Can you believe that, somehow, we’ve now sat through eleven whole weeks of MasterChef: Back to Win? Outrageous, the amount of TV we’ve all had to sit through. I’ve started having MasterChef dreams now. I am trapped in the kitchen with no way out, and I am constantly being judged even though I have cooked nothing. It’s hell. Thankfully with 6 contestants now remaining we are finally getting to the point where MasterChef may end soon, which should give me just enough time to mentally recover before the series fires back up again in 2021. Maybe. Might be a week or two short of ideal but I should be able to push through.
Here, for your viewing pleasure, are your official MasterChef: Back to Win Power Rankings for Week Eleven. Eleven! Eleven weeks of this, my god.
ELIMINATED: Tessa Boersma
Fair play to her, if I was the only cook in a MasterChef group of six people to pick something other packet mix dessert but I still copped harsh judging because of it, I would be absolutely filthy too.
What kind of bullshit challenge, in a Final 7 scenario, actually rewards people for playing it safe. Tessa picks Fish & Chips from a board full of “classic dishes” only for everyone else to pick a bloody White Wings 10-minute special, and she gets railed for not perfectly executing the half dozen elements she had to contend with while everyone else got to flail around on one?
ALSO while we’re at it, why the fuck does Callum get to have a tasting immediately after the cook finishes because a soufflé has a limited shelf life, but Tessa has to wait until the very end with her fish slowly broiling under a heat lamp?? And they have the gall to say it’s overcooked??
ALSO WHILE WE ARE VERY MUCH AT IT.
Is that what you reckon, Jock? Let’s have a bloody look.
Uh-huh.
Yep, so far so good.
Hang on a bloody minute!
What the!!!!
No one’s arguing that capers aren’t among the classic ingredients of a tartar sauce. But it’s certainly not a make-or-break. Just because you grew up in a Dickens novel is no reason to start drawing lines where there is no paper, Jock.
I mean it’s not like Tessa did something like, I don’t know, reveal a fundamental lack of knowledge in her chosen dessert specialty by not knowing that a Bombe Alaska has a sponge in it.
6) Reynold Poernomo
Yes, you idiot. There’s a sponge.
That alone would’ve been enough to put Reynold at odds-on favourite to score bottom spot on this week’s rankings, but then he goes and locks it up tight by pulling this absurd First Date bullshit in round two.
“Well let me tell you something about Space. They say it’s an infinite void, but I think that the one in our hearts is bigger. Why are you leaving?”
Pretty lucky that every second challenge is framed around an abstract brief that rests perfectly in Reynold’s wheelhouse meaning he can just ride through the entire competition doing the one thing he’s good at while never addressing the gaping holes in his food knowledge!
Lucky! Lucky boy!
5) Poh Ling Yeow
I simply cannot ignore Poh serving up a ramekin of creme caramel slop. Asking anyone to make a full-on creme caramel in 60 minutes is ridiculous, and Reece putting one up that was about 5mm thick is the only that ever would’ve been achievable. So a bowl of dessert soup is the factor at play in ranking Poh this low.
That said, it’s nearly 18 hours later and I’m still reeling from the emotional awakening this perfect single shot of Poh and Melissa crouching by the Blast Freezer sparked within me.
I mean… I just…
Art.
4) Reece Hignell
Firstly, the bad:
That has all the thickness of a common bath plug and looks like it weighs as much as a picture of itself. 60 minutes to get a full creme caramel up is a truly dumbfuck thing to make anyone do. But the only reason King Reece didn’t get punted into round two of last night’s elimination is because the judges (Jock in particular) love nothing more than to move their own goalposts on a whim.
But conversely, the good:
There is not a purer personality, in the entire history of MasterChef, than Reece. He is a glimmering ray of light. A beacon of hope. All that is good about the world. Give him everything he wants, immediately.
3) Emelia Jackson
Millsy having a well deserved quiet one in Week Eleven after driving the majority of the show for the month prior proves that, even in MasterChef, you should still be allowed the occasional RDO. All union rules apply in the MasterChef kitchen. Everyone gets their requisite smoko. Everyone has to stand on those comfy rubber mats. Everyone has limits on the amount of challenges they can participate in. Sorry mate, can’t uncork this Mystery Box, I’ve already hit my quota of 4 for the month. And eliminating me for not participating in it constitutes unfair dismissal. So if you need me, I’ll be up on the gantry in a K-Mart camp chair with a fresh packet of durries, a Dare Iced Coffee, and a servo pie. These are all paid hours too, by the way. Don’t even think about stiffing me there or else the boys will down tools and walk off site.
2) Laura Sharrad
Laura has discovered the key to winning individual immunity on MasterChef: Say you’ve never won it before. It does not matter what you cook. It does not matter if you plate up a literal dog’s breakfast. Hell, it does not even matter if you’ve actually won immunity before. If you say you’ve never won it, you will get immunity. The show cannot resist that storyline. It is a fiend for it. Saying you have never won immunity before is the blinding blue bug zapper, and the show is but a horny moth trapped in its glow. You can miss the brief by a culinary mile – you could be asked to cook a toasted sandwich and you could serve up a tax return – but if you say you haven’t won immunity before, you will win it.
That’s the true MasterChef secret.
1) Callum Hann
I repeat my call last week that Callum has entered rare Kitchen Wizard territory. Last week it was blindly guessing “starfruit” in the Cube Challenge. This week he’s just trial-and-erroring his way to a perfect soufflé recipe. Never done one before, just guessing his way into nailing a deeply complex, classically French dessert. People study for years in French culinary schools to get that shit nailed, and old mate just Yeah Nahs his way through one in a touch over an hour. Ridiculous. The food equivalent of going 20 for 20 from three. He cannot miss right now, and it’s a sight to behold.
