TV

‘MasterChef Australia’ Recap: Raw Tofu, Root Vegetable Drama, And The Return Of Sous Vide

The Laura Pasta Curse of 2020 has been broken, y'all. We did it.

by Michelle Rennex  1 May 2020
masterchef recap immunity raw tofu laura

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If you haven’t watched MasterChef: Back To Win this week, honestly? You’ve not missed much except Laura cooking pasta literally every day. No, seriously.

On Sunday, we said bye, bye, bye to one-half of Bandy in a tearful farewell to Ben and his dry-ass salmon tail. Then on Monday, we were forced to endure an hour-and-a-half of miscellaneous screaming. Nope, it wasn’t the usual shouting done by the excited judges but by an auditorium full of over-excited randos, which was truly insufferable.

In this off-site “team” challenge that made zero sense, the remaining 21 contestants had to split into teams of three and put up a representative for each round — meaning two-thirds of the all-stars didn’t cook at all. From there, the losing team was forced into the next day’s Self-Pressure Test elimination.

Despite the Self-Pressure Test being designed for the cooks to step out of their comfort zones and really push themselves, Laura plated up another pasta dish for the second day in a row. Such pressure, much invention. Wow. In the end, Harry ended up getting eliminated after actually pushing himself to create an absolutely stunning edible smoking rock pool — but ravioli, hey!

Wednesday’s Mystery Box was an exciting twist on the traditional cooking challenge with each contestant being given a box of four random ingredients. With Australia hopeful that Laura wouldn’t be given any form of flour or egg, our prayers were answered when she unveiled her box to find pomegranate, apples, chilli and peas.

However, it was then revealed — probably decided after Jock saw his sweet baby Laura stuck without pasta-appropriate ingredients — that the contestants were allowed to swap ingredients between themselves so long as they all ended up with four to cook with. So, of course, Laura found Emelia, who had potatoes, and promptly ditched her chilli for the main ingredient of gnocchi. Which, despite what Melissa and Jock say, is definitely, 100000% another type of pasta — even Collins Dictionary thinks so.

But the ol’ switcheroo worked! And Laura’s gnocchi with apple caramel ended up landing her one of the four spots available for last night’s immunity challenge. Her dish was joined by Callum’s attempt at at a Japanese pancake with zero Japanese ingredients, Jess’ funky-ass fennel and chocolate ice cream concoction, and Queen of Law and Good Vibes, Sarah Tiong’s spicy ice cream.

Jumping into last night’s immunity challenge, the top four from the funky Mystery Box challenge were greeted by walking Coles billboard, Curtis Stone. And because the contestants can never just have a nice, normal, calm cook-off, were informed that they would be partaking in a Reverse Time Auction.

Given a total of 120 minutes, Callum, Jess, Sarah and Laura learned they would have to trade their cooking time to bid for the ingredients they wanted. With four categories of ingredients — protein, miscellaneous, fruit and veg, and herbs and spices — the contestants had to use something from each group to present a dish.

To make the auction even more confusing, Andy announced that the bidding would work backwards — with the first item going for 60 minutes until the timer dwindled down to nothing. Honestly, it was all a lot more confusing than it needed to be but that’s this season of MasterChef for you.

In the protein portion, Callum traded a meagre 15 minutes for a whole free-range chicken and, in a shock to everyone, Pasta-Lover Laura didn’t even try to bid for eggs — even though there were none included in her under-bench staples for the day.

Dessert Queen Jess managed to nab the eggs for just 10 minutes, narrowly beating out Sarah who was also keen for them. Between the coral trout and the tofu, Sarah bought the fish for 35 minutes and Laura paid nothing to get a few packets of silken tofu.

In the miscellaneous section of items, Laura traded 40 minutes for an assortment of vinegars, Callum swapped 10 minutes for corn products, Sarah gave up 15 minutes for citrus and Jess scored rice for the sweet price of nothing.

For the fresh ingredients, Jess bought stone fruit for just five minutes — probably because she was really the only one who could do anything with fruit considering she had the eggs to make something sweet. Callum also managed to swap only five minutes for nightshade veggies, and Laura spent 35 minutes to get leafy greens. This left Sarah with a bunch root vegetables that cost her zilch.

In the final category of herbs and spices, Sarah nabbed the Asian herbs for 10 minutes, leaving her with a total cooking time of 60 minutes. The Middle-Eastern spices found their way to Jess for a lowly five minutes, meaning she was left with 100 minutes to cook. With 75 minutes remaining, Callum nabbed the box of European herbs for 15 minutes, which left Laura with the free Indian spices and 45-minutes of cooking time.

Once the world’s longest auction concluded, Jess got stuck right into her 100-minute cook by just… dropping eggs and peppercorns fucking everywhere. After gathering what was left of the ingredients she bought, the Dessert Queen announced that she was going to try something new by dishing up a savoury plate — which made the judges and almost everyone on the gantry gasp because they love being dramatic.

Finally bringing back the trusty sous vide machine and packing away the hibachi, Jess started on her dish of a sous vide egg with turmeric noodles, fried rice crisps and an aromatic chilli oil.

Discussing what they’d do with Jess’ ingredients, Curtis Stone proved that he’s actually far more bogan than Andy by saying he wouldn’t want eggs and rice. Unless, of course, he was making a “Korean BIMBIMBOP”?? BIBBLE BOP?? BI BI BOP? Child, I don’t how how he butchered the world bibimbap so bad as chef, but he did.

After 25 minutes went by, Callum started his cook by deconstructing his chicken and throwing the breasts into the sous vide bath. And, finally!! Some damn justice for the sous vide machine this season!! Throwing the rest of the chicken into the pressure cooker with his tomatoes and thyme, Callum begun cooking down a sauce to serve with his chicken breast.

With everyone still banging on about her not “playing to her strengths” by going savoury, Jess ignored her haters and started chopping up her plums to use in place of vinegar for a hit of acidity, which was actually very smart.

As Callum and Jess’ sauces simmered, Sarah eased the minds of all the hibachi-lovers across Australia. At the 60 minute mark, Sarah begun filleting her fish for a dish of barbecued trout with pomelo and herb salad served with an aromatic broth. But because Curtis Stone just loves to start shit, he wandered over to Sarah’s bench to question her on how she would incorporate her root veggies.

Not giving a single fuck, Sarah explained that she was going to use the leaves of the root vegetable in the dish, not the roots themselves. Despite Curtis saying it was a lil’ bit of a “cop out”, Sarah stood her ground and said “it’s fair game”. Boom. Lawyered.

With 45 minutes to go, Laura was finally able to jump in and cook her pasta, sorry, force of habit. I mean tofu. Using her noggin, Laura decided to “cook” silken tofu with charred leeks (hibachi!) and a spiced black vinegar — and by cook she actually meant she was serving the tofu totally raw, like straight out of the packet raw.

On the other side of the kitchen, Jess realised that her attempt at sous vide eggs turned into… well, normal boiled eggs after she got the cooking times and temperatures all wrong. With just over half an hour to go, she threw a few more in the water bath and hoped for the best.

Meanwhile, as Jock was at Callum’s station harassing him about his sauce smelling too “farmy” — whatever the hell that means — Callum set his microwave on fire after chucking some basil in to dehydrate. Sounds about Callum, tbh.

Jock, continuing to terrorise the contestants trying to cook, also questioned Sarah about her lack of actual root vegetables in her dish. As Andy stood with his dad fellow judge, he agreed that Sarah should be using the root part of the veg because that was what she was given.

Finally picking up on the hint, with 15 minutes to go, Sarah decided to coal-roast some of the purple carrots from her root vegetable box. At the same time, in a real Goldilocks-style turn of events, Jess realised that her second-batch of sous vide eggs were now undercooked.

On her third batch of eggs — or fourth if you count all the ones she dropped on the floor at the start of the cook — Jess switched up her temperature to 65°C and hoped for the best. And thankfully, the changed temperature actually worked despite everyone in the kitchen trying to shit on her all episode for cooking savoury.

Meanwhile in hibachi land, Sarah readies to grill up her trout with 10 minutes to go. Jess starts rolling out and cutting her turmeric noodles. Callum tries to make his jus less farmy (??) and Laura is calm as she watches her sauce boil and oils drain because she’s serving uncooked tofu.

With a few minutes to go, the scenes are frantic as Sarah starts charring her fish and Callum begins rolling his boiled chicken into his herbs — which really does look as gross as it sounds.

Even though Sarah wanted a “blackened” skin on her trout, after she flips the fillet, the fish ends up looking straight-up burnt — just like Callum’s microwaved basil from earlier. But in better news, after countless attempts, Jess’ finally plates the perfect sous vide egg with only minutes to spare.

Up first to the tasting table, Jess presented her savoury 65°C egg creation. Despite the dish literally being noodles and egg, Curtis Stone was extremely hesitant to eat it for some reason and called the pairing “bold”. Like, um sir? Have you not eaten Mi Goreng before? Anyway, in the most negative-sounding positive critique ever, the judges said they “liked the idea of the dish”.

Next, the judges thought Sarah’s burnt blackened trout was… definitely blackened. So blackened that it actually made the fish bitter. Melissa said that the carrots — that all the male judges forced her to use – felt like an after-thought, because, well, it was an after-thought.

Meanwhile, Callum’s boiled chicken logs received opposite critiques. In some sort of miracle, Callum managed to turn his Old MacDonald-esque sauce into something the judges found pretty tasty. The only real downside Curtis found was that the chicken breast was slightly overcooked and gave the boiled bird a somewhat floury mouth-feel.

Last but not least, Laura presented her raw tofu with leek and various oils. Even though the tofu was straight out of the packet, the judges absolutely frothed her oils that were able to carry the dish. Which is a very strange concept considering Hayden was slammed for using store-bought tortilla chips just a few episodes ago.

But at the end of the day, the judges felt that Jess’ foray into savoury was worthy of immunity for the week. But Andy was sure to give Laura a special shout out, saying that her tofu dish screamed Laura “even though it wasn’t pasta” — so here’s hoping this new trend of cooking new things continues for the sake of our sanity.

On the next episode of MasterChef: Back To Win, 19 all-stars battle it out two-round elimination based on textures.

MasterChef: Back To Win returns on Sunday night 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.