We’re smack bang in the middle of POWER WEEK on MasterChef Australia. So named because each challenge carries with it the chance to win the POWER APRON – a mythical garment with untold powers that gifts the wearer omnipotence and almost cartoon-like superpowers within the MasterChef kitchen.
How does it do this? It’s got a MasterChef logo on it that’s a little bigger than normal and also it’s gold.
Kind of in the same way that the gold thingy on Teal’c‘s forehead in Stargate SG-1 denoted that it was he who was the bipedal humanoid alien with immense space strength and wisdom, whilst the others surrounding him were mere bare-skulled mortal meat bags.
At the beginning of last night’s episode we find ourselves staring down the barrel of an Immunity Challenge, but this time it’s not actually like the past Immunity Challenges. Instead of the usual “celebrity chef subtly films a sizzle reel for their cooking show audition tape,” someone is GUARANTEED to walk away with the special pin that means they can sneakily dodge elimination at some point. Credit where it’s due, Rose has been doing that all series – and she hasn’t needed some fancy badge to do it.
The top four from Sunday’s invention test are here to duke it out: Reynold, Sara, Billie, and Jessie – the lineup of contestants voted most likely to wind up in a Vogue cover shoot at some point, if you assume Reynold is the guy who holds the silver light reflector up.
Reynold is wearing the power apron thanks to his chocolate and raspberry log from Sunday night which definitely gave Matt Preston a culinary stiffy, and thus his power here is not only to pick the core ingredient and regional cuisine, but also which of his three opponents to cook 1-on-1 against. He chooses Pipis, French, and Jessie. And as it turns out, he whiffs on all three.
Immunity Challenge wrangler (the MasterChef version of the weekend summer anchor) Shannon Bennett immediately questions why on earth you’d try and combine French cooking with pipis – meanwhile here’s me nursing a Menulog cheeseburger on my chest whilst Googling what in the living fuck even is a pipi anyway – and Jessie is having herself a very quiet, reserved little fistpump because she is one with the sea and its watery delights.
In a quickfire 30 minute challenge, Reynold immediately bungs a net’s worth of pipis into the pot, not realising – or choosing to forget – that they’ll keep cooking for the 20-odd minutes he’ll have them resting on the bench for. You might say it’s a mighty shellfish decision.
Even though it’s only thirty minutes, Reynold still manages to put up a dish that’s approximately 1.3 mouthfuls in size, and Gary’s rumbling stomach could not be more cut. Sure, it looks pretty and all, but nothing tastes as good as ACTUAL TASTY FOOD.
Meanwhile in the blue corner, Jessie’s knocked shit completely out of the park by leaving the pipis until the very last moment to cook, leaving them whole, and serving them up with a tarragon and dill nage.
It’s a winner. The eternally hungry three are appeased. And Reynold cops a first-to-worst, leaving the remaining three in the challenge to be the entire population of Babe Town.
Round 2 sees Sara and Billie duke it out, with the combination of UK cuisine and flathead as the core ingredient – which is about as inventive as selecting USA and Big Macs TBH.
Despite only having 30 minutes, Billie approaches it as exam-like conditions, and proceeds to try and dump everything she knows about fish and potatoes onto the plate. Meanwhile Sara fillets her fish with the kind of knife skills you can usually only acquire through fleecing strangers of their cash by stabbing the gaps between your fingers at speed.
Sara, having literally stood on the sidelines and watched as Reynold cooked his seafood way too early and ruin it, immediately falls into the exact same trap and straight-fries up her flathead fillets a full four minutes too soon. Billie, conversely, is having a hell of a time trying to put a hodge-podge aioli together, but I have trouble registering what the issue is because she does this little sideways glance at the camera and my brain seizes up momentarily.
Ultimately, it’s the overcooked fish that loses it for the second-straight cook, as Sara’s rubbery fillets send her to the bin, leaving the Immunity Final a Jessie vs Billie affair.
For the final 60 minute challenge, we’re taking a chook and heading to China, which just about pleases everyone. Gary, George, and Matt head to the back to do their usual blind taste test, once again showing their arbitrary professionalism by not letting ~personal feelings~ cloud their judgment.
Jessie busts out the sous vide – the international MasterChef symbol for “IT’S PARTY TIME” – to throw together a little Chickity China the Chinese Chicken sausage, wrapped in its own skin which she refers to as a “cardigan.” Somehow, this is the most off-putting thing I’ve ever heard.
Meanwhile Billie, not content to simply cook the chicken once, decides to cook that shit twice by searing it and bunging it into the pressure cooker before finishing it off with a quick roast – a method of cooking that perfectly describes the flow of conversation at my past Christmas Day lunches.
Whilst Jessie’s Hainanese chicken soup is fundamentally fine in principle, she struggles with rice noodles – ultimately binning them due to time and going for some vermicelli she found in a back corner of the cupboard.
But wouldn’t you believe it, when Gary tastes it he bemoans “wouldn’t it have been great if they’d had a crack at some rice noodles with this?” Not “there should’ve been rice noodles.” Just “it’d be nice if they had a crack at it.”
M8, if you’d been out in the kitchen instead of hiding away in the back like a three year old box of Bi-Carb you’d have seen Jessie waste FIFTEEN MINUTES on them shits. Are you mental? Get the net.
On the other hand, Billie’s dish sends the judges into inglorious rapture – the orange glaze on the chicken matches the orange glaze that fogs over Preston’s eyes as I’m punished yet again by elongated close-up shots of these people eating.
So Billie wins the challenge, scores the Power Apron, and gets the Immunity Pin. In the world of MasterChef, she is now God and we are all but her quivering inferiors.
The episode concludes with a sneak peek at tonight’s team challenge, which features the words “John” and “Team Captain” uttered in the same breath.
If that doesn’t terrify you to your very core, check your bloody pulse.
*shudders*
Photo via Facebook.
