PREVIOUSLY ON MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA: It’s been goddamned Heston Blumenthal week this week, which means eliminations have ground to a halt and no one’s learned anything actually useful, because the Crown Prince of Kitchen Dicking has been making everyone try to whip up savoury fucking ice creams and chocolate ridiculousness and everything with liquid nitrogen before serving it up to a waiting public, all of whom have had the same best-case-scenario reaction:
“Oh. Uh… Yeah, that’s ah… That’s not too bad.“
The real highlight of the week has been George and his absolute disgust for all this horseshit, which he hasn’t been even remotely bothered to hide. He hates this ridiculous bullshit. He HATES IT.
George Calombaris and Heston Blumenthal. The Spy vs Spy of the culinary world.
AND NOW, LAST NIGHT.
One bloody elimination. That’s all we’re getting out of Heston Week. That’s it. No surprise double elimination like they were clearly, *CLEARLY* building to all week. No two-stage challenge that whittles the prospective death rowers down to a final battle of 3. Nothing. Just 7 of the remaining 10 cooking one dish and plonking it up.
Tonight we’ve got Brett, Chloe, Elena, Trent, Theresa, Matt, and Heather all dressed in black, leaving Mimi, Harry, and Elise to watch on from the gantry, for they have endured Heston’s nonsense and as such have earned the right to view this particular bloodbath from upon high.
The three of them clap as the rest of the group enters the kitchen. 12 people clapping is proper applause. 3 people clapping just sounds like a couple of cows shitting.
For this latest hair-brained idea pulled from the scone of a clear madman, we have a single prism placed in the middle of the MasterChef Kitchen, which casts off a rainbow when light is shone into it. I bet precisely three Australian dollars that this is how Heston *absolutely insists* the room to look whenever he listens to Dark Side of the Moon.
Because this whole friggin’ thing is just Three Seven Colours Heston, the seven are faced with a knife pull to determine which colour will form the basis for their dish. Oy vey.
Red, Orange, Yellow, and Green are all clear no-brainer colours, and they go to Theresa, Elena, Heather, and Brett respectively. Where things get really interesting is the Blue, Indigo, and Violet (rainbows fucking love purple, y’all) variants, which Matt, Chloe, and Trent all cop.
Matt is fucking furious about picking blue, and wants absolutely no part of it whatsoever.
Both Chloe and Matt rush into the pantry desperately hoping that some magical blue or indigo ingredient has materialised in there overnight, but both come up with bupkis. Figuring it’s a Heston challenge and therefore it’s open to interpretation (because, after all, the dish is all about the fucking feel of it or some cockamamie bulltwaddle like that) they both decide, quite smartly you would’ve thought, to cook a dish based on what the colour evokes. They’re literally borrowing a feeling. Kirk van Houten would be proud.
Heather, who has yellow and therefore arguably the easiest task of the lot, naturally goes straight for lemon, and mentions that she’ll be cooking a ‘Lemon Sultana Delicious.’ And if you missed that phrase the first time through, fear not, because she’s fixin’ to drop it another thousand-odd goddamned times before the episode is through. YES WE HEARD YOU WE ALL KNOW WHAT IT IS. DO YOU?
Matt has taken his blue brief and decided on a theme of the sea, which is pretty smart cooking to be honest. The sea is blue. Fish swim in the sea. Colour. Connection. FOOD. But Chloe’s task of trying to squeeze something out of indigo is proving far more difficult; finally setting on… uh… cooking her Nan? Or something like that? Look, it’s a field of grass at nighttime, and if she served it in the dark it would’ve been a genius call. You can’t see colours in the dark, you fucks.
Theresa, who apparently spent her time away from the competition (y’know, that period of time after she was ELIMINATED THE FIRST TIME) plugged directly into the matrix downloading the “How To Cook Actually” file into her brizzain, because she’s been so suspiciously good since returning that I’m tempted to call for a drug test.
Because it’s godforsaken Heston Week and he is apparently carrying commercial consideration from a chemical manufacturer, we have a shitload of liquid nitrogen getting around in this cook. Most of it goes directly onto Theresa’s dome moulds, because in MasterChef, if a dessert isn’t made in a dome mould, is it really a dessert at all?
Meanwhile in team lemon, Heather has decided that instead of just sticking to lemon like a sensible person, she’s decided to chuck white chocolate and coffee and dukkah and god knows what else onto the dish – a LEMON SULTANA DELICIOUS in case you missed that – because lord knows the best accompaniment to any lemon dish is the literal rest of the cupboard.
That just about sums her whole day up. An otherwise simple task, fizzed all over the bloody place.
Chloe and Matt keep plowing ahead with their inspired by colour angle, which I maintain is on-theme for Heston week. But oh, no. It’s today of all goddamned days where we’re gonna be VERY LITERAL with the task brief, and thus we have Matt Preston and Heston rocking up to their benches asking where the actual colours are. Get fucked. Get absolutely, well and truly fucked, m8s. God damn it, you cannot – YOU CANNOT – put them through the wringer all week with borked challenges and INSPIRED BY creative nonsense and then flip the script on them right at the end and demand blue food.
As usual, Matt’s face sums everything up far better than words ever could.
ABOUT TO E-X-P-L-O-D-E
Fortunately for Matt, he finds some blue mussels tucked away in the back corner of the pantry, which are the actual only blue item in the entire storeroom. And when the judges bitch about his dish still being not blue enough, I nearly put my fist through the screen. You set the fucking task, idiots. Maybe make sure its possible to actually complete next time?
Chloe, however, rests her entire indigo theme on the existence of an indigo plate. M8, it’s the MasterChef Kitchen, not bloody IKEA. Lo and behold, when there isn’t an indigo plate in the cupboard (who would’ve thought) she’s forced to plate her very white-looking dish up on a very white-looking plate. Cross all your fingers and pray that the judges are colourblind.
They are not, though. And Preston’s exasperation is so visceral it hurts.
I haven’t seen an adult make that face since I was in Grade 3 and Mrs Hay couldn’t a class full of post-recess kids all messed up on sunfruits to sit still.
There are successes, though. Theresa’s mushroom dessert looks straight-up Instagram-worthy. Elena’s seafood delight has Heston skolling sauce from a jug.
Manners, you bloody cretin.
Also Brett – remember Brett? – is still here for some unknown reason. His only really prominent screen time during the episode is when he nonchalantly tosses his dish of green things down on the table.
“Yep. G’day. Here’s this shit.“
But despite Chloe and Matt “missing the brief” according to the judging panel, it’s Heather’s lemon disaster that’s enough to send her home this time, the sun setting on her Heather Day and sending her out into the good Heather Night.
I will not be apologising for that gag. Not now. Not ever.
NEXT TIME: George literally runs Heston out of town, for the MasterChef Kitchen is not big enough for two bald chefs. Particularly when one wears those goofy-ass glasses.
Photo: Channel Ten.
