‘MasterChef’ Finale Recap: Yes You Are A Good Chef, But Can You Cook An Egg?

Last night I cried. Then I got really, really mad.

It wasn’t just that MasterChef went until TEN PM last night, despite the fact the TV guide app specifically saying that it finished at 9.40, but that’s part of it. I got mad because MasterChef has now descended into a game of chance and nonsensical tasks that mean nothing and I feel terrible that those two little angels had to endure such a mindless and empty challenge.

Basically, I hate this guy.

Matt and Elena have made it to the final two and the judges are saying various vague but dramatic things while gesturing to a very grubby looking MasterChef plate. “Whoever blinks first will lose!” says Matt, because on top of cooking a fine meal, the contestants must also engage in a staring contest or something, I don’t know what’s happening with this dumb show anymore.

Matt and Elena are just happy to be here, and already look close to tears. “Hey Matt, do you like cooking?” says Gary. Matt can’t even speak because he likes cooking so much. Very candidly, he admits that what this competition boils down to for him is his fear of failure. “Good stuff,” says Gary.

They ask Elena what she reckons about the competition and she says that “It’s given me and hopefully others permission to dream”. Quick question: does anyone feel like Gary, George and Matt have ever given them permission to dream, follow-up: why were you waiting for permission? I think Matt and Elena are very tired.

Somewhere, Bachelor Girl are sighing and thinking “so close”.

There will be three rounds of cooking and after assuring them that “THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF YOUR LIFE, PROBABLY”, the judges try to impress upon the contestants just how difficult this will be.

“Guys, it’s going to be hard,” says Matt Preston.

“We know.”

“Super hard.”

“Yep.”

“Extremely hard cooking, it will be terrible.”

“Okay.”

Just quietly, Matt Preston also looks like he’s just come home from wrapping up the French revolution.

Round one is an entrée, and Elena and Matt choose the two ingredients on the table that most evocatively represent death — tiny baby quails and demonic marron (not Maron). Matt begins massacring the teeny quails and hacking at their feeble bones. Elena starts assembling the 5,000 elements required to make her dish, as is her want. George and Gary sidle up to her and frown. Then George says, “Hurry up.” They then sashay over to Matt and sniff in disapproval. Matt starts sweating. These judges are savage tonight.

Elena’s reduction is bland so she just starts chucking what looks like the entire ocean into a pot. “That’s doing nothing,” says Gary. Elena says :/ “Good decisions help you win!” says Gary, most helpfully. For a minute Matt looks like he wants to confit himself, but then goes into some sort of trance and announces that he’s reached “another gear”. Matt looks like he’s taking it too easy now, so the producers force him to run into the pantry to get herbs in the last 20 seconds.

It’s judging time, and Elena’s marron is a success! Gary reminds her to keep her nerves in check, and also that her dish “hasn’t disappointed” them, which isn’t exactly the same as saying that it’s good, but whatever. The judges think that Matt’s dish is inspired, naturally. Elena is now three points behind Matt, and announces manically “I’M GOING TO PUT MY BEST COOK FORWARD!” Oh, Elena.

For the next round there’s no rules and they can cook whatever they want, which anyone who has ever encountered endless choice knows is absolutely terrifying (see: The Bachelor, capitalism, etc.). Elena is making lamb that will “warm you from the inside” which sounds like a very Hannibal Lector thing to say, but go ahead and put your best cook forward girl! Matt is making a prawn head and pancetta broth, because they cannot get enough of demons of the deep on MasterChef.

“Here is my prawn head and pancetta broth!” Matt says to Gary and George. “That doesn’t make sense,” Gary says. Matt says :/

Matt does it anyway because it’s important to back yourself and anyway, what sounds better than a salty liquid full of fish brains yum yum, I’ll take two please! Meanwhile, Matt Preston for some inexplicable reason has started repeatedly yelling: “IS IT DELICIOUS, IS IT DELICIOUS, IS IT DELICIOUS” at Elena. “Elena looks flustered,” says one salty ex-contestant who I don’t remember on the balcony. The balcony I have realised, is exactly like a Greek Chorus except a rubbish machine with wrong opinions.

Both of dishes have a big piece of meat, blobs of colour and are sitting on a white plate, looks like high cuisine to me! Elena’s dish is being judged first and they say to her: “Hey, remember when you said we gave you permission to dream” just to make her cry, which she of course does because she is so goddamn tired. “I’m running out of words!” George says, because he likes her lamb so much. “I love this restaurant, can we come again?” says Matt, and they all laugh the hearty laugh of well-fed men.

Matt brings in his barramundi and just starts crying as soon as they look at him. “The great dishes for me are the ones you put in your mouth and you taste them,” says Matt, which I think is meant to be complimentary. Matt is still in front!

“Well done contestants, well done!” says Gary. “Contestants as you know, cooking is also about getting pretty upset, so upset that you struggle to see your liquid nitrogen gun through the steady stream of tears that roll from your dead eyes. So without further ado – here are your families!”

Everyone is crying so much. George tells Matt’s wife that he never shuts up about her! He says to Elena’s partner Eric, “Hi Eric!” Matt’s parents cut short their Italian vacay short just to cheer him on from the misery balcony, so no pressure Matt! Now that Matt and Elena are feeling a delightful mix of parental guilt and emotional instability, it’s time for the final task. And that’s when this smug bastard waltzes in.

I can’t fully express how much I dislike Heston. I could rant for days about this elitist, squid-mist idiot. The conversations I imagine him having with his friends — about ‘reinventing’ food and making it a realm of high art, relegating home cooking to a pitiable exercise of commoners — make me so mad that I have to ball my hands up into fists to stop myself from punching the television. I imagine Heston’s conversations a lot.

Anyway, Heston walks into the kitchen and throws gang signs or something and says that the thing he wants them to make requires “over 100 steps”. “That’s like climbing Mount Everest and finding there’s another mountain behind it!” says Elena, who has gone mad. That’s when Heston and his mate (Feston?) present the dish that Matt and Elena need to make. Everyone gasps like it’s the most beautiful thing they have ever seen in their dumb lives.

“Here is an egg that is not an egg,” says Heston, while everyone froths at how brilliant he is. “I got the idea from a recipe from 1726, except in the end I changed the recipe to show that only I can make a non-egg egg because I have divine powers and have conquered basic physics.”

Matt and Elena cannot believe their eyes! It looks like an egg, but it’s not an egg! Heston is a genius!!!! “This is beyond a plate of food, this is a science, this is an art,” says Matt, because he simply cannot believe that this is not an egg, what a wondrous skill to be able to make something look like an egg. They now have five hours to make the silliest and most pretentious fucking dish in MasterChef history.

Every step of this recipe makes me quiver with rage. Most of the cooking involves whisking white powders together to cause a chemical reaction and having to measure the temperature of each substance with a thermometer every step of the way, or the kitchen will explode or something.

Then, they have to put yellow liquid into a vacuum machine. This machine makes the liquid smoother or thicker, or something. It is the most useless invention in the history of the planet and it makes me never want to use electricity every again.

Now they have to make the egg white, which is really coconut panna cotta, for Heston, who is really toffee steam from the butt of a turkey. Matt’s panna cotta is not setting, which puts him behind an hour. He is absolutely shattered. “I’m hurting,” he says to his dad and everyone’s heart breaks. Fuck you, Heston. George is very nice to him (nicer than if Elena was in this scenario, just saying) and gives him a rousing speech like “DIG DEEP, DON’T GIVE UP!” Back to the lab for Matt!

Elena is making the eggshell, which is one layer of milk chocolate, one layer of white chocolate and some spray chocolate (ARGHHHHHHHH). She admits that she has never done this before. Nothing matters.

Elena is finally putting the eggs together, and some helpful person yells “CAREFUL” from the balcony. She seals it and then sprays it with liquid nitrogen and I tell ya, it really brought back memories of family dinners, all of us sitting around the table, with my mum pulling out the liquid nitrogen and just spraying us a top notch meal. Matt decides not to seal his egg (no) and then Elena teaches him how to spray the halves together. Elena is a queen among Hestons.

The task is finished! Sweet relief washes over them! Then Matt looks over. “Oh no, my egg,” he says. Matt has cooked it. And not in a good way.

This is the worst and is genuinely sad. Fuck Heston and his dumb goggles and his stupid recipes. Matt is a good Matt. Matt’s wife hugs him and it is terrible. Matt is very despondent, but the judges tell him “Good job, you have obviously lost, but good job”. Elena’s egg hasn’t cracked so she’s comparatively happy. “The experience is more in the visual of it,” George says about the egg, just hitting home how nonsense this challenge actually was.

It’s judging time. “Elena, your dish did look like an egg,” says Gary. Elena wins! Despite the confetti cannons going off for Elena, Matt is given equal speech time and $40,000 for bringing his weepy intensity to the show. Go Matt!

Now, let’s never speak of this dumb challenge again.