says her presentation is beautiful and precise. The sorbet and wafers are great. But cutting the fruit early means she has lost some freshness.
Zoe: During her plating up time she realises her over-reduced syrup has set and the editors allow a muttered “shit” to air. She chucks it in the microwave so she can at least get something on the plate but it looks very globby. By the time George does his serving up it turns to toffee again. Her sorbet isn’t quite right – she overchurned it because she did half the mixture. The rest of the dish is great.
Elise: She knows she is in big trouble. Gaz loves the syrup but the peach butter is wrong and her biscuits aren’t holey.
Matt says it’s a toss up between Zoe and Elise. So, phew, Elena is safe then – she’s not going out on stone fruit.

The eliminated contestant is …
Zoe. No more swishy pony tails. Elise is lucky. The yayas will be in tears.

Where is she now?
Who knows, because …

Tomorrow
… She’s back tomorrow night with the other eliminated contestants to try and win back a spot.



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MasterChef – Wed, June 8 – team challenge

Tonight, Kylie Kwong is back – thankfully just as a guest mentor as Shannon Bennett makes a much better regular mentor.
She’s there for the off-site team challenge for Chinese New Year.

The contestants arrive at Melbourne Chinatown. The sun is out and here’s Kylie to tell them she wants tasty street food. To divvy up the teams, George pulls out a bag (no, not Tim Gunn’s button bag from Project Runway) containing fortune cookies with team colours and captain roles.
Chloe captains yellow and Elise red, which is good as it’s first time for both. Gaz spells out the rules: They must do at least two dishes, with one priced at $7, the rest $5. They have to feed 500 people and have three hours to prep. The team who makes the most money wins, and the cash goes to the Smith Family.

Yellow is Chloe, Harry, Intense Matt, Miles, Zoe, Mimi and Elena.
Red is Elise, Karmen, Heather, Nicolette, Brett, Trent and Anastasia.
Harry pushes yellow team to do a noodle stir fry while Intense Matt suggests pork belly skewers with plum jam – yum!
Red team’s $7 dish is pork loin with noodles and Karmen suggests fried “wongtongs”, according to Elise. They decided to do three dishes, with a sweet sago pudding.
Kylie pops over to yellow to quiz them about their dishes and she just “hmmms” when they say they are using pork belly.
Karmen and her fellow reds have to peel and devein 10kg of prawns for their wongtongs and they are chopping 24kg of pork fillet to marinate for their cold pork noodle dish. Luckily it looks to be a hot day. Nicolette is working on the mango coconut sago pudding by herself.
Captain Chloe has been around George too much: “Gice, we’ve really got to keep motoring, yeah?” Kylie is worried about Harry wanting to serve his hot noodles to order, given the crowd they are expecting. Chloe wants to switch to a cold salad but Harry does not want to back down. Dude – Kylie Kwong told you that you needed to change it and she knows her stuff. Luckily Elena is the voice of reason and says they can do basicaly the same dish cold and just punch up the flavours. Harry seems to listen to her.
Oh god – Elise said wongtong again. Karmen, you need to tell her! Karmen is conducting a dumpling-filling masterclass. It’s labour intensive – perhaps they should have done steamed pork buns instead.
Over at yellow, Kylie is happy with Miles’s master stock. Good one, Miles. Elena is making the chilli plum sauce for the pork skewers in a massive pot.
Nicolette is freaking out over doing dessert by herself in what seems a precursor to her stuffing up her calculations.

Gaz and Kylie give reds a talking to about portion control and tell them they need to get their maths right. Brett and Trent realise winging it was a mistake and they only have half the pork they need. Oopsie! I’d be grabbing some packets of tofu if that was an option. Instead they motor through some extra chopping. Anastasia – in a rare appearance – is choking everyone with the fumes from her chilli sauce. Zoe has cooked beef for the reds’ noodle salad and it’s “cooked perfect”. Taking grammar cues from George.

Red team has fried a tonne of dumplings in advance and popped them in the oven to keep warm. Please don’t let there be a problem with the oven so they burn! Food is flying out of the stalls but yellows are worried about their choice to only do two dishes.

The judges taste
Red team: The “Wongtongs” are a bit dry due to being in the oven but they love the chilli sauce. The pork, xo and noodle salad is “moreish”, says Kylie.
sagoudding
The sago pudding is light, fresh and not too sweet, Kylie says. George gives Nicolette huge props for her solo effort on the dessert. The judges say the extra dish was a smart business decision.
Yellow team: Kylie loves the look of the pork skewers and plum jam. They start with the beef noodle salad (that was meant to be a hot dish originally) and the meat is tender but there’s not enough dressing. “We can taste the friction there,” says Kylie. Luckily she loves the pork skewers.
With half an hour to go, the yellows run out of customers, while reds have a huge line.
They decide to add a quick dish. Harry thinks on his feet and skewers whole prawns to grill on the hot plate sprinkled with szechuan pepper and brushed with the master stock they already have. People love prawns and these are monsters, so it’s a good move. They must be wishing they did this from the start as it’s probably too little, too late.
Seeing the prawns draw away their customers, Elise sends Brett out to spruik with his best bellow.
Both teams start taking trays out to the crowd. With firecrackers going off and contestants “wooh-ing” it’s a louder affair than one of Preston’s suits.

So, who won?
Together, the teams raised more than $6000 for charity.
Yellow made $2774, red made $3285. Preston tells Nicolette her dessert was $785 worth of that win, while the prawns helped yellow at least close the gap.

So, tomorrow night the yellow team contestants don their black gear for a lucky dip for protein and cuisine. Chloe will no doubt play her immunity pin. We see Gaz having what should really be a private moment with one dish – “Oh. My. God ” – he utters. If it’s the dish they showed with prawn heady things on it I’m guessing it belongs to Intense Matt.



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MasterChef – Sun, June 5 – Maggie Beer

It’s Maggie Beer, popping in from the Barossa for her usual MC appearance and to make us want to run out and buy verjuice and pate (actually, her pate IS delicious).


It’s the usual mystery box/invention test deal. Last year the Maggie mystery box contained secateurs and gardening gloves and they had to raid the MC garden. The subsequent invention test resulted in a top three of Jessie (the young SA cook), John (who did many Filipino dishes) and eventual series winner Billie.
****
Here we go with a rolling recap (SA time).
maggiejudges
Matt Preston is wearing a cream suit that makes him look like a giant vanilla thickshake. It’s very distracting and makes me wonder how many back-up versions there are, for when he eats food that needs to be slurped.
Maggie Enters and Nose Ring Chloe tears up a little in excitement. The twist today is they are cooking the invention test first. The judges reveal three cloches with three core ingredients chosen by Maggie. The contestants get to pick what they want to use. It’s abalone, silken tofu and lemongrass. Miles should be cheering at this Japanese-inspired selection.


Will anyone choose abalone? Ooh, Anastasia and Trent are ballsy and Elena is a late third. And she gets to speak! Only Miles and Zoe pick tofu. So all the people who picked lemongrass only have a teeny chance to get tasted, as obviously they’ll pick one person from each ingredient to try.
Can’t say I’ve tried abalone. Have any TTVers? What does it taste like?

Miles is doing tofu two ways and meat on a stick, based on meals he ate while living in Japan for two years.
Harry is doing a Thai-inspired smoked lobster with coconut lemongrass broth.
Elena speaks again! Her parents owned a dive shop – holy moley – is this back story? She’s making a an abalone and mushroom green tea noodle salad, with gluten-free noodles. Gary responds to her dish description with “good”. He’s such an encouraging chap.
Chloe is doing a savoury lemongrass panna cotta (ABPC!) with cold prawns while Zoe (who should never, ever be team captain again after that Hellenic Republic schemozzle) is making a tofu cheesecake. And yet she’s still adding cream cheese so it’s not much different to a normal cheesecake – plenty of recipes for good vegan tofu cheesecakes out there. At least she decides to add a chilli cherry jelly topping after Vanilla Matt told her she needed to do more.
Back to Harry again. And back to Elena. And back to Miles.
Come on – can’t we at least see what the other abalone pickers are making? Or Intense Matt.
Matt and Maggie put the frighteners on Chloe about her ABPC so she switches it to red curried prawn salad. Boring (by MC standards, anyway). Just do the ABPC anyway, Chloe.
Elena doesn’t eat gluten so she’s making GF noodles but we don’t hear what they’re actually made from, other than green tea. They look brown – buckwheat, maybe?
We get a glimpse of Trent and Elise (I think) doing some creative plating, but who knows what they cooked. It sucks when we already know at least nine people who have no chance of being tasted. No doubt it will be Harry, Zoe and Elena. Predicatble.

Time for judging


Harry’s lemongrass tom kha looks pretty and you just know George is dying to try the lobster head butter. (And what is with George’s ugly black and white bamboo shirt? Is that supposed to match the Japanese ingredients?) The judges love the dish and say he’s kept lemongrass the hero.
Elena’s green tea GF noodle with abalone and mushrooms dish looks pretty and George loves the noodles but they wanted her to serve the dashi broth from the pot, too. She needed the obligatory carafe of soz!
Zoe’s dark chocolate and silken tofu cheesecake with chill cherry jelly looks tasty and Maggie loves the texture. Zoe’s getting the triumphant too-loud music. They love it.
So, a predictable top three and I imagine Harry’s got this one. Oh no, actually it’s Zoe. Look for a tofu cheesecake recipe in Maggie’s next book.
Zoe’s advantage is a big one: She gets to pick all eight ingredients for the mystery box. So, will we see lots of Greek stuff, or lots of dessert things? Or something offaly?

Mystery box time
Zoe reckons the contestants will be surprised. She’s picked simple stuff ricotta, pork mince, thyme, chilli, pancetta, tomatoes, garlic and basil. Is she cooking meatballs? She says it’s a dish she cooks for her husband – oh, she’s married? Have we seen any Zoe back story?
Yes, Zoe is making meatballs with papparedelle. They are very homestyle ingredients are having abalone in the previous challenge.
Everyone’s making pasta, it seems, so we’ll have a return of giant ravioli. Can’t someone at least do ricotta dumpkings. Chloe is not doing pasta. Instead it’s a pancetta fat parfait with a caramel soz (she loves her caramel sauces). But we’re getting voice overs about her hoping she’ll pull it off, so maybe it will fail.
Trent is getting air time! He’s making his own brik pastry for a spring roll wrapper. That’s hard yakka, Trent. Good luck.
Elise is standing out by making dessert. A thyme biscuit with a caramel parfait, which may not set in time.
Harry is doing steamed dim sims which are a take on one of George’s dishes. Risky. (By the way, George charges $10 for four dimmies at his Jimmy Grant’s joints, which I hadn’t heard about until now, but they look more downmarket than his fine dining restaurants jimmy grants.)
Brett doesn’t care everyone is doing pasta; his will be the best. And he’s doing ravioli.
Nicolette is making a ricotta parfait with a chilli salted caramel.She already has an immunity pin so she is making a riskier dish. “It has a weird sort of grainy texture, but I want that in my dish today.” Really? No-one wants grainy texture in their parfait, Nicolette.
Charlie’s fringe is flopping all over his flatbread and he’s already talking about how he doesn’t have his usually ingredients but is making them anyway. So, Charlie for the elimination challenge, then?
Both Elise and Chloe are having trouble getting their anglaise to thicken for their parfaits. Urgh – enough with the parfaits, girls.
Harry gets more air time because he’s using Maggie Beer verjuice in his tomato sauce. And Trent chucked verjuice in the chilli jam to go with his spring rolls.
Still no Intense Matt this episode and Karmen has also fallen off the face of the earth. Charlie is having flatbread dramas and Elise’s frozen dessert is melting before her eyes. Nicolette is having dramas with her grainy parfait, also.
Brett gets more air time for his plump ravioli and his is the only pasta dish getting airtime – not even Zoe has made the edit.

Time to taste
I’m barracking for the little-seen Trent on this one. They look fab and no-one else did anything similar.

Yum
Yum

Trent’s pork and ricotta spring rolls with chilli jam: Maggie loves the pastry and Gaz asks Trent to make him a jar of the jam. George says he pushed himself.
Nicolette’s ricotta parfait: Maggie is too polite to say she doesn’t like it. Matt says it’s lucky she has the immunity pin.
Zoe’s meatballs with pappardelle: The pasta is great but that’s all we get.
Heather’s deconstructed smoked tomato tart: They like the soz.
Intense Matt’s pasta with pancetta and smoked ricotta: Maggie would like to eat it at home.
Karmen’s pancetta and ricotta croquettes: Gaz says it’s a crowd pleaser.
Elise’s lopsided caramel parfait: It’s not a total puddle. Gaz likes the parfait texture but Maggie says it needs more flavour.
Harry’s dimmies: With the cockiness that comes with being a 22-year-old bartender, Harry is just dying for the judges to say his dimmies are better than George’s. “I think you’ve used too much verjuice,” says Maggie – words we never thought she’d say. And the other elements suck, too. Stick with your bookies, Harry.
Brett’s ravioli with tomato sauce: Brett calls a spade a spade and you can tell the judges love the dish as they’re eating it. “Yum,” says George. “That’s one of your best dishes that I’ve tasted.” See, you don’t always need a smoking gun or nasturtium leaves to garner praise.
Charlie’s pork rissoles with flatbread: “It just doesn’t look good, mate,” says Matt of the turd-like rissoles. Matt says the bread is dry. Charlie’s definitely bottom three.
chloeparfaitjun5
Chloe’s pancetta fat parfait with brik pastry: The judges love the look of it. “That is incredible,” says George. Maggie is in raptures. Matt says she’s an A1 contender.
So we missed Miles, Anastasia, Elena and Mimi’s tasting.

The top three
Chloe, Trent (yay) and Brett. No surprises there. They get to compete for a chance at immunity on Tuesday.

The bottom three
Charlie, Nicolette and Harry. Just when I’m think it’s disappointing only two people will cook, as Nicolette should use her immunity pin, we learn the fourth-placed person will take Nicolette’s place. Way to give Nicolette the guilts, but of course she should play the pin and live to fight another day instead of creating a dessert which has a 74-step recipe.



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