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‘MasterChef Australia’ Recap: Pumpkin, Emelia Running Marathons And Laura’s ‘Yawnfest’ Pasta

"Jock calling Laura's pasta a yawnfest has been my favourite moment of 'MasterChef' 2020."

by Michelle Rennex  12 June 2020
masterchef laura pasta yawnfest

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It has been a pretty sad week in the MasterChef: Back to Win kitchen.

After saying goodbye to sweet human puppy dog, Simon off the back of his pale, limp broccoli, we then had to farewell actual sunshine in human form, Sarah Tiong.

Starting the week with another gimmicky challenge, the top 10 were tasked with highlighting one of five vegetables by cooking with a partner. The gag? Well, the dishes had to be identical in appearance and flavour, but the chefs were divided by a wall and could only be guided by voice. Ugh, don’t we just love a challenge that tests luck and not, hmmm, talent or skill?

Anyway, despite Laura and Khanh’s squid pasta not looking identical at all, Jock commended the pair for plating such similar dishes. Then, for some unknown reason (that’s a lie, we all know the reason), Jock didn’t use this same criteria for the other contestants, who all served equally similar looking dishes.

In the end, the judges felt that Sarah Tiong and Brendan’s pancakes, and Chaotic Poh and Vegan Reece’s brûlée tarts were the worst of the bunch. Heading into elimination, the bottom four were then faced with a recipe-less Pressure Test challenge to… recreate a gentrified curry by white man ThAi fOoD GoD, Benjamin Cooper from Chin Chin.

Magically somehow more smug than Jock is on a regular day, Cooper provided absolutely zero helpful advice to the cooks. At one point, Cooper even appeared to be hitting on Brendan when he asked Brendan to “smile” and “be cheeky” mid-cook. Big creep energy, that.

Anyway, after the cooks struggled through the challenge, it came down to Poh and Sarah, with curries that were both too thick and too thin, respectively. In the end, Sarah Tiong was sent packing for her weak-tasting replica of a white man’s curry, and the world got just that little bit worse again.

Then jumping into the Mystery Box for the week, the ingredient of the day was ~smoke~, which isn’t really an ingredient, but ok.

The challenge was basically just about everyone cooking with smoke and tbh, most struggled with not injecting enough smokiness and generally just pretty shit flavours. Sadly, this included Reynold, who let his science experiments get out of hand by focusing too much on impressive techniques than on good flavours. Sad!

With about five good dishes out of the 10 available, the judges settled on Poh’s smoked duck, Reece’s mousse, and Emelia’s dessert — even after bitching and moaning all cook about her needing to do more than three elements this far in the competition.

Yet, Teacher’s Pet Laura ~somehow~ managed to nab a spot in the top with only three elements that were literally *checks notes* a scoop of sorbet on top of a *checks notes once more* stringy stewed rhubarb and *checks notes for the final time* literal ice. Pure insanity.

Entering into the kitchen last night to battle it out for immunity, the top four learned that they were competing in three rolling 30-minute rounds based on their best possible pumpkin recipes.

Focusing on the theme of resourcefulness, Chaotic Poh, Teacher’s Pet Laura, Vegan Reece and Emelia were each only given one pumpkin to make use of for all three rounds — which makes this probably the worst week that Vego Simon could’ve left. Seriously? Challenges all about less waste AND vegetables? Talk about kicking the man while he’s down.

Jumping right into it, Vegan Reece decided on a sweet and sour glazed pumpkin, served with mushrooms, truffle oil and chestnut puree, for his first dish. Adopting the strategy of working on his second and third round dishes while his first cooked away, Vegan Reece also started roasting off some pumpkin for a round two pumpkin cake with mascarpone ice cream.

Taking a page out of Teacher’s Pet Laura’s book, Chaotic Poh decided on an Italian theme for round one. Starting with a dish she’s never done before, because that’s always such a great strategy (I’m lying), Poh started to whip up a time-consuming pizzoccheri valtellinesi aka buckwheat pasta with a brown butter sauce and roast pumpkin.

Going for something a little lighter for the first course, Emelia was well into prepping her elements for a pickled pumpkin salad with vanilla buttered bugs.

Back to their favourite pastime of pestering the contestants during walk-throughs, Andy and Jock begun guilt tripping Emelia into not wasting the precious head guts in her bugs. Taking the hint, Emelia stirred the raw head goop into her fresh cream dressing, instead of, hmm idk, cooking it first or doing… literally anything else.

Meanwhile, whipping out the trust ol’ hibachi for her first dish, Teacher’s Pet Laura started grilling a huge pumpkin wedge to serve with smoked buttermilk sauce and wakame soy roasted pumpkin seeds. While that was cooking, Teacher’s Pet Laura started to prep her round two dish of, you guessed it, pasta. We’re back, baby.

Also working on her round two dish after plating her salad with time to spare, Emelia moved onto her pumpkin cake with a pine nut caramel and pumpkin puree.

In pasta land, only rolling out her pasta with 15 minutes to go, Poh realised that she fucked up royally. Although the pasta itself only takes seven minutes to cook, Chaotic Poh had yet to even boil the fuck-off giant pot of water she needed to cook the pasta in. This left Poh with only five minutes to cook her seven-minute pasta and, sounds about Poh, honestly.

Leaving it down to the wire, as usual, Chaotic Poh pulled her pasta from the pot with only 30 seconds to spare. Back to being an annoying ass bench demon, Jock started whispering in Poh’s ear that her sauce was looking pretty watery, and honestly? What the fuck do want her to do with 30 seconds on the clock, good sir? Please get a life.

Tasting the first round dishes, the judges started with Vegan Reece’s mushies and pumpkin combo, which they found to be lovely looking but in some dire need of some acidity to cut through the richness and sweetness.

Moving over to Laura’s grilled pumpkin, Mel thought the plate was beautifully presented with some big flavours, while Andy called the dish “mediocre” and pretty salty. Then, unlike the other dishes, the judges absolutely frothed over Emelia’s “well-rounded and well-executed” salad.

Back over on the benches, starting on her second dish of pastry, Poh was blissfully unaware that she was about to get the axe for her sloppy pasta creation — which, if we’re being honest, kinda did look like throw up a bit.

Anyway, Chaotic Poh not tasting her pasta was an obvious mistake and Jock absolutely tore the fuck into its terrible texture, while Melissa hated the inclusion of cabbage. As expected, Chaotic Poh’s pasta was deemed the worst of the lot, which booted her out of the challenge.

Continuing on, Vegan Reece blitzed his pre-roasted pumpkin from round one for his round two cake. To serve alongside his cake, Reece decided to make a whipped ice cream to speed up the setting process — and thank God, because he only had 20 minutes left to do so.

Also preparing her version of a pumpkin cake, Emelia started piping her mixture into little tiny cake moulds of spheres and sticks to also speed up the process.

Back over in the pasta corner, Teacher’s Pet Laura begun shaping her pumpkin tortellini to try and leave a better taste in Jock’s mouth than whatever the hell Poh had served in round one.

As she started to mix together her pumpkin filling, Bench Demon Jock came over to be annoying once again. To inject a little drama into the season, probably because the producers told him to, Jock called Laura’s creation a “yawnfest”, which likely broke her heart into two.

Continuing to share his opinions that no one cares about, Jock complained that pumpkin tortellini is often a dish that you order and are disappointed by. But replying like a true bad bitch, Laura said that she only ever eats it at her own restaurant and is never disappointed by it. And I can’t believe I’m going to say this about Laura, but KING. SHIT.

With five minutes to go, Teacher’s Pet Laura started to cook her “yawnfest” tortellini while she racked her brain to think of a third dish. Also waiting for his cake to finish and for the ice cream to stop churning, Vegan Reece used the spare time to start the prep on his round three pumpkin and eggplant penang curry.

Starting to plate his second round dish, Vegan Reece realised that his pumpkin cake had actually torn apart after getting stuck to the cake tin, which forced him to completely change his plating style to make it look intentional. Ok Einstein, we see you.

Similarly, Laura struggled to get her butter browned in time for plating. But, just like the first round, Emelia was just standing around eating the off-cuts of her completed dessert with the spare time. Queen.

Moving into the CaKe OfF, the judges chowed down on Emelia’s first and found that it was delicious and moist — which was great news for Emelia, because she was already whipping up another sweet dish (Paris-brest) for round three.

Back to the battle of pumpkin cakes, while Jock and Mel loved Reece’s cake, Andy felt it was inferior to Emelia’s because there was way too much cardamom for him.

As the judges were tasting, Teacher’s Pet Laura was still lost on a round three dish after exhausting her go-to’s of wakame, hibachi and pasta. After spending a hot minute in the pantry, Laura finally settled on using the hibachi again for a grilled quail.

But this stress was unnecessary because, despite Jock being thoroughly impressed by Teacher’s Pet Laura’s pasta filling (shocking! Who would’ve thought Jock loves Laura’s dish? Omg, crazy!), the pasta itself was a little too thick and slightly undercooked.

This meant the cakes reigned supreme, booting out Laura’s quail and leaving Vegan Reece and his penang curry battling out Emelia’s Paris-brest in round three.

As the top two scrambled to finish their round three dishes, Emelia hit a snag. While working on her famous choux pastry, Emelia realised she fucked up her dough beyond repair after adding her eggs way too fast.

With just 18 minutes remaining, Emelia scrapped her original plans and started on a pumpkin mille-feuille instead — or a “milly filly” as she called it, obviously trying to dethrone Andy for MasterChef’s biggest bogan.

Deciding to run a marathon around the kitchen in an attempt to take her mind off her failed brest (heh), Emelia truly did personify the saying “running around like a headless chook”. Meanwhile, oddly calm as the brest breakdown was happening only a few benches over, Vegan Reece started to drop the vegetables to his penang curry.

After channeling Usain Bolt for about 10 minutes, Emelia calmed down and started on the creme pat to fill between her tuile slices. To make sure she hit the pumpkin brief of the day, Emelia also decided to quickly candy up some slightly-pickled pumpkin circles.

With literally three minutes to go, the top two started to put their finishing touches on their dishes, but, of course, Jock and Andy couldn’t allow that.

Deciding to taste Reece’s curry at possibly the worst and most inconsiderate time ever, Jock, dangling from the stairs like a movie villain, decided to be a smart ass and ask “iS ThErE pUmPkiN iN iT?!?!” and nah, Jock. You’re right. The bright orange curry made of nothing but pumpkin and eggplant surely doesn’t have pumpkin in it. Duh, silly us.

Still taking in his shitty advice, Vegan Reece decided to chuck some extra pumpkin puree into the curry to boost up the flavours and thicken the sauce. Meanwhile, Emelia was busy constructing her own tall-ass edible Leaning Tower of Pisa that defied gravity and any logical sense.

Tasting Emelia’s huge dessert first, the judges were shocked by the lack of elegance and finesse on the dish. And when it came down to flavours, the judges could tell this was a back-up dish, which left them wanting more.

Receiving a similar critique, Andy described Vegan Reece’s bright orange pumpkin penang curry as “a reasonable job, with a fair amount of flavour whacked into there”, as Andy does. With the judges thinking it wasn’t the best penang curry or the best use of pumpkin they’ve ever seen, it was obvious that both Emelia and Reece totally bombed out in round three.

But it was Vegan Reece’s average curry that beat our Emelia’s even average-r mille-feuille, which meant that Reece was safe from this week’s elimination challenge.

On the next episode of MasterChef: Back To Win, the bottom eight cooks split into four teams in a two-round street food and fine-dining elimination challenge.

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.