MKR – Tues, March 1

Welcome to Autumn, everyone. It’s Dee Day and she’s let poor hubby Harry Potter out from under the stairs to help in the kitchen. Bet he wishes he knew the Avada Kedavra curse ….
Sadly this is the last night The Khoo will be on MKR. Nooooo ….

Unfortunately I can’t watch til after 10pm, so have at it with the comments.


Here we go …

Look how happily married we are. For reals.
Look how happily married we are. For reals.

Dee and downtrodden Harry Potter husband (please, can someone please save him from his cupboard under the stairs and send him off to Hogwarts) head off to the shops with 7 hr 30 mins on the clock. So that’s 4 hrs 30 mins to shop and decorate, which seems a long time – are all the nearby Coles stores not pretty enough for TV?

In the car they get the background music of the novelty song, Macarena, because Dee is, you know, Spanish, and that’s the all they had on file. Remember this?

This was 20 years ago - feeling old yet?
This was 20 years ago – feeling old yet?

Dee is coaching Tim on how to say the names of their Spanish dishes, but I don’t hold out much hope given he’s one of those people who says “pronunciation” as “pro-nounce-iation”.
The menu
Entree: Lentijas – Spanish lentil soup with chorizo (sounds not very technical – it’s no twice-baked souffle)
Main: Albondigas Patatas Bravas – Spanish meatballs with potatoes and spicy sauce (I’ve only had these as two separate tapas – not togetether)
Dessert: Flan de Huevo (Spanish creme caramel)

And here’s our last-ever shot of The Khoo and The Fass – or do we call them by their celeb couple name Khoonidge or Fassoo – critiqueing the menu.

Look at us, in new outfits and pretending we don't film all these bits on one day.
Look at us, in new outfits and pretending we don’t film all these bits on one day.

In Coles, we learn Dee has written her shopping list course by course, rather than food groupings, so there will be a lot of time wasted running back and forth. That’s ok; it’s not like there’s a clock counting down or anything.
Harry Potter wipes his schnozz on the veg and this is a bigger crime than last night’s egg shaking.
Who's ever heard of a schnozzberry?
Who’s ever heard of a schnozzberry?

Sure, sniff away but don’t leave boogers on veg you have not paid for. Plus, they are supermarket tomatoes – if they had any tomatoey scent you’d fall over in shock.
After two hours in Coles and with still more shopping to do, Dee concedes she stuffed up the shopping list. Do you reckon she normally does online shopping and never sets foot in a real supermarket?
Finally home, they rush through the setting up of their travel-themed restaurant but still get into the kitchen way behind, with 2:28 on the clock. Tim gets cracking on the dessert as it needs time to set. His caramel looks pale, but maybe that’s the Spanish way.
Dee is micromanaging him, but in their confessional – with Dee within knifing distance – he tells the camera he loves being told what to do. But he’s blinking H-E-L-P in Morse code.
Modest Dee gets out the flour: “Bread. I make it every day. To me, it’s really easy. I’m pretty confiedent it’s going to be perfect.” So, we know something goes wrong with the bread.
And then it gets worse – she says she has changed the soup recipe from the traditional way she and her mum have always cooked. Normally she fries the chorizo first but she just chucks them in whole. Yeah, skip the frying, Dee, why would you want to add amazing flavour and texture to your dish? Might as well just chuck in some cocktail franks instead.
She goes to make the second batch of bread – the one Harry Potter started – and it’s not working and she instantly gets super whiny and oh this is going to get so much worse as the night goes on. And it does within two seconds when she sees her sauteeing onions are slightly brown. Instead of picking out the few browned ones she has a total tantie. Can Jessica come back instead – all is forgiven!
Then the tears start.
My four-year-old has more self control.
My four-year-old has more self control.

Tim attempts to calm her down and she gets it together, only to realise she forgot to put the ham hock in the soup. Those lentils are going to be flavourless mush by the time that ham gets boiling.
Then she points out he’s left the sticker on a lemon that’s been sliced for drinks – let’s hope Lauren gets that one. She gets increasingly cranky that he’s making sangria when the kitchen looks like this:
This is all Tim's fault; none of this mess is Dee's. Not even the lentils and veg which are from her soup.
This is all Tim’s fault; none of this mess is Dee’s. Not even the lentils and veg which are from her soup.

And then this happens:
Tim's wishing he could drink the whole bottle.
Tim’s wishing he could drink the whole bottle.

And he splashes wine an inch away from their precious flans.
We’re only 25 minutes already in and theirs already been more drama and tension than the whole of last night’s episode.
The guests arrive and I was wrong: Channel 7 has one other Spanish song in its music library. It’s Bamboleo, by The Gypsy Kings. And here are the judges, looking schmick, as per usual, and they get the cool kids music of Goldfrapp We Are Glitter.
Last time Rachel arrives at an MKR house.
Last time Rachel arrives at an MKR house.

The guests peruse the menus and they are done in a cool airline-ticket style, but it’s all in Spanish – no translation – which is pretentious.
Back in the kitchen, Dee’s soup just needs one more thing: cumin powder. And what have they bought? Coriander powder. Fail! Again, it’s all Harry Potter’s fault even though they went shopping together.
"Anywhere but my face, Deeze."
“Anywhere but my face, Deeze.”

This is where frying off the chorizo would have helped, both to impart flavour and look more appetising on top of the soup.


It’s chew o’clock …
The Fass was happy with the hearty, peasant-style look of the dish, but that was it. The lentils weren’t cooked, the onion was raw, the chorizo wasn’t caramelised, there wasn’t enough flavour: “What I got was not very good.” The Khoo says it’s obvious they had trouble in the kitchen. Yep, her name is Dee.
She tears up and Lauren can’t hide her disgust, thinking she’s going for the sympathy vote. The only nice thing the guests can say is they liked the bread, so Lauren – who’s on the bottom of the leaderboard – is happy again.
ticket
Back in the kitchen they get to work on the meatballs and Harry Potter is tasked with toasting the homemade bread for crumbs in the oven. And burns the bread. And not in a gourmet “ash is cool” kind of way.
At least they have a back-up packet of breadcrumbs. Dee then gives hubby the complicated task of rolling meatballs.
It’s taking them ages – the guests are very restless – and, foolishly, Dee has made hubby wait til the rolling is done until they start browning meatballs, even they can only fit a few in the pan at a time.
And the ones he has done are raw in the middle. She’s a very supportive wife: “Just cook them! You’re pissing me off.”
Run away, Harry – don’t let the Dementor get you!
Why don’t they chuck them in the oven to finish off? They are plating up and it looks awful. Apparently they had a different vision for the dish, but it would be hard to make it look pretty, even if it was well cooked.


Chew time … and The Fass is disappointed with the blahness of the dish: “You didn’t give me Spain. I didn’t travel nowhere.” Not only are the meatballs uncooked, the sauce is, too. The Khoo gives them cooking tips for next time and says the aioli – which is easy to make, but then Lisa had to do hers four times – is good. The potatoes should have been par-boiled before deep frying to get them crunchy. She tries to buck them up: “Show me a cracker of a dessert.”
Carmine and Lauren are dancing on the inside.
Dad No. 1, who has nibbled the edge of one meatball, sums it up when he says: “If we had been able to eat them, I reckon they might have been enjoyable, actually.”
Carmine and Lauren aren’t as used to being tactful. “I would say they are going home already,” he tells the table, which is just the sort of comment to make people want to boot you from the comp.

Back in the kitchen they know they’ve screwed up, but at least their dessert is mostly done. The creme caramels slide out of the ramekins pretty well, and the two slightly bodgy ones are headed for Carmine and Lauren. The caramel looks super pale, and the side garnish of three raspberries and two whole, giant mint leaves is weird. Why not serve the dessert on dark plates for contrast, with some kind of crumb and perhaps a tuille to scoop with? Yes, that would be beyond their abilities but they could have done something else to fancy it up.


Time for the judges to masticate …
The Khoo liked the plating but says the caramel was under. The Fass agrees but found the garnish “pedestrian”.
Hazel loves the flan and it’s generally well received, although no-one seems to have touched their mint leaves, perhaps because they’d need a knife to cut them.
Just before scoring time, Lauren is winning friends: “I hate to think that, if I had cried my eyes out, that would have saved me. I’m not going to put on tears just because I want to win votes.”
Time for the team scores but, oh, that’s right, we have to go back to HQ for the reveal. They need to beat Carmine and Lauren’s 51 and if everyone scores fairly, Dee and hubby will get the boot for having two inedible dishes.

Judges: Entree Khoo 3, Fass 2; Main Khoo 2, Fass 2; Dessert Khoo 6, Fass 6. The guest teams gave a combined score of 11/50, for a total of 32.
Bye bye, Dee, and – sniff – bye, Rachel Khoo. Please come back next year for more than four eps.
The other teams file back in, 15 in total. As with last year, the bottom two teams will go another round with Pete and Manu. At the end, two teams will get the boot. So it’s out of The Ducks Nutters, The Miners, The Cops, The Stepsies, Carmine and Lauren and SA Besties Rosie and Paige. From the promos, MKR is relying on Lauren to stir the pot.



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