MasterChef – Wed, July 20 – reworking entry dishes

The bottom three contestants from the Lake House challenge (Mimi, Elise and Harry) now face elimination and must impress the judges with a dish produced from the ingredients they each cooked with to get into the competition.

They usually do a variation on this each year and I do like to compare the two dishes. Perhaps they could have done a knife pull instead with the challenge of immproving each other’s audition dish.
They have all come a long way but I’m guessing there will still be a parfait in there somewhere, as we near the end of this MasterChef “jurney”.
Here are some excerpts from my recap of the MasterChef premiere, way back in May:

Next up is the coffee roaster dude with one of those button earrings. We know he gets in because we’ve seen footage of him in the preview, freaking out in a team challenge. Good on him for giving the death dish, risotto, a go – and for wearing a glove when handling the raw meat. Hope he’s not one of those “I don’t do desserts” guys.
Matt the coffee roaster has an intense look about him. George likes him because they have the same hairdo.
The risotto is a winner but George’s “Will you make us proud?” goes down like a lead balloon. And then he pulls out the signature “big boy”.

Most of the contestants who got airtime in the first episode were dessert people – Celia, Karmen – and, of course, Jimmy and Theresa. All long gone. I did make note of a bloke called Harry who cooked salmon and did not receive an apron but was sent through to the second round of auditions.
Harry got more airtime (and recap time) in the second episode:
Harry, bartender with the weird hair, catches his own seafood near Magnetic Island. He’s a veritable Ozzy from Survivor. He’s making lobster with some spicy flavours. So, Harry got airtime so he’s either amazing or appalling.
And – blow me down with a feather – Elise made a savoury dish in episode 2 – pistachio-crusted lamb. I wrote:
“I’ve spent a lot of time Frenching,” says Elise AKA coral top lady. Ooh, have you? She lucked out with some decent ingredients that complement each other – I reckon she took a punt they could be used for an invention test.
I do remember that Mimi started off with a bang. I wrote:
Snapper lady Mimi looks like she knows what she’s doing and is getting a few confessionals where she has to explain the components of her dish. She’ll be safe.

So, no mention of Elena or Trent in the first two episodes, and I do remember they were invisible for a long time. I wonder what their audition dishes were? I’m guessing neat and veg for Trent and some kind of vibrant salady thing with quinoa or another ancient grain for Elena.

Ah, MasterChef has posted pix of the audition dishes. Harry’s is obvious but what about the desserts? Is the flowery one Mimi’s?

No recap for me tonight, gice. Got a lurgy and since IM and GE are safe, I’m hitting the hay.
Mimi went home. Here are the “new and improved” dishes which, judging by your comments below, weren’t crash hot.



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58 Comments

  1. This is picky, but they keep talking about the “quarter finals” next week. Quarter final is between eight contestants, not four. Next week is semi finals.

  2. You got to push!
    You got to push!
    You got to push!

    Please, you are not Marco, George.

    Grrrr.

    Harry is making a raviolo. Matt tells him, “That is a bit Week Three.” That should tell you volumes about the best contestants EVA! Extremely limited.

  3. Right, can’t do a raviolo so let’s make a dumpling. Isn’t that Week Four?

    And Elise makes a brownie!!

  4. No goat cheese ( now ricotta) or figs in Mimi audition dish. But now she have them in her box.

    Same with Elise. Unless they are combining the 2 dishes in the audition

    • It would have been a complete disaster if they had the contestants limited to the ingredients in their audition dish. Not seeing much evolution as it is.

  5. Oh geez, don’t know what to do with an ingredient? Smoke it or if you are Harry burn it.

    Has no-one told Elise how to bake? Stop pulling it out the oven!!!

    They should have had a CWA challenge and eliminate everyone who failed to bake a cake. Would have been a very short season. 🙂

  6. I really don’t care who is going home.

    One is cooking a chocolate brownie. Yawn. Another an ice cream. Yawn

  7. Might as well give them the same ingredients and asked them to produce a dish. Why talked about improving the audition dish.

  8. Most people can’t live without food. Why do they ask such trite questions in expectation of a profound answer.

    Gordon Ramsay should have done a guest spot when they were in the US.

  9. Top 5. The desserts are worst than those from Junior MC.

    If Elise want a tall brownie, why can’t she just stack 2 brownie together.

    Now I miss Karmen

  10. Not one of them produced a dish they were proud of. Best thing at this point would be to send all 3 home and have the final n Sun day between GE and IM.

    • This new cooking show, The Market Kitchen

      ‘Mimi is now working as a prep chef for a new Channel 10 cooking show, My Market Kitchen, hosted by MasterChef Australia season five winner Emma Dean and runner-up Lynton Tapp.’

      Not sure I will watch.

        • Juz, she has lost weight and a new hair do. She actually looks quite nice. Same with Georgia from last year. Totally different look. Very pretty.

          • Yeah, she was on Celebrity Family Feud earlier in the year. I didn’t recognise her, she looked so different.

  11. Just as a random observation/question – why does the script this year have Gary consistently saying how much a dish makes him smile while being unable to unleash even a convincing grimace?

    • Gary frequently smiles – when he pre-judges a dish from one of his favourites, having already made up his mind. He admitted it last night, saying that he had already decided that ‘Mimi was safe’ just by looking at the dish.

  12. All three could have gone home and I wouldn’t be disappointed. Elise and Harry remain and they both annoy me.
    Will this show ever end?

    I don’t know what was worse, Elise’s floods of tears to camera or Harry’s terrible hair. It’s a tie.

  13. Three dishes. Three fails. The thrill of fennels week,yeah? It doesn’t get any better than this.

    It wasn’t going to be Harry…..but let’s announce Elise safe first so there’s some faux suspense about Harry going. We’re sorry , Mimi, but your grandma dish and all that jazz. Let’s play ricotta rort.

    Elise really heroed her tears at the right time.

  14. Gary & George protecting Elise yet again. This is becoming tedious and embarrassing. Sunken, unset, simple to make, brownie. At least it wasn’t another bloody parfait. “Ignore how it looks” says Gary. FFS! Since when has this ever been said on MasterChef? I am calling utter bullshit on this series thus far.

    • Yep, and no discussion whatsoever on the so-called improvement on the original dish. Failed brownie, mousse and icecream could have been done by a 15 year old.

  15. Omg was this a joke?!
    It just goes to show that when someone’s slated to go, it doesn’t matter how anyone cooks.
    At least Harry and Mimi did more complex cooking, with one fault each.
    Elise did the simplest things ever, as usual, and still stuffed it up – an uncooked, collapsed brownie with mushy mousse. You wouldn’t find that served in a Bangladeshi food court.

    Yet the judges used every excuse in the book, decided that the sloppy disaster made them smile … and elevated this nincompoop to top 4.
    Even she thought she should be eliminated!
    Harry was never going anywhere, but I feel Mimi was robbed.

    Gary and the other two should buy raw cookie dough in the supermarket and ‘smile’ up and down the aisles.
    What a travesty.

    • Isn’t that a tiny, wilting frond of fennel on Elise’s botched brownie? I’m not sure. But if you can have proscuitto shard next to ice cream, who am I to say?

      There was a generous bald sphere on Gary’s head that I was staring at to lighten the boredom …that deceptive little crest at the front just makes the bald sphere sing.

  16. Oh, sorry you’re not well Juz. Hope you feel better soon.
    I misunderstood the brief. The promos made it look like they had to make their audition dish again & improve it, but they all made different dishes.
    Wow, they all had problems.
    Harry was told not to do ravioli because it was a week 3 dish.
    Then Mimi thought her ricotta cheese was goat’s cheese.
    Then poor Elise’s brownie didn’t cook & collapsed. When she took it out of the oven she said it was cooked. Didn’t she check it? That’s what skewers were invented for. I was sure she was a goner but not only was she safe, she had the dish of the day. Apparently undercooked brownies are ok by the judges.
    So bye bye Mimi.
    Tomorrow night should be fun. They get to judge the judges. I like those episodes, they get to give the judges a hard time. It’s usually funny.

  17. Juz – hope you feel better soon, I had it a couple of weeks ago – frog still resident in throat. 😉
    Thanks for your rewind – too funny! I’m not surprised regarding Elena and Trent, they were pretty invisible for a few weeks. Chloe hogging lots of early episodes. Of course IM has been “showcased” all the way through.
    Looking forward to the relay tomorrow but I noticed in the preview George pulling the same faces he pulled every other year – pretending to be terrified of the contestants scripted reviews. Same old, same old…

  18. What an excellent demonstration tonight’s episode was of “how to stuff up your dish.” All three should have been eliminated on their pathetic efforts.

    Harry started with a simple dish. Every time a judge told him it was too simple, or lacking something, he said he knew that. Really? Then he threw everything in the kitchen into his bisque and it was still a fail.

    Mimi panicked as usual. She managed to panic herself right out of the competition tonight. She will never survive in a commercial kitchen where tears and hysteria don’t cut it.

    Elise forgot time constraints for her components to be finished properly–again, as usual. Her fat brownie was encased in baking paper, but she didn’t think to move it from a hot metal dish into a cold dish before putting it into the chiller.

    Most of them still make basic mistakes. This is finals week? Pffft.

  19. I often make desserts witth ricotta – not sure what all the drama was about. Just blitz it in a food processor until very smooth, then flavour with sweet (sugar, or honey if they had it), add a dash of lemon to sour it a bit, then whatever other flavouring. It might have been a little grainy, but would have been creamy and as close to grandma’s recipe as possible. Personally I would prefer it anyway, as goat’s cheese is a bit yuk.

    It is all irrelevant though, because they had already decided that Mimi was the stooge this week, and all Elise needed to do was put something vaguely food-ish (preferably chocolate) on the plate.

    It is becoming one of the competition show stereotypes – the contestant who is terrible at the start, hangs on through sheer luck, and then suddenly the judges are proclaiming their ‘improvement’ as a miracle. Seems that the producers have to slot one into every show now.

  20. Sorry you are not feeling well, Juz. Hope you are better soon.
    That was one of the MOST BORING episodes evah. Each of them deserved to be eliminated. No quality or innovation. Two crappy desserts and the same old kind of dish by Harry. Since the rule is that they can only eliminate one person then Elise should be gone due to her uncooked brownie and a mousse that didn’t set. If the judges were served that in a restaurant would they be raving over the taste or send it back to the kitchen? It’s not a complete/edible dish if it’s not cooked/baked properly.
    Top 5….not these 3.

  21. It’s funny because a few weeks ago or less, it was “the judges are bullying Elise as usual”. Now it’s the judges are protecting Elise as usual! It’s about time they were vaguely decent towards her, I think! It seems to me they’ve grudgingly moved into being nicer to her this last week.

    Anyway, I don’t think she’s being at all protected – but maybe I am biased as I like Elise and I am over the moon they’ve finally sent Mimi home. Such a dull girl and it annoyed me that she stayed over Karmen, for one.

    • They’ve been nicer to Elise since she won a challenge with a savoury dish. I forget which one. I think she could be final three is Harry gets overconfident- what are the chances of that? Cooking aside, she seems pretty down to earth. And I really want to hear her say wongtongs again.

  22. If the judges always taste the dishes cold, doesn’t that create a heavy bias for dessert dishes? Even if they taste things throughout the cooking period, they are not going to know how all the flavours combine until the presentation of the dish at the end. So it seems to me, if you have a cold piece of medium rare lamb (with the solid fat marble in the meat) against a sweet cold parfait with a bit of crumb and fruit, the lamb doesnt really have a decent chance.

    Even a cold stiff pasta ravioli with cold chicken in it wouldn’t in my mind, elicit the ecstasy those three pretend they’re experiencing when they eat it.

    A lot of smoke and mirrors methinks.

  23. So it was all about learnining…. Didn’t Trent have a problem of trying to cook a brownie just the other night… took longer to cook because he made it higher than it needed to be… Can see Elise learnt from that…..

    Mimi was not my favourite but by golly from my eyes she beat the pants off the two of them. Although how she thought she had goats cheese??? Wouldn’t be surprised if when she wasn’t looking they swapped it… or how Matt somehow magically knew it wasn’t goats cheese and told her after the fact they knew she decided on her dessert.

    Wonder what flavour icecream Elise will make next?

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