It’s week 10’s team challenge. After Larissa won her pin last night with her corn combination, it’s going to be exciting to see what the contestants will serve today.
The contestants are in Queenscliff, and the judges are waiting for them by a train line.
Gaz welcomes them, and tells them to look behind them.
Matt tells them that 30 diners will be experiencing a 4 course vegetarian meal. Each team will make one course.
George starts to get to the nitty gritty, standing there in his chef whites. Their kitchens are set up at different stops. At each stop, they load their food on. They’ll be plating and serving their food before the next stop.
Matt brings out a knife block. Each knife has a number on it. Whoever shares the number will be their team mate. The number also corresponds to a meal.
The teams:
Anushka and Larissa – first course – purple team.
Christina and Nicole – second course – yellow team.
Tessa and Tim – third course – burgundy team.
Derek and Simon – fourth course – green team.
George has picked four local ingredients that will be featured in their dishes. They won’t find out what their ingredient is until they enter the kitchen. They’ll have two hours to prep and cook. The train will arrive at the 2 hour mark, and they’ll be loaded on to plate and serve. They’ll have 20 minutes to do so. The bottom two teams will be in elimination tomorrow.
“Organisation is paramount,” George says, and tells them the train doesn’t wait for anyone. “Miss the train, and you miss service.”
First is Anushka and Larissa in Queenscliff.
Their ingredient is white oyster mushrooms.
ANUSHKA WATCH: 49 year old optical distributor, Anushka, is wearing white/cream glasses, and they’re looking a bit like her elimination glasses?
George works with them to talk about the flavours and the ingredient.
The yellow team, Christina and Nicole, are over at Suma Park. Their ingredient is zucchini.
Then a little van/truck comes by and it really throws George. He watches as it drives away before returning to the task at hand.
They’ve said zucchini so many times it doesn’t sound like a word anymore.
Over in Drysdale is the burgundy team, Tessa and Tim.
Their ingredient is eggplant, one of the most popular emojis.
The last team is Derek and Simon, the green team, and their ingredient is figs. It’s never actually explicitly said where they are, but I think they’re also at Suma Park?
The diners start loading up the train, and Anushka and Larissa need to hustle and get their food on the train.
Anushka and Larissa need to plate and serve before the train gets to Suma Park.
George comes to see Nicole and Christina and says, ‘This plate is too small.’
The girls rush to get something else, before the train arrives in 20 minutes.
It’s time to taste Larissa and Anushka’s dish.
Gaz says it’s great that it looks pretty, and the crumb stands out nicely. The puree is delicious, and the pickled mushroom is great.
Matt says as a customer, he loves it. As a hardcore top 8, this is a bit too forward in lemon.
Gaz says more crunch would be better.
The train arrives in Suma Park, and the women are frantic to get everything together in time.
Gaz comes out to tell them to load. Anything they forget is dead to them.
They start to plate, and realise that it’s a bit drama city with the movements.
Tessa and Tim are frantically trying to get their eggplants to work.
They’ve also decided to cook eggs in plastic bags in the sous vide, because that’s the tool they just learnt about. The eggs are still runny, and it’s looking gross.
Then, somehow, Tim’s wedding ring yeeted his ring onto the tracks. He’s lucky the train wasn’t there when it fell off his finger.
It’s time to taste Christina and Nicole’s dish.
They love it, and say the flavours are great. Gaz says there’s a lot of flavours and it tastes amazing. The boys say they want bread for the bits of zucchini spread/puree, idk. They harass local diners for their bread.
It’s time for the burgundy team, Tessa and Tim.
They load up, and the train leaves Drysdale.
Simon and Derek are doing their last minute stuff before the train comes their way.
George tastes a bit of their food and goes, ‘I don’t like it.’
They’re freaking out, George tells them it’s fatty and bitter.
On the train, Tim gets their condom eggs ready for service. They’re not looking that appealing at all.
Gaz says he doesn’t like the textures, and feels there needs to be a crunch. There’s nothing about it he particularly likes. Gaz calls it sloppy, Matt calls it slugy, and says that adding dukkha doesn’t make it Middle Eastern.
Tim and Derek start serving their dishes up on the train.
The judges agree that it’s beautiful looking, but also says it’s not figgy enough.
Matt says it’s top eight now, and they need to step it up a bit more.
It’s time for the decisions, and everyone’s hoping they’ll be safe.
Gaz says the top two dishes were consistent for all the dishes, and they scraped their plates clean.
Those dishes were the purple team, Anushka and Larissa, and the yellow team, Christina and Nicole, and they’re all safe.
That means the burgundy team, Tessa and Tim, who had terrible eggs, and the green team, Derek and Simon, who didn’t fig it up enough, are in elimination tomorrow night.
As usual, this recap was written as I watched the episode, so there will be spelling and grammar mistakes.
I posted a MasterChef rant about Sandeep, and you can read it here. I also did a bigger rant about the rest of the season, and you can read that here.
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Felicity Feiner 
I thought Larissa was being really bossy towards Anushka, but they won so I guess thats ok. Tims condom eggs looked disgusting, and you could see the leftover eggs on peoples plates because they were so gross. But the fig dish looked awesome, I get that it wasn’t figgy enough, but no way was it at the same level as Tim and Tessa’s monstrosity.
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I find myself hesitant to call women bossy, although Anushka did seem a bit annoyed at a couple of points.
Ugh yes, I don’t know why they felt so compelled to use the Sous vide for eggs. So gross. And I agree. Had they had a few more people, Tim and Tessa would be through on their own. Alas, we can only hope for the best for Derek! At least it means two of my least favourites are in the elimination.
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