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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Entertainment
Meg Watson

MasterChef 2020 Australia elimination: broccoli underwhelms as top ten revealed – as it happened

MasterChef Australia 2020 judges Jock Zonfrillo, Andy Allen and Melissa Leong, practicing socially distanced promotional photography. Join us for the live elimination of another season 12 contestant to find out who will be eliminated tonight.
MasterChef Australia 2020 judges Jock Zonfrillo, Andy Allen and Melissa Leong. Photograph: Network Ten

But, this means we have the final ten contestants!! Callum, Reynold, Poh, Tessa, Sarah, Brendan, Khanh, Emelia, Laura and Reece. Or, more accurately: Reynold and the top nine losers.

Thank you for following along with me tonight! Have a nice cuppa, don’t doomscroll before bed, and get a good night’s rest. Tomorrow, maybe buy yourself a local veggie box in Simon’s honour.

This episode probably did damage to Australians’ views of veggies, which is not great for Simon’s whole ethos.

Simon is going home

Reynold downloads his terabyte of praise from the judges. He’s safe from elimination.

Tessa’s dry pork: also safe.

Sarah’s chippie-less charcoal chicken: all good, bb.

It’s Simon. He’s going back to the veggie patch. And he takes it well. Thankfully there’s no more crying this week because, tbh I just can’t take it.

As expected, the judges are not impressed. The food has a good story behind it, but the dish isn’t enough for the time he was given. It’s also not what he promised: it’s not fresh or vibrant at all, and the broccoli is overcooked. Seems like an open and shut case for the veggie boi :(

No matter what the MasterChef social media persons says...

Simon’s philosophy and passion for veggies is much better than his soggy broccoli. “I think the way forward in Australian eating is vegetables. It’s a bit of meat, and a lot of vegetables”.

He’s not wrong. Australians are massive consumers of meat, yes, but we’re increasingly cutting back. Increasing our intake of veg is obviously good for our bodies, but it’s good for the environment too. (Also, technically, hot chippies ARE veg so…)

This is truly not far off the real thing.

The editing team aren’t even trying to craft an alternative narrative where someone else could go home..

And lastly, Simon: dead man walking. He’s gotta be going home for this one right? What do you think?

Tessa’s braised pork belly looks like something that a restaurant would make you pay $50 for, and you’d still swing by Macca’s on the way home. (My critique, not theirs).

The judges aren’t super convinced by the pork: it’s dry, and ultimately not the right protein to pick for this kind of dish/challenge. (Wow, maybe the lamb lobby has an in here). The pressure cooker dogged Tessa again.

The flavours, however, are good in the rest of the dish.

Sarah’s Southeast Asian-style charcoal chicken is next up. The chicken is perfectly moist (sorry), the sauce is flavourful and has a huge kick, the greens are beautifully charred.

The only improvement that could be made is adding chippies. Which, to be fair, is a good critique of every dish that doesn’t include chippies.

The judges don’t even bother talking about the technical merits of Reynold’s dish because they’re unparalleled. It’s amazing. It’s perfect. It’s better than sex. Reynold is safe.

It’s time to taste (again)!

Reynold is first up for tasting. He uses his 30 seconds plating time to complete about four more parts of the dish before even starting on the construction of a dessert Sydney Opera House.

The end result does not look exactly like he would have wanted, but it’s still pretty great. He should have improvised and said it was the Opera House in the style of Ken Done. Extra points for Australiana.

And a brief update from the real world:

Next on MasterChef: waterlogged frozen veggies that have been microwaved for 25 minutes and very, very well-done steak.

Imagine making soggy broccoli when you could have just done this

Reynold says that it’s a one in four chance for someone going home: “that person could be me”. Technically that is correct. But, on the other hand, nah it’s 100% going to be Simon.

Simon looking sad
Photograph: Network Ten

More bad news: Reynold’s meringue for the Sydney Opera House sails is all cracked and breaking. It’s not pliable enough to mould. Still, he’s going to give it a go during the 30 SECONDS he has to plate up in front of the judges :\

Soggy broccoli ruins the day

TERRIBLE NEWS FOR SIMON’S BROCCOLI: it’s overdone. The sous vide has made it all mushy. It was already a questionable dish if every single thing went right during the cook, now his odds are even worse.

Simon says he wanted it to be a “sick broccoli dish” and, in a way, he got what he wanted:

soggy broccoli
This broccoli is truly diseased. Photograph: Network Ten

Reynold really needs to step his game up. This is so embarrassing for him

Sarah Tiong isn’t making hot chippies because she thinks it’s not fancy enough for her charcoal chicken. Instead, she’s making little fried potato gems to “MasterChef it up” (is that really much fancier?)

Uh oh, another pressure cooker situation. Tessa is using it to cook her sticky pork, and the judges are worried that it’ll dry out the meat.

“It didn’t work for me last time, but hopefully it works for me this time,” she replies. Okay!! I think there’s a famous quote about that...

Meanwhile, Simon is vacuum-packing his chopped broccoli (mmm yummy?). Jock seems to feel the same way as I do. He silently stands over Simon, with no feedback whatsoever, slowly raising one eyebrow.

Even Poh is worried. She says Reynold is off pulling a Reynold, and the other two dishes just sound more flavourful… Are “naked” veggies enough?

Reynold returns to optimum functionality

Reynold is making dacquoise, whipped ganache, cherry syrup, liquid nitrogen gelato and yoghurt snow all at once. His arms are a blur. He is working at hyperspeed as our earthly conception of time melts around him like tempered chocolate under hot caramel. Sparks are flying out his ears.

“I need to push harder,” he says. “Maximum capacity required. Microchips. Overheating.”

Reynold with dry ice
“00101110101110001010101011100” Photograph: Network Ten

Sarah Tiong is making charcoal chicken, which I strongly endorse. She also says she’s going to “Southeast-Asian it up”. Even better.

Sarah says that when her mum moved to Australia as a student nurse, charcoal chicken was a big luxury. Then, when she had kids she’d often treat them to chicken and chips.

“TIONG IS BACK.” <3

Simon is making “naked broccoli”: a thank you to Australian producers and, for him, the most Australian thing he could make. I doubt a majority of Australians would agree with that assessment but hey, the judges said to make it personal!

Reynold is making a bloody Cherry Ripe, like he’s working out of the Bon Appetit test kitchen.

He says the dish will be “his take” on a Cherry Ripe and he wants it to look like - and this isn’t a joke or any kind of exaggeration at all - the Sydney Opera House. I repeat: Reynold is making the Sydney Opera House out of Cherry Ripe.

I was actually freakishly close when I guessed he was going to do a pie MCG.

Tessa is making a sticky braised pork dish with sea succulents and natives. She says that Australia is a melting pot of cultures, so she wants to make something that incorporates many cuisines. The lamb lobby is not going to be happy about her using pork for this.

Round two: I am, you are, we are cooking for our lives

So, the second round. Tessa, Simon, Sarah and Reynold each have to cook a dish that represents “their Australia”. It can pretty much be anything they like, but they have to have a good explanation for why it represents Australia to them.

It’s a great way to offset the first round, but wow what a task! No pressure, but here’s a deeply political challenge to complete under extreme time pressure on national television. If you include some kind of personal or family trauma, even better. Yum yum.

The contestants with the worst dishes in round one, who will be going on to cook in round two are: Tessa, Simon, Sarah and Reynold. Wow, there were a fair few dud ones for this challenge hey!

Reece has a big ol’ case of survivor’s guilt. His filling was so good that the judges excused his soggy pastry. I can already tell that he’ll cry at the end of this episode.

Also good to know that I’m not the only nerd out there:

Back to Reynold. The bad news: the pastry is raw and the chicken’s overcooked. The good news: the filling is delicious.

Yep, sure seems like he will be cooking in round two!!

While we’re in an ad break, what’s everyone view on pie etiquette?

Another good option: taking off the lid and putting chippies in. You can have that one for free.

Oh boy, is Andy on the socials tonight?

Reynold’s chicken and leek pie is next up. He seems pretty sure he’ll be cooking in round two. Jock is thrilled. Time for an ad break.

Time for Tessa’s gran’s pie: “Josie Pye’s Pie”. (I’m not saying Tessa is lying about her grandma’s name, but Josie Pye is also a character from Anne of Green Gables.)

The verdict: the pastry is good! And… that’s it. Andy hates her grandma’s recipe: the meat is dry, the sauce is too strong and over-reduced. Melissa softens the blow by essentially saying “I like that you tried…” Ooft.

Tessa looking upset
This is not the kind of crying about their grandmothers people are supposed to do on this show. Photograph: Network Ten

Laura’s pork and fennel pie is succulent and flavourful. Also, Emelia’s chicken, leek and pancetta is the best chicken pie Jock has ever had! (Weird she didn’t get more airtime then)

Meanwhile, everyone’s having extremely normal feelings about Jess.

Reece brings up his wallaby pie, clearly upset. He’s disappointed in the pastry, which looks to be cracking and sagging on the plate.

The good news is: the filling might just be the best one of the day! The bad news: yep, that pastry sucks dude.

Simon’s beer pie is mediocre and “not lovely”. There’s not enough flavour or seasoning in the gravy.

Sarah’s pork belly pie is “not wonderful”. The pork is very dry.

This is all “not good”.

Brendan’s Mauritian beef pie is next. He fixed up the pastry with some scissors, so it looks less like scrambled egg and more like a Portugese egg tart (slightly better).

It’s a delight! The flavour is jam-packed, the rough puff is perfect.

Ok back to Khanh’s pie.

Melissa loves it! She tells a very Jock-style story about eating a curry pie when she was three years old in Brighton-Le-Sands (I don’t know Sydney very well, but this is the kind of name I would make up for a cartoonishly rich suburb).

Unfortunately, the top of the pie is undercooked… Khanh could definitely be cooking again today.

Khanh is confident in his filling, but not so confident in the pastry… They leave us to sweat it out over the ad break.

Let’s just use this time to focus on the positives:

Jock says it’s “perfect coq au vin”. Andy loves the little cheesy pastry. Melissa says it’s homely and hearty and lovely. Poh is almost definitely safe :)

It’s time to taste!

Poh is up first. She’s so relaxed, which is deeply disturbing. It does make sense though because this pie looks perfect. She says it was a real “muscle memory” cook, because this is what she loves to do.

Time’s up!!! Khanh is absolutely shrieking: “WE ACTUALLY MADE A PIE. NO RECIPE. WE MADE A PIE.” This is extremely relatable to me, a person who approaches each meal like a mad science experiment doomed for failure.

The pies are coming out of the oven. Poh’s looks perfect! Emelia’s looks like a little squat brick but she seems happy. Reynold’s looks very flaky and good! He sets his facial settings to ‘smile’.

Reece is stressing and compares looking into the oven as “looking at a car crash”. This does not bode well.

Jock peers into the oven and describes Brendan’s pies as “rustic”. It looks like a child has filled some pie tins with two sweaty handfuls of scrambled egg.

Gross pies
Photograph: Network Ten

Khanh’s is the last pie in the oven. Everyone now just has to pray and hope it works out while not getting too many tears in their sauce.

Reynold finally gets his pie in.

“I feel like Poh!” he says, crouched in front of the oven, noses pressed against the hot glass.

Poh and Reynold peer into the oven
‘Mother and Child’, by Goya or one of those other old sickos who loved pain. Photograph: Network Ten

An update on Khanh:

Both Simon and Sarah still have their fillings in the pressure cooker as everyone else puts their pies in the oven. Everyone is extremely worried.

Pray for Sarah Tiong. I can’t see her go straight after Jess. I can’t do it. We’ve suffered enough.

She then gives everyone in Australia a heart attack when she tells Andy she hasn’t made a sauce. Don’t worry!!!! She has one, she just didn’t know what he was talking about (standard).

Poh says her coq au vin is very rich and classic-tasting, despite not making it the usual way. She says she makes pies a lot, and gives a very smart little shout out to her business Jamface (we’re in corona times now, gotta hustle girl).

Everyone is freaking out about time. Reece is flinging his wallaby filling in the blast chiller to cool it down before he puts it in the pastry before he puts it in the oven. Brendan is sprinting around the kitchen, slipping on melted butter and tears.

“No one wants to go home and eat the ol’ humble pie!” Andy yells at the contestants. “That certainly wouldn’t be fulFILLING. Winning this challenge is definitely not a pie in the sky thinking!!!

“I hope you’re all feeling hap-PIE. I only wish you hap-PIE-ness and PIECE. Life is what you BAKE it...”

Melissa escorts Andy, blathering with increasing urgency, out of the kitchen.

Jock approaches Reynold’s bench, absolutely thrilled at the prospect of his potential failure. “Is it possible… we’ve got Reynold rattled???” he says.

Reynold replies with “congratulations” which wow.

A scene from Mad Men where Don disses someone
Photograph: Mad Men

Reynold gets his pastry out of the fridge and it’s an absolute mess: the tray was too hot and everything’s melted.

Is it possible… he made a mistake??????? Are his wires crossed? Is he short-circuiting? Someone pls reboot.

If you were wondering, yes, the nightly Laura jokes have started.

Reece is making a wallaby pie, even though he’s been a vegan for the past eight months. Yum yum, love to pound mounds of shaved butter into the tabletop while breaking down an animal carcass on the stove!

Meanwhile, Tessa’s boasting about her grandma’s last name literally being Pie. Coincidentally, she’s also great at making pie.

Tessa says her gran’s beef pie recipe usually takes FOUR HOURS, but she is using the pressure cooker to try and speed things up (EEK).

Remember last week when Poh tried to do this (who else) and then stood in front of a very slowly depressuring pressure cooker having a mental breakdown about not being able to even access her food? Good luck, Tessa!!

Now to Poh... Poh is doing a coq au vin pie with smoked cheddar crust. FYI Taste.com.au says that an “easy coq au vin takes one hour to cook. Cool cool cool cool.

She says she’s not going to make it the usual way and won’t use any stock. It’s a tense moment with Jock, but Melissa instantly makes it better by sauntering away and saying “it’s a no-stock coq”. Well, that solves that!!

What’s everyone else doing?

Laura is making pork and fennel pie. Emelia is doing chicken, leek and pancetta.

Brendan is making a Mauritian beef curry pie, his pan is heaped with roughly 56 spices. Looks good. Simon is opting for beef and stout, with a tomato/chilli sauce.

Sarah is making a braised pork belly pie with apple sauce. She’s hesitant about the time it’ll take: twice cooking the pork belly itself before baking it in the pastry. Sounds like a valid concern!

Khanh is making a coconut chicken curry pie with chilli jam/sauce/relish/thing. And he’s doing rough puff! Everyone’s yelling about it here too!

Like Khanh said, it’s basically just a shortcut to puff pastry: you grate the butter into small slivers instead of repeatedly pounding a big old slab of butter into it.

Reynold is making a chicken and leek pie with tomato chutney, like his mum makes. He says he has an artisan bakehouse that sells meat pies… but he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. His mum and another chef cover this boring peasant business, while he sculpts fairgrounds and dreamscapes out of sugar - obviously.

He’s making a puff pastry - a type of pastry that the Great British Bakeoff has taught me is an absolute nightmare. I know this because they’re always anxiously yelling about how they’re doing “rough puff” instead.

Oh god, Jock is back on the HP Sauce. He’s hooting and hollering for that brown sauce. The other judges are rightfully disgusted.

Let me tell ya: Andy is absolutely frothin’ for this one. It makes sense. Before entering MasterChef in 2012, Andy was an electrician. He’s fangin’ for the tradie’s brekky.

Anyone who also makes him a choccy milk is automatically safe from elimination.

Round one: just cook a ripper pie, mate

Let’s get straight into it! Tonight’s elimination is over two rounds. The bottom four contestants from round one will go into round two.

In the first challenge, they’ll be cooking “the classic Australian dish”: a meat pie with tomato sauce.

“We’ve heard your touching stories about immigrating to this country,” the judges say. “We’ve embraced all the incredible cuisines your families have taught you. Now we must pay our dutiful honour to white people’s favourite meat slop!!”

The pies must be savoury, the filling must be encased in pastry, and they must also come with a sauce. They have 90 minutes, let’s go!

What’s the bet that Reynold’s meat pie is a perfect diorama of the MCG? (Man, I miss eating my meat slop at the footy)

Callum is also missing from the photo below, and he’s already safe from tonight’s elimination. So try not to panic too much.

The show hasn’t started yet, but I’m already getting juicy tips.

Emelia posted this pic on Instagram an hour ago. Hopefully... Poh was um... taking the photo?

Hi everyone! It’s been another absolute horror week in the real world, so thanks for taking a time out with me to make jokes about pasta and cakes.

If you didn’t catch any episodes this week (fair, there’s a lot going on), here’s a little recap.

It was a good week for: Callum, who has immunity for tonight’s cook. This week was “Heats Week”, which involved a Hunger Games-style fight to the death over four nights. The challenges included cooking with citrus (yum, seems pretty chill), ingredients decided from a bingo-style mystery box (classic MasterChef antics), and cooking a dessert with meat/protein in it (um…..)

It came down to Callum, Poh and Khanh. They all did pretty great, but Callum took it out in the last round by literally getting tens across the board.

It was a bad week for: Laura, after Callum casually made fresh pasta in less than 20 minutes as part of his final challenge.

Also a bad week for Jock, whose stories are steadily getting more and more concerning. (We must never, ever forget the eggs)

Tonight: An “Australian-themed” pressure test that will see another contestant eliminated. At the end of tonight’s show we’ll know the top ten contestants! Callum is already safe. As is Reynold, I assume, just by virtue of being Reynold. But who will fill the last eight spots????

Tweet me @msmegwatson or send me an email!

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