Tag: Reynold

MasterChef – Tues, May 23 – Reynold returns

More sweets tonight and – yay – Reynold is back! Glad he is doing so well with his Koi dessert bar in Sydney.

So, Overly Excited Bryan went home last night, which means the top three contestants from Sunday night get to cook for a chance to beat a chef for the immunity pin. We have Cool Headed Diana, Whizz Kid Callan and Young Sam.
Presto announces there’s a twist tonight: All three go straight into an immunity pin challenge, and each person will be cooking against one of three pastrychefs.
There are two award-winning female chefs, Lauren and Angelique – thank god for pastry week giving us a break from the heavily tattooed lad chefs – but all eyes are on our beloved Reynold.


There’s a knife draw and Lauren cooks against Young Sam, Diana gets Angelique and the crowd cracks up when they realise Callan gets Reynold as his opponent.
The MasterChef contestants get a 15-minute headstart and, of course, the wisdom of mentor Shannon Bennett and crimson sneakers.

Diana is making a dark chocolate sorbet on a sable (also known as a bickie) with orange sauce. Yum – Jaffa flavours!
Oooh – Young Sam’s got the lingo right – he’s “respecting the ingredients”. He grabs some blood plums, which are my fave summer fruit, so I may have to barrack for him tonight. Dark fruit with gingerbread, a vanilla parfait and a roasted chocolate. He’s never made gingerbread before! Man, my five-year-old has made gingerbread.
Callan is creating a layered sponge cake with fruit, jelly and toffees. Sounds more like a trifle. He wants to “hero” the strawberries, raspberries, grapes, kiwi fruit and yellow peach. Callan may be able to cook but he certainly doesn’t know the difference between singular and plural.

The judges are freed from the dungeon and allowed to start cooking. I wish I could slice up a pineapple as quickly as Reynold. He’s making a lemongrass and ginger consomme with mango cream and a white chocolate disc.
Callan has made a prosecco jelly – bingo! It’s the “it” element of the season.
Angelique is creating something with green tea, coconut and raspberry and she’s a mad, messy Frenchie in the kitchen. She’s very entertaining.
Lauren is creating honeycomb with creme fraiche ice cream and she’s much more precise – she spoke earlier about doing simple elements, well. Is it going to be MasterCheffy enoughy? The crowd on the gantry tried to convince her to tizzy it up a bit but she’s not keen.
Her honeycomb looks fabulous. I’m going to make mine in a high tin next time.


And she gets out the liquid nitrogen to make ice cream! About time – we’re three nights into Sweet Week. She shows Young Sam how it all works.


Angelique – who I hope comes back next year because she’s fun to listen to – decides to make some super precise tuiles. Her opponent, Diana, is devo to learn Shannon thinks her sable is too thick and tough, so she turns it into a crumb.
Shannon is good with the hints tonight – he’s given Callan advice on using one ingredient and now supervises Sam making some liquid nitrogen parfait snow. Looks pretty.
Shannon is even giving Reynold a little pep talk as he works on his chocolate – old habits die hard.
Callan has 50 elements but decides it’s not enough. He starts making a ganache from what looks to be milk chocolate.
Sam is doing one of those forest floor plate-ups that looks like a plate of pasta covered in parmesan cheese, while Diana’s is clean and precise. Reynold has the Georgie tweezers out. Callan’s sponge topped with fruit AND ganache looks a bit weird. Angelique is rightly pumped about what she achieved in 75 minutes in an unfamiliar kitchen, and on TV.

The judges taste
Reynold V Callan: They’ve got to know straight away which one was done by the professional. It is so delicate and beautiful. They are impressed by the hot consomme melting the white choc disc to reveal the mango surprise underneath. Georgie uses tweezers to pick each piece of fruit off Callan’s sponge. Use a spoon, George! The judges say the choc ganache doesn’t work. They don’t like the dish.


Diana V Angelique: They like Diana’s dark choc sorbet but George thinks the cook did not use the time well. They “ooh” as they cut open Angelique’s dessert and see the layers. They love, love, love it.


Young Sam V Lauren: Lauren’s honeycomb is “unbelievable” and her honeycomb is “flawless”. Gez says Sam’s dish is delicious and like a deconstructed version of black forest gateaux. They like the addition of the roasted plums. It’s a Christmassy dessert.

The scores
Callan: Gaz 5, George 5, Presto 6
Reynold: Gaz 9, George 9, Presto 9 (poor Reynold must have been having flashbacks)
Diana: Gaz 5, George 6, Presto 7 (good on you, Matt – she deserved a better score than Callan)
Angelique: Gaz 10, George 10, Presto 10 – perfect score!
Young Sam: Presto 9, George 9, Gaz 9
Lauren: Presto 9, George 9, Gaz 10 (she only had two elements on the plate but he couldn’t fault either of them).

The guest chefs
Angelique is from Monster Kitchen in Canberra, near the lake website here. You can see some of her funky desserts on their Facebook page.
Lauren is from Marque in Sydney website here.

And here’s the link to Reynold’s place.
Tomorrow night it’s the team challenge with the greenhouses full of edible stuff we’ve seen on the ads.



Facebooktwitterredditmail

MasterChef – Mon, May 16 – The return of Reynold

As we know, Reynold is back in the MasterChef kitchen tonight, but this time he doesn’t have to worry he’ll be asked to do something savoury. He gets to set the challenge for the pressure test for the bottom three from last night’s invention test.
Here’s a link to his dessert bar, which is about to get even busier http://www.koidessertbar.com.au/

From Reynold's Facebook page.
From Reynold’s Facebook page.

The three contestants in the firing line are Chloe, Karmen and Olivia.

Apparently running on a treadmill, reading love letters and standing on your head are just what you need to prep you for a cooking comp. I’d just be reading cookbooks, but that doesn’t make for riveting TV.
They’re ready for the pressure test from Reynold – who gets a total fangirl welcome from the contestants – which is to create “Moss”. moss
It’s a dried fennel frond, apple blossom pearl, pistachio sponge, yoghurt foam, apple sorbet, and a sphere of pistachio mousse coated in matcha with a caramel gel interior.
George asks dessert enthusiast Karmen: “What’s it like standing so close to Reynold?” Reynold laughs like a nervous 15-year-old boy and tells George: “That’s not necessary.” Ah, Reynold – you’re just a dork who likes to cook – I love it. Yeah, George – just because they’re Aussies of Asian descent who like sweets doesn’t mean they’ll have the hots for each other.
Oops – forgot to do a “what’s Matt wearing?” update:

Tamer than his usual ensembles.
Tamer than his usual ensembles but we saw this cravat on May 5. C’mon, wardrobe – mix it up!

Karmen says she is familiar with most of the techniques used in the recipe and she’s off to a quick start. Olivia is also doing well and George and Reynold are impressed, just advising her to keep her bench clean. Karmen is having trouble with her pistachio mousse and Chloe manages to overtake her, so she starts again. And again it seizes up. What’s going on – is she not reading the recipe properly? She decides to keep it and just add cream and it seems to work. Hope her sphere sets Ok.
Restaurant manager Olivia seems to be whipping through each task – hope she doesn’t come a cropper. At least with her job she’d be used to multitasking.
Karmen is catching up so the producers send Reynold over to distract her with questions that will enable to mention how her parents think she should stick with surveying.
Reynold advises everyone to make spare spheres but Chloe has just made one sphere – aargh – so risky. Yes, she’s pushed for time, but without a sphere there isn’t a dish. Better to spend time doing a second sphere and leave off something like the yoghurt foam if you have to.
It’s just over a week into the competition and, finally, microwave siphon sponges make an appearance. Poor Olivia, who’s been doing so well up until now, stuffs up her sponge because she second guesses herself, and then she leaves the gelatine out of her foam. This is what happens when George comes over to tell you how far ahead of the others you are – the Calombaris jinx.
Chloe moves on to her white chocolate cremeux, which I think is the second cremeux of the comp, following Charlie’s ginger chocolate version when he was in the bottom three. At least it’s not ABPC (another bloody panna cotta).
Karmen is having cremeux trouble so she decides to leave it off the plate so she can concentrate on other elements. Olivia is in a total flap and it doesn’t look good for her.
The contestants have to make sure each element of the dish is in a specific place (fridge, freezer, bench etc) as they have 10 minutes to plate up when it’s their turn. But Olivia has forgotten her matcha sphere, and as she runs to get it she stacks it, just like Chloe the other night. What the heck are they polishing those MC floors with – olive oil? So, Olivia’s sphere is stuck in the freezer and probably won’t ooze when it’s cut.
Time to judge
Chloe lucked out in that her sole sphere looks good. She’s done a great job to get all those elements up and she seems to have a balanced outlook on life and a laidback temperament. Reynold likes the look of the sphere but the caramel inside is too pale. The sponge and mousse get the thumbs up.
Karmen is next to don the mad scientist goggles and play with liquid nitrogen to make her yoghurt snow. She’s devastated she missed the cremeux (or creme-ooh, as George calls it) but George gives her props for what she’s achieved. Her caramel centre looks better than Chloe’s but the plate is not as pretty. She gets ticks for a lot of her elements.
It’s Olivia’s turn and the siphon gun isn’t working, so she improvises. Olivia is totally going home, which is such a shame as she’s done a few delicious-looking savoury dishes, like this one:
Please come to my house and cook this, Olivia.
Please come to my house and cook this, Olivia.

As she predicted, her sphere is too frozen and her sponge is dense. Gaz does like the flavour of the mousse but Reynold says the caramel is too blond and her matcha coating is uneven.
The judges pretend she’s in with a shot but one missing element easily outweighs three poorly executed ones.
The announcement
The judges praise Chloe for her attitude and her dish. Olivia is going home but there’s no shame in bowing out on a dish that would have been a finale test in previous seasons. Can you imagine Poh or Julie having to create “Moss” back in their season? They would have failed miserably.
Where are they now?
Olivia is working full time in The Cook’s Garden (Google says it’s an English style pub in north Sydney – wonder if this is where she was working before?), heading up the pastry section. She hopes to launch a cooking program for high school and university students.
Tomorrow night
Nicolette, Con and Anastasia have to cook a dish using popcorn. Expect a tonne of popcorn parfaits.



Facebooktwitterredditmail