TV

‘MasterChef Australia’ Recap: Fish Bones, Immunity And Wine In Measuring Cups

Sarah is an icon, change my mind.

by Michelle Rennex  17 April 2020
masterchef recap immunity

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What a week it’s been in the land of Masterchef: Back To Win. 

In case you’ve missed an episode so far, which is hard to believe considering all we have now is time to watch TV, let me catch you up real quick.

It all kicked off on Monday night, where we officially met the new judges: Season 4 winner Andy Allen, food connoisseur Melissa Leong, and celebrity chef, Jock Zonfrillo. We also learned that Gordon Ramsay would join the 24 returning all-stars for the first week of the competition.

During the premiere, Dani won the only immunity pin up for grabs this season with her Sri-Lankan mud crab curry. The cooks also had to split into two teams for a three-course service challenge that kinda went tits up for a few of the chefs.

Team Blue ended up losing thanks to a couple of huge fuck ups. Most notable was Fedora Man Chris and his absolutely abysmal attempt at portioning pork belly, which left only eight slices of meat to cover 36 diners.

Sadly, Rocket Scientist Reynold was responsible for the final nail in the coffin for the team. Despite being the resident Dessert King™️, his thyme-heavy dish left a rank taste in the judges’ mouths. The exact taste? That of potpourri, or POHTT PEWWREEE, as resident bogan judge Andy described it.

Team Green ended up taking out the win, but quickly the competition was flipped on its head. Turns out that spending an entire episode winning a challenge doesn’t make you safe — it means you have to cook again just for the CHANCE to be immune that week.

So the next day, the winning team had to compete in four groups of three in a relay cook that looked like Satan himself designed. Tasked with creating a themed menu, the chefs had 60 minutes to complete a three-course meal. The gag? They had to rotate stations every 20 minutes.

Cooking very different cuisines, Poh and Co. opted for an Asian-inspired menu, team Rose went for Middle Eastern, and Hayden’s squad went for a honey option. The team who reigned supreme, however, was Sarah, Callum and Lynton, who catered to Jock’s native ingredient-loving heart with a menu using indigenous ingredients.

And now we’re all caught up to last night’s immunity challenge. The victorious three from the relay cook-off enter the kitchen, and Lynton almost shits himself upon the realisation that Gordon Ramsay is in his whites, which can mean only one thing — they’re cooking against the angry chef himself.

Andy explains that for immunity, the trio would have to cook along with Gordon Ramsay with no reference dish or image, just straight from whatever comes out of his mouth. Picking the most fuck-off extravagant dish imaginable, Gordon announces that they’ll be cooking a potato-crusted Murray cod with vegetable minestrone and macadamia puree. Totally normal choice.

To spice it up and ruin the top three’s lives even more, the judges share that the cooks have to finish plating within 10 seconds of Gordon finishing his. And with that news, if Lynton hadn’t shat himself yet, he had now.

The cook started off with something relatively straight forward — filleting the giant cod to be used as the star of the dish. Explaining to the contestants what to do, the cook felt like an odd mix of Immunity Challenge and those Masterclasses they used to whack on Friday nights to get as many viewers as possible.

Right off the bat, the boys seemed to be doing pretty good at keeping up. Pan over to Sarah, and my God, what a mess.

Perched up on Struggle Street, Sarah was basically in a fist fight with her fish. As Gordon, Callum and Lynton finished de-boning and skinning their fillets, Sarah was still hacking away at what was left of the carcass.

With Sarah still floundering, the boys moved on to the macadamia puree. And in some sort of miracle move, Sarah is somehow able to salvage a decent piece of fish and catch up. Noticing she’s finally done it, Gordon has to basically beg the gantry to give Sarah a round of applause for her very mediocre attempt at filleting.

Now you know damn well if it was Fedora Chris butchering the cod, Gordon Ramsay would’ve slapped him in the face with the carcass and called him a buffoon, but that’s fine, I guess.

Despite being most nervous about the cook, Lynton manages to stay right along with Gordon Ramsay, constantly tasting as he goes on. However, while Callum watches what Gordon does, he doesn’t listen which results in an over-blitzed macadamia puree that ends up pretty grainy. After tasting his puree, Callum realises he fucked up but there’s no time to waste.

Being the sweatyboi he’s always been, Callum’s running back and forth between his own bench on Gordon’s has him perspiring profusely. The in-kitchen marathon has also caused him to lag further behind in both the minestrone and toasting of the clams.

Somehow evening out through editing, all the contestants start to slice their potato “scales” in preparation for assembling the fish at the same time. To describe the feeling in the room, resident bogan Andy sums up the energy by saying: “Aw, man I’m heaps nervous for ’em, aye.”

In what is easily the most intricate part of the cook, the all-stars start placing the potato rounds onto the fish. Absolutely smashing through the process, Gordon takes his completed fish around to each bench to show the contestants and give them a hot second to hopefully catch up.

Once the fish hits the pan, Sarah realises her absolutely butchered piece of cod is about half the thickness of everyone else’s. Thinking on her feet, she decides to flip her fish and take it out of the pan before Gordon does his, much to the shock of everyone on the gantry.

When Gordon finally flips his, Sarah realises she definitely done hers too early and is stuck. Luckily, Gordon Ramsay is a fucking maniac who thinks 80 grams of butter to baste one piece of fish is a normal amount. Spoiler alert, it really isn’t. But it gives the contestants the opportunity to brown their potato scales a little more before putting the fish on the plate.

With time ticking, and all three stressed about plating, the cracks start to show. Lynton gets mad sloppy with his minestrone and has jus flying everywhere, Sarah’s un-crispy potatoes are looking a little anaemic and Callum, as usual, just can’t stop fucking sweating.

Meanwhile Gordon’s picture perfect creation looks like it’s straight out of a cookbook. But it doesn’t matter, they did it! The three of them actually cooked along with Gordon Ramsay and all plated a dish within the time limit. Sarah, the icon, celebrates by drinking the leftover wine straight out of her stainless steel measuring cups.

Starting with Callum, the judges point out what we already knew: While his flavours were “immaculate”, his macadamia puree was not a smooth as it could be. Even tougher, a normally laid-back Andy found a bone in his fish, which totally put him off the dish.

For Sarah, the judges felt the plate looked very scattered and immediately noticed that the bottom of the fish was browner than the potato side — which was a result of her flipping the cod way too early. While the puree was bang-on, the fish was, obviously, overcooked.

After Callum’s fish bone disaster and Sarah’s over-crisped fillet, it all came down to Lynton. All four judges agreed that the plating on his dish was “heavy-handed” and that the veg needed some more cooking.

Ultimately, the judges ended up picking sweaty king Callum for the win. And with that, the all-star contestants had to bid farewell to Gordon Ramsay. But before leaving the MasterChef Australia kitchen, Gordon gifted the contestants a mystery gift that they were told they could open during Sunday’s elimination.

On the next episode, 23 contestants are up for elimination and have to compete in a two-round timed cooking challenge.

MasterChef returns on Sunday at 7:30pm on Channel 10.

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.