Masterchef Australia – Now We Know They Are All Stars
Thank God we are nearly back to normal transmission, this is the face of Chris Badenoch which we know and love. He was pissed off that his much praised Beef Carpaccio with Sea Urchin butter did not make the top three dishes in the mystery box challenge.
Also the episode lived up to the hype about it being all about the cooking.
Tonight it was the mystery box with the red team aka season two having the advantage of knowing what was in it. There were ingredients selected by chefs that had been on the show. Beef by John Torode, spanner crab from Rick Stein, sea urchin by Anthony Bourdain, lemons from Nigella Lawson, chocolate by Michael Roux, chilli by Jamie Oliver and dry ice from Heston Blummenthal.
With those ingredients the All Stars showed why they were All Stars there was barely a dud dish. Well except for Hayden Quinn who did a weird surf and turf with the beef and made sea urchin ice cream to go on top of it and Dani Venn’s lemon meringue cup cakes. Julia from Series Four must have been laughing at the paltry attempt.
Poh also used the lemon to make Crepes with a Lemon Creme Anglais. She also made a Savoury Egg Custard with Crab. After a few false starts, the judges thought it was an excellently made dish.
Jonathan who managed to explode his ice cream mixture unfortunately did not get awarded extra points for flicking some on Gary. His chocolate ice cream sandwiches with salted caramel (which appears to be the trendy dish on Masterchef this year) looked good but Gary said the chocolate flavour did not come through.
Kumar looked like he was having some sort of brain explosion when he made asparagus ice cream to go with his Steam Spanner Crab which actually got him into the top three. Will we see Kumar go all nouvelle cuisine on us for the rest of the series?
Kate was making a chocolate and chilli terrine which was not a surprise because if there is a dessert dish to do she will do it, and let’s face it she has her cookbook to promote.
Marion was making a Crab and Sea Urchin Souffle with a Singapore Pepper Sauce which looked delicious and the judges thought it was brilliant as well.
Julie went with a dumpling which the judges were not that enthused about until they tasted it. This was the same attitude they gave to Justine saying there was not enough protein in the spanner crab to set her bourdain blanc. Even though they were little balls they ended up holding together.
Aaron stuck with his Italian comfort zone and made Spanner Crab Ravioli with chilli oil with Matt Preston saying it feels like you rushed a bit.
The top three were Marion, Kate and Kumar with Marion taking out the $10,000 for her charity Save The Children.
Tonight finally there is an elimination.
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64 comments
Just wondering if you knew that your RSS feed has changed so we can’t see the full post in Google Reader anymore? We have to click through – I like being able to read it all in one place.
Sue – I was fiddling with something at the back end yesterday and that must have been the thing I changed thinking I was doing something else. Well at least I have learnt something. Now I just have to work out where and how I did that…
Let me know if it continues. But hell I do like the hits from traffic some please come in occasionally.
I do feel for Chris B in this comp because his somber demeanor makes it difficult for him to follow the producers’ exhortations for the contestants to “make like you’re at a Wiggles concert!”
Apart from Marion’s, Badenoch’s looked the closest to something I’d go out of my way to order at a restaurant.
He had every right to look pissed off.
While the cooking element has been so much better than the general standard of S3 or S4, the dodgy part of this show is production’s manipulative share-the-charity-money-around approach.
FFS, this shouldn’t be a pre-schooler’s pass-the-parcel game!
In Top Chef Masters not everyone gets a prize, even if this means some charities miss out. The contestants are either good enough or they’re not. Just like at The Olympics.
Julie is not inspiring me to go out and buy her next cookbook! Actually, it would be interesting to know how much of the MC cookbooks are “ghost-written”. I imagine that at the very least there would be a lot of prompting from experienced professional cooks.
Went to my local library the other day and they had every single book from all the series! Suffice to say cooking books was not the purpose of the library visit.
I really liked Hayden with his comment saying something about these are the sort of ingredients you don’t get to cook with at home. Little can be said about dani and her “safe” approach… no one was going to be eliminated so why the boring cookingness?
RR: Are you sure there’s going to be an elimination tonight? I thought the ad said it was going to be another team relay challenge. According to the EPG there will be elimination(s?) on Monday.
By the way, I thought Poh looked a bit peeved not to be in the top three as well.
Thanks for the recap RR! Missed this ep due to being in an olympic-tv house, prolly gonna miss Thursday’s ep too!
I’ll be off to Coles later. I’m sure there’ll be a dazzling range of sea urchins for me to choose from.
I don’t know how Kate made Top 3 over Chris and Poh. I’m glad she didn’t win. Marion (or Poh) better win this whole thing, I swear to god.
I think I forgot to mention, I don’t like Kate. I liked the sound of her chilli sugar tuille, but very boring.
Kate will just have to cop it on the chins, PollyB.
If there was an elimination last night surely the poor effort Dani put up would have been the flop of the night. Very inventive Dani – don’t stretch yourself too much.
Glad Marion won. She has a really love disposition, attitude, etc and always seems to come up with something quite unique.
Not sure that I would like to taste asparagus ice cream though. Good on Kumar nonetheless
Have found its all much the muchness since MC-AS started, each night the same but slightly different. No highlights so far.
lol @ BDD for “make like you’re at a Wiggles concert!”
I dunno, I’m not convinced that this series is doing much to promote these guys as all-stars and master chefs. I wonder what it’s going to do to their reputations.
Yes, bdd. And for her sake, hopefully she won’t bite her tongue off, as it’s always lapping around.
I missed the episode last night, can anyone tell me what Callum made?
I seem to recall some sort of custard involved , Suit – which is a high risk area for Callum.
Just shows you how rigged this all is, the winners of previous seasons are so much weaker than the others. Poh will give them all a hiding!
Goodness knows how Julie managed to win her series, and how she holds it together when cooking on TV. She is messy, messy, messy and not a particularly good cook. Cookbooks are often written by recipe writers with a little help from the ‘author’ and then of course it’s all styled at photography.
Wonder who’ll go tonight, one of the mumsy pair or tortoise Kumar with the very shaky hands!
Speaking of shaky hands, Aaron’s the other night shook like those of a deckhand on the Titanic.
Chris B’s will probably also start shaking soon if they don’t airlift some Bone Yard beer* into the MCA compound.
* See: http://chrisbadenoch.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/boneyard-web-notice.png
Enjoyed last night much better than the sausage night. At least we got to see all the tastings. Julie is looking hopeless and even if Dani’s cakes had tasted good, they were still boring. Chris had every right to look peeved, Jonathon was a bit upset as well.
What is with all these savoury ice creams and custards. Sea urchin ice cream and crab custard holds as much appeal to me as a fish milkshake.
Went searchin’ for the urchins at a flash Coles. Managed to glaze a few eyes over.
RR – I come in to comment, I just should comment more! But I can promise I read every Masterchef entry, and some other shows (depends what’s on – you’ll have me in here when Brynn’s show airs!).
After S2′s cake disaster when they came back from London, they made S3 extremely dessert heavy with tons of challenges relating to them. So Kate won and can’t really cook much else.
Can’t believe Kate is supposedly 37. A typo? 47? Makes Mindy’s “30″ claim look almost realistic by comparison…
Chris W – you are right. This whole format is really pissing me off. It only goes for 3 weeks and there is no eliminations in the first week? WTF? Is there going to be six in the final.
I can scarcely believe that Frumpzilla chucked all that sugar into the Blue bolognese and they still “won”. Then she was shovelling it out like there was no tomorrow. What a sweating, mess making, unmitigated disaster. She ought to be wearing a sports bra, too, if they make them that big.
Kate must be a hoot in the bedroom for her husband. What with that domineering, bossy, smug, nit-picking, conceited attitude of hers.
Never liked her before. Despise her even more now.
Baz – Indeed was she that annoying in season three? I hope she is the first to go, but doubt it. Also Kate should have been yellow carded tonight when she yelled out to Kumar.
So the Red Team lost simply because their pasta was too thin to take their “salty” sauce. Especially when the challenge was more about the sauce that it was the pasta? For fuck’s sake judges!
And I don’t know about you guys, but I hate pappedale (sp?). Easily my least favourite pasta. Red Team were straight up robbed. I hope Julie dosen’t win tomorrow night, as she ruined her team’s sauce with the sugar.
I like Poh..a lil cranky,eccentric,frazzled,blank,fun …all in one….as much as I like Kumar ,wanted to shake him a lil in tonight’s ep. Why does Gary always have a ridicule laced tone when talking to Kumar? An ‘Am too good a chef to be interacting with the likes of you’ attitude. Over the last season he has come across as most pompous n sharp tongued,not George….the Red team comes across as very balanced,mature,cohesive n calm. Simple doubt,how did Julie Goodwin win?
#32 is Dutch Courage and not me. Lo$er.
This show could have been so good. Resent having to sit there watching them chop onions, George childishly covering the weight with his hands, then having to fix the most basic of sauces with one team being given a huge advantage and of course that team wins.
Yes, Kate should have been carded, I would like to have seen Kumar making a pie out of pasta dough!
You’re right Whitewine, it’s really obnoxious and noticeable. How the hell did Red team lose? Sugar in a bolognese ugh :/
Noticed the same as you Whitewine re- Gary’s interactions with Kumar.
Must be some part of his DNA harking back to the British Raj. Either that or he thinks he’s on the set of ‘It Aint Half Hot Mum’….
… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTVuOEe797M
“Colonel Reynolds: [their faulty plane has just crashed] Right! Evacuate!
Gunner Beaumont: Blimey! I nearly did!”
My thoughts too CB.
Julie and Kate are really, really irking me. I mean in reality I couldn’t give a fig about people, whatever takes all kinds, but I’m seriously not liking them.
Agree Baz, re Kate’s persona. Just vile. Julie is passive aggressive control freak.
However, I use sugar with tomatoes, depending on the dish and the acidity level.
Polly B , I’m guessing when you use the sugar, you don’t empty it into the dish like it’s a bag of cement and then frantically scoop the excess back out on to the bench top. You’re probably not sweating up a treat , either.
I was also reading that raw sugar could be used ,if some adjustment is made for the stronger flavour. More nutrients and less refined than the white stuff.
Julie’s cooking is great~ if you want heart disease or diabetes.
Kate~ Her Holier Than Thou-ness. Pity anyone married to that T.Rex.
LOL bdd – I gradually add organic raw sugar. And you’re right, I do not add ‘liquid salt’ to my food. Eeeww!
As much as we like Justine and Poh, really didn’t think the blue team should have won. They had the advantage and still ‘borderline’ result.
Did Julie taste the sauce before dumping quarter of a pack in?
It really emphasises how strong the season two contestants were. Think Marion will take this out.
Red was robbed. They are the best team by far.
I messages a few Italian friends last night and this morning and all were HORRIFIED at the thought of any sugar going into a pasta sauce. “Only for tourists” was the most memorable reply…
I agree Red Team was robbed in this instance, but I do love eating sweet spaghetti. Well I eat a lot of spaghetti actually, as long as it is not seafood based but I certainly prefer the semi-sweet variety in my family. I don’t mind ultra sweet Jollibee spaghetti either.
Kate was this gruesome last season. I could see it all in her eyes then, and underneath her sugary front. She’s more overt, less disguised with it, now. I think there’s a secret angry bully in her just yearning to bust out.
Cb..u hit the nail on the head.cud not understand Gary’s attitude towards Kumar ,ESP coz he is so warm n well loved…..now I know… disdain for nationals of former British colonies.
I’ve noticed Gary is a really stuck up piece of crap.
When George and Jowl$y have a plate of food placed in front of them at a tasting, or at the recent French Embassy junket on MCA… they’ve usually got at least enough class to say “Thank you”
Not gorging Gazza. The porcine mouthfuls of bolognese he took were appalling as well.
Kate, a bully? You have got to be joking!!! Seriously there are nine different classes of bullying (according to WorkCover) and to call Kate a bully, you definitely must not have been bullied. Kate is just a serious person and there is nothing wrong with that.
I must admit that I don’t like the attitude of some of the judges this time around re favouring some of the contestants over the others but I am enjoying the lack of competitiveness for oneself (as against for one’s charity) that was so evident in Series 4 of MC. Why Kumar and Jonathan are not favoured like some of the others are, is beyond me. They are both very very good cooks are well as being very personable.
RR – oh yes Kate was just as horrid in Season 3 as she is now but she was a lot more subtle. This time round she isn’t even making any effort to hide the disgusted smug expressions on her face. She definitely deserved that yellow card and one for jumping up and down and shrieking at George to weigh her onions. What a twat.
PollyB and planb – couldn’t agree more! Good thing she’s tall, makes it easier to look down her nose at everyone. Especially Kumar.
Julie, what a joke. I never imagined it would be this painful to watch her on screen. How she ever got past the top 10 much less win, I’ll never know.
Will be cheering for red team, Julie and especially Poh. They are a classy lot and Poh has so much more spark than the entire season 4 cast combined.
Sorry, but I can’t see what the problem is with Kate, I really can’t. Like I wrote before, she is a serious person. Not everybody is outgoing like Alice was in Season 4 (and there’s nothing against extroverts). Yes, extroverts do make for good television but if you had a room full of them, who would you listen too. I missed Season 1 and so missed Julie, Poh and Chris but have followed their cooking careers since then and like them all. It is amazing to see how nervous Julie and Poh are, given all they have achieved since their time on the show. Julie is quite open about being a messy cook and being an intuitive cook and prior to writing her book following her Masterchef win, she had rearely written a recipe for others to follow. So many of the other contestants, especially in this last season, have forgotten that they are competing in a “home cook” competition and are not chefs. Julie has not forgotten this and does not purport to be a professional but she does know what home cooks want in the way of recipes, hence why she has just finished her 3rd cookbook and why the previous two cookbooks weres such a success. Lots of people, including me, love Julie because she is down to earth, doesn’t promote herself as “the next best thing” and relates to all of those busy home cooks out there. Likewise Poh is down to earth as well and has gone on to great success.
Serious people don’t go on Ma$terchef.
The root word “serious” applies very well to MCA contestants, bdd, as in:
Seriously annoying – Kate, Dani, the judges, Mindy
Seriously deluded – Julie G, Microwave Kate (S2)
Seriously hot – Skye Craig, Alana Lowes (oh, and Andy for you chicks and blokes that likes bloke bits)
Seriously a player – Chris Badenoch
Seriously Germanic – Irmgard
Seriously a chipmunk disguised as a boy – Hayden
Seriously voiced by an extra from the muppets – Jonathan
Seriously intriguing – Poh
Do you want Poh’s address , Boner? She lives just down the road. $eriously.
I thought Ajay is all you’d ever wanted…and more.
What a load of bullocks, BDD.
Serious people do go on Masterchef as they want to fast track a career. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all.
The world of BDD – Where nobody is to have any ambition or aspiration.
What a joyless place that would be.
“Bollocks”, I think is what you’re foolishly trying to troll there.
Bdd, as knowledge be the mortal enemy of intrigue, I’ll pass up any chance to get closer to the beguiling oriental lady of many moods and aspects, especially as this would ruin my viewing of a show of pretty marginal entertainment value. Better she remains an intriguing set of pixelated images.
Now Ajay….ahhh…. Ajay…hmmmmmm
Alas, alack it appears she ‘s come down with an ailment called “ViSalus”.
See, as this condition starts with the dreaded letter “V” I’m pretty convinced it’s *ahem* and intimate women’s problem and …um… well, going to pose a problem with *blushes* well… you know.
Though if Dr T can advise what sort of…um… protection, heavy duty mind you, might help out here, he’d do wonders for putting me mind at ease.
*Alas, alack , even in her tainted state, Ajay still gives me the horn.
Trolling defintion for BDD – someone who disagrees with his world view that nobody is to have any ambition and nobody is to try and reach their potential.
You truly a miserable person. Get rid of that chip on your shoulder and you might actually achieve something meaningful.
There’s something comforting about having Dudley Do-Right watching over us and giving us advice on how to live a successful life. Onya Duds.
So this means bdd is Snidely Whiplash and Julie Goodwin is Nell?
hahhahahaha
I’m visualising it all now.
Julie Goodwin is 4 Nells.
And Snidely’s got an insurance claim in for whiplash from the last time he tied her to the train tracks.
Lol CB – I could see a derailing happening there.
This is what misery is. Same as it ever was.
http://www.realityravings.com/2010/07/30/claire-winton-burn-talks-about-her-personal-life/#comments
Speaking of misery and chips on his shoulder… hi Paul. Glad to know that you’re still lurking in the shadows, monitoring us and getting ready to spank us all at the first chance you get.
What a joyless place you must be in.
Bern – I have nothing personal against Julie but there’s no denying it, she is a comedy of errors in the kitchen. As for Kate, different people see different things. If I may kindly use BDD as an example; to some his sardonic wit is entertaining. To others, he is the devil spawning harbinger of evil and misery (did I get that right Paul?).
Different strokes for different folks. Unlike a certain person (not you), the most important thing here is to respect each other’s opinions, no matter how much you disagree. Cheers
Thanks for the link bdd, that was an interesting read with breakfast. Although I’ve watched all 4 series of MC, this was my first one on RR.
So the MC blog campaign really is a tradition with Duds, as some have mentioned before. I have to say though, he seems to have become more pious over the last two years, which is typical ‘grinch’ behaviour.
There’d be no women’s mags in his house – the wife would have to get her fix in waiting rooms.
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