PREVIOUSLY ON MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA: Everyone’s favourite Nan Maggie Beer rocked up to the kitchen and got everyone absolutely fucked up on verjuice, clouding everyone’s judgment and allowing her to escape the episode without having to answer why my local Woolies is constantly out of stock of her ridiculous burnt fig, honeycomb and caramel ice cream.
You cannot let me know a thing like that exists in this world and then constantly deny me it afterwards. That is torture in most countries.
Ohhh, Maggie Beer. She is a crafty lass.
AND NOW, LAST NIGHT.
I cannot – I CANNOT – be the only one who is absolutely bloody sick of these bonkers-ridiculous, dozens-upon-dozens of steps dishes that even seasoned chefs would have trouble sorting out?
Look at this thing.
Fucking look at it.
What the hell even is that? How do you even begin to go about recreating it? It’s a bloody albino Death Star with what appears to be a tube of actual meth inside it, with some stuck-on makeup pads that’ve had that thing where you get a blood nose and accidentally sneeze done all up on them.
Anna Polyviou, the “punk powerhouse of pastry” according to Matt Preston in a beautiful bit of alliteration that definitely earned the show’s writers their pay that week, arrives carrying this business called “Anna’s Mess™” which is a phrase repeated ad nauseam throughout the episode. Branding, people. There is such a thing as too much.
Initially it’s Nicolette, Harry, and Charlie facing the chop today, but Nicolette uses her Immunity Pin – a decision she feels massively guilty for having to use it to get out of an elimination challenge, despite “getting out of an elimination challenge” being the pin’s literal only function – so she heads up to the gantry to be replaced by Elise and her high hair of glory.
So Anna’s Mess™ now faces our three condemned, and it’s a dish that has some SEVENTY FOUR STEPS in it. And, apparently, step #74 simply reads “fuck up everything you just did,” because:
Do you have to just meekly drop the damned thing onto the plate like that? Is there a degree of difficulty modifier? CAN YOU BUST OUT A FRONT FLIP FOR STYLE?
Holy hell. 3 hours cooking this stupidly intricate *thing*, only to bash its brains in before anyone can eat it.
Just leave, guys. Run away now. This is not worth it. Get a three-hour head start on going home and sorting out an apprenticeship instead. Fuck all of this.
You would not blame someone – not even in the slightest – if they set fire to this goddamned encyclopaedia of a recipe and served a bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate Ice Magic instead. I know which one I’d bloody well prefer.
Unsurprisingly, with a recipe this complex, the whole thing is dotted with mistakes. First up is Harry, who commits the most recoverable-sin of leaving the sugar out of his sponge cake, which is kind of like forgetting to inflate a basketball and wondering why it splats on the ground.
And speaking of splatting on the ground, were you aware that Anna’s Mess™ was designed to be smashed all over the fucking place?
Because if you’re not, get ready to have this shot driven into your brains every 5 minutes.
Dexter‘s had less-grotesque wet dreams, I swear.
The second mistake we get comes not necessarily from the contestants, but from the actual recipe itself, which forces the production team to cut together a watchable montage out of three people trying to get melted white chocolate to cool down by two degrees for an entire hour.
It’s the literal watching paint dry of the MasterChef Kitchen. And shout out to the editor who somehow managed to make that tense: You the real MVP.
Charlie, however, is all over the shop. Not only his white chocolate as thick as tar, but his total and utter unwillingness to be ready for that jelly means his raspberry curd is going into the fridge sans gelatine.
Meaning when it comes out, it’s less of a dome, and more of an origin-scene from a horror movie.
He’s literally made the slime from Ghostbusters 2. This dessert is Anna’s Mess™! You are like the buzzing of flies to it!
But it’s the godforsaken white chocolate domes that prove to be the biggest hassle. Charlie’s slide out with relative ease, because he’s cast them so thick they basically cracked the moulds around them.
Meanwhile Harry & Elise’s are absolutely stuck in there. And they are stuck good. No amount of poking or prodding is budging them, which is leading to some drastic and poorly thought-out measures.
*cough*
Seems that Anna’s Mess™ is a real Anna’s Test™, and you’re gonna have to do your Anna’s Best™ before you take an Anna’s Rest™.
Somehow – and it’s a bloody MIRACLE, I tell you – Elise and Harry extract their biodomes from their moulds (buuuuuuuuddy) with literal seconds to spare, meaning they all have a delightfully pretty and intricately put-together dish to mercilessly destroy in front of the judges.
Harry, quite obviously, could not be more stoked about it.
He has a moment of existential dread and states he would have “no idea” what to do if he got kicked off the show now, but if that GIF is anything to go by we might have an advance favourite for the next season of Dancing With The Stars.
Harry and Elise both managed to get all their elements onto the plate in decent order, leaving Charlie hanging out to dry.
His damned chocolate spheres were so thick the whole thing practically bounced, and that’s all it takes for our boy Charlie, and his magnificent “I’m boned” faces…
…to be spirited away from the show. Meaning I now officially have one final chance to make a cheap golf pun on his way out.
*rolls up sleeves*
Ahem.
LOOKS LIKE HE’LL BE TEEING OFF ON A NEW CAREER.
Absolutely worth it.
NEXT TIME: Everyone has to cook a metric tonne of spatchcock in under ten minutes whilst riding atop an on-fire cheetah.
Or, y’know, someshit like that.
Photo: Channel Ten.
