PREVIOUSLY ON MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA: WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH? WHERE’S MY KINGFISH?
Marco Pierre White apparently got stuck into some cooking sherry whilst the first group challenge of the year went down, and had a full-on existential meltdown over a long-lost fish. Is it all a metaphor? A symbol of repressed childhood trauma and innocence lost? Is this his Rosebud? TUNE IN TO FIND OUT.
AND NOW, LAST NIGHT.
Ahhh, elimination day. The smell of blood lingers thick in the air. And thanks to the group challenge there are a heap of contestants putting their necks on the line today.
Anastasia, Miles, Tassie Con, Matt, Harry with the Good Hair, Zoe, Adam, Cecilia, Nicolette, Olivia, and Trent all march their backsides into the MasterChef Kitchen to face the proverbial music, which is ironic given that Marco tells them that when they get knocked down they need to “get back up again.” Presumably, because it’s advisable to never let them keep you down and also because whisky drink/vodka drink/lager drink/etc drink.
But rather than piss the night away, we dive headlong into the dreaded alphabet cloche challenge, in which they must pick a letter and guess the random ingredient that begins with that letter.
Miles, the stone cold legend that he is, starts things off by selecting B. Much to my own surprise, the production staff have placed basil underneath the cloche, choosing against trying to trip up everyone by unleashing a swarm of bees.
In the initial stages, everything is reasonably straight-forward. Anastasia nails Dijon Mustard for D, which I absolutely insist is a copout. Matt somehow manages to correctly identify mirin like it’s he literally pisses it; it’s an ingredient that, given its name, clearly lifts.
The first big hurdle we run into today is with Adam. Ohhh, boy. Adam.
Casually stepping up to the plate and selecting the letter R, Adam is confronted with this:
Common sense would suggest that, even if you have literally no idea that that’s a fucking rambutan, it would at least be a thing that begins with the letter R.
Not Adam. Not he.
No, he sees right through your ~ruse~, MasterChef Australia. He sees THROUGH THAT SHIT. And with all the confidence of a 14-year-old fucked on Red Bull and playing CoD with god mode on, he states his answer.
“That’s a lychee.“
A lychee.
A goddamned LYCHEE.
A word that definitely begins with the letter R.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME, M8.
Putting aside the fact that you very clearly did not have to endure 5 years of basic Indonesian like the rest of us public school schlubs did, ignoring the whole “it might be a thing that starts with R, hey” part of the challenge is easily enough to put you into the bottom four by yourself.
Good lord.
The cloches keep coming off in earnest, and as it turns out these people know their shit. They are straight-up nailing it.
Cecilia, in a wonderful piece of foreshadowing, states that her biggest concern is “not knowing the name of the ingredient,” which shows a grasp of the task’s concept that Adam could apparently only ever dream of having.
But when she picks J and gets confronted with this…
…my kneejerk reaction was to shout “JINJA!” at my TV screen, so what the living hell do I know.
For the record, that’s apparently jicama, or a Mexican Turnip which is a phrase that somehow feels like it should be considered racist.
Because the contestants are all far too good at this, the production team has to start fucking up some worlds.
Matt, one of the few in this current cast who can actually talk to camera properly and is thus scoring the lion’s share of the screen time, gets chucked this disaster plate:
…though at the very least he succeeds where Adam failed by uttering out an answer of “Uhhhh…“.
Apparently that’s umeboshi, or Japanese pickled plums. Fitting, given that’s what the production was trying to do to Matt’s.
Harry, good hair and all, gets thrown a piece of fish-looking flesh for C, which he takes a decent stab at and answers as “cod,” but OH LOL NO IT’S ACTUALLY CROCODILE.
CROC-O-FUCKING-DILE. Bloody hell. At some point that’s less making a quiz hard to trip someone up, and more just beating up your students in front of the rest of the class.
So with that we’ve whittled the potential person-going-home down to four: Matt, Cecilia, Adam, and Harry. To avoid elimination all they have to do is craft a dish using the ingredients that were correctly identified by the group, so we’re definitely not gonna get those lychee crocodile tacos that we absolutely deserve.
Harry immediately grabs a big slab of tuna to compliment his look of “every white chef at a sushi bar“.
“Welcome to Sushi Shack, brah. My name is Harry-san.“
Adam‘s day goes from bad to worse when he decides to just fry up a bunch of chops and call it a mixed grill like it’s the Tuesday night special at the Port Lincoln RSL.
You wanna know how bad of an idea it is? Making this mixed grill with precisely one version of meat on it? Cop a squizz at George‘s face when Adam tells him that’s what he’s doing.
That’s the rare combination of disgust, confusion, and Disappointed Dad face. The aggro crag of facial expression. The holy triumvirate of “you’re fucking this up, m8”.
After some sage advice from the judges, Adam decides to pivot the dish and instead cook something that he labels a “duo of juicy & tender lamb with a delicious sauce” which is JUST A BUNCH OF WORDS THAT DON’T REALLY MEAN ANYTHING, ADAM.
Matt, who is too good at actually cooking to be in an elimination challenge this early in the season, is steaming ahead with such utter brute force and precision that the judges are forced to heap extra pressure onto him just so it *kind of* looks like he’s struggling a bit.
Instead of cooking up one quail, they say, why not do two? Or three or four? Hell, fry up an entire flock of the little bastards.
This raising of stakes unintentionally gifts us two magnificent reactions from dear, sweet Matt and his surprisingly rubbery face.
Number 1: The “You want me to do WHAT?” look.
And Number 2: “I Feel Like I’m Taking CRAZY PILLS!”
Your face, Matt. It is a true gift to us all.
Harry, wanting to cut a few corners, decides to try and make mayonnaise in a blender, which is kind of like trying to mix cake batter in a centrifuge. Instead of stiff mayo he winds up with drippy cream-coloured slop, which is more evidence to suggest that this season is a particularly jizzy one.
After Marco manages to scare Harry shitless by telling him to throw it all out and start again (even though I’m dead certain he was trying to subtly quote Destiny’s Child and now the image of stern Marco Pierre White getting absolutely down to 90s bangers is giving me LIFE), Harry makes another go of it and this time says “I’ll whisk it.”
*clears throat, adjusts tie*
I’M PRETTY SURE CHUCKING IT IN THE BLENDER WAS A WAY BIGGER WHISK.
Cecilia‘s tuna is overcooked by *just a wee smidge* so she has to come up with something on the fly. If it were me, I’d just bung some baked beans on toast on the plate and hope for the best (you cannot look me in the eye, Matt Preston, and tell me that that would be unenjoyable. You CANNOT).
Meanwhile Adam‘s lamb disaster dish continues to be so pedestrian it’s practically got gum on its shoe and he decides to plate it up in “the way that I’d like to eat it at home,” and I am *FURIOUS* at the fact that this does not mean he’s demanding the judges consume it in bed whilst binge-watching Gilmore Girls and falling down a shame spiral.
But all the fancy lamb plating in the world isn’t enough to save Adam from the ironic fate of getting the chop, for it is he who is off to meet the grand black 4WD in the driveway.
Cecilia is now sporting a clean sheet of 2-0 in elimination challenges.
MasterChef 2016 has its new ELIMINATOR. Tremble in fear, fellow cooks.
NEXT TIME: Marco Pierre White leaves the kitchen, only to be replaced by a series of robotic arms who periodically spin and slap each contestant as a continuous loop of their loved ones having sex with someone else plays. Gotta get dem tears out somehow.
Photos: Channel Ten.
