TV

‘MasterChef Australia’ Recap: Chaotic Katy Perry, Coughing Fits And A Significant Lack Of Ben

Katy Perry talking about "sweat meat" and calling Jock "daddy" is truly the only thing that could save Twist Week.

by Michelle Rennex  15 May 2020
katy perry masterchef

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It’s official, Twist Week sucks major ass.

The terrible theme week started on Monday — following Fedora Chris’ elimination — with a service challenge, where the judges split the remaining contestants into two teams.

From there, the teams were tasked with crafting a three-course menu for 50 diners. Last-Minute Poh led the highly disorganised Grey team, while Queen of Law Sarah was responsible for the Brown team. As the challenge was dubbed a “double twist” day, the judges threw gimmick after gimmick at the stressed cooks.

Instead of letting the contestants, I don’t know, just use their skills to progress in the competition, the judges forced the teams to switch kitchens and menus mid-challenge. This left the Brown team with the Grey’s disorganised, unprepared mess. To make matters worse, at the last minute the teams were then told that they also had to craft and plate up some vego options of their meat-heavy menus.

Somehow, the Brown team managed to salvage what they were left with and took out the challenge win, which left fan faves like Amina, Poh, Jess and Reynold at risk of going home.

While I really want to be funny here, I just can’t because I’m still so sad. During Darren Purchese’s Twisted Pressure Test, we had to farewell actual ball of sunshine Amina because the producers wanted a bit of MKR-style drama injected into the competition.

However, the concept totally backfired on them when the “fun twists” were not received well by the Australian public. Instead of being ~cute and quirky~ the twists just came up looking evil and unfair, especially during the mango passionfruit pavlova Pressure Test.

You see, despite Pressure Tests normally being about a chefs ability to replicate a dish, the judges decided to take away the contestants recipes but still expected the exact same dessert with every tiny detail to be plated up. Honestly? The recipe in question was quite literally seven pages long. How the hell is anyone meant to remember that much information, ever? Welcome to MasterChef MemoryChef™️, I guess.

After both plating up an abomination of a pavlova, it was down to Last-Minute Poh and Amina for the bottom spot. Sadly, Amina was ruled the worst of the day and was sent packing with some very tearful goodbyes — leaving even Melissa in tears, which is just proof that Twist Week is a majorly stupid concept.

Jumping back into another sad day of twists, the remaining 16 contestants had to cook using a “Babushka Mystery Box”. This twist introduced the must-use ingredients of fig and lemon myrtle as the contestants were well into their cooks with the original Mystery Box.

In the end, Dessert King Reynold with his savoury turnips, Sarah with her duck dish, Simon with his minuscule serving of chargrilled scampi, an unusually zen Poh with her carpaccio, and Reece with his Jock-style scampi redemption dish, all won themselves a spot in the immunity cook-off.

Entering the kitchen last night, the top five were faced with the challenge of crafting a dish based on the show’s theme song: ‘Hot N Cold’ by Katy Perry.

Sharing the same sentiment as everyone watching at home, Poh started off the episode by sharing just how much she hates Twist Week — which wasn’t necessary because we could tell. After turning basically catatonic during the pavlova Pressure Test, Poh decided she was going to turn away from her recent zen energy and back to her trusty “psycho” cooking style.

With 75 minutes on the clock, the judges asked the cooks to present a temperature hot dish that could be either sweet or savoury. But because it’s ~tWiSt WeEk~, Andy then announced the hot dishes also had to have a cold element included — which we already knew was in honour of our lord and saviour, Katy Perry based on the week-long ads about her.

Going back to their roots, both Reynold and Reece decide to cook sweet, while Sarah, Poh and Simon opt for a savoury dish. A very calm Reece, first out of the pantry, starts his cook by flinging back shots of rum for his dish of hot rum baba topped with a smoked honey diplomat cream… which, definitely are all words.

Also leaning on his strengths, Dessert King Reynold decided to cook yet another dish with approximately 73 elements. Going for a matcha génoise sponge cake filled with an apple and yuzu caramel, almond sablé disc, yuzu curd as his warm components, Reynold chose to match the cake with a cold yogurt sorbet.

Determined to finally win an immunity, Poh decided to switch her crazy back on and try to go head to head with Reynold with an equally bonkers number of elements. Describing her dish as a Malaysian dry duck rendang parcel wrapped in sticky turmeric rice, coconut lace pandan pancake, and topped with chilled cucumber and chilli relish, Poh really just said fuck being relaxed today.

Meanwhile, back in the land of normal, Sarah begun whipping up her hot Shanghainese red braised pork served with a cold pickled ginger granita. While Vego Simon was just calmly slicing some colourful carrots for his simple dish of *checks notes* hot carrot circle (??) with a cold, savoury parmesan custard (???). Sounding absolutely feral, Melissa lied through her teeth and told the Vego King™️ that the dish sounded good with the most pained look I’ve ever seen on the show.

With 45 minutes remaining, the judges dropped the bombshell that the second twist of the night wasn’t actually food-related at all. Instead, it was literally the introduction of Ms Katy motherfucking Perry as a guest judge, which has been the ONLY good twist all week.

As the contestants adorably all lost their shit at the news, in walked Katy Perry. But surprisingly no one was more excited than Poh, who swiftly gave the singer a hug and Brendan, who was so excited that he literally looked like he was about to jump off the gantry. Also beside himself was Reece, who became a giggly school girl when Katy approached his bench and he lost the ability to speak.

As Reece continued to freak the fuck out, sweet, adorable Vego Simon just calmly bantered with the pop star. Next, a blushing Reynold learned during his walk-through that, while Katy is a fan of matcha, she isn’t too fond of white chocolate — which, was sadly inside both his cake and yuzu curd.

Going down the line, Katy then visited Sarah, who was beaming from ear to ear. Sarah was even more excited to learn that since she became pregnant, Katy has “more of a salt tooth than a sweet tooth” and had been craving more exotic food than ever. Naturally, as Katy joked about loving “sweet meat”, Sarah stumbled over her words and struggled to get any words out.

When it came to Poh, as Katy gassed her up, Jock totally threw Poh under the bus and called her a “last-minute specialist” sharing that she likes to use every last second in a challenge. Like dude, chill out. Let Poh have her fucking moment with Katy, ok?!

Anyway, while Katy Perry’s presence was a clearly a much needed mood-booster for the contestants, she kept breaking the fourth wall and it was very uncomfortable — especially when she smelled Reece’s cakes while staring dead down the barrel of the camera lens. Mom, pick me up. I’m scared.

Beyond the uncomfortable staring, Katy also broke out into random song throughout the episode. She even gave a live rendition of ‘Hot N Cold’ like she was performing at a concert with the world’s most disinterested crowd. As she stopped some lyrics to have the top five sing them back, none of them did as they were too focused on their cook. But that didn’t stop Hayden trying to join in from the gantry above with the totally wrong lyrics. Bless his soul, honestly.

Back to cooking, to address the whole “pregnant Katy can’t have alcohol” debacle, once Reece calmed down a little, he decided to soak one baba in a vanilla syrup instead of rum. And despite Katy Perry telling Poh that she was keen for a bit of spice, when she tasted Poh’s rendang mix at the 15 minute mark, she had a total coughing fit — which, if we’re honest was probably pretty expected for someone named Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson who was “raised on meatloaf and milk”.

Unfortunately for Reynold, just five minutes before service, he realised that his sorbet was icy and hadn’t quite worked out like he wanted it to. To make matters worse, the Dessert King also totally forgot about his cakes in the oven, which led them to them being burnt on the tops.

Breaking out into song every couple of minutes, the novelty of Katy Perry as a guest judge quickly wore off. Even Poh said she had to block out the commotion because it was all “too much” and you know if the Queen of Chaos™️ herself says something is a lot, then, well it must be a LOT. But even with the free concert and literal minute-by-minute time shouting countdown going on, all the contestants managed to plate their dishes.

First up to the tasting table, Katy Perry chose Sarah’s “sweet meat”. Sharing that she sprained her thumb, Katy asked Jock to cut the meat for her just before calling him “daddy” — and MOOD, please keeping making Jock do menial tasks, Katy. We absolutely love to see it.

All getting a bit sexual, Katy stared Sarah in the eyes as she shoved the pork in her mouth and Sarah just let out the most unexpectedly soft “yᵉᵉᵉᵉᵉᵉˢˢˢˢˢ” ever. After eating her perfect bite crafted by Jock, Katy called the dish amazing for its perfect ratio of fat to meat, and just continued to scoff down the food in front of her. The judges agreed and called Sarah’s dish delicious, effortless and killer, with Melissa even going so far as to call it one of Sarah’s best plates in the competition so far.

Up next, Katy continued with savoury and called up Simon’s tiny-sized carrot creation. After splitting the one mouthful by four, the dish was deemed “lovely”, which roughly translates to just fine and nothing more.

Jumping over to sweet for a palate cleanser, the Dessert King presented his cake, which ended up looking like a little forest and caught the eye of Katy straight away. Sadly for Reynold, the dessert, while nice, just didn’t taste as good as it looked with the judges feeling that the choice of an icy sorbet over ice cream threw the dish off.

Following Reynold, Katy then prepared her stomach lining for Poh’s spicy duck rendang dish. Excited over the colour and look of the dish, Katy made Jock prepare yet another bite for her. After tasting the roll, despite not being the biggest fan of duck, Katy continued to go to town on Poh’s dish. The judges also agreed that Poh’s dish was inventive and delicious, but were interrupted by Katy Perry gyrating her hips in excitement. Yet again another mood.

Last but not least, Reece brought up his baba cakes, to which Katy also happy danced to. Literally fashioning a pair of tits out of her napkin, Katy Perry called Reece “the tits” which probably made his entire year considering how much he was frothing over the singer the whole episode.

Deliberating over the five, for Katy it came down to Poh and Sarah because of how they managed to broadened her normally bland palate. Ultimately, Katy Perry, and her unborn child, decided that Poh with her spicy duck was the worthy recipient of  immunity for the week.

But with all the chaotic commotion Katy Perry brought with her, it should be noted that there was a significant lack of Ice Cream Ben in tonight’s episode. And when I say a significant lack, I mean… he was not there at all. However, he did make an appearance in last night’s MasterClass, so who really knows if the man has been arrested yet or not. My brain hurts trying to crack this case.

On the next episode of MasterChef: Back To Win, the vulnerable contestants battle it out against their bench-mates in a two-round cook-off based on different countries and cuisines.

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.