Tag: seni final

MasterChef – Mon, July 25 – Three cooks enter, two cooks leave

The final three contestants vie for a place in the Grand Finale in this service challenge. Each contestant must prepare a main and a dessert for 20 guests plus the three judges.

Here we are at the MasterChef house and Intense Matt, Growing Elena and Harry are competing to see who’s now the tallest, because it’s all about growth in the MC boxing ring – ahem – kitchen, and rounder tummies do not count.
Matt Preston has worn his tartan-iest navy and purple suit for the occasion; he seems to save his pink numbers for the “away” challenges.
“This is going to be the hardest day you have ever spent in the MasterChef kitchen,” Gaz warns the trio. I dunno, Gaz – there was that one jaffle challenge …
They each have to serve a main and a dessert for 20 guests plus the three judges. They have four hours to prep. Blah blah … destiny .. blah blah … journey .. blah … deliciousness. The last being, George says, the main criteria of the judging. Umm, surely that’s beetroot, George?
Shannon is there to mentor them.
Oh god, we’re eight minutes in and they haven’t started cooking yet because it’s all about the dream. And then George makes them do the “yes, George”.

IM is cooking confit duck with harissa pumpkin and baby beetroot (BINGO!) and a brioche doughnut with orange and coffee. Yum! Winner! He’ll get points for his desert technique and not doing an Asian dish, which is his strength.

GE is using native Australian ingredients (we usually get a native challenge but didn’t this year – maybe because Jock Zonfrillo was on another netweork?). She’s doing an Aussie nicoise salad and for dessert, apples, bickies and cheese. This must be the dish with the perfect apple batons they showed on the preview. The apple component is a green apple sorbet. She is hard boiling a massive pot of eggs – I guess one per person. Her dishes will take forever to plate up.

Harry is showing different skills by doing European instead of Asian. He’s making lobster cannelloni with a smoked custard and a twist on a tiramisu. “This is something I’d want to see in a three-star restaurant,” he tells the camera of his dessert. Classic Harry. He’s obsessed with layered desserts, having missed out on serving a trifle that day Brett went rogue.

IM is getting a lot of “at home” shots. Building the winner edit? Harry’s delivery seems a little flat – and his enunciation is worse than usual – so perhaps he’s the goner.
GE has 16 elements to complete and has calculated she needs to do one thing every 15 minutes. It would take me that long to peel just seven eggs, so good on her. But, uh oh – they took her twice as long as she anticipated.


Now she has to cut up the world’s biggest piece of tuna and she starts freaking out a little. Don’t get stuck in the Mimi and Elise brain freeze trap, GE! Serenity now! At least you have the lovely Shannon Bennett there to try to calm you down.
IM is showing off his mad butchery skills, chopping up 14 whole ducks.
Harry is chopping up kingfish for his cannelloni filling and Shannon expresses concern about the fattiness of the fish. Harry listens – a bit – and ups the ration of lobster to kingfish.
GE is talking a lot about how far behind she is (and Shannon points out using unwashed potatoes is just adding to her workload). No doubt she will triumph on the end.
IM is starting to panic a lit and pops butter in the microwave … in a metal bowl! On the gantry a horrified Trent starts to clap his hands to his mouth and someone – it sounds like Chloe – yells out to him, luckily before there’s an explosion.
With 90 mimnutes to go Shannon gives them the “dig deep speech”. More from GE about being behind (she’s just completed a wattleseed crumb and a fennel gel and is simmering spuds in saffron). Shannon goes through all the steps she has yet to complete.
The gantry is whooping and clapping on cue – I wonder if they get to sit down in between whoops? IM revs them up by flaming his duck with madeira.


“I think he’s just amazing to watch,” Heather (sans headband) tells the camera.
Harry is prepping artichokes for his dish, which will take forever to do. It’s the skewered prawns all over again. After a while he tells Shannon he’s going to ditch them, but Shannon points out the word artichoke is on the menu, so he needs to lose something else instead. Harry decides to bulk things out with some brussels sprouts so he doesn’t have to do as many artichokes.
IM’s duck is looking pretty good – they haven’t alerted us to any potential mistakes yet. He is a machine.
Someone has shown Shannon George’s cue card: “It’s crunch time – push, push!” He tells GE she needs to speed up by 10 per cent. She’s stresed out but hasn’t yet cracked.
Harry is happy with his lobster reduction but he hasn’t made enough – aargh – how many times have we seen this (most notably with – jew-ess Heather).

Service starts and GE is still cooking her tuna. Shannon tells her she just needs four plates to start with.
IM gets four out quickly. “I’m really liking the presentation,” says Shannon.

The judges taste


IM’s duck: The judges are drooling just looking at it. Gary tilts back his head in ecstasy. “I’ve got nothing negative about this dish .. thank you Matt for being in this competition. He brings us so much joy every time he cooks,” says George. Gaz admires the French techniques used. He would drive 100km to eat this duck.


Harry’s kingfish and lobster cannelloni: “I really don’t taste the lobsert,” says Gaz. George and Gaz are confused there seems to be no soz. George heads to Harry’s bench to taste the soz and reports back it’s delicious. They yell out to Shannon to bring the soz over and drown their plates in it, so they can see what they missed. So a lot of diners will be missing out on it altogether. The kingfish was the wrong choice of fish for the dish.


GE’s Oz Meets Nice (Aussie tuna nicoise): And just before she serves it we hear her say it should have more sauce but she’s worried about keeping the diners waiting any longer. Not again! The judges notice, too. But she’s cooked the tuna well and they like the bush tomato sauce and tempura samphire. So she’s ahead of Harry.

Dessert time
From the gantry, Nicolette (wow -she’s a distant memory) gets to yell out George’s lines: “Good job, Elena – push, push, push!”
IM’s doughnuts look fab and he’s doing his curd in the microwave, but it’s not behaving itself. He chucks butter in thinking that may help but Shannon gives him the bad news that he’s just stuffed it by doing so. It’s the first sign of trouble for IM but he’d have to drop dessert on the floor, scrape it off and still serve it to not be put through.
Harry is using some fancy techniques, spraying his dessert with a melted chocolate and coconut oil mix (aka Ice Magic) and Trent gets a talking head to say how coll this is.
Luckily IM’s second go at curd works.

The judges taste


IM’s doughnut with orange and coffee: They look even ore excited than they did for his duck. “I haven’t seen a doughnut look that good for as long as I can remember,” says Gaz. They taste and are in heaven. “Can’t get enough of that,” Gaz says. George says it’s a restaurant quailty dish. “Those doughnuts could be coming out of a food truck with people queuing round the block to get them,” says Matt. (Well, he is a former barista, so a coffee and doughnut truck could be a goer.”


GE’s Apple, Cheese and Bickies: “How modern and exciting does this dish look.” says George. They all love it. “I love the fact it’s real – nothing’s mucked around,” says Matt. He actually prefers this over IM’s doughnut.


Harry’s espresso bavarois with marsala ice cream: (It looks good on the dark plate – much more refined than the desserts Harry and Elise served last night. and, to his credit, he did a good job after no doubt being rattled by George coming to his bench to taste the lobster soz.) The judges like that it’s not what they expected – fooled by the sprayed chocolate coating. Matt says it’s sophisticated and fun. George says he’s pulled out all the stops.

The judges decide
They pretend it’s going to be a tough decision but it’s obvious IM is going through. And surely GE’s only transgression of not enough sauce on the main far outweighs Harry using the wrong fish and serving only a skerrick of soz on his.
First up Gaz raves about two flawless dishes, and of course they belong to IM. He’s through! And starts crying and laughing. Good on you, IM! Winner winner, duck dinner! Pity they weren’t finale dishes.
George gets the talking stick and raves about GE’s and Harry’s desserts but says both their mains were too dry. Harry’s choice of kingfish was wrong. So GE’s through. More tears and Harry, to his credit, is grinning and clapping away.
“How do you feel about being in the finale?” George asks GE. “Pretty bloody stoked,” she replies (channelling a bit of Elise, there). “Matt and I sat on the first table on the first day of auditions, so it’s especially cool to be there with him.”
Hooray – the result we here at Talking TV have wanted for weeks.
Good luck, Harry – go find a great mentor to channel that energy in the right direction.


Tomorrow night
Heston is back. Well, that’s a surprise. I hope it’s not just two hours of recreating a Heston dish, as usually the finale has three different challenges. But since they did the service challenge tonight maybe it will be all Heston. Will he be able to muster up more enthusiasm for this latest appearance?



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