Our top five are battling to win an advantage for the next challenge, which could secure them a spot in the semifinal. Contestants can cook whatever they want.
MasterChef Tues – advantage battle
Our top five are battling to win an advantage for the next challenge, which could secure them a spot in the semifinal. Contestants can cook whatever they want.
What the hell when Nicole said she has so much to do. Put chicken in the sou vide machine. Done. Dump everything into pressure cooker to do stock, done.
You don’t need to stand there to watch the stock reduce.
Except for Simon and Larissa doing wanky stuff, the rest are boring
Can’t believe they let Larissa coerce them into 75mins – it’s really suited for someone who wants to plate another icecream and sauce!
She seems to take control whenever it is to her advantage.
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. Idiots.
I’m struggling to maintain any interest in this show now. I don’t like any of the remaining contestants. They can all get stuffed, with their stupid vegetables and their stupid ice creams and their stupid frigging every other dumb dish. Pffft.
Cook anything you want and two do chook with veg. Larissa is staying calm under pressure and can course correct. Tessa is letting the pressure get to her.
These are Top 5 and all Tessa did was roast chicken and not even cook.
I thought we have seen the last of the ice creams from Ice cream Ben. Now we have more ice creams!
I know MKR was bitchy but this year there were better dishes from MKR than from the best cooks from Australia.
Next year will be unbearable
If I were stuck on a desert island for years, and Simon’s dish miraculously appeared, I would choose starvation.
He should be arrested for what he does to food.
The decision to choose 75 minutes was made mutually … or by the producers. It was hardly Larissa’s fault.
In fact, she and Tessa are the only ones who can cook – they’re streaks ahead of the other three, who are an embarrassment.
So what’s with George? His right eye was semi- closed. Did the botox injection slip or was it a disgruntled employee?
George eats with his eyes, it says a lot about the shit the amatas are stumping up that his eye won’t accept and tries to avoid.
George might have stabbed himself with an old tarnished Ammunity Pin or some tweezers when distributing some micro herbs and got an infection.
He said he learnt you should always wear protective goggles but didn’t say what he was doing when he didn’t wear them.
He was hit in the eye playing squash.
https://neoskosmos.com/en/137723/george-calombaris-nearly-loses-his-sight-after-squash-accident/
How many times did Larissa stick that spoon in her mouth and then stick it back in to the bowl of her chocolate and saliva sauce? That’s disgusting.
Simon’s food usually looks like the bits of leftover vegetables I give my dog.
I don’t know what’s going on with George’s eye, but I feel for him. It looks really sore and makes me close my right eye in sympathy when I look at him.
This is what happened to George
Speaking to the Herald Sun, Mr Calombaris said that he was hit in the eye with a squash ball during a social game of squash. He was then rushed into the emergency ward for an operation. He said that he first thought he would potentially ‘lose his eye sight’.
Following his first operation there was bleeding from the back of his eye. Once the bleeding stopped, it was discovered that he had torn his retina in several spots. Days after the original operation he was forced into another emergency operation ‘to save his sight’.
He said that surgeons removed the lens from his damaged eye as well as the jelly from the eyeball that has been filled with oil which will be drained. He will also have to undergo another operation.
Oh thanks for that. I was curious. People on twitter were making fun of him & a Producer tweeted that he had had eye surgery but didn’t go into details.
Sounds similar to a friend’s experience, although hers was spontaneous, not an injury. It was very, very painful and took weeks to resolve, and there was no guarantee that the retina would re-attach. I feel lots of sympathy for George about this.
I’m with you Fijane about feeling sympathy for George. I suffer from an eye condition known as Recurrent Corneal Erosion and can tell you that eye pain is excruciating. Photophobia is also a huge problem, so I now understand why he needed dark glasses in daylight and in front of strong lights.
Masterchef, you have totally lost your mojo this year. There was literally no incentive to try in this challenge, so it was yet another completely pointless “filler” episode. How funny that the other four let Larissa dictate the time. That would have been a red flag for me – I’d have known that she had a dish in mind that needed 75 minutes, so I’d have proposed 45 minutes just to stuff her up.
I felt really let down by the dishes served up tonight, most of which looked beige and pale. There was nothing fantastic about any of them, which is quite disappointing at this point. You would think at this stage of the competition, especially when they get to pick their “best” dish and the cooking time they needed that they would do much better.
A roast chicken, Tessa? Charred corn, Tim? A braised chicken breast, Nicole? In finals week? Really? How are those finals worthy? Nicole, does it really take 75 minutes to cook half a chicken breast with purée? I make poached chicken breasts every night for my dog (don’t judge!) and I don’t need to faff around with a cryovac – four breasts in a covered dish with a little chicken stock, six minutes in the microwave. Done. If I ordered a chicken schnitty at a restaurant and was served this, I’d definitely want my money back. How is it even a schnitzel if it’s not crumbed? It looked more like one of those frozen Lean Cuisine meals that you bung in the micro. It wasn’t so much a chicken schnitty, but more like a chicken nugget.
The only amusement I got was the stooges crucifying Slimy’s ridiculous, wanky, hipster dish. How hilarious that he’s been serving them “bits on a plate” all competition and they’ve been praising him to the high heavens. But tonight they complain that he served them “bits on a plate”. I’m sure Slimy is confused, as he was sticking to what he thought was what the judges wanted, only to have them turn on him now. Of course this might all be a red herring strategy to praise up Knickers and Timbogan before ditching them.
Things that gave me the shits tonight – having to listen to the stooges crunch, crunch, crunch through Larissa’s tuile while making cow eyes at each other, the fact that ALL of the girls repeatedly said “I am freaking out” every few minutes and that even in finale week the judges are still babysitting all of them and telling them how to “fix” their dishes. No wonder the ratings are abysmal.
If I could OzSwede, you would be getting 2+ likes.
Me too Big H. OzSwede is spot on!
Unlike the contestants who couldn’t hit the spot unless it was circled with a wagon of ice creamers and cauliflower drool.
Honestly, what a lot of ordinary CRAP.
Can’t help but remember the Olden Days when a challenge was that. Not a “okay, we know you’re pretty woefuls so if you could see your way to cooking something that you feel you can possibly manage without stuffing it up in the time YOU think you can cope with – that would be lovely”. And yet STILL we get raw chook and chicken breast on a plate.
I do think Larissa is playing a deeply strategic game – how can the others not see that? I would have gone for some number under the magic “ice cream in the churner time” as well. But these idiots just went along with her. I am in awe of her manipulation!
Aww, thanks Big H and Brusselsprout. I can’t watch it like you guys can. As I live outside of Australia, I have to wait for it to be uploaded onto one of the dodgy streaming sites. I get to see it about two hours after you do, so I have to avoid this page and social media until I get a chance to see it for myself. This means that I don’t get to enjoy the Twitter and Facebook repartee – well, not live anyway, though later if I have time I scroll and have a chuckle. Instead I just write my thoughts here.
That said, I have the luxury of being able to pause, rewind etc so I can quote what they are saying or go back and really see if I was mistaken that eg Gary had a big smile on his face as he told Anushka that she was eliminated. I wasn’t mistaken.
I see that I’m not the only one to have been disappointed by the calibre of the cooks this season, not to mention the monotony of dishes they prepare and the lack of true challenges. While they aren’t as bad as Season 5’s lot, some of them are simply there looking for five minutes of fame and the much lauded “genuine friendship and camaraderie” is looking totally fake this season. They need to dial the gushing back a bit if they want us to believe it. I don’t really think that all this touchy, feely, huggy camaraderie is genuine. Surely the contestants need a bit of “fire in their bellies” to win and as you rightly point out, it’s only Larissa who shows signs of that in her strategic thinking, her taking command and in her whole “What would Russel do?” approach to getting an advantage.
Which is why I think she won’t win – they won’t want a strategist winning. Plus the structure of the show always seems to ditch the dessert specialist in 3rd or 4th place so they don’t get to do the grand finale dessert. I’ve got her firmly in third place. I do admire her though.
Last night as they munched on prawns, I wondered for an instant if they might make Tim the winner and bang on about “good, honest food”, but surely they won’t. Will they? Tessa is looking more and more nervous and less assured with every cook as we get close to the finals. Nicole cannot cook without a lot of help from the judges and Slimy is serving wacky stuff that has no popular appeal at all. But the good old Aussie battler, who came back from elimination to take out the title…. hmmm.. that might be a winner. God forbid.
Stooges salivating over Larissa’s parsnip ice cream, sauce, caramelized pears and tuille—-over the top acting/bad acting by the three of them. Her dish wasn’t even right and it gets the win so what does that say about the final 5. She did add one extra ingredient….saliva. YUCK!
They could choose their time limit and yet they chose 75 mins. Stupid. They get to choose whatever they want and most were not at all innovative. Is chicken all that Nicole and Tessa have been waiting to cook? A pantry full of ingredients and all they could come up with were roast and sous vide chicken. Tessa couldn’t even get the chicken right.
I think that Larissa spends a lot of time looking for unusual recipes in cookbooks and on the internet so that she can impress the stooges with her originality.
I thought that the black olive Madeleines she made the other day were very innovative but after doing a search I found several recipes. There are recipes for parsnip ice cream, too, as well as many recipes for some of the other supposedly innovative dishes she has made.
I am totally with you on this! Mad props to her for playing the system and manipulating the judges and the contestants to position herself so strongly.
Positioning herself as an innovator (innovative googler, possibly) is simply clever and even though I am bored rigid with her ice creams, I admire her strategy.
I know it will be boring but if they can cook anything, I am sure I will be salivating from dishes cook by Tati, Anushka or Sandeep. With Derek, I am not too sure as he will try something crazy and run out of time,
BTW Derek and Monique pop up restaurant was sold out under 1 hr. Melbourne must have lots of people with money. Well done Derek and Monique.
Heads up. No MC tomorrow. No elimination either in the service challenge. After tonight only 3 episodes left. Pathetic. They are trying to keep these ‘greatest amatas’ as long as possible.
This season will goes down as one of the worst season ever. Even Twitter world is not impress with the cooking. Simon wacky dishes-nobody want to try!
Larissa wacky ice cream -yuk. Ice cream Ben were better.
Tim just trying to hang in with either too simple cook or throw in everything and hope for the best.
Tessa who is a better cook but running out of ideas
Nicole can just follow a recipe and when she is cooking she is always running out of time by doing nothing much!
Couldn’t careless who will win. Will fade off like Emma or Brent.
Pathetic. There should definitely have been an elimination.
This week has just been a filler, useless – but George gets to carry on about his Press Club … The Last Supper.
Ah forgot about Emma. If everyone thinks this is the worst season evah – and it hasn’t been great – the one which Emma won was worse. She managed to burn toast 3 times in a row.
Oh you’re right – I have erased Emma. She was deeply, deeply terrible. We all couldn’t figure out why she kept raves from judges.
Brent was a woeful winner in the “bit better than Tim but not much” category.
The only dish that looked halfway edible was Tim’s. Those prawns looked yummy. Both chicken dishes looked bland. Tessa then forgot her drumsticks, which are the best bit & her quail eggs which she went to so much trouble doing. That ‘porridge’ looked disgusting & don’t get me started on fucking parsnip ice cream. Bleh.
So are they not doing the Master class where they judge the judges this year? It’s usually on the last Thursday before the finals but it’s not on tomorrow night. I like those, it’s hilarious seeing them picking on the judges.
Carole, it will be on Sun.
Oh great. Thanks for that.
Wonder how many people would order that faux porridge thing if Simon opens a restaurant and puts something like that on the menu. It sounded and looked disgusting. If he wants to go the vegetarian or vegan route there were many other things he could have made.
At least he didn’t do cauliflower 27 ways.
He’s liked on Whirlpool whereas the few people who still comment about MC were happy that Anushka was eliminated. I think that Anushka is a better cook than Simon.
What has happened to the interesting challenges? I get tired of just seeing them cook whatever they want at the benches. Admittedly, I haven’t seen much this year, but the only one that looked fun was the pairs on either side of the wall one. I like games.
The ones from the past that I remember enjoying: Fix this dish (each get a part made dish with flaws, and they have to make it edible), lots of Taste testing and identify the flavours, Cook along with a guest chef. I think my favourite was the Name the Cake one, where there were about twenty different types of cakes to identify (I learnt about lots of new cakes then, and googled them to find recipes). I suppose the common theme here is the challenges which test their culinary knowledge, rather than just regurgitating recipes they have practised continually.
What have been the best challenges this season, that people remember and would like to see done again?
Actually they did do keep up with the chef in the first or second week with Curtis Stone.
Yeah I remember the fix the dish too. They did spaghetti bolognaise one year and apricot chicken another year.
I remember a casserole one – maybe an Asian broth/soup. I have a memory of Alice (who now does food segments on ABC Breakfast) doing well in that one.
That’s a tricky one, Fijane. I can barely remember last night’s episode.
Since you reminded me of it, I did like the one with the pairs yelling at each other either sides of a wall. That’s the one where Anushka began using her outside voice and that was funny.
I like the Fix the dish challenge. Also to identify ingredients in a dish and then to recreate the dish.
Or they all have to cook the same dish their way. Like making Satay sauce (poor Marion), spaghetti bolg or something old and classical.
Taking a classic dish and putting a modern spin on it, is a regular theme on Spring (or Kid’s) Baking Championship. That is one place where you see some very high quality cooks and fabulous reimaginings of old favourites.