Tag: Karlie

MasterChef – Semi final – Sun, July 23

The stakes are high as the three remaining contestants fight it out for the two places in the finale and the chance of winning the coveted prize.
Who will be eliminated tonight? Vote in the new poll.
The finale is tomorrow night at 7.30pm, on Ten.

We start with Ben pretending to drink coffee while wistfully gazing out over Melbourne from the hotel balcony. He plans to use his Dutch heritage in his cooking for the service challenge and we see his Oma (Nan) briefly.
No Nan for Diana and Karlie.
They arrive at the MC kitchen and the eliminated contestants are up on the gantry to be the cheer squad. Ben’s hair is glued into place and Matt is wearing a teal suit with a white and silver cravat.
George is wearing a dreadful checked travel rug as a woollen blazer.

Ben’s dessert has a Dutch theme and is called pumpkin and spices and – fun fact – people in the Netherlands don’t eat pumpkin, they just feed it to livestock.

Karlie is making crayfish with a ginger broth, because as he know she loves Asian flavours.

Diana’s main has nine elements and her dessert seven. She is doing wagyu two ways – good move given her wagyu dish has highly praised at the Heston restaurant service challenge, even after she had trouble with cutting the meat to the correct size. There’s a lot of stuff on her dishes but Diana always keeps a cool head.

And the first ice cream of the night goes to … Ben! Of course! Vanilla and bay leaf. He manages to slosh half the anglaise out of the mixer and gets a calming back pat from Shannon Bennett – awww.
The edit shows Ben falling behind and looking stressed out – so he must triumph in the end. After an hour of prep he has not started on his main dish. Shannon calls the dish “brave” but Ben doesn’t bite and simply says “thank you”.
Karlie is boiling up some massive crayfish and her dessert is orange and sesame something ice cream.

Diana is making lemon verbena sorbet and rice pudding and the gantry freaks out when her pot starts boiling over.
Who knew you could cook with tulip bulbs? Ben is topping his with onion skins that the waiters will set on fire at the table. The judges will be impressed with this.


Diana is making a whey caramel that she learnt in the challenge set by former contestant Kylie – that dessert that looked like a pile of dried-out leaves. The judges like it when contestants show techniques they have learnt on their “journey”.
Karlie is having prawn oil drama so she’s going to ditch it. She is getting very flustered.

Meanwhile, for more info about the Dutch and their tulip bulb-eating habits go here.
I love that Ben and Karlie are freaking and Diana is just methodically working away. Shannon comes over to turn the screws on Ben. He needs to get his beef in the oven now or it won’t have time to rest – no-one wants blood on their plate.
He turns to a pic of his kids to give him strength. Usually this sort of thing irks me but it’s not like it’s the start of competition and they are using it gratuitously.
How annoying must it be to have Shannon yelling “Stop! Stop!” every few minutes to announce how little time they have left. I want Comforting-Pats-On-Back-Shannon back!
Diana is frying up some massive Wagyu scotch fillets – imagine the cost! (This place sells it for 100 a kilo, although commercial prices would be lower. Check out the butchery here.
Diana is calling for waiters to take her plates while Karlie is still cooking. Diana’s dish looks delicious – love the herb dust.
THE JUDGES TASTE


Gary does the “lifting eyes to the heavens” look when he tastes the meat. Matt praises the sauce and says it’s a MasterChef Top Ten dish – big call! Well done, Diana.

Ben has had to do pickled beetroot as he ran out of time to roast, and he’s worried.

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The judges love the theatre of the flaming onion skin and are overjoyed to taste something they’ve never before tried: tulip bulbs.
George says the bulbs are delicious. I wish they would actually tell us what they taste like. They praise the dish but Gary points out it’s not as “multi-sensory” as Diana’s main. Remember the first half of the comp, when it felt as though Gary never had a kind word to say about her – well, none that made the edit anyway.

Karlie is STILL cooking and tearfully wanders almost out of sight, to be hugged by Diana. When her dishes do go out they look really interesting.


The judges say it was worth the wait.
The girls have it over Ben at this stage. We get the obligatory “it’s going to come down to dessert”.

DESSERT TIME
Diana is using someone interesting ingredients in her lemon verbena dessert, including finger limes and buckwheat. She’s put a lot of thought into the textures.


The judges think it’s really pretty, uses new combinations of flavours and is delicious.
Diana is definitely safe. She is a machine! And, yes, teary Diana, I hope your Mum comes over for the final, too!

Poor Ben is having drama with his pumpkin galettes being too mushy to lift outof the pan. Oh, Ben, this is not looking good! Quick – look at the picture of your kids again!
Karlie’s mandarin and black sesame dessert looks really interesting.


The judges love the look of it and the sponge is light BUT the mandarin sauce is bitter and Gary thinks it detracts from the tasty black sesame ice cream. George quickly jumps in with some superlatives to throw us off the scent.

Ben is at it again with setting things on fire, lighting up some cinnamon quills to be placed in a bowl in the table for aroma. It does not look as pretty as the girls’ desserts but they always praise him for his herby ice creams.


Gary loves it – phew – especially the salty finish on the butterscotch sauce. “It’s like the best pumpkin pie,” says George. It’s a “ripper”.

The three semi-finalists get a group hug with Shannon. I wish they would include him in the judging and give him points to allocate to the best worker in the kitchen.

THE JUDGES’ VERDICT
No surprise – Diana is first through. Yay! She has been a rock throughout the comp (apart from those cocktail-inspired dishes for Heston’s water-themed challenge but let’s not talk about that disappointing Heston Week) but did not make the edit for a long time.
And the other semi-finalist is Ben, because Karlie’s mandarin syrup was too bitter. Poor Karlie says it’s not a surprise after seeing the other two work in the kitchen: “I felt like I was lacking a little bit.” Awww.
I can see her going on to have a successful career helping create new dishes or products, rather than a job as a working chef, or perhaps in food styling. Her plating has always been beautiful and inviting.

TOMORROW NIGHT
It’s Diana versus Ben and, unless Ben plans his dishes very carefully, Diana will just steamroll over him with her attention to detail and time management – and delicious flavours.
As with last year’s Elena versus Matt finale, we have two worthy finalists.



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MasterChef – Thurs, Jul 20 – Curtis & a relay

Three contestants must create a dish worthy of a place in the semi-final. Later, Curtis “Coles” Stone drops by to take part in an invention test relay.

Karlie, Diana and Tamara have 75 minutes to cook whatever dish they like, using an open pantry. Loser is eliminated. They have to pick a flavour, a cuisine and a concept.
Diana goes the seafood route, grabbing crayfish to go in a Thai-style broth.
Tamara is making “campfire brownies”, inspired by her camping desserts which are apparently cooked inside an orange. Hmm, she just made a choc orange dessert the other day. Her cuisine is Chinese. Yeah, because brownies are the new fortune cookie.
Karlie goes Chinese, her specialty, and is creating pork belly with XO sauce, “heroing” chilli.

Diana is getting a worrying amount of air time, talking about childhood memories, and they are showing photos of her family – is she going home?
The edit is making a big deal about Karlie’s sauce being hot, but that’s what XO sauce is meant to be, surely. If she weakens it they are bound to say it’s not authentic.


Tamara’s anglaise has Chinese five spice in it, so that makes it Chinese… right? Why didn’t she just say her cuisine was American? I’m intrigued by the whole cook-in-an-orange concept but it does not seem very Mastercheffy at this stage of the comp. And why has she not wrapped them in foil, as she would when cooking on a campfire? Surely they won’t get hot enough.


Matt announces they are travelling from Broome, to Malaysia to China with their dishes – guess he couldn’t bring himself to say the brownies were Chinese, too.
Ben looks sharp up on the gantry in his dark jacket – it’s not often you see them in anything other than T-shirts. Wardrobe must have got him one with extra big sleeves.
The cook is over and it looks like Tamara knows she’s a goner.

THE JUDGES TASTE


George says the concept is more important than the ingredients or cuisine. What a toss.
Cool, calm and collected Diana is tearing up a little. I hope she has a great cooking career ahead of her. The judges adore the dish – and that she got emotional about her family.


The judges adore the XO sauce – what a beat-up the earlier editing was. Tamara is totally going home; social media is going to explode.


The judges don’t look enthusiastic about tasting Tamara’s dish. They love the sauce and ice cream but the brownie looks like raw cake batter.

THE ELIMINATED CONTESTANT IS …
Tamara. Again. (And the internet goes wild!) She gets the special treatment of the judges revealing a blackboard menu of her past “hits” that she can use if she opens her Broome cafe. She gets lots of cuddles.

Masterclass is next but I’ll watch that at the weekend.



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