TV

‘MasterChef Australia’ Recap: 300 Plates Of Sushi, Rice Ball Drama, And A ‘Scallop-Off’

"The three gals having a blast and supporting each other whilst bitching on Jock is the thriving I wanted in 2020."

by Michelle Rennex  8 May 2020
masterchef recap immunity sushi

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

This week on MasterChef: Back To Win we had to endure something the Channel 10 producers called ‘Suburban Week’.

And for those playing at home, no this didn’t mean all the cooks rode around in champagne-coloured SUVs and got their Karen cuts ready for the week. Instead, it just meant that the all-stars were spending the entire week out of the MasterChef kitchen and in restaurants dotted across the Melbourne ‘burbs.

Following on from Dani’s unfortunate undercooked egg elimination with her immunity pin still in hand, the remaining 19 contestants had to partake in a Thai Team Service challenge. Split into two groups led by Khanh and Tessa, Tessa quickly realised that the other team had some “strong players” aka the majority of the Asian cooks in the competition.

Armed only with Poh, Tessa’s team failed miserably after their pork belly was hard and the chicken larb was way too white to ever be considered traditional or tasty. As a result, team Tessa headed to an Indian ‘Pasta Not Pasta’ Pressure Test run by the owner of Enter Via Laundry.

Despite the dish not technically being pasta, Laura blitzed through the taste test which left Poh, Rose and Ice Cream Ben to battle it out to by recreating the khandvi dish. Despite royally fucking up his ‘pasta’, Ice Cream Ben somehow managed to still plate up a better dish than Rose, who was sent packing.

From there, the remaining 18 cooks took part in a ‘Suburban’ Mystery Box, where the ingredients were provided by residents of the community. Provided with apples, garlic, blue cheese, shiitake mushrooms, zucchinis, basil and brown rice miso, the contestants were allowed to buy only one extra ingredient from the Coles down the road to support their dish.

With all heap of randos from the neighbourhood watching the contestants cook in the middle of a park, it was all a bit much. To sum the day up: Poh lied by saying she wasn’t going to cook anymore high-pressure dishes, Hayden baked a cake for what feels like the first time ever, Laura magically didn’t buy eggs to make pasta, and Brendan full-on made soy sauce out of mushrooms?? Idk how that’s even possible, but he’s Brendan so it just is.

When it came time for tasting, despite both Poh and Hayden cooking the same cake and Emilia and Laura plating up the same protein, no ‘cake offs’ or ‘quail offs’ were declared by the judges. Instead, Andy just announced, for the umpteenth time, that he isn’t a cake man despite devouring any and all sweets in front of him.

In the end, the judges decided that Amina’s lobster tortellini, Emelia’s quail creation and Tracy — who has finally convinced producers to give her a bit of screen time — with her duck neck sausage, all earned a spot in last night’s immunity cook.

Entering into last night’s immunity cook, Amina, Emelia and Tracy were told that they would have to each prepare 100 dishes for the judges and the contestants who weren’t cooking. Set at a sushi train joint, the girls learned that they were each required to make 20 servings of five different Asian-inspired snack plates.

With two and a half hours of prep time, Jock explained that each dish had to be served within 15 minute of the last. And that with colour-coded plates and no kitchen input from the judges, the immunity cook would be decided totally blind.

After entering what is probably the smallest kitchen in the world, Amina got cracking right into making kimchi to give it as much time to ferment as possible. Opting to rely on her Korean heritage, Amina decides to cook a menu of bulgogi lettuce cups, scallop, tuna chirashi salad, deep-fried firm tofu and rice balls with kimchi.

Meanwhile, as Emelia starts noting down her ideal menu, she structures her cook around Japanese cuisine. Keeping her menu pretty similar to every $3 food court sushi joint across the country, Emelia starts her prep for chicken karaage — which she manages to pronounces at least seven different ways in five minutes. Along with her chicken, she decides to also whip up potstickers, fish ceviche, beef tataki and seared tuna.

Jock, totally ignoring the fact that Amina is Asian, shares that he thinks that Emelia will serve the best food because “her style is more finessed, tighter and less rustic.” Melissa, being the voice of reason, reminds Jock that Amina has an abundance of knowledge about Asian cuisine, you know, considering she IS Asian.

Adding absolutely nothing of importance to the conversation, Andy chimes in to say “we want to see something fried, don’t we? :)”. And… yeah, that pretty much sums up Andy as a judge, doesn’t it?

Anyway, back in the kitchen Tracy shares that she’s crafting an Asian-fusion menu that uses the flavours of Thai and Chinese. To show these fusion flavours, Tracy decides to cook five very clearly Japanese-inspired dishes of kingfish sashimi, chicken katsu, ma hor, silken tofu and scallops.

Sitting outside waiting for the dishes to be served, the judges loudly yell through the restaurant to update the cooks on their remaining time — which wasn’t really necessary at all considering how small the place is. In fact, the place is so small that the diners can 100% hear the cooks talking about their dishes making the whole ‘blind tasting’ far from anonymous.

Powering through, the energy in the room without judges breathing down the girls necks every two seconds is actually very wholesome. The good vibes, however, are quickly killed when the cooks make up a (terrible) MasterChef song to come for Ms ‘Hot N Cold’ Katy Perry’s neck.

Realising singing careers are not meant for them, Emelia utters the truest words spoken all season: “I’m just glad went don’t have bloody Jock just yelling at us right now.”

After that, the Jock-less kitchen continues powering through prep. As Tracy stuggles to finish cooking her ma hor, Emelia starts plating up her first “small” (read: fucking massive) dish of kingfish ceviche. A smart choice, considering it required really no really cooking at all. At the same time, Amina serves her cold dish of tuna chirashi salad to start everyones palates with something that’s fresh but punchy.

Tracy, proving she’s the new Last Minute Poh, chose to plate her kingfish sashimi with only one minute to go. Proving that she really fucked up her prep time, Poh Tracy runs back and forth between plating her first dish and to the stove that’s still cooking her ma hor.

As the sushi train starts moving, Emelia realises that her fucking mammoth servings of kingfish left her with minimal fish left for the rest of her plates. In an attempt to save her dish, Emilia starts plucking fish of plates as they leave the kitchen and go into the dining room. Unfortunately for her, while the judges didn’t see her hands grabbing at the fish, they did notice the inconsistency in portions and un-refined cut on the fish.

Meanwhile, for Amina, the judges found the tuna salad was not only beautiful, but also delicious. On the other end of spectrum, definitely looking like it was plated with only one minute left, Tracy’s cream and green-covered sashimi was… a dish. But the judges did enjoy the green curry flavours.

For the girls’ second dishes, Tracy continued with her ma hor, while Emelia began deep-frying her chicken kara-jay, kara-jee, kara-gay karaage. As Amina started rolling out her Korean rice balls , she noted that she was grateful Melissa was there because Andy and Jock might not entirely understand the dish — and surprise, surprise she was right!

As Amina’s rice balls came out, Jock had his own Curtis Stone BIMBIMBOP moment. After absolutely butchering the pronunciation of geotjeori, Jock had the nerve to describe the dish as “last night’s greasy fried rice” but because Melissa is a queen, she put Jock right in his place by asking what’s wrong with leftovers? Ugh, icon.

For the other girls, with yet another mammoth plate, Emelia’s mayo with a side of chicken was going well until the judges realised that she failed to plate her pickles. However, they found the chicken was still yum. Meanwhile, finally out of her life, Tracy’s ma hor got all the praises she was aiming for as the judges called it delicious.

Back in the kitchen, in an act of true sportsmanship, Amina called Emelia over for help as they prepped for their third dishes. As the meat being used wasn’t halal, Emilia happily helped Amina adjust her bulgogi seasoning before it went out. And we just really do love to see it.

Plating the dish, Amina served the beef on a bed of lettuce with a slathering of gochujang. Continuing her theme of fuck-off massive servings, Emelia fried up her single, box-sized dumplings and Tracy, again, struggled to get her chicken katsu out on time while somehow simultaneously setting the kitchen on fire.

Sadly giving Jock war flashbacks to the White Pepper Crisis from his childhood, Andy found that Emilia’s huge dumpling had an overwhelming flavour of white pepper and was difficult to eat. Jock, on the other hand, surprisingly ate the whole thing and called it tasty even though it did have its pepper problems.

Powering through the rest of the cook and tastings, the judges loved Amina’s bulgogi but felt that Tracy’s katsu sandwich fell short of what a Japanese classic should be — which makes sense considering it literally looked like an Aussie schnitty sanga, not Japanese.

With the producers basically ignoring the girl’s fourth plates, we zoomed right to the final dishes. As Amina and Tracy prepared their final plates of scallops, Tracy declared a dreaded “scallop off”. So you can tick that one off your MasterChef bingo card.

The judges ended up liking both Amina’s wakame scallop for it’s textures, and enjoyed Tracy’s citrus-dressed scallops for their freshness. Sadly, Emelia’s heavy-handed hacking at her meats was her downfall. While the beef tataki was delicious, the lack of finesse was hard to ignore. You know, finesse? That quality that Jock kept banging on about Emelia having at the start of the challenge? The one that would make her win the challenge? Yeah, that one.

Ultimately, after looking at the menu as a whole instead of by individual plates, the judges felt that the Amina’s flavours reigned supreme ruling her safe from the next elimination cook-off.

On the next episode of MasterChef: Back To Win, the 17 vulnerable contestants enter a take-away-themed elimination challenge back in the MasterChef kitchen.

MasterChef: Back To Win returns on Sunday at 7.30pm on Channel Ten. 

Michelle Rennex is a Senior Writer at Junkee who can’t cook, but enjoys judging people like she can. You can follow her on Twitter at @michellerennex.