This week MasterChef unleashed Beat the Brigade Week: service challenges that set our humble “home cooks” against the best in the business, leaving me a smoking pile of traumatised ashes as I remember working service at an Italian restaurant during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Luckily for our faves, nobody yelled at them for trying to carry six spaghetti marinaras past the big screen just as Denmark was about to score against Uruguay.
There were highlights (Depinder dazzling Tonka’s Adam D’Sylva with her curry sauce!), lowlights (burnt pork belly nightmares at Movida!), and even traffic lights (a colour-focused challenge against Stokehouse!), all of which have brought us to Sunday night’s elimination.
Green team (Jess, Tommy, Dan and Scott) and Turquoise team (Sabina, Justin, Pete and Amir) return to the poultry shed to compete … AGAINST EACH OTHER. Melissa announces the challenge with the glee of a supervillain: “The relay,” she hollers, spreading her arms wide as lightning cracks overhead and children weep. Oh yes, they’ve all heard the tales of relay challenges of old. “White chocolate velouté … White chocolate velouté,” Dan mumbles, experiencing anguish.
It gets worse: the key ingredient will only be revealed to the first person in each team. There are more rules, which I can’t remember, because I’m already under the table making low-pitched keening noises.
Jess and Sabina are tapped to go first, and the ingredient is revealed … The team captains react as though Jock and Andy have just whipped the sheet off to reveal Surströmming or goji berries, but the ingredient is … apples.
Sabina explains that she’s “from the Apple Isle” as she begins an apple-glazed pork chop with apple slaw. Jess is making duck with apple and parsnip puree, but when it’s handover time and she communicates this to Dan, he seems to be astral travelling to the site of white chocolate velouté trauma.
Things aren’t much better at Turquoise station. “I heard a lot of words, and I’m trying to recall it …” says Justin as he paces around, before wandering off to the pantry for inspiration. In the viewing room, Sabina looks as if she’s about to lay an apple.
In the garden, Scott and Tommy are roleplaying how to ask questions during the handover; within seconds, Tommy heads in to cast +3 question on Dan and receive +5 apple hero in his bag of holding. Despite Tommy’s expert-level roleplaying, it turns out the apple chips are on fire and the parsnip-apple puree tastes like baby food; this wasn’t in his Players’ Handbook!
Meanwhile, Justin has helpfully laid about 37,000 “options” out on the Turquoise station, leaving Amir looking like an apple once killed his entire family.
Finally it’s time for the soft spoken blondes to bring it home: Scott and ASMR Pete are in!
“I don’t know what we’re going to do, to be honest,” Tommy says, by way of a handover with Scott. “All of our roleplay in the garden has gone out the window!” exclaims Scott, presumably preparing to cast Speak with Plants on the ingredients. Jess and Dan watch in agony as Scott adds parsnip chips to the duck fat. Hey, in a way, aren’t parsnips just long apples? Just thinking out loud!
Suddenly, ASMR Pete works his magic on Turquoise team’s “pork and apples”! He cuts into the pork loin and Justin, Amir and Sabina lose their minds. “It looks sick!” Justin yells, like pork loin just scored a crucial goal against apples.
“It looks amazing, so similar to how I’d imagined it,” Sabina says, as Pete plates up a pork loin on an apple compote, despite the fact she’d imagined a pork chop with an apple slaw. Justin waves a chair in the air in celebration: never change you perfect weirdo.
Turquoise team’s sauce is a bit underplayed, but all the judges agree the pork dish is “apple-forward”. Green team’s duck is praised by Andy, but lo and behold, those pesky parsnips have overpowered the apple flavour, and our Green pals head into round two to make apple-focused desserts.
It’s Dan’s seventh time in a black apron, and in a moment of foreboding, his wedding ring flies off and rolls under a bench. Jess is paying homage to her grandmother’s apple streusel cake, and thinking about home.
“Streusel, pie or crumble, let’s get ready to rumble!” Jock yells, shortly before Sting runs in and takes him out with a scorpion death drop.
Finally, it’s time to eat. Dan’s apple sorbet is a winner. Scott’s “retro” apple charlotte cheesecake looks so good I tried to cut my TV open just to see if I could get a slice …
… but the judges just like it, not love it. Jess’s grab bag of “apple textures” is deemed “problematic” by Mel and Andy holds a cube of raw apple up like he’s found a blue Band-Aid in his dessert.
After much fear on his part, Tommy’s “táo-er” of apple and flaky pastry bewitches the judges, so it’s down to Jess and Scott. Both dishes have “issues”, but Jess’s dish “has a great story, but too many flaws”, and so she heads home – first via Flame-Throwers-R-Us, and then the nearest apple orchard.
What made me cry
Tommy keeping it together during the cook then taking one look at a photo of his “little baby boy” and coming undone. HE’S PROUD OF YOU, TOMMY! WE ALL ARE!!
The white chocolate velouté award for failure
Parsnips, for not tasting like apples. Who’da thunk it?
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