MKR – Wed, Mar 9 – the one where Rosie and Paige try to redeem themselves

Ok, time to see Paige and Rosie’s beautiful friendship and witty one liners (and, hopefully, yummy food) overshadowed by the drama of Feisty Cop and Villain Lauren. Can we just hurry up and get to the part of MKR where teams get to cook for the public?
The SA Besties start the day determined to be top of the leaderboard, so the music editor throws in a late 80s classic: New Kids on the Block’s You Got It (The Right Stuff).

And the music just gets better with Roxette’s Dressed for Success (and yes, I had the cassette of the album: Look Sharp!).

The judges are doing their preview bit and Pete is delighted to see a menu that flows, after the Miners’ trip around the world last episode.
Entree: Spiced lamb filo rolls with yoghurt sauce
Main: Chicken shawarma with hummus and flatbread
Dessert: Orange and almond syrup cake
It all sounds delicious but I’m wondering if they will make their own filo? They did it once on Great British Bake Off and it is labour intensive and required a tonne of bench space for the stretching.
They whip through Coles and after a visit to a crazy-haired butcher for chicken thighs, they are home.

Take a butchers at his hair.

Take a butchers at his hair.

And again they are running late, getting back to the house once the clock has started ticking. Geez, you make it hard for yourselves, girls. Luckily their setting up does not involve any broken signage this time so they are in the kitchen as the clock ticks 2:40.
Paige says their mantra is: “No stress, be calm, got each other’s backs.” As head chef Rosie tasks her with creating the dukkah for the entree.
Rosie gets on to the dessert and gets a double yolker for luck. Hopefully this means their ice cream won’t be glop this time.

And here come the guests to – of course – T Swift’s Bad Blood and Lauren and Carmine are leading the pack. (If any SVU fans have not seen the Bad Blood clip, check it out for a cameo by Olivia Benson )
However, there’s been a wardrobe malfunction: The Stepsies are not dressed alike. Was there a last-minute change after one of Lisa’s eyebrows melted off her face and stained her planned outfit?

"Where's my Daughtie? Look at moi, stranger in non-matching clothing."

“Where’s my Daughtie? Look at moi, stranger in non-matching clothing.”

In the dining room Rosie and Paige give their happy families spiel and Ducks Nutters and the Miners are pleased to be there, but the other three teams hate each other (well, that’s what it’s edited to look like and Hazel’s too upbeat to join in), so conversation is awkward and the Miners (who were stuck in the kitchen last time) don’t know what’s going on.
Feisty Cop is happy to fill them in because she likes to kick the hornet’s nest, and hornet Lauren is still defensive. Ad then they start arguing over whether or not Lauren is raising her voice. Lauren to Feisty: “You can’t throw that in my face because you did it the other night and you’re doing it again now.”
Then she tells the confessional: “Thanks, Monique, thanks for firing me up .. I can’t wait til you come to our instant restaurant because we are aiming for the top of the leaderboard and we are going to smash it out. How do you like them apples.”
Umm, she can’t wait because she is going to poison Monique with uncooked seafood? What does she think will happen? She will force Monique to give her a high score by the sheer brilliance of her cooking?

In the kitchen Paige is cooking some delicious-looking spicy lamb mince and – oh, sorry – it’s back to the drama, which probably lasted all of two minutes in real life but has now been going on for donkeys years because Channel 7 promoted the heck out of it.
Monique: Stop pointing your finger. Lauren: Don’t tell me what to do, Monique.
I’m waiting for Monique to say: “If you can’t be nice, young lady, go to your room.”
Here come the judges so we’ll finally get some peace and quiet. And, perhaps, some cooking. It does worry me the Besties are still cooking the filling for their filos, as it will have to cool before they can bake the pastries.
The guests peruse the menus and are surprised to see the Middle Eastern flavours.

In the kitchen Rosie makes her marinade for the chicken (wouldn’t that have been good to do earlier?) and she mixes up the paprika with cayenne pepper and the taste blows their heads off. Luckily before she chucks it out Paige tells her to do the bleeding obvious and add yoghurt to mute the spiciness.

Monique wants them to have minced their own lamb and made their own yoghurt. Given the latter takes at least four hours, it’s not really doable in the MKR timeframe. And, yes, they could have minced their own lamb but then we wouldn’t have got the footage of the Coles butcher who just happened to have a trolley of mince when they needed it.
The girls are determined not to freak out and stuff up like they did last time. They plate up their filos with a nice tumble of dressed rocket and it looks a bit underwhelming, but could well be delicious.

Cue the chew … Pete: “You’ve entered the competotion with this dish because you were cooking with love. The lamb filo roll was to die for.” And Paige bursts into tears – a common reaction for people speaking with Pete.
Manu’s turn: “It was good.” Manu, you are terrible at these fakeouts.. “It was great.” Manu loved it but wished they had a few more buttery layers of pastry.
Hooray – finally some good news for the Besties and in the kitchen they do a happy dance and hug it out.
At the table everyone loves it – Man Bun is in heaven – even those who were hoping for a disaster to save their own skins. In the confessional, Feisty says: “It’s like a bittersweet mouthful.” At least they aren’t doing the talking it down thing.

The Besties start prepping the elements of their chicken shawarma and at the table – and in the editing – there is much innuendo involving the word shawarma. To illustrate its supposed filthiness we get Ginuwine’s Pony (which IS filthy), which inspired a lot of grinding action in mid-90s nightclubs.

None of the guests is sure what shawarma is. Kell cuts to the chase: “I think it’s a fancy way of saying a kebab.”
But we’re in SA at the moment, so let’s call it a yiros, please.

In the kitchen Paige is blithely blitzing hummus while Rosie cuts chicken, pan-fries chicken and pan-fries pita bread, all while trying not to give anyone salmonella. And she burns it all. Making hummus is a dead-easy two-minute job. Why doesn’t one of them cut all the chicken while the other cooks it, then one person can fry the bread why the other makes hummus? Simple.
Rosie is starting to freak out, just when things were going so well. Go stick your head in the freezer and take some deep breaths, Rosie. Instead, Paige makes her dance it out (she’s been watching too much Grey’s Anatomy) and wisely takes the helm of Rosie’s gorgeous six-burner stove. Rosie gets it together and they plate up on round chopping boards, which is exactly what my local Middle Easter cafe does. They’re not happy with the bread but decide to serve it anyway. They are worried about the spiciness of the kitchen but with yoghurt, hummus and salad as sides it should be fine.


Chew o’clock …
BUT WAIT – WHAT’S THIS.
It’s an MKR ad about the twist. “None of you are seff,” intones Manu and we cut to a picture of Ducks Nuts, Cops and Lauren and Carmine. Guess we have to wait til Sunday to find out.
Back to the chew … And Manu gets to speak first for a change. But then Rosie starts talking the dish down, while Paige wishes she could gag her. Manu: “I think this is an amazing dish. The flavors are just dancing, jumping.” He agrees the bread was rolled too thinly. Pete says it’s one of the best chook dishes he’s had in the comp. And there are more tears from Rosie. Yay. They are on track to beat Nev and Kell and their uncooked marron.
Again, Man Bun is loving it. The Cops are less thrilled, saying there was not much skill involved. Serious;y, girls, if the judges praise a dish, you look like tools when you bag it out. And then we get a Pot-Kettle moment from Lauren: “Be a good sport about it.”
Hazel was loving it but then she gets a piece of raw chicken. Not good – why couldn’t the Cops get that bit.
In the kitchen the girls are testing their massive orange cake – two smaller cakes would have been easier. And then Rosie realises she forgot to add the almonds to the icecream, so they have to stir them by hand, which will delay the freezing further. The cake is looking great but the icecream has an inconsistent texture. They want to ditch it and Rosie offers to whip some cream, but Paige wants it served plain. You need something “wet” on there – are you out of yoghurt? Make a quick almond praline to jazz it up.
Instead they scoop out smaller quenelles of the successful scoops and for some reason plop them on the plate next to the hot cake. Why not clean off their icecream serving dishes and put them back on there, even if they did look small? Better than molten lava on the plate.


Luckily the cake looks divine.
Time to chews … “It works,” says Pete. “It’s moist, it’s full of flavour.” He would like more syrup. Manu stresses it’s a simple dessert and the ice cream’s texture is wrong, but the cake is right.
Most of the table likes it, but, the Cops find their orange cake too orangey. Man Bun miner is frustrated by the comments, yet polite: “I understand this is a redemption round and I think a lot of people are trying to hunt for something negative to say.”
He’s a nice boy.
The girls are definitely the best cooks of the round thus far but the teams are obviously suss about the looming twist and some are scoring to save themselves. Credit to the Cops and Lauren for not lowballing as hard as Nev and Kell.

Team scores: Cops 6; Ducks Nuts 5; Miners 10; Stepsies 3 (Yes, it’s low and strategic but on MasterChef raw chook gets you booted from the comp ASAP); Carmine and Lauren, 7.
Judges: Entree Manu 8, Pete 9; Main Manu 8, Pete 7; Dessert Manu 8, Pete 8.
Total score: 79 (top of the leaderboard, eight clear of Ducks Nuts, so Cops and Stepsies are still in the bottom two).

The girls are stoked – go South Australia!
And we get another twist promo for Sunday, with Manu proclaiming: “Hole is not what it sims. None of you are seff.”
What, do they have to do some instant cook-off to add to their score?

And now we have a break to catch our breath and prepare ourselves to watch Lauren cook on Sunday. And to see Lisa attack poor Man Bun.



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73 Comments

  1. When they are already behind time, why did Page still try to put all the purchases up on the shelf and then climbed up to take the spices down.

    Also how can you run out of spices when you are using new bottles?

    • It was weird, Littlepetal.

      It was as though the producers wanted to emphasized how short of stature Paige is.

  2. Page is not very helpful. It doesn’t take long to make hummus. Why can’t she help with the cooking.

    It’s going to be a long night as they still have not bake the cake

  3. All that blue eye shadow on Lauren is so passe! Message came up on screen saying let Lauren stay so that she can meet up with Zana. I think we would al agree with that.

        • I miss Kat. At least the death stare was fun to watch. Jessica knew almost nothing about food and just announced periodically that she didn’t eat Food X. Lauren listens to the judges and then tries to paraphrase them as negatively as possible.

          If they insist on having a claque of female villains in every series they could at least try and make them interesting.

  4. C’mon Rosie and Paige. You girls are our only hope for a decent outcome to this stupidly-long round of instant restaurants. Don’t let us down!

    • No sh*t sherlock. The orange cake tastes too much like orange. Promote that girl to head of the murder squad. 😛

    • OMG – I am so ANGRY!!!

      Closest I’ve come to throwing something at the screen. Hmmm, the twist. Saying none of them are safe. The only thing I can think of now is that the judges decide based on whether they “believe” the team redeemed themselves.

  5. I couldn’t help but laugh at the judges’ reaction to the menu, when Manu says, “I want this menu to take me to the middle east.”

    So he wants a violent, bloody, pointless combat zone, then? *looks in dining room* Mission accomplished!

  6. Nev and Kell are sneaky bas*ards. Sitting pretty pretending to be nice and then gave an undercut.

    Stepsies also keep saying about others being strategic but they are the worst.

    Lauren has been fair with her score.

  7. I didn’t think the step mums chicken was raw. Quite often there is different colours when you cook thigh fillets. I think she was looking for an excuse. Ps scoring a 3 is total shite.

  8. I’m wondering if the contestants scores are dropped off given the ridiculous scores from Nev and Kel and the in-laws in particular.
    I am still lol at your comment Windsong #12. Very clever.

  9. I gotta say, when the other teams were scoring, I cackled madly when Alex and Gareth gave an outright 10 out of 10 … and then I started swearing when we cut to Duck Nuts and his brother’s wife, and the Stepsies.

    Duck Nuts enjoyed every meal, and didn’t even vocalise a single complaint. But they gave Paige and Rosie 5 out of 10? That wouldn’t possibly be because they were worried about losing their top spot, would it? Backstabbing twerps.

    As for the Stepsies, WTF is wrong with the pair of you?! Enjoyed every part of the meal, one piece of chicken seemed undercooked … and it was 3 out of 10? Lauren might be loud and obnoxiously opinionated, but at least she was scoring reasonably fairly. I too LOLed at the policewomen complaining that the orange cake tasted orange-y. No seriously, what?

    At this point I’m not sure which team I despise more. That’s not a good thing.

    • Duck Nutters actually said ‘The overall night was really good’ then proceeded to give them a 5.
      What would they have given if one or two of the courses had been off?

      Those stepsies are just plain off, I can’t stand them, they can’t cook and they can’t score, good-bye to them I hope and the police.

      In an ad. I am sure Laurne and Carmine were at the front advertising for the next lot of outdoor challenges.

  10. I despise the coppers!! Lauren’s looking OK to me now. Monique is the shite stirrer. I would’ve reminded her she’s not on duty if she was telling me what to do. Good on Lauren for biting back. I want them gone. Ducks nuts can go as soon as possible too.

  11. I missed tonight, (Belinda Carlisle and Pseudo Echo were playing in Das Kapital tonight, was a lot of fun) so have caught up on the score…I am really happy the girls are on top. And I am with you guys…I am warming to Lauren compared to some of the others and their bad behaviour.

  12. If there hadn’t been a small piece of raw chicken, would the Stepsies have scored much higher? and the Battlers??? More like Rattlers with a score of 5 after that meal. Hopefully the twist will be that ALL the nasty and ungracious people will be eliminated.

    • That would be a great twist. Those who have scored unfairly will be booted from the competition. Don’t think it’s going to happen, though.

    • Duck Nut was just showing us his “passion” and how “bad he wants this”

      He’s rooting his brother’s ex wife. That ain’t no thermometer he’s testing her meat with.

      Course he’s gonna cheat.

  13. Duck Nutters with that score of “5”. They liked everything so no rationale for that except that they wanted to try to stay on the top of the leaderboard. Stepsies with the “3”….was the chicken really uncooked or was that just the coloring from the marinade and if it was uncooked (which I don’t think it was) one piece of raw chicken does not a score of “3” make.
    As much as I don’t like Lauren and Carmine I would prefer that they stay over Nutters, Stepsies and Coppers. At least Lauren is upfront about her opinions and not hiding behind false smiles like the Nutters & Stepsies. As for the Coppers they are just going over the top with their negativity. Complaining about an orange cake being too orange….It’s a $%#%#$ orange cake.

    • The uncooked piece of chicken is quite a head-scratcher, to be honest. Not a single other person at the table complained about any undercooked pieces of chicken, and how could there have only been one single little piece that didn’t get cooked? Did Rosie and Paige cook all the other pieces of chicken, then just grab a random uncooked piece and throw it in for funsies?

      (maybe it was deliberate and Rosie and Paige were actually trying to *off* the contestants, but they gave the bad bit to Hazel instead of Lisa? Just a thought)

  14. Grrr, what unfair scoring! I felt really ashamed of those bee-otches. 3? A 5? I am scared that MKR producers will shove the Aussie battlers down our throats and groom them for the win. :S Because… who doesn’t like the battlers win big?
    The cops… Too much orange? That is the purpose. Orange is already quite subtle. So I cannot imagine that it was totally in your face as they were describing it…

    I really liked the menu and would have eaten all of it. (Except for the sultanas, yuck, that should never be put into food!!!111).

    And I really had a good laugh at the “I am not happy with the chicken. It’s too spicy”. I did the exact same thing in my interview yesterday. “Yeah, I know I did have a bad test, I admit it…”. And while saying that I had the exact same voice in my had telling me “Don’t say that” Let them figure it out. You don’t always have to admit you failed at something. Because if you do, they will surely see it as even more negative”. 😀

      • It was actually the weirdest non-interview interview I’ve ever had. Was well-prepared and he didn’t ask one single question. Don’t know, I just stop thinking about it any longer and move on. Not a good thing to to concentrate on how weird it was.

    • Zhee agree with you generally but am 1000% with you that “sultanas….should never be put in food”.

      • Sultanas/raisins… Why would you eat the dried fruit when you can have the beautiful fresh fruit? Texture is weird, taste is weird and it is sickly sweet. 😀

        Same with pineapple on pizza. Why on earth would you do that to pizza??!?!?!?!

  15. Don’t know if I was dreaming, but did I see Pete ask everyone for their individual scores, and camera pans to shock horror faces? Perhaps it’s going to happen on Sunday, perhaps that’s the twist. It is a worry if I was dreaming of MKR!!

    • Sara that would be great if you weren’t dreaming, I would love to see them say their scores out loud. It would serve them right, especially duck nutters and the evil steppies last night.

  16. Loved the recap, Juz. Ma$terchef frowns on raw chicken as you say, we have seen it celebrated before on MKR when Bree (and Jessica) served raw chicken,yet still went on to culinary glory to win MKR.We haven’t heard of them since (scratches head with doe eyed wonder).

    Raw marron sans claws ~ top of the leader board for Duck Nut.

    We ain’t in Kansas anymore.

  17. I agree with what has been said above, I think the only score this round that will be counted is the judges score… remove any of the “strategic” scores.

    • Desi won’t eat pizza without pineapple. 😕 Happy hubby happy home . ( have to say that he pays the bills 😛 )

      • Haha don’t know what happened there previous comment should be for Zhee @22.3

        That would be great if only judges scores counted.

  18. I thought I recognised that Chicken Shawarma recipe and here it is, practically ingredient for ingredient as well as the salad:
    http://www.recipetineats.com/chicken-sharwama-middle-eastern
    No problems following a recipe word for word, I do it all the time, but maybe just a little bit of innovation is expected in a competition. Though they did add more chili didn’t they and the yogurt.
    BTW, the recipes at this site are really good and easy to follow.

    • Yeah……but like Pete said it was cooked with “love” and that makes all the difference. All of a sudden , somehow the dish is “to die for” and makes an amazing journey from the recipe website to the table of turncoats and grubs. The ingredients have even learned to jump and dance. This blog was actually written with love , so I expect a lot of “likes” from you gice.

    • Thanks for the link Annie B, I hadn’t been there before.

      BDD I could could feel the love in your post.

  19. Maybe the twist is that the two teams with the lowest scores from the judges only are eliminated; and the contestants scores don’t actually count at all?

  20. I think you said it Juz…well done to Gareth for politely saying what’s really been happening with the critiques and scoring. The look on Monique’s face, priceless. Alex and Gareth seem like good and generous of heart young men. Never mind Colin’s Komback Kitchen, perhaps all the nasties should be sent to Gordon Ramsay for recycling.

  21. The twist could be that the contestants have to eat the raw marron and chicken dishes. Those who fail or throw up have to cook off in an epic elimination. Ergo Manu gibbered that none of the tims are seff.

    The contestants’ scores should be revealed to all , of course and let them sort it out.

  22. Anybody else grieving Jon English today? One of my favourite performers, saw him live in November and he was awesome. So versatile, and accomplished so much more than most people realise – live theatre, tv, song-writing and performing, wrote and performed in a rock opera, revolutionised Gilbert & Sullivan. He has a special place in my heart.

    RIP.

    • Certainly a huge loss to Australian entertainment industry. So many this year, and it’s only March.

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