MasterChef Aus S11E19 – Recap

Tonight is the elimination challenge for the Legend Week team challenge failures – Christina, Aushka, Tati, Simon, Blake, and Ben.

The losers are at home, preparing to head to the kitchen.

ANUSHKA WATCH: Anushka, the cute “optical dispenser”, is wearing cream frames today. I’m pretty sure these are her elimination glasses, although I’m also sure we’ve seen these for non-elimination related cooks.

Ben starts his sad backstory, which is really that he expresses himself with his food, and he cooks with his dad. No offence, but I don’t really care.

All six of them walk to the front of the kitchen where George, Gaz, Matt, and Yotam are waiting for them. behind them is a big deli counter.

Gaz and George are in their usual clothes. Matt is looking amazing, as per usual, and once again, he inspires me to want to buy a whole new wardrobe.

Yotam looks a bit like he turned up in a t-shirt and jeans, and the costume team were like, “Oh, sorry, you have to wear a jacket. We’re aiming for a professional, high brow show, even though we make the trio of judges bring their clothes from home. Here’s one of George’s jackets for ya. Leave it unbuttoned so it says casual but also professional.”

Today’s elimination theme is, “the humble deli,” as Matt puts it.

“It’s like an Aladdin’s cave,” Yotam says. “You come in, you see beautiful stuff, you want to eat everything.”

Round one is naming ingredients in the deli counter.

“I’m totally screwed,” Tati mutters to Anushka.

“You can smell, you can touch, you can taste,” George says, telling them once they make a decision, they’re locked in.

As Simon walks over, Gaz stops him and says, “Take a ticket, mate, I don’t serve you if you don’t have a ticket,” before laughing and telling him to go ahead and pick something.

Like last time, I’ll say who gets out and what they get out with.

In his second round, Ben gets his meat wrong. He guessed pancetta instead of porsciutto.

In the third round, Tati says smoked paprika and is wrong. It was a smoked capsicum.

Right after Tati, Blake messes his meat and guesses coppa, but it was bresaola. He’s in for the final cook.

Simon, Anushka, and Christina are safe.

Round two is the pressure cook. The correct guessed dishes are out for display. They must use at least one of them. The garden and the pantry are open for business. They have 60 minutes, and the least impressive dish will be the loser.

Time starts, and so does the montage.

Everything seems to be going well, until Blake burns his herbs.

He decides it’s fine and has an idea to utilise it in his dish.

Well… crisis averted, I guess… I was hoping for maybe some tears, a quick tantrum, maybe.

Later on, right before time up, Blake blends his potatoes, and it ends up being really gluey. He tries it and it’s terrible, but decides to serve it nonetheless. A big error, Blake.

The montage continues until it’s time up.

Tati is first to have her dish tasted.

“That is delicious,” Gaz said, before going on about flavours. “That is just spot on.”

“Making her own noodles from scratch, that’s what MasterChef is all about,” George says.

“It’s a bit like the hug she gave me,” Yotam said.

Next is Ben.

I love Ben, he’s a blessing. Also his twitter is pretty funny.

“I look at it with suspicion,” Yotam says. He thinks it could be either great or the worst.

Everyone ends up having a couple of little bits and it’s not looking appealing like that, tbh.

“I think it delivers exactly what it looks like on the plate,” Yotam says. “It’s got no oompf. It’s flat.”

“It’s bits on a plate,” Matt says. “It’s very, for me, underwhelming.”

Finally is Blake.

As George starts to plate, they all see the mash is just like glue and I think they’ll all skp over it. George lets it slide off his knife a few times, looking down in disgust.

“The shame of it is the mash is just really gluey,” Gaz said.

They speculate that Blake didn’t put on a lot of the mash because he knew it was bad.

Yotam says it’s a shame the bacon ended up as a crumb because it could have been used for so much more.

Matt hates the texture of the sauce.

“It’s between Ben and Blake,” George says.

And now, the verdict.

The trio interrogate Yotam one more time before setting him free. They all thank him, and he smiles at everyone, before Gaz gives the bad news.

“Let’s relieve the pressure for one of you,” Gaz says, before telling Tati that her dish was delicious. “Thank you so much, and congratulations, you’re safe.”

“Let’s cut to the chase,” George says. “Blake, you know as well as we do, that dish was not up to standard. I’m sorry, Blake, but that’s why you’re going home.”

They applaud as Blake leaves, but in a nice way.

Where are they now?

Blake has been moved from the bar to the kitchen in his parents restaurant. I’m a bit disapointed on his behalf that it took being on MasterChef for him to be upgraded, but I’m also glad he’s now making money from doing his passion – cooking.

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As always, this recap is not edited, as it was written as I watched the episode, and published as fast as possible. There will be spelling and grammar issues.

I watched this episode online, so I was able to include screenshots with this episode. I’m still playing with the idea of using screenshots,