MasterChef – Tues – immunity challenge

The winner of Sunday night’s mystery box, along with the members of the winning team in the invention test relay will compete for a coveted immunity pin.
Matt, resplendent in coral, tells Jess, Samira, Sashi, Aldo and Sarah they have 45 minutes to cook chicken wings.
Glad they are continuing the theme of accessible dishes.
Dessert queen Jess most be wondering how to mirror glaze a chook wing. She eventually decided to do spicy wings with a honey sweet and sour sauce.
Redhead Sarah is doing buffalo wings with bread sauce, compressed celery and apple. She’s definitely up with the latest vegie prep trends.
Sashi is doing a sambal with his wings.
Aldo is doing spicy chicken wings with spicy mayo but is only making a handful. Expect Gary to comment on the need for “generosity” in his judging.
Samira (go, Samira!) is marinating her wings in pomegranate molasses and chilli. Mmmm.
I thought someone might get fancy and do a stuffed chicken wing but time is against them.

Sashi does a tester and mentor Shannon advises him to dredge the wings in rice flour for to max the deep fried crispy goodness.
Samira has chosen to bake hers, which should set it apart. Aldo seems to be struggling and the gantry has to boss him around to get him on track. It’s as if he went into the challenge thinking he could not win.
I love that we see so many of them Tati g their wings before serving – no MKR noobs here.
I’m guessing Sarah has won because she got the most air time.
JUDGES TASTE
Samira: Gaz is not thrilled by the tabouki but they love the wings.
Sarah: “Where’s all the wings?” asks Gaz, looking crankily at the three on the plate. Oops – she did not cook one for Shannon. Of course Matt and Gaz get a wing each and Shannon and George go halvsies. They rave about the flavour.
Jess: “I sucked the whole thing off,” says Gaz. They love it. She confesses she had no idea what she was doing but she must have been watching mum closely at one point.
Aldo: “It’s not a disaster,” George says.
Sashi: The sambal is good but the chicken is not quite as succulent as some others.
The judges are split between Jess and Sarah, so Jess gets it because she did not skimp on the serving. Well done, Jess – you need to back yourself more on savoury dishes.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE
I bet this is not a dessert challenge. She is up against chef Jacqui Challinot from Sydney’s Nomad, a Mediterranean inspired restaurant.
Yay for a female chef! Jess has to choose between small ingredients (prawns, micro herbs, quail eggs) and big ingredients (pumpkin, tomahawk steak, whole fish). It all looks very savoury. I reckon she will go small. Oh no – she goes big because she wanted eggs. Fair enough.
She is thinking of a lime tart with meringue and brazil nut praline – after Shannon tells her what Brazil nuts look like.
She realises early on she does not have much butter so has to do a small dish with her big ingredients.
Locked in the pantry, chef Jacqui is good humouredly trying not to pack it on national TV. We love her already.

With an hour to go Jacqui is freed. She grabs fennel, prawns, chilli and lime. Shannon tries to freak her out by mentioning the time as much as possible.
Jess’s dish looks surprisingly simple – a real tart shell instead of crumb and no domes in sight.

THE JUDGES TASTE
Jacqui’s barbecued prawns: George ponders aloud which person cooked the Mediterranean-inspired dish. Surely not the chef who works at a Mediterranean-inspired restaurant?
Jess’s lime tart: The judges go all giggly at the sight of the three cute tarts. Matt says the pastry is one of the best they’ve had in the comp. The curd is great but she used a bit too much meringue, so the dish is sweeter than it should be.

JUDGES
Jess: Gaz 9, George 8, Matt 8
Jacqui: Matt 9, G 9, Gaz 10
Matt says the prawns were “the definition of where modern Australian cooking is right now”.

I looked up Jacqui’s restaurant and this features in the “about” section:
Learn how to make real food (no foams here), while working in our state of the art kitchen with charcoal grill, smoker and custom made wood fired oven.



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41 Comments

  1. I think Aldo should try a side part. He is too tall for the high bun.
    Meanwhile I wish I could actually master the art of eating chicken wings

  2. Gary asks Aldo to tell him a joke.

    Aldo without missing a beat tells Gary that he ‘looks beautiful today.’

    • ” Your hair is going to grow back, Gary”

      ” You’ll learn some table manners”

      ” You’ll stop favouring Chloe”

  3. Fair bit of honey being used. Pity nobody thought of a chicken/honey dish on Sunday for the team relay instead of all that ice cream and figs.

    • What is the deal with figs on this show? They are always cooking them. I don’t really like them.

    • I like the name Fake Vintage thanks for the chuckle, this was the first episode I’ve watched this season because of wings but I reckon I’ll skip the rest of them and rejoin next year

  4. If Garry wants a generous quantity he should get the bucket from kfc. He looks as though he is partial to a bucket or two

  5. Why do they bother with showing the amatas telling us they “…. want the pin so bad (sic)” .
    1. it’s badly
    2. We know, every amata says it every elimination challenge, every year.

  6. I’m watching on delay but I’m finding it difficult to care (I can feel a Midsomer Murders repeat coming on). Why are they obsessed with “First time in Masterchef”? Let’s face it, Sashi didn’t deserve the pin he got last week and was the weakest member on his team, so would be somewhat less than fair if he gets another chance.

  7. As if judges can’t tell who cook what. Also the judges can decide whether they want to give out the pin or not

  8. Definitely changing channel, I’ll check back here to see if the pin is gifted.
    Samira is definitely not on their pet list, she doesn’t suck up.

    • Yeah I thought I saw cherries & other fruit on the small table. Thought she would pick the one that would be easiest for desserts. Limes. Yuk. Too sour.

  9. All I ask is that the judges don’t think we as an audience are stupid and do the usual… “I wonder who cooked this dish” during judging.

    On a side note… noticed Ghana-In-Law has not really posted any “tweets” for almost 3 weeks (on par with her downfall)…what I take from that is that she may not get far… although Aldo annoyingly tweets non stop.

  10. So none of them did Matt’s coca cola wings. When Sarah put her tiny 3 wings on the plate saying one for each judge I thought but Shannon’s there too. Don’t know what the hell bread sauce is.
    For an immunity pin that lime meringue tart was a bit ordinary. Would think she’d make something a bit more exotic. And no judges there can never be too much meringue. I always put heaps of meringue when I make a meringue dish, it’s the best part. Don’t they bake meringue in the oven any more? That’s the second time someone did meringue & just used the blow torch on it. Does that cook it? It looks like it’s only browning it but not cooking it. And since when do they skimp on butter? Why did she run out? She picked the big table. Don’t they usually have an unlimited supply of staples like butter, milk, flour etc? I couldn’t understand that.

    • Probably Italian meringue, where you use a hot sugar syrup to “cook” the egg whites so the torching is just for effect. Surely if there was any time to do a deconstructed cheffy dessert, as Jess usually does, this what it. I think the pressure rattled her

    • Jess did a swiss Meringue. Slightly different from Italian meringue. Warm up the whites and sugar over simmering water to 60C and then whiskey till stiff and glossy

  11. I noticed lately they are sending more contestsnts to the pressure test. Not your usual bottom 3.

    • Increases the odds of more stuff-ups and drama… plus Gary gets to eat more (of all the judges he’s the one who always finishes his plate regardless of quality of dish).

  12. I miss Gordon Ramsay. His comments and actions made the show more interesting. He was a better mentor than Shannon. I really wish they would shake the show up and get different judges.
    The guest chef had her hair pulled back & up and away from her face. The contestants with long hair should pay attention to that. There were several times that it looked as if Jess’ hair was hitting the bowls. Why did Jess bother with the brazil nut praline when she hardly put any on the dish. I know Shannon advised her to use those but the teeny tiny bits of praline on the dish were barely noticeable.
    Limes on the big table??? Were those giant limes?

    • To work in a commercial kitchen they have very strict health & safety regulations. No jewellery, except for wedding rings, hair pulled back & in a hair net & no clothes with bits hanging over. Don’t know why they are not told this when doing challenges in restaurants.

  13. i am just surprised that Jess won with her wings whilst I am sure she just poured in a commercially available sweet and sour sauce into the pan

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