PREVIOUSLY ON MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA: Nigella Lawson arrived to kick-off Nigella week by offering up the fabulous Mystery Box prize of tea with her in London, and the 60+ hours of gruelling air travel that comes with it. Also we lost Adele, an elimination which has no meaningful impact on the competition whatsoever.
AND NOW, LAST NIGHT.
We’re back for another Immunity Challenge where cooks compete for the opportunity to claim a cheap, golden pin, gifting them the ability to completely erase one (1) future kitchen fuck-up should they choose to embrace cowardice by not owning their failures.
Today, Hoda, Loki, Kristen, and Ben all line up, vying for the chance to have their life ruined by getting bashed by a professional chef on national TV.
Matt Preston reveals the theme for round one: Pancakes.
Quick check in with Ben for his thoughts on that?
Thank you very much Ben.
Selfishly, and with great glee, the pancake-themed challenge also gives me reason to post an all-time favourite wrestling GIF and once-again invoke the great and mighty Rusev, by suggesting that if the judges do not like any of the dishes, they can declare phooey on the pancakes.
This recap series is slowly morphing into pro-Rusev propaganda and there’s nothing any of you can do to stop it. Why would you? It is Rusev Day, after all.
In an otherwise bland and boring pancake challenge that might’ve otherwise been only notable for George’s fart-sniffing reaction at Kristen’s gelatinous mess of a sorbet…
…we spend the most amount of time with Hoda. And with good reason. Because she’s a fucking sugar sorcerer.
Unfazed by her previous failed attempt to make what she calls “hand-pulled cotton candy,” Hoda goes at it again. This time with all the appropriate ingredients.
At first, what she does elicits consternation of the highest order from Nigella.
Whatever the upper-crust Brit translation of “the fuck are you doing, binch?” is, that’s what she’s thinking. “Whatsdt is thou producing, thine foolish git?” Y’know, something like that.
But quickly, the entire gang gathers around like Gary just found a dead frog and one of them is gonna be bullied into touching it.
Using something that Hoda calls “asbestos fingers” which leads me to believe she doesn’t actually know what asbestos is, she turns a glob of what at first looks like a candy dildo into fine, wispy sugar hair.
And here’s the bit that really cranks my chain: They never really explain how she does it.
It goes from looking like a giant’s hanky…
…to a giraffe’s anoos…
…to this…
…and then suddenly this…
…and like how…
…the living fuck…
…is this EVEN HAPPENING??
I don’t get it. I don’t understand. She just folded it over on itself a bunch of times and suddenly it exploded into a million pieces?
I know this show isn’t exactly Breaking the Magician’s Code but throw me a fucking bone here. What does the recipe say? “Step 4) Clap three times and entrust your heart to believe”? Come on.
Obviously exhibiting technique of that ridiculous quality cannot be denied, so obviously the judges award the round to Loki.
Because, lol.
As is the case with all these early-stage immunity challenges, Loki’s grand reward is getting beaten within an inch of his culinary life by a professional chef, today played by this smiling assassin:
Yep, he’s boned alright.
And thus brings to a close this rather short edition of our MasterChef reca-
What, what do you mean “he won”?
He won?
Loki won an Immunity Pin.
Loki.
In week three. You’re kidding me.
Fuck me sideways, alright then.
Given the choice between heroing either oranges or lemons, Loki casually mentions that southern Indian cooking features a lot of lemon; lemon rice, lemon stew, lemon broth, lemon curry. So naturally he picks oranges.
LEMONS?!
Christ this is going off the rails quick.
With a 15-minute head-start, Loki looks to make the most of his time by strapping on an apron and getting to work in as professional a manner as he possibly can.
Loki. An absolute boss at two things: Delicately balancing spice profiles, and physical comedy. It’s a rare one-two punch that you just don’t see much of nowadays.
Loki decides to cook a lemon-based curry dish with a giant slab of kingfish as its central protein. The mere mention of the word “kingfish” gives me horrific flashbacks to Marco Pierre White barking “WHERE’S MY KINGFISH?” to the point of the brain clouding over. The fish is the spoon in the teacup, and the MasterChef Kitchen is the Sunken Place. We’re never getting out.
In the grand spirit of letting nothing go to waste, Loki cooks and serves up what appears to be the entire giant fish.
“Yes thank you waiter I’ll have the bowl of fish slab, thank you.”
Meanwhile the guest chef, Alanna Sapwell of Saint Peter in Sydney, cooks an incredible plate of technically brilliant calamari that falls directly into the trap MasterChef sets for these professional goofballs: Doing too much.
See, it’s all well and good to produce food that is of world-standard and pushes the mould and challenges food palates and innovates and whatnot. But in MasterChef, that’s a weakness. Because while, sure, the judges thoroughly enjoyed an exquisitely-presented dish of squid with a sauce of ink made from the creature’s guts, at the end of the day all they’re really hungry for is something that taste good and fills the belly.
You could serve up hand-fried spatchcock served in a man’s dream, and it would be soundly beaten by a plate of beans on toast if it were cooked well enough.
Lo and behold, Loki wins.
He doesn’t just win, Gary gives him a 10. And suddenly Loki busts out a bang-on impression of 19-year-old Cam Tyeson at a No Use For A Name gig.
So there you have it: 12 episodes into season ten, and our first Immunity Pin goes off. And it goes off to Loki, who is firming as a serious threat this year.
Those damned judges. They love-a the spice.
NEXT TIME: A giant team challenge takes over brunch, and if the previews are to be believed, Brendan cuts his fucking hand off. Hell yeah.
