PREVIOUSLY ON MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA: We are now well and truly embedded in the dreaded holding pattern of the series; the bit after the should-not-have-been-here’s crash and burn spectacularly, but before the in-it-to-win-its start having their arses properly kicked by professional chefs out for blood.
Some stuff happened. Some people got booted. By next week you’ll have forgotten all of it. Remember Rashedul? Exactly.
AND NOW, LAST NIGHT.
Ordinarily the Immunity Challenge episodes come and go without incident. Have you noticed how nothing ever goes drastically wrong in the Immunity Challenges? No one fucks up in any meaningful way? Almost as if the producers lay off the secret oven kill-switch during these cooks so the contestants actually look like they’re seriously competing with experienced, tenured, professional chefs? REALLY MAKES YOU THINK.
This Immunity Challenge follows the formula of all the others: Three good cooks rattle off a quick first round, one is selected to face the Boss Cook, the Boss Cook rocks up and clearly kicks their arse but still only manages to win by like… 2 or 3 points max.
It’s fine. It’s good. There’s nothing to see here.
EXCEPT.
Round one this time around just happened to be a Mac & Cheese challenge, which should have sent Tamara, Samuel, and Ben into fits of rapture.
It’s the slam dunk of food challenges. It’s the stuff dreams are made of. The staple of the genre is literally called EASY MAC. Though you wouldn’t have known this from the brand-free generic-box alternative the show was forced to name.
Ahh yes. Good old fashioned ‘Non-Specific Blue Box Macaroni Pasta In Cheese-Based Sauce‘.
Note to Kraft: worry a little less about mystifyingly trying to re-brand Kraft Singles and worry a little more about prominent product placement.
Tamara, as the only pure and good contestant in this round, rightfully lost her mind over this. Samuel sheepishly admitted that the dish wasn’t exactly in his wheelhouse. And that would’ve easily been the weirdest thing about this episode on any other day. But this time around, perfect, chiseled, cut-from-stone Ben flings his hand up and says… this:
…but “woofing down a carbonara before running a triathlon” absolutely does not count, m8.
You remember that one kid who always insisted he’d kissed a girl but she was from a school across town so none of you would know her?
That.
Ben is that kid, and eating carbs is the imaginary girl he made up to avoid getting dacked.
They say you should never trust a skinny chef, but Ben is a fair beefcake. So in this case it’s probably more accurate to suggest never trusting a chef that knows their skin folds off the top of their head.
It somehow got worse in the 45-minute cook, too.
Your ordinary person who enjoys tasting actual food is probably going to look at a brief like “mac & cheese but different” and come up with some gloriously fucked food fantasies.
Me, I would’ve gone for a Mac & Cheese Pizza, for example.
It’s irresistible to all Leslie Knopes. Fact.
Ben, however, looks at the idea of combining pasta and cheese sauce and immediately decides the one thing this literal centuries-old dish is missing is a little protein.
Firstly, he grabbed three different cheeses off the shelf like it’s literally the first time his perfect hands have ever touched the stuff (“mozzer… ella? I’ve heard of that, I think“).
But the egg yolk. Cooked in the water bath. For a macaroni and cheese dish.
Can you put someone straight through to an elimination challenge from immunity? Hell’s bells.
Owing largely to the fact that she was the only one to produce a dish that had both a) macaroni and b) cheese in it (who would’ve bloody thought), Tamara was the one sent through to round two.
She didn’t win, of course. Because getting to battle-cook a professional chef for Immunity is “winning” in the same sense that a Under 13’s player getting a run in the Under 16’s to help fill the numbers is a “reward” for playing well. It’s nice that you’re here, but the big kid is gonna flatten you.
That’s ‘MasterChef’ for you, pals. It’s nothing if not a treadmill at times.
As for Ben, for the love of god man eat a freakin’ doughnut fer cryin’ out loud.
They’re delicious.
It’ll be good for you.
NEXT TIME: The gang takes over the celebrated South Melbourne Market and if someone so much as utters the phrase “dim sim” even in passing they are gonna get tremendously sued.
