Season 6 of MasterChef Australia is due to return to our TV screen soon after Easter. The actual premiere date has not been revealed yet. However Channel 10 has been running the first promo for the past couple of weeks, and has started showing promos of some of the contestants, well so far I have seen two (Amy, Emily), this week.
This year, MCA has “promised” that we will be seeing the best home cooks ever, but as promises go, MCA does not have very good track records, just look at the appalling group of unskilled contestants from last year! Every year before the season began, they came out spewing promises that the show is all about the cooking, and yet all we’ve got since season 3 were more and more personal sob stories that nobody really cares (I watch MasterChef to see the cooking skills of the contestants, NOT their personal life stories!), or constant tears and crying because they can’t cook! The skills of the contestants have been going downhill fast since season two, and with not a single outstanding contestant in sight. Therefore I will not keep my hopes up until I see the first couple of episodes.
Can MasterChef Australia season six boost Channel 10’s ratings?
MasterChef contestants: where are they now?
Oh, well, here’s something more interesting… The coaches from The Voice Australia doing a parody of MasterChef Blind Tasting, LOL
On a side note, one of the regular international guest judges on MCA, Heston Blumenthal, has recently announced that he is moving his famous restaurant, The Fat Duck, to Melbourne for six months next year. Good news, but what are the chances of getting a table there for the mere mortals even if you can afford it? LOL
Update April 21, 2014: Is MCA already in trouble? Just had had a look at the views statistic today on YouTube for the two videos I’ve embedded above… So far, only a paltry 300+ views for the MCA promo versus 10,600+ views for the Voice Blind Tasting… Ouch, MCA is not looking to be very popular, is it? Maybe the crying-wolf tactics of the show is “all about the cooking” from the producers the past couple of seasons, yet giving us contestants who seemed to have limited/no basic skills and only entering the show “to learn how to cook”, have finally caught up with them?
Update April 23, 2014: Channel 10 has just announced that MasterChef Australia season 6 will begin Monday, May 5, 2014 at 7:30pm. This year Chef Kylie Kwong will be a regular guest mentor on the show, helping to guide the contestants through testing times.
Next wave of reality TV to roll in from next week
TV Networks set dates for post Easter franchises
MasterChef’s added ingredient
Does MasterChef Australia need to change its ingredients?
MasterChef faces the chopping block if ratings fail to improve
Masterchef left out of the mix by upstart My Kitchen Rules
MasterChef Australia season six review Back to cooking, not drama
Mackay woman set to add flavour to new MasterChef series
The Voice smashes ratings with more than two million viewers and will take on MasterChef, House Rules
TEN invests in research to reheat MasterChef
Ep 1, Monday, May 5, 2014 – 12 (or Less) 14 Aprons for the Top 50
OK, I’ll admit it, after the first 20 minutes, I’m impressed. It looks like MasterChef is going back to its root so far. It has a more sombre feel compared to last year’s silly loud opening episode. I was all but given up on MCA thinking it was on a one-way street to the rubbish heap the way it was going the past couple of years. So I was rather glad to see it has done a U-turn. First dish featured is Sarawak Laksa, one of my favourite dishes, I hope they publish the recipes properly this year instead of withholding some recipes like the last couple of years. And wow, the judges are tough this year which is a good thing, the younger brother of Ben from Series 4 could not even make it through, and I’m sure he would have been coached through by Ben about what the judges like and don’t like.
Some of the dishes are presented so well and looked so professional, they could beat any of the Top 12 from the past three years, seriously! And we are only in the Top 50 stage! I’m looking forward to the episode when the 5 former champions return, especially the last two winners and them having to be confronted by the fact that the Top 24 this year are better cooks than them. It will be hilarious!
Yes, there are still sob stories, but we’ll just have to get over that as they are the producers’ pets. The thing with sob stories are, they don’t suddenly and automatically make the contestants good cook or make them deserving of a place in the Top 24! And in previous two to three years, sometimes I think the judges were swayed by the sob stories rather than cooking abilities. And we all know how that went!
I was thinking also this episode would have been great if it was a blind tasting instead. The contestants cook their dish outside, then waiter bring the dish in for blind tasting. The judges then make their verdict before letting the contestant in for critique and judges have their first meeting with the contestant. But that will never happen, will it… Oh wait, that’s another show… LOL
Anyway, otherwise surprisingly I did enjoy most of this episode. They did move those who did not make it quickly through and concentrated on those who made it into the Top 24. So looking forward to tomorrow. Just hope they keep the standard up this year, and not deteriorates after a few episodes.
Sarawak Laksa (Emily Loo)
Potato Curry (Deepali Behar)
Chicken Involtino, Served with Polenta and Caponata (Laura Cassai)
Jaffa & Black Sesame Macarons (Cecilia Vuong)
Chocoholics Delight (Tash Shan)
Lemon Panna Cotta with Roasted Rhubarb and Toasted Meringue (Emelia Jackson)
Soba Noodle and Duck Salad with Squid Kara-age with Japanese Mayonnaise (Nicole Cleave)
Crab and Prawn Wontons in a Seafood Bisque (Rachael Ciesiolka)
Red Emperor with Lemon Cream Caper Sauce (Amy Shields)
Pan Fried Snapper with Asparagus, Fennel Puree and Orange Miso Reduction (Ben Macdonald)
Squid Ink Spaghetti with Vongole and Cuttlefish (Sean Baxter)
Chateaubriand with Béarnaise-Sauce and Potato and Speck Gratin (Sam Gant)
Chicken Tasting Plate (Colin Sheppard)
Chicken with Prosciutto Crumbs and Walnut Sauce (Tracy Collins)
Second-Chance Contestants (to cook again tomorrow):
Lemon Curd & Almond Crumble Cake (Nick Doyle)
Empanadilla Scallops with Morcilla Croquette Spicy Mussels (Jamie Fleming)
Raw Chocolate Ganache Cake (Kira Westwick)
Crispy Skin Snapper, Citrus Bur Blanc, Fondant Potato and Garlic Custard (Brendan Langfield)
Deconstructed Roast Lamb (Brent Owens)
Chocolate & Peanut Butter Tart (Renae Smith)
Twice Cooked Chicken Drumsticks with Crispy Chive and Parmesan Rostis (Scott Yeoman)
Tom Kime’s Beef Stroganoff (Sarah Todd)
Steak Frites with Maitre d’ Butter (Byron Finnerty)
Whole Fish 3 Ways (Steven Peh)
Nine cooking tips from new series of MasterChef Australia (Matt Preston)
MasterChef Australia Series 6 set to highlight Melbourne & Victoria’s culinary credentials
Former Anglesea cook Sam Gant a MasterChef contestant
MasterChef, House Rules rate OK as Game of Thrones slays on pay TV
MasterChef returns to tears, cheers akin to One Direction concert
Ep 2, Tuesday, May 6, 2014 – Final 10 Aprons for the Top 50: Invention Test using 1 of 3 Core Skills & Pressure Test
The first challenge tonight is an Invention Test for the remaining 18 contestants to get the next 7 aprons available. In 75 minutes, they have to show one of the 3 core skills required from the judges in an Invention Test; they are either Fish Filleting, Butchery (eg. breaking down poultry or Frenching lamb cutlets), or Pastry.
The second challenge is a 2-hour Pressure Test set by George. The last 6 contestants will have to fight for the final 3 aprons.
Welcome back, Invention Test and Pressure Test, I’ve missed you! This is what MCA is all about! Just have to say, George’s dessert tonight looks as good as those of Heston… Drool…
LOL, Byron reminded me of a reverse Jonathan from season two, Jonathan was all go, go, go; while Byron is slow-and-steady-win-the-race kind of guy. Seeing how much time he spent reading the recipe was nerve wracking to say the least. And isn’t it refreshing nobody is shouting instructions from the sideline?
Lemon, Lime and Bitters (George Calombaris)
Fire back in the belly for Matt Preston as MasterChef goes back to basics with good cooks
Scott Gelzinnis, Nick Doyle, on The Voice, Masterchef
Meet Byron Finnerty, the MasterChef hottie everyone is talking about
Ep 3, Wednesday, May 7, 2014 – A Top 24 Substitution, The Former Champions’ Mystery Box & Core Theme Invention Test
Middle: Byron, Steven, Kira, Jamie, Brent, Tracy, Emelia, Deepali
Front: Tash, Emily, Rachael, Renae, Georgia, Laura
A surprise in the first five minutes with the news that Cecilia has to retire from the competition following doctor’s advice, so Georgia who had the next best dish from last night’s Pressure Test is in. That’s unexpected! Then the five former champions come into the kitchen bearing this year’s trophy and they had also chosen an ingredient each to make up tonight’s Mystery Box. The ingredients are:
Julie – Lemon
Adam – Guava
Kate – White Chocolate
Andy – Hazelnuts
Emma – Rhubarb
The second challenge is a Core Theme Invention Test with the three themes being Past, Present or Future.
Although I’m enjoying seeing some good dishes being cooked on the show so far three episodes in, a few things about MCA still annoyed the hell out of me. First of course is the sob stories. I was hoping after the Top 24 has been chosen that they will put more emphasis on the cooking and not wasting time showing those sob-story clips again and again! Next of course is that the judges do not taste every dish during judging time for Mystery Box challenge, how can they judge without tasting every dish? I know they taste bits and pieces during the cooking, but still if they don’t taste the final dish, how could they know? Also recipes not being published, they got episode 1’s recipes out but where are the recipes from episode 2’s Invention Test? They are still not available as I type this and episode 3 on air at the moment! Finally not showing all the dishes being cooked, these are perennial problems year after year that I’m just too tired to complain anymore…
Enough ranting! Let’s move to the positive. Up to this point a few contestants have stood out for me, Ben, Jamie (looks like he’s staying a while as there’s a big poster at a tram shelter near my place with him on it about a croquembouche he made that Matt likes), Nick (dessert only so far) only because they are being shown more. Whereas contestants like Tracy and Colin are a big mystery as we have barely seen them at all, also Emily has gone missing in this episode except a few seconds at the end. Well, trying to follow the progress of some of the contestants on MCA is just impossible.
Also interesting about the ingredients chosen by the former champions. The first four winners all chose an ingredient that they used during their season that stood out for them, and Emma, well what can I say, she chose an ingredient from a dish someone else cooked that she tasted during her visit to Paris with Matt. LOL. Also best line of the night is from Andy standing on the balcony watching the contestants cooked, “At this stage, I could not even boil an egg!” and he was surprised most of the contestants actually know how to make pastry… LMAO. But at least he was honest and humble enough to even say it out loud.
Lemon Curd with White Chocolate Mousse and Hazelnut Praline (Nick Doyle)
Lemon Cake with Rhubarb and Guava Ball (Georgia Hughes)
Lemon Tart with Meringue and Guava Sorbet (Tash Shan)
Hazelnut and White Chocolate Iced Nougat (Sarah Todd)
Roasted Rhubarb, Hazelnut Crumble & White Chocolate Ganache (Ben Macdonald)
Spiced Smoked Salmon with Pumpkin and Carrot Puree (Jamie Fleming)
Golden Chocolate Truffle Tart (Georgia Hughes) – this is a surprise, can’t recall seeing it on the show tonight!
Cecilia Vuong out of MasterChef Australia’s top 24 on medical advice
The dough keeps on rising for our previous five MasterChef winners
Ep 4, Thursday, May 8, 2014 – Elimination #1
Elimination based on Chinese cuisine with the first appearance of Kylie Kwong
Round 1 (21 contestants) – Fried Rice (30 minutes) – 12 will be safe
Round 2 (9 contestants) – Name That Chinese Ingredients
Round 3 (3 Contestants) – Chinese-Inspire Dish (60 minutes)
LOL, quite a few contestants just plain confused Chinese with South-East Asian fried rice…
Safe Round 1 – Tash, Emelia, Colin, Nick, Emily, Georgia, Nicole, Kira, Sarah, Scott, Tracy & Byron
Safe Round 2 – Steven, Brent, Renae, Sam, Ben & Amy
Uh oh, did the promo give away who’s been eliminated now we know what the 3 contestants are cooking? Kylie said she’s not eating that and they showed the dumplings, looks like Deepali is gone!
Oh, no, hang on, maybe it is Brendan with the undercooked pork, hahaha, clever editing, fools me again…
Safe Round 3 – Rachael, Deepali
Eliminated: Brendan
Traditional Chinese Fried Rice (Tash Shan)
Ji Xiang Fried Rice (Emily Loo)
Prawn and Chicken Fried Rice (Tracy Collins)
Special Fried Rice with Scampi (Sarah Todd)
Egg and Prawn Fried Rice (Nicole Cleave)
Pork, Prawn and Sausage Fried Rice (Kira Westwick)
Egg and Shrimp Fried Rice (Georgia Hughes)
Chinese Sausage and Prawn Fried Rice (Emelia Jackson)
Pork Fried Rice (Scott Yeoman)
Fried Rice with Chinese Sausage and Shrimp (Nick Doyle)
Special Fried Rice with Marinated Pork (Colin Sheppard)
Westerners’ Vegetarian Fried Rice (Byron Finnerty)
Szechuan and Coriander Mud Crab with Aromatic Chinese Broccoli (Rachael Ciesiolka)
Raw pork disaster sees Brendan Langfield out of MasterChef
MasterChef inspired by Kilkivan childhood
Ratings: Masterchef tops one million
Masterchef serves up rare good news for Ten
Warming up: Kylie Kwong helps MasterChef over the one million mark
A crab that Kylie Kwong couldn’t resist
Today plates up national radio show with MasterChef Australia
George Calombaris lists the five toughest challenges in MasterChef Australia history
Ep 5, Sunday, May 11, 2014 – Mystery Box & Breakfast Invention Test
Mystery Box (1 hour): chicken, pineapple, cinnamon, pistachio, beetroot, thyme, yoghurt, liquorice
Like Colin’s chicken wing’s sausage idea and love the look of Tash’s cake.
Invention Test (1 hour): Breakfast
Core Ingredient Choices: Bacon, Eggs (from different poultry), Mushrooms
Scott’s not feeling well, so stepping out of this challenge and will go straight into elimination with 3 others who have the worst dishes.
Let’s see if the editors are back to their old habit of showing only top 3 and bottom 3! They are focusing on Kira (winner of Mystery Box), Emelia, Byron, Jamie, Deepali, Sarah, & Nick so far.
Top 3: Sarah (best dish), Kira, Byron
Bottom 3: Deepali, Nick, Jamie
Yep, old habit is back! No surprise there at all. Come on, you can do better than that, MCA editors! Based on the predictable editing, Scott will be gone tomorrow. The other three all had their sob stories played a few times, and I cannot remember any from Scott and he’s been quite invisible so far. Jamie still hasn’t shown us his croquembouche yet, so he’s safe. Deepali will get a lot of help from the squawking cockatoos up in the gallery, so she could be safe. Nick’s sob stories will save him if that’s what sob stories on MCA are for.
Chicken Roulade with Pineapple Jam and Pistachio Crumbs (Kira Westwick) – Best Dish Mystery Box
Pistachio and Cinnamon Cake with Liquorice Custard and Pineapple and Thyme Foam (Tash Shan)
Cinnamon Chicken with Beetroot and Pistachio (Renae Smith)
Scotch Quail Eggs with Salmon Tartare (Sarah Todd)
Chipotle Salsa and Lime and Coriander Smoothie (Kira Westwick)
Spanish Eggs and Churros (Byron Finnerty)
Ep 6, Monday, May 12, 2014 – Shannon Bennett’s Pressure Test
Pressure Test (1 1/2 hours) – Shannon Bennett’s Filet de Boeuf et Pommes Soufflé au Jus Gras
LOL, what’s going on with Jamie’s facial hair? It is very disconcerting watching his moustache changing shape from one minute to the next during the challenge and when he’s talking to camera.
Oh, glad to see Scott did quite well, hope I’m wrong and he stays. I think Jamie is OK too, so that leaves Nick and Deepali.
Hmm, Nick looks OK too, except for the blue steak but the Matt likes it.
Good, Scott is safe…
Eliminated: Deepali
Good decision!
Filet De Bouef Et Pommes Souffle Au Jus Gras (Shannon Bennett)
Hmm, very interesting read about Tash’s previous unsuccessful audition (last season) but got the call from producers to audition again for this year. It certainly gives credential to rumour that producers rejected good cooks in previous year, and selected mediocre contestants so they can grow and learn through the series, so the producers could manipulate an ugly duckling to swan fairy tale that they obviously wallowed in…
Natasha Shan: Canberra’s new MasterChef star
MasterChef slips as The Voice shines
Ep 7, Tuesday, May 13, 2014 – Upstairs Downstairs Team Challenge
Team Challenge – Captain Baxter (upstairs) & Republica (downstairs) in St. Kilda
Prep. Time: 4 hours
Service: 1 – 3pm
Red Team (Republica): Sarah (captain), Kira, Sam, Jamie, Ben, Sean, Emelia, Renae, Colin, Georgia, Nick – Sarah who won the Invention Test has the advantage of choosing her team members
Blue Ream (Captain Baxter): Tracy (captain), Amy, Steven, Laura, Rachael, Scott, Brent, Emily, Tash, Nicole, Byron
Finally we see Tracy, Brent and Colin, after 6 episode! Tracy seems to be a better captain, Sarah is all over the place. The blue team also has Steven who’s experienced with front of house.
LOL, nobody wants to go to Red’s restaurant… and already full house at Blue’s restaurant.
Hahaha, Red Team made changes to their dishes but did not correct their menu… Customers ordered tacos but got served bruschetta…
Uh, oh, Blue Team ran out of food… Customers abandoning and going to Red’s… Not good!
Yum, Red’s Chocolate Mousse Tart looks so delicious!
Red Team: $2477 (winners)
Blue Team: $1952
Blue Team Menu:
Red Team Menu:
Trio of Dips
Flathead Croquettes with Dill Mayonnaise
Seared Scallop with Capsicum Gazpachio
Seared Prawns on Avocado Toast
Mushroom & Rocket Pizza
Bacon & Blue Cheese Pizza
Seared Salmon with Pickle and Aioli
Mediterranean Spatchcock
Eye Fillet with Beetroot and White Bean Puree
Chocolate Mousse Tart with Salted Caramel
Lemon Panna Cotta
Newtown mum Renae Smith puts it all on the line for a shot at the Masterchef title
Ep 8, Wednesday, May 14, 2014 – Snapper Elimination
3 rounds of 30-minute challenge using only 1 snapper
Oh, so the gutsy thing with Nicole is she’s going to cook the whole snapper in the first round… Wow, no backup plan if she’s not in the top 5 in Round 1… But I think she can do it as she’s one of the stronger cook I reckon.
Meanwhile Steven has given up already, preparing to go into all 3 rounds, oh dear!
Oh, the judges, stop harassing Nicole and waste her time, let her get on with it!
Mmm, Emily’s Fish Head Curry looks so delicious!
Wow, so many yummy dishes… Really impressed!
Oh no, maybe Nicole is going, 50 minutes in and judges still tasting first round dishes… I think the judges jeopardized Nicole’s chances by messing with her head and wasting her time, if they had just let her get on with it, she would have time to properly cook the whole fish, jeez…
Safe after Round 1: Tash, Emily (Matt’s dish of the day), Laura, Rachael, Amy
Eliminated: Nicole
East Malaysian Fish Head Curry (Emily Loo)
Crisp Snapper with Sauteed Mushrooms (Tash Shan)
Sicilian Snapper Involtino (Laura Cassai)
Husbands Treasures (Rachael Ciesiolka)
Vanilla Butter Poached Snapper (Amy Shields)
MasterChef contestant Nicole Cleave in biggest mistake seen on show
Special Episode, Thursday, May 15, 2014 – Class of 2014
A special behind the scenes look at the Top 24 21 of 2014. There was not supposed to be an episode tonight (they scheduled a Jamie Oliver episode since tomorrow is Food Revolution Day), but last Thursday’s episode was the highest rating episode of MCA6 so far this season, without having to compete head-to-head with The Voice on Nine or House Rules on 7 on Thursday, so I think Channel Ten decided to quickly cobble up an episode for tonight. I wonder if they will show the three contestants that’d already been eliminated, don’t think so!
LOL, it just showed you can’t fool viewers by cobbling together a weak, useless episode together in the last minute. viewers want to see a proper episode, not sob stories. The ratings tell the story, last week’s elimination episode was the highest rating episode to date, but last night’s was the lowest rating episode to date.
Masterchef Thursday night audience nearly halves as Nine shows edited Top Gear special
Ipoh-born wins MasterChef UK with nasi lemak, wanton soup
Ep 9, Sunday, May 18, 2014 – Maggie Beer’s Mystery Box & Spanish Invention Test
Mystery Box (1 hour): octopus (untenderized), verjuice, pear, chocolate, bayleaf, caper berries, parsley, umeboshi (Japanese preserved plums) – incl. a bottle of Vino Cotto under the bench with the basic ingredients
Best Dish: Scott
Invention Test (1 hour): Spanish with Frank Camorra
Core Ingredient Choices: chorizo, rabbit, citrus fruits
Top 3 will go into this year’s first Immunity Challenge
Glad to hear about the Top 3 from Invention Test will all go for the Immunity Pin this year. This makes sense since Bottom 3 go into Pressure Test elimination, so the Top 3 should all have the chance to fight for the Immunity Pin. Looks like they might finally get the Immunity Challenge right this year, just hope it is fair unlike the previous few years.
Top 3: Tracy, Amy, Laura
Bottom 3: Nick, Sean, Sarah (LOL, Jamie was really lucky to not be in the bottom 3 with his nearly ‘poisonous’ dish thanks to the raw-squid squad)
Chocolate Ganache Tart (Scott Yeoman) – Best Dish Mystery Box
Malaysian Sponge Cake (Emily Loo)
Poached Vino Cotto Pear (Kira Westwick)
Tenderised Octopus with Parsley Farfelle (Sarah Todd)
Char Grilled Octopus with Grilled Pears (Rachael Ciesiolka)
Chorizo Stuffed Squid with Saffron Broth and Aioli (Tracy Collins)
Chorizo and Squid Paella (Laura Cassai)
Patatas Bravas and Chorizo with Green Mojo Sauce, Caramel Chorizo and Fried Capers (Amy Shields)
Death by flowers! From a near poisoning to a shock bottom three, Sunday’s Masterchef packed a punch
Will Mega Week bring mega numbers to MasterChef
Ep 10, Monday, May 19, 2014 – Allan Wolf-Tasker’s Pressure Test
Pressure Test – Allan Wolf-Tasker’s Rivers and Lakes
I don’t know why they even need the recipe for the Pressure Test, since the yakking monkeys in the gallery are giving step-by-step instructions to the three below? I wonder what will happen if the 3 contestants were given the full recipe, but those upstairs were given truncated recipe with missing instructions à la Bake Off? I guess that will be more interesting and hilarious to watch!
Let’s see, Sean is having a lot of trouble with the recipe, does that mean he’ll be safe? Nick is also having trouble, but he still seems quite positive, so maybe elimination beckons for him?
Eliminated: Nick
Waa, something new, the other contestants are still in the kitchen saying goodbye to Nick. Was that the case last week as well? Can’t remember.
Hmm, tomorrow looks interesting, the Top Three get a mini Mystery Box, LOL. So it looks like they fight among themselves before the winner faces off against a chef.
Rivers and Lakes (Alla Wolf-Tasker)
Nick Doyle flounders on Masterchef fish dishes
Ep 11, Tuesday, May 20, 2014 – Immunity Challenge
Round 1 Amuse-Bouche Knock-Out Challenge (4 serves, 30 minutes) – Mini Mystery Box: quail, quail eggs, whitebait, melba toast, honey, finger lime, mini leek, mini beetroot
Best Dish: Tracy
Round 2 Against a Chef (amateur 75 minutes vs professional 60 minutes) – Young Chef of The Year 2014, Oliver Gould
Core Ingredient Choices (Oliver’s choice): fruit, nuts
Kylie Kwong will mentor contestants in all Immunity Challenges this year
LOL, this is funny, everything is small or tiny, even utensils and cutleries, for the mini mystery box challenge.
Once again, one look at the 2 dishes for round 2, you can tell straight away which one is from the amateur and which one from the professional. Tracy also overbeat the egg whites for the meringue and the piping was not very elegant.
Scores:
Oliver – Gary 8/10, George 8/10, Matt 8/10 = 24/30
Tracy – Gary 6/10, George 7/10, Matt 7/10 = 20/30
No Immunity Pin given out!
Quail Sausage with Quail Egg Crème and Candy Beetroot (Tracy Collins)
Lemon and Lime Curd Tart with Meringue and Candied Orange (Tracy Collins)
Ep 12, Wednesday, May 21, 2014 – Replicating Menu By Memory Team Challenge
Team Challenge: Recreating Recipes from Ezard and Cutler & Co. for 30 Diners
1 hour for team captain and vice captain to visit restaurant and memorize recipes, no notes allowed
Mise en Place: 15 minutes to transfer information to rest of team members
Prep. Time & Cooking: 30 minutes for each course
Red Team (Cutler & Co.): Jamie (captain), Emelia (vice captain), Ben, Sean, Emily, Georgia, Steven, Tracy, Brent, Sam
Blue Ream (Ezard): Sarah (captain), Tash (vice captain), Kira, Byron, Renae, Laura, Colin, Rachael, Amy, Scott
Hahaha, Red team is too cocky!
I want that cheesecake recipe, wow, drool! Just for that I want Blue to win, LOL
Best Dish:
Entrée: Blue
Main: Red
Dessert: Blue
Winner: Blue Team, yay, now waiting for the cheesecake recipe!
Blue Team Ezard’s Menu:
Mulloway (Ezard Restaurant)
Where are the other recipes? The first recipe from this season I want to try, the Fromage Frais Cheesecake, and it is not available! FRUSTRATED! I want to see what they use in place of fromage frais as I am sure it is not available in Australia.
There are two episodes for tomorrow, Thursday, night, first the elimination and then followed by the first MasterClass for the year.
Ep 13, Thursday, May 22, 2014 – Sudden Death Elimination
LOL, MCA is also using the term “sudden death elimination” for the promo today, a term used extensively by MKR.
Round 1 (10 contestants): 30 minutes, 10 ingredients
Round 2 (6 contestants): 20 minutes, 6 ingredients
Round 3 (3 contestants): 10 minutes, 3 ingredients
A table of ingredients are on offer, but once an ingredient has been taken by a contestant, no one else can use that ingredient again, and it is off the table for the remaining rounds.
Safe after Round 1: Tracy, Emelia, Sam, Ben
The editing is getting too predictable, after showing Tracy losing her head in the promo, guess what? She’s through in the first round. Every time they show someone in trouble, it is an indication that person will pull through!
Also, Steven looks like he’s one of the weakest cooks this season. Didn’t he say he has only been cooking for about 6 months in his back story?
LOL, crab and apricot jam? What’s Emily thinking!
Safe after Round 2: Jamie, Brent, Georgia
No, looks like Emily is going! She had a brain fart as she’s going to serve raw panko breadcrumbs with fried banana. She got the condensed milk because there’s no eggs, so why didn’t she coat the banana with condensed milk (in place of the egg as those in the gallery also suggested) and then panko, then deep-fried, that might have worked? Thinking about it, maybe even mash the banana, mix with the condensed milk and panko, make something like a banana cake pop thingy, coat with more panko and deep-fry?
Safe after Round 3: Sean, Steven
Eliminated: Emily
Lamb Cutlets with Cauliflower Couscous, Yoghurt and Mediterranean Vegetables (Ben Macdonald)
Beef Wrapped in Speck with Mushrooms (Tracy Collins)
Grilled Crayfish Tail with Leek Puree (Sam Gant)
Lime Meringue Tart (Emelia Jackson)
MasterChef Emily Loo eliminated after slipping on banana dish
Ep 14, Thursday, May 22, 2014 – MasterClass
Octopus with Squid Ink Pasta (Maggie Beer)
Red Wine Pears, Gingerbread, Red Wine Granita, Walnut Crumble (Alla Wolf-Tasker)
Ocean Trout on Rosti (Gary Mehigan)
Walnut with Blue Cheese Mousse (George Calombaris)
Blue Swimmer Crab with Stir Fried Greens (Kylie Kwong)
Jude’s Chicken Italienne (Matt Preston)
Runner up MasterChef takes out second in the 7:30 slot
‘Dessert Queen’ Emelia Jackson from Templestowe makes MasterChef’s final 24
Also interesting about the MasterChef House being listed for sale, does that mean this year is the final season of MasterChef Australia, or is the show moving to another city next year (or with the declining ratings and revenue, maybe they can’t keep such an expensive house anymore)?
MasterChef Australia home in Brighton for sale
Ep 15, Sunday, May 25, 2014 – Leftovers Mystery Box & Invention Test
Mystery Box (1 hour): beef fillet chains, mussel stock, bruised fruit, vegetable peels, coriander & parsley stalks, parmesan rind, beetroot leaves, chicken neck
Best Dish: Emelia
Invention Test (1 hour): Remove a Food Group from the Pantry
Choices: meat, fish, eggs, poultry, or fruit & vegetables
Finally, someone is making Chinese flaky pastry on MasterChef, looking forward to seeing Tash succeeds with her Acar & Curry Puffs! Oh no, forgot she fell over in the promo… Hope nothing serious and she gets to complete her dish!
Phew, luckily she still got some filling…
Hahaha, Gary wants to know how to make that pastry, judges love Tash’s dish! (Although what Tash did was not really an invention, but since the judges are not that knowledgeable with Asian food… That pastry may as well be a new invention in the judges’ eyes, LOL)
LOL, Gary’s face when he tasted Jamie’s crunchy dhal! Classic!
Brent can make dessert!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who knew, when we hardly see him until now.
LOL, Gary with his Akar (Acar is pronounced Achar).
Top 3: Tash, Sarah, Brent
Bottom 3: Jamie, Steven, Scott
Meatball Soup with Beetroot Pastries (Emelia Jackson)
Curry Puffs with Grandma’s Acar (Tash Shan)
Strawberries and Cream (Brent Owens)
Gobi with Paneer and Mint Chutney (Sarah Todd)
MasterChef Australia to return for seventh season in 2015
MasterChef’s contestants home in Melbourne can be yours for $5 million
Ep 16, Monday, May 26, 2014 – Christy Tania’s Pressure Test
Pressure Test – Mango Alfonso (Mango and Shiso Profiteroles, Kalamansi Sorbet, Coconut Lemongrass Foam 23)
LOL, love Christy’s no-nonsense approach and straight talking… Just like working in a real commercial kitchen!
Eliminated: Scott
Mango Alfonso – Om Nom (Christy Tania)
Is Christy Tania MasterChef’s meanest dessert chef since Adriano Zumbo?
‘Female Zumbo’ makes Scott Yeoman’s worst nightmares come true on MasterChef
Forget the ratings, MasterChef Australia has won already
Mclaren Vale’s produce inspires young MasterChef contestant Laura Cassai
Ep 17, Tuesday, May 27, 2014 – Immunity Challenge
Round 1 Chilli Knock-Out Challenge
Chilli Choices (time to cook): pablano (5 mins); jalapeño (10 mins); cayenne pepper (15 mins); pequin pepper (20 mins); habanero (30 mins)
Knife-Pull: Sarah pulled out knife 1 & chose habanero to cook with; Tash pulled out knife 2 & chose pequin to cook with; Brent was the last & chose cayenne to cook with
Best Dish: Tash
The time allowed were just ridiculous, 5 minutes to cook for pablano? By the time they run into the pantry to get the ingredients, they would have less than 5 minutes, what, the judges want chilli on toast?
Round 2 Against a Chef (amateur 75 minutes vs professional 60 minutes) – Benjamin Cooper
Core Ingredient Choices (Benjamin’s choice): herbs, spices
Which came first? Did they choose the theme for the challenge first, or did they choose the theme after they knew who the Top 3 were? It is just too coincidental that there are two contestants good with spicy Asian cuisine in this episode!
Scores:
Benjamin – Gary 10/10, George 9/10, Matt 9/10 = 28/30
Tash – Gary 8/10, George 8/10, Matt 8/10 = 24/30
No immunity pin given out again!
Pineapple Chilli Sorbet with Macerated Fruit Salad (Tash Shan)
Ep 18, Wednesday, May 28, 2014 – Darren Purchese’s Team Challenge
Team Challenge: 4-Course Dessert Dégustation
Prep. Time: 2 1/2 hours before the Centrepiece First Course
Service: 8:45pm – 10:30pm
4 core ingredients, one to be featured in each course
8:45pm 1st Course (Centrepiece) – Carrots
9:30pm 2nd course – Thyme
10:00pm 3rd course – Ginger
10:30pm 4th course (hot course) – Blue Cheese
Team chosen by alphabetical order:
Red Team (Sunday in the Garden): Amy, Brent, Colin, Georgia (captain), Kira, Rachael, Sam, Sean, Tash
Blue Team (Footprints in the Garden): Ben, Byron, Emelia (captain), Jamie, Laura, Renae, Sarah, Steven, Tracy
Shall we call Emelia the Pannacotta Queen rather than the Dessert Queen? How many times has she done or allocated someone else in her team to make pannacotta! And both times she’d allocated someone else to make it, they had failed, I don’t understand why she did not just give them her recipe to make?
LOL, the Red Team’s frozen rock-hard sorbet…
Best Course:
1st – blue
2nd – blue
3rd – red
4th – red
Winner: Blue Team, the winning edge due to the link of the footprint story through the 4 courses
Carrot Centrepiece (Blue Team)
Thyme Panna Cotta with Apricots (Blue Team)
Ginger Pond (Blue Team)
Pear Warka Cigar with Blue Cheese Mousse (Blue Team)
Ep 19, Thursday, May 29, 2014 – Taste Test Elimination
Round 1: Blind Taste Test (23 ingredients)
Safe if correctly named all 23 ingredients
3 minutes to taste blindfolded
2 minutes to write down ingredients
LOL, what elegance, fingers in soupy food!
Louisiana Gumbo: jalapeño chilli, salt, prawn, onion, thyme, tomato, celery, chicken, chicken stock, garlic, parsley, bay leaf, okra, oyster, kransky sausage, flour, spring onion, oil, bacon, butter, capsicum, filé powder, tabasco
Round 2 (45 minutes): Cook with only the correctly named ingredients
No staple ingredients available, so some contestants have no oil or butter to cook with!
The promo last night/today kept showing Brent in the challenge implying he did not get any ingredients correct, by the counting down of ingredients to 0 on the screen! However he got 9 ingredients correct, I think, and not even the lowest number correct which went to Sam (7 ingredients), so I don’t understand the promo at all… False advertising, LOL
It’s between Kira or Sean, I think it is Sean going, as Kira hurt her hand during the challenge and affected her cooking.
Eliminated: Sean
No MasterClass tonight! So they are not doing MasterClass every week this year. I wonder then if they made available previous years’ MasterClasses for the contestants to watch in the MasterChef house. If not then the contestants are missing out on learning, or less chances to learn, new skills this year!
Tomato Broth with Chargrilled Prawns (Rachael Ciesiolka)
Chicken with Stuffing and Crustacean Emulsion (Colin Sheppard)
MasterChef Sean eliminated as Kira suffers shock burns after grabbing hot pan
Reality shows, The Voice, House Rules and MasterChef, favour recaps
MasterChef kitchen not for the faint-hearted with challenges more akin to reality show Survivor – LOL, a slow day in news? BTW, that chilli was never offered to the contestants to cook…
MasterChef contestant Sarah Todd plans return to modelling – LOL, does that mean she has been eliminated in real time, maybe in the next few week for the broadcast? Now her motive of entering MasterChef is really just getting exposure (pun intended) for her modelling career?
Ep 20, Sunday, June 1, 2014 – The Risky Box or The Safe Board, & Thai Invention Test
Finally remembered to listen to the MasterChef Australia radio programme, The Dish, today! Gary was on, together with Dani from Season 3, and Byron. Dani was basically doing her bits for Coles as she writes recipes for the Coles website. Gary was still banging on about Byron’s savoury churros, they must have be very good, LOL.
Safe Board (30 minutes): lamb chops, potatoes, pumpkin, brussels sprouts (Meat & 3 Vegs ingredients, visible to contestants)
Mystery Box (60 minutes): pheasant, vegemite, salsify, choko, silken tofu, baby zucchini, paw paw, green cardamom
Safe Board: Sam, Ben, Byron, Emelia
I don’t understand about the judges saying paw paw has a funky aroma? Growing up in the tropic, I love the aroma, well, I love the smell of durian too, LOL.
Best Dish: Emelia (On top of choosing the core ingredient, she also has the advantage of choosing cooking time and cuisine for the Invention Test)
Invention Test (1 hour)
Core Ingredient Choices: Prawn, Lamb, Pork
Time to Cook Choices: 30, 45, 60 minutes
Cuisine Choices: Greek, Mexican, Thai
Steven is not feeling well, so he’s not cooking for the Invention Test and automatically going into the Pressure Test tomorrow.
Rachael is struggling, so she will be in the Top 3…
LOL, Byron, can’t he tell the prawns are still raw just by looking, really? Shocking! Flabbergasted!
Hahaha, got it right, Rachael’s dish is GOOD!
Top 3: Brent, Renae, Rachael
Bottom 3: Byron, Ben, Sarah
Vegetables 9 Ways (Emelia Jackson)
Thai Red Prawns with Coconut Lemongrass Panna Cotta (Brent Owens)
Hot and Sour Broth with Prawn Balls and Prawn Chips (Rachael Ciesiolka)
Crispy Prawns with Poached Scallop and Green Curry Sauce (Renae Smith)
Ep 21, Monday, June 2, 2014 – Scott Pickett and Joe Grbac’s Pressure Test
Pressure Test (2 hours)
Savoury Pressure Test – Venison, Fig and Beetroot (Scott Pickett)
Sweet Pressure Test – Rice Pudding with Jerusalem Artichokes and Parsnips (Joe Grbac)
Savoury – Byron, Sarah, Ben
Sweet – Steven
How are they going to judge 3 savoury dishes to compare with one sweet dish?
Oh, it is neck and neck, anyone of them could go!
Clingfilm in Sarah’s dish, oh dear! No fig, oh dear, dear, dear…
LOL, Ben’s venison is so raw it might just run away!
String in Byron’s dish, oh dear dear! No fig, oh dear, dear, dear too…
LOL, Steven sprays the judges with the foam, hilarious!
Oh, Matt, how can you compare no figs with no ice cream? Figs just need to be torched and put on the plate, it is not as if they need to grow the fig themselves, ice cream however takes time to make…
Good, Ben is safe, he got all the elements on the plate.
Sarah is safe.
Eliminated: Steven
Venison, Black fig & Heirloom Beetroot (St Crispin Restaurant)
Parsnip, Jerusalem Artichoke and Textures of Rice Pudding (St Crispin Restaurant)
Masterchef contestant Steven Peh eliminated after spraying judges with rice foam
Ep 22, Tuesday, June 3, 2014 – Immunity Challenge
Round 1 Name-That-Cheese Knock-Out Challenge – 15 cheeses
Knife-Pull for order: 1-Brent, 2-Renae, 3-Rachael
Brent – 1 bocconcini > 2 ricotta > 3 wrong identification, out of challenge
Renae – 1 parmesan > 2 wrong identification, out of challenge
Rachael – 1 (Greek) feta > 2 cheddar
Winner: Rachael
Round 2 Against a Chef (amateur 75 minutes vs professional 60 minutes) – Matt Stone
Core Ingredient Choices (Matt’s choice): hams, cheeses
Charred onion, really? LOL. Serving carcinogenic powder to the judges?
Cheese and mango? I don’t mind seafood with mango for savoury, but cheese? If it is a dessert, maybe. LOL.
LOL, the judges hate the lobster, cheese and mango combo…
Scores:
Matt – Gary 8/10, George 7/10, Matt 8/10 = 23/30
Rachael – Gary 5/10, George 5/10, Matt 5/10 = 15/30
No immunity pin given out.
Ep 23, Wednesday, June 4, 2014 – Queen Victoria Night Market Team Challenge
Team Challenge: Estimated 40,000 customers for the whole night market
Shopping & Prep. Time: 2 hours, $700 shopping money
Stalls Opening Time: 6pm – 8pm
Criteria: No dish over $12
Blue Team: Jamie, Colin, Emelia, Renae – Korean steamed buns
Green Team: Amy (captain), Byron, Laura, Georgia – burgers & chips
Red Team: Brent (captain), Tash, Ben, Rachael – empanadas
Yellow Team: Sam (captain), Kira, Sarah, Tracy – Mexican tortillas
Apart from the yellow team, the other three teams are all doing food 3-way, and all but dismissed by the judges to just concentrate on just one filling instead of three, LOL.
Have a feeling the churros might come back and save the red team in the end… LOL, I wouldn’t feel sorry for the red team if they lose apart from Tash, her idea of churros is much better than the empanadas, also no other teams are doing sweets. I think Brent as captain is being led astray by Ben and Rachael, both of them vehemently veto the churros idea. You can tell straight away when Tash first suggested making churros in the car, the disdain look on Rachael’s face and Ben kept shaking his head. The next couple of times Tash brought up the subject in front of Ben and Rachael, she got knocked back again. It was only after Tash pulled Brent aside out of the earshots of Ben and Rachael that he finally changed his mind.
It is also interesting that they tasked Tash to make the most difficult and crucial element, the dough, while the other three are CHOPPING VEGETABLES!
After all the fuss and throwing a tantrum like a five-year-old, where’s the aioli that Rachael supposedly made? Can’t see them on the plates they were serving! They just threw one empanada on each plate with a napkin…
LOL, red team have nothing to serve to the judges… Knew it, churros is coming back. And they are good and selling quick.
Hahaha, the sheepish look on the faces of Brent, Ben and Rachael when Matt says all the things Tash said at the beginning of the challenge. Jeez, what an infuriating episode to watch! Totally gone off Ben and Rachael tonight. Rachael is getting as smug as Emelia, both of them competing for Queen Smugness. Brent is coming across as not very bright, after last night and tonight…
Profits (include money leftover from shopping):
Blue Team: $2053.41
Green Team: $2328.14
Red Team: $1617.53 – going into elimination tomorrow
Yellow Team: $3884.85
Oh no, what with the promo saying shock elimination, Tash might be the one going tomorrow all because the other three did not listen to her right from the beginning, if it is correct that will be so unfair.
Fried Chicken & Maple Bacon Tortilla & Onion Rings (Yellow Team)
Stupid person who put up the recipes, why not put up the best recipes from the episode as well instead of just the recipe from the winning team which is not the best according to the judges with the ‘floury’ tortilla!
LOL, kept hearing Renae saying “bell” when referring to the Korean steamed buns last night while watching the show and couldn’t understand what she meant! Finally clicked this morning she was trying to pronounce “bao” which is actually the Chinese term for the steamed buns, Korean called them “jjinppang-mandu” if I’m not wrong, not “bao”.
Chicken or beef: MasterChef judge Matt Preston reveals his 14 biggest food secrets
Ep 24, Thursday, June 5, 2014 – Auction Elimination
LOL, they just showed Tash in the second episode for the MasterClass in the opening preview, so she’s safe? Hope so.
Round 1: Ingredient Auction (100 minutes available)
Bid of each ingredient is at 5-minute increment
1st auction: rib-eye steak (Brent 25 mins), pork belly (Rachael 25 mins), pigeon (Ben 5 mins), mackerel (Tash free)
2nd auction: root vegetables (Brent 25 mins), Asian vegetables (Tash 45 mins), nightshade vegetables (Ben 15 mins), wild-forage vegetables (Rachael free)
3rd auction: sauces (Tash 25 mins), pantry staples (Rachael 25 mins), dairy (Ben 25 minutes), spices (Brent free)
oil, salt, and pepper provided
Tash – 30 minutes to cook
Rachael – 50 minutes to cook
Ben – 55 minutes to cook
Brent – 50 minutes to cook
Good, Tash got the most compatible ingredient combination, and fish does not need a long time to cook, hope she does well! Don’t really matter about the other three, anyone of them can go for all I care.
LOL, Rachael’s pork is deep-fried til charred black!
Judges love Brent’s dish.
Good, Tash’s fish is cooked beautifully. “Delicious,” said Gary.
Judges like Ben’s dish as well, except too much sauce.
Rachael is looking very shaky, she’s gone!
Eliminated: Rachael
Love the way they eliminate, quick and decisive, and without the long pauses this year! So the shock elimination from the promo just implied that Rachael has gone from a high of playing for immunity pin just two episodes ago to the low of elimination straight away.
Roast Rib Eye with Beetroot and Parsnip (Brent Owens)
Harissa Stuffed Mackerel with Asian Greens (Tash Shan)
Roast Pigeon, Aubergine Puree and Green Pepper Custard (Ben Macdonald)
MasterChef Australia: Rachael gone after failing to put crackling in pork belly dish
Ep 25, Thursday, June 5, 2014 – Dessert MasterClass
Pistachio Sponge with White Choc Mousse and Yuzu Curd (Gary Mehigan)
Risogalo Jar (George Calombaris)
Apple Tarte Tartin (Darren Purchese)
Flourless Nutella Cake (Matt Preston)
Simple Peanut Cookies (Matt Preston)
Instant Ice Cream (Matt Preston)
Nobuyuki Matsuhisa: the making of a master chef
Ep 26, Sunday, June 8, 2014 – Superfood Mystery Box & Chocolate Invention Test
Superfood Mystery Box (1 hour): sweet potato, blueberries, goji berries, yoghurt, sardines, walnuts, kale, lentil
Best Dish: Ben
They are focusing on Kira, Byron and Ben already before they even enter the kitchen.
LOL, Byron, how funny! After the judges tasted the 5 dishes as per usual for Mystery Box challenge, Byron started eating/tasting his own dish. Guess what? The judges changed their mind and wanted to taste the 6th dish which is Byron’s! The funniest thing ever! That’s so endearing…
Invention Test (1 hour): chocolate
One savoury and one sweet dish using chocolate
Team challenge: 5 teams of 3
Ben get to choose his team members, as well as the other four teams.
Teams:
Ben, Emelia, Jamie
Kira, Tracy, Tash
Laura, Byron, Sam
Brent, Renae, Sarah
Amy, Colin, Georgia
LOL, Ben said Kira, Tracy and Tash do not work well together which means they may put up the best dishes…
Alright, here we go, savoury chocolate dishes – chocolate pasta, quail and chocolate sauce, venison and chocolate sauce, chocolate/peaches/beetroot chicken.
What’s going on? There seems to be a lot of ‘faulty’ equipments, ice cream machines that don’t work, ovens not heating up…
Laura’s dessert sounds amazing, chocolate noodles look fantastic.
Kira, Tracy, Tash are up first. The dessert looked professional, and judges love it, but the savoury dish missed the brief even though it tasted very good.
Brent, Renae, Sarah may be in the middle of the pack.
Gary said he hates chocolate pasta! Of course we are going into a commercial break!
Hahaha, of course now Gary loves Colin’s pasta! Georgia’s tempered chocolate is good!
Judges love Laura’s dessert! Sam’s savoury dish is a fail.
Here we go, Ben’s team is up. Quail is overcooked but judges praised the number of elements in the dish. Emelia is tearing up, so Gary said some nice thing, LOL!
Top 3: Amy, Colin, Georgia
Bottom 6: Tash, Kira, Tracy, Sam, Laura, Byron (both teams let down by the savoury dishes)
Bottom 3: Sam, Laura, Byron
Sardines, Kale, Sweet Potatoes and Walnuts (Ben Macdonald)
Walnut Crusted Sardines with Curds and Whey (Brent Owens)
Crumbed Sardines with Kale Chips (Colin Sheppard)
Sardines with Lentils and Whey (Emelia Jackson)
Walnut Crumbed Sardines with Lentil, Kale and Sweet Potato Salad (Renae Smith)
Lamb with Chocolate Pasta (Colin Sheppard)
Chocolate Fondant with Raspberry Vodka Sorbet (Georgia Hughes) – Note: The picture accompanying the recipe is wrong! The picture is Brent’s dessert! Also I thought Amy made the sorbet but not getting the credit for the dessert!
Ep 27, Monday, June 9, 2014 – Nobu’s Pressure Test
First Off-Site Pressure Test at Nobu Restaurant
Pressure Test (90 minutes) – Prepare 4 plates of 7 nigiri sushi & 1 vegetarian sushi roll
No recipe given but Chef Nobu Matsuhisa will demonstrate once for the contestants
Who’s got fish bones in their nigiri? I think it is Sam as she’s the only one mentioning about fish bones!
Byron is the only one who got all 8 sushi on the plates. Both Sam and Laura left out one nigiri!
Byron’s plates looked inconsistent, some too big, some with rice too loose.
LOL, George took such dainty bites of the nigiri, is he trying to avoid the wasabi?
Laura’s plates looked very consistent.
Yep, Sam’s sushi got fish bones, and it is on Nobu’s plate! Think she’s going!
Hahaha, love Nobu and George’s high-five!
Laura is safe.
Eliminated: Sam
6 Nirgiri and 1 Vegetable Cut Roll (Nobu Restaurant)
Sam Gant eliminated from Masterchef after Nobu elimination challenge
Ep 28, Tuesday, June 10, 2014 – Immunity Challenge
Round 1 Weapon-of-Choice Knock-Out Challenge (45 minutes): blowtorch, smoke gun, foam gun
Knife-Pull to determine the choices:
1 Georgia – blowtorch
2 Amy – smoke gun
3 Colin – foam gun
Contestants are only allowed to go into the pantry once.
Best Dish: Amy
Round 2 Against a Chef (amateur 60 minutes vs professional 45 minutes) – Jock Zonfrillo
Core Ingredient Choices (Jock’s choice): Prince, Pauper
The judges gave Amy the choice of choosing the ingredients but having the same time as Jock to cook, or letting Jock choose the ingredients and getting 15 more minutes than Jock to cook. Amy decided to let Jock choose the ingredients and getting 15 more minutes to cook.
Awww, Jock is so nice, helping Amy with the fish while he’s waiting…
He’s so laid back too! Is he sabotaging himself and letting Amy win?
Phew, can’t believe Jock did everything in the last few minutes, LOL
One thing I noticed this year with the more capable cooks, an amateur is still an amateur, even though the contestants try to plate like a professional, their plating still looks too rigid, and with elements too carefully placed, and without the free-flowing, more “organic” plating of a professional chef.
Scores:
Jock – Gary 8/10, George 10/10, Matt 9/10 = 27/30
Amy – Gary 8/10, George 8/10, Matt 8/10 = 24/30
No immunity pin given out!
Scallops with Smoked White Bean Puree (Amy Shields)
Potato Clams (Colin Sheppard)
Leather Jacket with Apples and Rye berry Sauce (Amy Shields)
Ep 29, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 – Diamond Jubilee Team Challenge
Team Challenge: Catering for 80 peoples at a 60th Wedding Anniversary at Ascot House (40 serves for each team)
Mise en Place: 90 minutes; 4 hours for cake makers
Entrée: 1:30pm
Main: 2:15pm
Cake: 3:00pm
Team chosen by judges handing out envelopes.
Blue Team: Byron (captain), Jamie, Sarah, Tracy, Brent, Emelia (cake), Colin (cake)
Vegetable entrée, Beef main, + 2-tier cake
Brent not feeling well during prep. and has to sit out of the challenge.
Red Team: Ben (captain), Amy, Kira, Laura, Renae, Georgia (cake), Tash (cake)
Fish entrée, Chicken main, + 2-tier cake
LOL, Ben is not very good at captaincy, he can’t lead a team by assuming his ideas can be teletransported to his team members. Byron seems to do OK, not too much problems in his team during entrée even with one man down.
Hahaha, Jamie took over the captaincy now… and he was the one pushing for Byron to captain. Yes, agreed with Gary, where’s the sauce from the braising of beef cheeks? The braising sauce is gold, and they are not using it, CRAZY! However on hindsight, Brent was preparing the beef before he got sick, so he was responsible for the dish and when he left, the others just got lost on top of having to concentrate on their own job, I expect.
Oh, no, what is Tash doing, 2 minutes left and she wanted to pipe another round of the pink icing?
Red Team’s cake looks beautiful in the end.
Blue Team’s cake is gorgeous as well, but the cream icing is too thin in some parts.
Oh, no, sponge of Blue Team is eggy. Don’t really understand, if Emelia is so good with dessert, why did she ask Colin to make the sponge?
Red Team’s Cake
Blue Team’s Cake
Best Dishes:
Entrée: Blue
Main: Red
Cake: Red
Winner: Red Team
What, the teaser for tomorrow indicates one of the better cooks is going to be eliminated, could it be Sarah? The first round of Name-That-Dish may trip up some of the better cooks, as like Brent in the previous Name-That challenge, they may want to show off and end up naming the dish wrong.
Dory with Fennel, Radish, Yoghurt, Potatoes and Crispy Capers (Red Team)
Chicken Roulade with Currants, Pinenuts and Pumpkin Puree (Red Team)
Lemon and Berry Two-Tiered Diamond Anniversary Cake (Red Team)
Ep 30, Thursday, June 12, 2014 – Elimination
Round 1: Name That Dish (16 classic dishes)
Visual identification only, no sniffing, no tasting allowed
1. Sphagetti Carbonara – all correct
2. Tarte Tatin – all correct
3. Osso Buco – all correct
4. Pad Thai – Colin out
5. Coq au Vin – Tracy, Sarah out
LOL, they asked Sarah in the beginning what her strength is, and Sarah replied, “French and Indian.” We all knew then that a French dish is going to stun Sarah…
What are the rest of the dishes? This is supposed to be a cooking show, isn’t it? Why not show the rest for the benefit of the viewers? Very irritated with the producers, still idiots!
Round 2: Ingredients are from the 5 dishes identified
They are focusing on Colin and Sarah.
Hmm, think Colin is safe with his pithivier according to the promo.
Sarah may have undercooked her chicken roulade and that may send her home.
Hmm, the roulade looks pink… and Sarah thinks it is cooked?
Tracy’s dish is good, not much criticism from the judges.
Colin looks safe, Gary said it looks great, pastry is cooked. They are picking small mistakes, LOL
Hmm, Gary said there is something very wrong with Sarah’s dish just before an ad break! That confirms it, Sarah is gone!
Yes, the chicken is raw, judges not tasting it!
Eliminated: Sarah
Wonder which other 11 dishes were under those mysterious cloches?
Moussaka, Nasi Goreng, Laksa, Paella, Tempura, Falafel, Baklava, Pierogies, Chili con Carne, Bulgogi, Bobotie, Gazpacho, Adobo, Hainanese Chicken Rice, Portuguese Custard Tarts, ???
MasterChef favourite Sarah Todd eliminated in raw chicken boob
Marco brings some White Heat to the MasterChef kitchen
Ep 31, Sunday, June 15, 2014 – Marco’s Mystery Box & Italian Invention Test
Mystery Box (1 hour): lobster, white port, fresh ginger, vine tomatoes, olive oil, carrot, cucumber, fresh coriander, mixed spices (cinnamon, star anise, green cardamom)
Marco Week begins. At least we are starting on the right foot as they are doing Mystery Box and Invention Test. What spoiled the show for me when Marco did the Professional series last year was that in nearly every second episodes, they were cooking to Marco’s recipes so we did not see much creative cooking at all.
Poor Tracy! She’s so intimidated by Marco that she couldn’t speak. Feel for her… Marco was ever so nice about it too, LOL
Has everyone gone gaga over Marco, so many ravioli and bisques! As far as I can glimpse as she was cooking next to Emelia, only Tash was doing something sweet I think as she was using the mixer.
LOL, Marco also wanted to taste a 6th dish, hopefully no one has started eating their own dish this time… It’s the trembling Tracy’s dish! That was nice of Marco.
Best Dish: Laura
Invention Test (1 hour): Italian
Core Ingredient Choices: dried porcini mushrooms, prosciutto, botargo
+ 5 other ingredients only on top of the core ingredient.
Thank goodness, Tracy can now talk!
Do you have the feeling that Tash got the wrong type of potatoes the way she was talking about it when in the pantry getting her ingredients?
Yep, Tash got the waxy potatoes…
Laura is very creative, I’ve never seen a stuffed gnocchi roll before!
Tash is in deep trouble, can’t believe she did not soak the dried mushrooms before cooking. It is the same principle with Chinese dried mushrooms…
Ben and Byron are also heading to the bottom 3.
Good to see Tracy came good after the shocking start.
LOL, Ben saved his dish after all.
Looks like it is Amy that’s in the bottom 3.
Nooooo, Marco said Byron’s dish is like a horror movie. Harsh, but he was nice to then pull Byron aside and talk to him privately about his insecurity and encouraging him…
Top 3: Tracy, Laura, Ben
Bottom 3: Byron, Tash, Amy
Pasta e Brodo (Laura Cassai)
Lobster Ravioli, Lobster Reduction and Smoked Yolk (Emelia Jackson)
Lobster Cream, Coriander and Lobster Ravioli, Coriander Oil, Poached Lobster Tail, Confit Tomato (Kira Westwick)
Panfried Lobster with Tomato Ginger Sauce (Amy Shields)
Lobster Bisque (Brent Owens)
Lobster Broth, Coriander Ravioli and Lobster Medallion (Tracy Collins)
Rolled Gnocchi stuffed with Porcini, Sage and Onions (Laura Cassai)
Duck Neck Sausage with Mushrooms and Leek and Fennel Puree (Tracy Collins)
Porcini, Chicken and Parsley Ravioli (Ben Macdonald)
Masterchef hits million; SBS places
Menacing Marco has finally mellowed
Ep 32, Monday, June 16, 2014 – Marco Pierre White’s White Heat Pressure Test
Pressure Test (90 minutes) – Roast Pigeon from Bresse with a Ravioli of Wild Mushrooms and a Fumet of Truffles
LOL, it always amazes me when the contestants are cooking a recipe by a chef, that they think they know more than the chef and not listen to the advise of the said chef or follow the recipe as given!
Marco has such a wicked sense of humour!
That was a tough challenge, can’t really tell who is going!
Amy seems to be safe.
Tash keeps saying she’s going home today, so from the usual predictable edit, that means she’s not going home? However, she forgot to put the turnips on the plate and she had a lot of problems when making her pasta for the ravioli!
So it is between Tash and Byron!
Eliminated: Byron
LOL, the happiest eliminated contestant ever on MCA.
Roast Pigeon with a Ravioli of Mushrooms (Marco Pierre White)
MasterChef: Aussie women in mourning as Byron Finnerty axed after Marco Pierre White challenge
Ep 33, Tuesday, June 17, 2014 – Immunity Challenge
The episode on Sunday hitting 1 million overnight viewers has obviously gone to Channel 10’s stupid head. The promo today revealed who is cooking against the chef in round 2, so no point in watching round 1 in tonight’s episode!
Round 1 Knock-Out Challenge: Finely chop one onion
So Marco is the mentor tonight. He also demonstrates a different way of finely chopping an onion, nearly mincing the onion rather than chopped onion.
Best Skill: Laura
Round 2 Against a Chef (amateur 60 minutes vs professional 60 minutes) – Donovan Cooke
Core Ingredient Choices (Laura’s choice): Surf, Turf
Laura has the choice of choosing the core ingredient and getting the same time to cook, or let Donovan choose the core ingredient and has 15 more minutes to cook. Laura decides to choose the core ingredient.
Laura sounds too happy doing the commentary, maybe she got the pin!
I like Marco’s way of mentoring, more helpful than any other mentors that MCA has used.
LOL, Laura wanted to make onion ash, and both Marco and Donovan did not like it. But, but, but, didn’t Matt Stone did that charred onion thing earlier, most probably where Laura got the idea from? Too funny…
Kudos to Laura for not being intimidated by Marco. She was speaking to Marco as if he was her father, but at least she was listening and following Marco’s advice.
Noooooo, Donovan did not plate up in time! So maybe that’s how Laura got the pin!
Interesting, Laura’s snapper is so, so, just that overcooked slightly!
Yes, confirmed, Donovan brought the dish himself to the judges and admitted he was 5 seconds late in plating up!
Scores:
Laura – Gary 9/10, George 8/10, Matt 9/10 = 26/30
Donovan – Gary -/10, George -/10, Matt -/10 = -/30 (No scores given)
First immunity pin given out to Laura!
That’s how you beat a chef, next time the contestant should use this strategy of making sure the professional chef does not plate up in time to get the pin!
MasterChef contestant Laura Cassai is awarded this season’s first immunity pin
Ep 34, Wednesday, June 18, 2014 – Top 12 British-Theme Team Challenge
Team Challenge: Preparing a 3-course, British inspired menu for 120 diners (60 per team) at Taxi Kitchen in Federation Square
Mise en Place: 2 hours
2 Entrées, 2 Mains, 1 Dessert
Marco will be running the pass in the kitchen.
Team chosen by splitting down the middle of the group of contestants.
Blue Team: Emelia (captain), Brent, Colin, Kira, Laura, Tash
Red Team: Renae (captain), Amy, Ben, Georgia, Jamie, Tracy
Blue team’s 2 entrées are simple and out of the pass very quickly, but the judges think they are boring and have no flavours!
Red team are behind with their entrées but judges love both entrées!
LOL, red’s beef main is RED! When Jamie cut the beef, blood pours out like there’s no tomorrow…
Blue’s lamb is cooked perfectly, so Brent spending 2 hours frenching and preparing them is worth it in the end. However the pork main is a fail.
Red’s bangers and mash is raw, FAIL! The roast beef which ends up being pan-fried is good!
Blue runs out of pork… Marco not happy…
After all the kerfuffle of Emelia giving Tash the wrong gelatine to liquid ratio, and Tash having to re-do them, Blue’s jelly ends up being smashing according to the judges.
Red’s steamed pudding is a bit heavy, and too little sauce.
Winner: Red Team
Brent’s in another losing team, the story continues…
Fried Garfish with Cauliflower Puree, Roasted Tomato and Lemon Caper Dressing (Red Team)
Parsnip Soup with Stilton and Bacon Crumb (Red Team)
Roast Beef (Red Team)
Bangers and Mash (Red Team) – Just plain weird! This recipe is attributed to Miguel Maestre, then recipe only showed mash & gravy, no bangers? I wasn’t paying attention when watching, did they use premade sausages?
Brandy Pudding with Brandy Butterscotch Sauce (Red Team)
Earl Grey Jelly, Berries and Cream (Tash, Blue Team)
REVEALED: The luxury Leopold house that Masterchef was filmed in
Have a feeling Tash might be eliminated in tonight’s challenge. Laura should be able to cook risotto well being Italian, so she’s safe if she doesn’t use her pin. That leaves Emelia, Brent, Colin, Kira and Tash. Since Tash has been struggling previously with Italian cuisine, re her gnocchi, she might be in trouble tonight especially as the risotto is the dish they have to cook. The others have shown they are better with European dishes, especially most of them did well in the Italian challenge earlier this week.
Ep 35, Thursday, June 19, 2014 – Risotto Elimination
Laura handed in her Immunity Pin just 2 days after winning it.
Knife-Pull to determine which dish they are cooking for this elimination.
Hate it when Matt pulled out 2 knives to prove there are 9 dishes in the knife block. I still don’t buy it, I still think Matt was told by the producers which two knives to pull out. It would be more believable if the contestants tell Matt which two knives to pull out if they really need to do this farcical theatric! So Matt basically killed the 2 dishes he pulled out which were éclair and soufflé, both desserts which just feel so false as that was just to trick the contestants into thinking there were 9 desserts!
The MCA producers are really not very good in producing TV shows, methinks. They like to do all these theatrics on the show thinking they will surprise the viewers, but 9 out of 10 times, the promos then go on to let the viewers know what/which dish they are doing, killing any surprises those theatrics are meant to do!
So they asked Emelia to pull one knife from the remaining 7 knives (which I believe all labelled risotto, what else during Marco week), and of course it was risotto. Laura looked peeved up in the balcony for wasting her immunity pin!
Kira is doing quinoa risotto. Judges doubted her, which meant she might pull it off! Colin is doing prawn risotto which the promo indicated one of the best…
Tash cooked her rice too early!
Marco said Tash’s risotto had strange combination (just did a search, her recipe sounds like it was Jamie Oliver’s asparagus, mint & lemon risotto!), too much vegetable and didn’t look comfortable in front of the pan! Not good news!
Oh, Colin’s dish doesn’t look like the one in the promo! So someone else cooked the other prawn risotto that was in the promo.
Brent’s dish lacked seasoning!
Marco didn’t think quinoa risotto is a risotto! Of course he’s right, isn’t rice in Italian “riso”, so risotto is a rice-base dish! What next, paella with no rice? If it is made with quinoa or other grains, call it a different name, what about savoury quinoa porridge, would be better than risotto!
Of course now they all loved Kira’s dish and trying to justify it as a new-age risotto!
Now Emelia’s up, so her prawn risotto is the one in the promo. Judges loved it. More and more it looks like Tash is gone!
Yes, confirmed, the judges didn’t even like the look of Tash’s dish.
Kira has the dish of the day!
Eliminated: Tash
Quinoa Risotto and Tomato Salad (Kira Westwick)
MasterChef contestant Tash Shan claims she was marginalised by rivals on Channel 10 show
Really sad to read this. It did feel she was ignored by other contestants, except a couple like Steven and Emily before they were eliminated, in many episodes. The only one or two who seems to be friendly with her towards the end are basically the quiet ones, Kira and maybe Sarah, as far as I can see. The problem is I think some of the contestants who think because they can do a few good classic/modern dishes in French/Italian cuisines, look down on those good with Asian/non-European cuisines as if they are not high-class or pretentious enough in their mind. However good for her to go on and find work experience at Ezard which would suit her style of cooking more.
Risotto ‘death dish’ brings down Canberra MasterChef star Tash Shan
Ep 36, Thursday, June 19, 2014 – Marco Pierre White MasterClass
LOL, did my eyes deceive me? Did they just show a preview of Marco using a wok to cook the pasta?
Salt Baked Snapper with Sauce Vierge (Marco Pierre White)
Spaghetti Carbonara (Marco Pierre White)
Tuna with Capers, Olives and Lemon (Marco Pierre White)
Steamed Seafood with Leek and Potato (Gary Mehigan)
Confit Salmon with Spinach and Tomato (George Calombaris)
Masterchef fails to stir Ten’s revenue
Kitchen’s enfant terrible Marco Pierre White descends on MasterChef
Ep 37, Sunday, June 22, 2014 – Mystery Box for 2 & Team-of-3 Invention Test
Welcome to the wonderful world of digital TV! Sorry, everybody, no update tonight as Network 10 has totally gone missing from my TV, cannot receive any TV signals from all 3 channels on Network 10 tonight! If anyone is happy to do a quick summary/update on the episode, you are welcome to comment below.
So being forced to watch The Voice Kids on Channel 9 at the moment, LOL. At least the twin chairs of Joel and Benji is providing some interest, haha…
Oh, that Scottish kid is too adorable…
Oh, forgot to mention, also remembered to listen to The Dish again, LOL, kept forgetting almost every week… Guess who were interviewed? Two former contestants, Poh and Rishi! What have they in common at the moment? Of course, they both have a new cookbook out recently. Poh has just released her second cookbook, Same Same But Different, and Rishi has also released his first cookbook, Modern Indian.
Update: Monday, June 23, 2014
LOL, got the recording of the encore episode this morning, although TV signal still weak, pictures breaking up here and there… Anyway, the update is finally here.
Time: Sometimes earlier this year
Place: Shine’s Boardroom
Agenda: Producers’ meeting to develop game-changing storylines for Ep 37, MCA Season 6
So we have 11 contestants left, but we only need 9 contestants for the Invention Test, what to do, what to do?
We need to get rid of two contestants first! Yes, that’s it!
“Damn it, we need to make someone cry,” cried the executive producer. That Tash! She went without even shedding a single tear! God knows, we tried everything, she just won’t bug! Good thing we got rid of her now before it is too late. Imagine a grand finale with her in it! It will be a VERY DRY finale, NO, NO, NO, WE CAN”T HAVE THAT!
Yes, we will make them gamble, surely if they lose, tears will flow like Niagara Falls!
Yes, yes, yes, we will make them step up for a gamble and we will choose two to do the Mystery Box, loser goes straight to Pressure Test, that will teach them for NOT CRYING! Bwahahahahahaha…
Winner? Oh, what the heck, we will just give them immunity for the week, and forget about them so we have one less contestant to focus on for the WHOLE WEEK! We all know we have difficulty counting to more than ten! We have fooled the viewers by focusing only on the top 3 and bottom 3 so far, yes, 6 is easier to count and manage than 10. That way the editors won’t get too confused and it will make their job easier, Agree? Agreed!
6 contestants Stepping Up for Mystery Box Challenge – Emelia, Laura, Jamie, Amy, Renae, Tracy
Standing Left to Right from Judges’ point of view: Amy, Tracy, Jamie, Renae, Emelia, Laura
Culinary Pop Quiz to choose two contestants for the Mystery Box challenge (Select text to reveal answers)
Q1 to Amy: If you were sitting down for a Beef Vindaloo, what country would you be in?
A: India. (LOL, and here I’m thinking cows are sacred animals in India!)
Q2 to Tracy: What is the ratio of fat to flour in short crust pastry?
A: 1 to 2.
Q3 to Jamie: What kind of pastry is used to make baklava?
A: Fillo pastry. (Jamie out saying brik pastry)
Q4 to Renae: What meat is used in vitello tonnato?
A: Veal.
Q5 to Emelia: Brunoise is a term to determine ingredients cut into what shape?
A: Small dice.
Q6 to Laura: What is the difference between a bechamel sauce and a mornay sauce?
A: A mornay sauce has cheese in it, bechamel sauce is the base. (Laura out saying bechamel is thicker)
Q7 to Emelia: If you were in Croatia and you ordered a brodetto, what would you expect to get?
A: Fish stew or fish soup. (Emelia out saying no idea)
Q8 to Renae: What ingredient defines a bisque?
A: Shellfish or crustaceans.
Q9 to Tracy: What is a squab?
A: Pigeon.
Q10 to Amy: What is injera?
A: A type of Ethiopian bread or pancake. (Amy out saying a spice)
Tracy and Renae to do Mystery Box.
Mystery Box (45 minutes): yabby, dates, zucchini flowers, corns, watercress, chicken wings, goat curd, blackberries
Loser goes straight to Pressure Test
Winner gets immunity for the week
Winner: Tracy
Renae goes to Pressure Test.
Meanwhile back in the Shine’s boardroom… The producers are excited with giddiness…
Goody goody, clap, clap, clap, Renae is CRYING! Yes, more tears, more, more, more! Yes, good one, Gary, feign sympathy, and make her cry more! Bwahahahaha, mission accomplished!
Invention Test (60 minutes): 2 dishes
Teams formed by self-selection:
Brent, Emelia, Jamie
Amy, Georgia, Laura
Ben, Colin, Kira
Parameter Choices:
Cuisines: Vietnamese, Moroccan, American
Appliances: Ice Cream Machine, Food Processor, Planetary Mixer
Cooking Methods: Cooktop, Oven, Deep-Fryer
Knife-Pull for choices:
Brent, Emelia, Jamie – American (1st choice), Planetary Mixer (2nd choice), Cooktop (1st choice)
Amy, Georgia, Laura – Vietnamese (3rd choice), Food Processor (1st choice), Deep-Fryer (3rd choice)
Ben, Colin, Kira – Moroccan (2nd choice), Ice Cream Machine (3rd choice), Oven (2nd choice)
LOL, it is very clear now that non of the remaining contestants are good with Asian cuisines!
Top 3: Brent, Emelia, Jamie
Bottom 3: Amy, Georgia, Laura
Stuffed Zucchini Flowers with Corn, Watercress and Yabbies (Tracy Collins)
Pork Chop, Popcorn Grits and Pickles (Team America)
Peanut Butter Mousse with Grilled Banana and Maple Bacon Crumb (Team America)
Ep 38, Monday, June 23, 2014 – Vikas Khanna’s Pressure Test
LOL, looks like another night of no Channel 10. It is now 7:25pm, just switch on TV, the picture quality is so bad, breaking up every few seconds…
Yep, TV signals gone missing again 2 minutes after the episode began. Switch over to Channel 9, no problems, and just caught Coldplay performing live on The Voice. Now wondering that Channel 10 don’t do well in the TV ratings, is not because people not watching Channel 10, but because they could NOT receive Channel 10, LOL.
Can’t watch the episode at all but found out about the eliminated contestant anyway…
Eliminated: Georgia
MasterChef gives 14 eliminated contestants including Georgia Hughes a second chance
The Pressure Test recipe does not seem to be available, but found a more home-friendly recipe from Vikas Khanna:
Chicken Tikka Masala (Vikas Khanna)
OK, they finally release the recipe a day later:
Rose Tea Smoked Chicken Tikka Masala (Vikas Khanna)
So they are bringing back one eliminated contestant! Makes me wonder if, and that is a BIG if, they were going to India for their oversea trip, as there has not been any spoilers about that this year. If there is, then my guess is one of the contestants with Indian heritage, Tash or Deepali, or one who could cook Indian food well, Sarah, will be brought back. The producers know which side of their bread is buttered on, so we shall see…
Ep 39, Tuesday, June 24, 2014 – Second-Chance Mystery Boxes
The gale force winds today must have blown the cobwebs out of the digital TV signals from Channel 10, we have clear reception tonight! Lalalalalalala…
The 14 eliminated contestants returned to find two Mystery Boxes on each bench. The wooden Mystery Box contained the ingredients for the dish that got them eliminated, while the steel Mystery Box contained the ingredients from their best dish in the competition.
Wooden Mystery Box – 60 minutes to cook
Steel Mystery Box – 30 minutes to cook
Only 4 contestants chose the steel Mystery Box: Deepali, Emily, Nick and Nicole
The talking heads are Sarah, Brendan, Sean, Nick, Emily, Byron, Rachael, so far… Guess the winner will be from these lots.
LOL, Nick’s plate looks unfinished, so sparse. Emily does not look like coming back too, I’m sure there will be broken glass in her dish!
Oh, no, 20 minutes to go and TV signals start breaking up again…
Brendan’s dish is good, the 300 plus hours working in a commercial kitchen after being eliminated has paid off…
Rachael’s dish is good but somehow does not look like a winning dish…
They are running fast through tasting for Tash, Nicole, Deepali… No chance of them coming back.
Nick’s dish is average, didn’t know he and Brent were good friends in the house.
George said Byron has a small plate of food for a lot of hard work! Too fiddly to eat, he’s not coming back!
Sean’s dish got two yums, from Matt and Gary… LOL
Going very quickly through Sam, Scott, Steven, so non of them coming back.
Emily admits there may be glasses in the dish, so no tasting from the judges. It’s a shame she changed her idea after Gary doubted her, her original canapé dish that she put on the side looked much better…
Judges loved Georgia’s dish!
Sarah’s dish is delicious, but with rough puree!
Top 5: Brendan, Sean, Sarah, Rachael, Georgia
It is between Sarah and Georgia…
Returnee: Sarah
Off to India they go, LOL, just joking!
Just in time too, the TV reception during the last 5 minutes of the broadcast was so bad, I nearly could not see or hear who’s coming back…
Apple Stuffed Chicken Roulade with Carrot Puree and Crisp Salad (Sarah Todd)
Eliminated contestant Sarah Todd gets back into MasterChef Australia after Mystery Box cook-off
Curtis Stone talks MasterChef and baby number two, after dropping F-bomb on The Talk
Ep 40, Wednesday, June 25, 2014 – Starlight Children’s Foundation Charity Lunch with Curtis Stone
Looks like another night of no TV reception from Network 10. Something is telling me to wean off my MasterChef addiction, LOL. Good things too as I was not that fuss about missing the show the last few nights when I could not watch… I think too much manipulation by the producers on the show’s direction has finally made me feel very nonchalant about the show this year even though there seems to be better cooks, but really not that great most of them to be honest apart from a few, this year. It also seems like even though the producers keep pushing the lovey dovey feel of the show, but behind the scenes, there appear to be some very questionable actions going on like the contestants have to toe the line and conform to what the producers want, ie. an open book, which was also confirmed by Tash that they told her she was a closed book. I wonder how much leeway that sort of statement allows the other contestants to feel free to ostracise her. That would have been considered workplace bullying if it happens in the outside world. I would rather see someone like Tash, who just get on with the task of cooking on a ‘cooking’ competition, on the screen than all the others with all sorts of sob stories to keep them in the show!
Sorry again, that’s all for now, feel free to give summary/spoilers in the comments if you are able to watch…
Update Thursday June 26, 2014: Watched the episode and here’s the update…
Fundraiser Team Challenge: 6-course citrus degustation menu
Mise en Place: 2 1/2 hours, 3 courses per team, 30 minutes between courses
Team selected by splitting down the middle on where they stood (don’t believe the coincidences, where they stood were all orchestrated, see evidence below!)
Red Team: Sarah (captain), Ben, Colin, Kira, Laura (Judges appointed Sarah to be captain)
Blue Team: Jamie (captain), Amy, Brent, Emelia, Renae (Captaincy decided among members)
Tracy has immunity for the week, so she’s not cooking.
Red team to serve first course (after discussion between teams), then blue team second course, then red, and continue to alternate for all following courses.
LOL, see how they entered the kitchen, two-by-two and then where they stood in front of the judges, do you believe a random group of people will stand so orderly? Five to the left and 5 to the right (not counting Tracy). You can already see who is on which team before the judges split them down the middle, note also where Tracy stood, right at the end as she’s not part of any team…
Not even going to comment on the result, the producers definitely know which side of their bread is buttered on. One big sponsor’s cheque decided the winning group, which coincidently happened in previous years when they did the charity lunch!
Winner: Blue Team
Pumpkin and Orange Soup with Smoked Cumin Yoghurt (Blue Team)
Rack of Lamb (Blue Team)
Chocolate Pave with Citrus (Blue Team)
Spoilers for the next episode from the TV guide (select text below if you want to know):
———————————–
In an intense Mystery Box challenge, the winning team from the service challenge play off for the power apron, which will mean they control every challenge played out next week.
———————————–
Ep 41, Thursday, June 26, 2014 – Power Apron Challenge
3 rounds of cooking, winner will wear the Power Apron and control all challenges next week.
Round 1 (30 minutes, 6 contestants): Entrée, Best 3 move on to round 2
Round 2 (45 minutes, 3 contestants): Main, Best 2 move on to round 3
Round 3 (60 minutes, 2 contestants): Dessert
Round 1 winners: Jamie, Emelia, Tracy
Round 2 winners: Tracy, Jamie
LOL, don’t know if the broadcast will last until the end of the episode, it is getting so bad, can’t even see anything clearly, and the sound has disappeared into thin air, hearing one word now and then, and not the next few words being said!
Power Apron winner: Tracy
Glad that it is Tracy, she has certainly improved a lot and not jittery like the beginning.
Jeez, don’t know how they decided which recipes to published? Jamie has the best entrée, but they published Emelia’s too oily one. Tracy has the best main, yet they published Jamie’s undercooked freekeh dish. Only the dessert is the best out of the three being published.
Zucchini and Charred Leek Salad with Whipped Fetta (Emelia Jackson)
Lamb with Beetroot and Freekah Succotash (Jamie Fleming)
Cookies and Cream (Tracy Collins)
Masterchef helps Ten to stronger performance in key demographics
MasterChef judge Gary Mehigan’s recipe for wedding food success
Ep 42, Sunday, June 29, 2014 – Power Week’s Mystery Box & Invention Test
If Tracy was eliminated this week, she can pass the Golden Apron to a contestant of her choice.
Tracy’s Mystrery Box (45 minutes): mint, Jerusalem artichoke, peas, lemon, skate wings, custard apple, nutmeg, goat cheese
This just proved what a load of bollocks choosing only a few dishes to taste only for Mystery Box! So Emelia’s custard was a fail but still being called up for tasting! I do not believe there’s not another dish better than hers…
Best Dish: Brent
Invention Test: Mystery Gifts from Tracy
The core ingredients chosen by Tracy for each contestant are not available to other contestants.
Time allowed are 60 minutes, 30 minutes, or 15 minutes (must give 15 minutes to 2 peoples)
Core Ingredients:
Ben – chilli, 30 minutes
Laura – carrot, 60 minutes
Jamie – guava, 30 minutes
Colin – chicken, 60 minutes chocolate, 30 minutes
Amy – pigface, 60 minutes
Kira – turkey leg, 15 minutes
Emelia – snail, 30 minutes
Brent – chocolate, 30 minutes chicken, 60 minutes
Renae – eel, 60 minutes
Sarah – tripe, 15 minutes
Tracy – snapper, 60 minutes
As Brent won the Mystery Box, he was allowed to swap his ingredient with another contestant except Tracy. He decided to swap with Colin.
Good to see that Tracy did not shy away from giving challenging ingredients!
LOL, what a wuss is Renae, crying so dramatically over getting an eel! Seriously they wanted to be a cook and this is how they behaved over an ingredient?
Interesting about the relationship between Tracy and both Kira and Sarah in the house.
So Tracy gets along well with Colin and Laura in the house.
Top 3: no Top 3 announced… but Tracy, Sarah, Emelia, Renae, Amy, Laura are all safe
Bottom 3: Jamie, Colin, Kira
LOL, is tomorrow the third time they are going to do croquembouche in MCA? So this time no recipe given. But we already know which one is safe, search above for spoiler, hahaha…
Pan Fried Skate with Pea Salad (Brent Owens)
Goats Cheese Parfait with Mint Sauce (Sarah Todd)
Jerusalem Artichoke Crème Brulee (Emelia Jackson)
Crispy Tripe with Tomato Sauce (Sarah Todd)
Roast Quail with Carrot Puree and Jus (Laura Cassai)
Snail Garden (Emelia Jackson)
Australians in 2014 love to watch My Kitchen Rules, The Block and MasterChef
Ep 43, Monday, June 30, 2014 – Pressure Test
Pressure Test – Croquembouche with partial recipe
Another night of no TV reception from Channel 10. However based on old promos and advertisements, I think it is Colin going home tonight. Jamie made the best croquembouche according to the posters they put up in bus and tram shelters when the show began last month. Kira was shown having a complete croquembouche in an old preview earlier on. So far Colin was the only one not being shown in any promo. Unless of course there is a twist involving Tracy tonight which might’ve changed things completely…
Eliminated: Kira (leaked online! Screamed one headline “Eliminated Westwick betrayed on MasterChef” when I googled just before 8:30pm, LOL, but the article itself was not available. So the Power Apron must have come into play tonight…)
Croquembouche (Adriano Zumbo)
Did Zumbo appear on the show tonight? Or MCA recycling recipe again…
MasterChef croquembouche pressure test ‘not level playing field’ says eliminated Kira Westwick
Looks like what began with such promises with this season’s improved ability of the contestants, it appears the show is rapidly descending into a farce once again… The dirty hands of the producers are all over the silly tricks being played out in recent episodes…
Update July 1, 2014: Caught up with the episode today. Really frustrated to see the silly twist of dividing the recipe into three being played in an elimination episode, even though I still don’t know why Kira is in MasterChef! Of the three, Jamie and Colin have both mentioned their post-MasterChef ideal of a career change, but all I know of Kira was that she wanted to promote healthy eating. Does she really need to go onto MasterChef to do that? And isn’t that a conflict of interest since we know how much the judges love ‘flavoursome’ & ‘wholesome’ food!
Anyway, I haven’t really mind the Power Apron during Mystery Box and Invention Test, but it should have been more an even playing field for elimination. I was also amused, but glad, to see not much help from the gallery. Why? Because they were not given the recipe, so it seems they were hesitant in case they made a fool of themselves if they gave the wrong help to those below, LOL.
Kira just got caught in the crossfire of the producers’ silly game. I can see Tracy’s point of view in that her main aim was to save Colin. Then she was left with Jamie and Kira. She knew Jamie had the choux recipe down pat, so she gave that recipe to Jamie to make a more even playing field between Jamie and Kira, which worked because Jamie did have a lot of trouble making the pastry cream without the recipe. If Tracy had given the pastry cream recipe to Jamie, Jamie would have no trouble with this challenge AT ALL, and probably nailed all the essential elements! That would possibly force Colin into a weaker position fighting to stay alive with Kira, remember Tracy is trying to make sure Colin is safe! In which case Kira might have been able to make the choux, but would she know how to make the pastry cream without the recipe? If she did not know the very basic of a choux recipe, would she know the pastry cream recipe? My guess is NO since her whole thing is healthy eating!
In saying that, I was impressed that Jamie had practised recipes over and over again that are his weaknesses in the house. It seems Colin had practised as well, I was not expecting him to know how to make choux pastry with his record of weakness in desserts. So what about Kira? They were all living in the same house, if someone was practising basic recipes, I would make damn sure I would practice too if I don’t know that recipe!
Also the choux recipe is not that hard to remember: 100g butter, 1 cup water, 1 cup flour, about 4 eggs, it is that simple!
It still amazes me that all these supposedly ‘cooks’ still do not know the basic recipes that all cooks should at least know! They all seem to want to run before they can walk!
Ep 44, Tuesday, July 1, 2014 – Immunity Challenge
Tracy automatically in the immunity challenge, and she can picked two other contestants to cook against in Round 1
Tracy picked Laura and Colin.
How odd is this, Colin in the Pressure Test, then in the Immunity Challenge in the same week!
Round 1 Knock-Out Challenge (45 minutes): Bar snack using beer
Winner: Tracy
Round 2 Against a Chef (amateur 75 minutes vs professional 75 minutes): Choice of two chefs to cook against
Jason Jones (B’Stilla) or James Viles (Biota)
Tracy chose James to cook against
Coin toss to decide who choose the core ingredients
James said head, coin landed tail
Core Ingredient Choices (Tracy’s choice): heads, tails
Good to see Laura helping Tracy with the gnocchi recipe after Tracy chose her to play in Round 1 of the challenge tonight.
What’s the deal with black and charred food this year, must be the trend, they looked disgusting, LOL
Finally Gary admitted they can tell who cooked which dish, LOL…
Scores:
Tracy – Gary 9/10, George 9/10, Matt 9/10 = 27/30
James – Gary 9/10, George 9/10, Matt 8/10 = 26/30
Tracy has won the immunity pin!
Beer Candied Bacon and Popcorn Chicken Sliders (Tracy Collins)
Braised Beef Cheeks with Pan Fried Gnocchi (Tracy Collins)
Ep 45, Wednesday, July 2, 2014 – Team Challenge
Team Challenge: Preparing a banquet at Split Point Lighthouse for 20 best producers from Aireys Inlet, The Great Ocean Road
Tracy gets to choose her team first:
Red Team – Tracy (captain), Emelia, Sarah, Jamie, Ben
Blue Team – Laura (captain), Amy, Brent, Colin, Renae
Can’t help laughing that yesterday, Tracy’s best friends, Laura and Colin, were good enough to be in Immunity Challenge with her, but a totally different story tonight when she gets to pick her team (which she considered the stronger cooks) that her two best friends are now not good enough to be on her team!
5 hours available to prepare with limited pantry ingredients
Teams have to buy their produce with time, 3 proteins per team
Tracy (Red) first and second picks for protein, pork (45 minutes), shellfish (30 minutes)
Laura (Blue) then picks lamb (60 minutes), snapper (60 minutes)
Tracy (Red) then picks crayfish (45 minutes)
Which left the last protein, duck (45 minutes) for Laura (Blue)
For the vegetables, Laura (Blue) picks green vegetables (15 minutes)
Tracy (Red) then picks green vegetables (15 minutes), and pumpkins/carrots/corns (30 minutes)
Laura (Blue) finally picks potatoes (20 minutes)
So preparation and cooking time:
Red Team – 2 hours 15 minutes
Blue Team – 1 hour 40 minutes
LOL, another howling wind situation for the challenge, reminiscence of the CWA challenge from Season 2!
Brent is the lamb dude this year! Has he cooked any other meat at all out of choice?
Winner: Red Team
Pork Belly, Pork Scratchings and Spiced Pumpkin (Red Team)
Lobster, Bread & Pickle (Red Team)
Braised Leeks with Oysters (Red Team)
Ep 46, Thursday, July 3, 2014 – Mexican Elimination
Tracy can use her Power Apron to save one contestant from elimination.
Tracy wanted to save Laura or Colin, but ended up saving Laura (reason was maternal instinct)
Round 1 (45 minutes): Savoury Mexican (Cooking in pairs)
Brent and Amy
Colin and Renae
Losing pair go into round 2.
What’s going on, the judges kept asking about the final presentation of their dish today?
Also interesting both pairs were going to make self-serve style Mexican food in the beginning, who’s copying whom?
Like Brent’s calm attitude, he just got on with the cooking, and trying to bring Amy to the right headspace at the same time. He could be the dark horse to win this season.
Judges said “Yuk” to Colin and Renae’s dish.
Jeez, the judges are doing it again, bet they love Brent and Amy’s dish but pretending they hate it! Fireball… Commercial…
It is getting old hat! Yep, they love it, no mistake on their dish…
Colin and Renae going into Round 2.
Round 2 (60 minutes): Mexican Flavoured Dessert
Eliminated: Colin
The judging were fickle to say the least. Time and time again the judges said the dish they would go back to would win, but when it didn’t suit them, they found some other reasons to kick someone off the show. They said Renae’s fondant was floury and didn’t taste good, and Colin’s dish was not cohesive as a whole but individual element tasted good on their own… Yeah, right, judges are just dancing to the producers’ tune. Gary must be tired with the charade as well, he didn’t even want to pretend anymore, and said, “You say it,” a couple of times to the other two judges and Matt took up the slack with the usual “we secretly loved your dish, but I’m going to make you sweat first with the appalling act that we hated it…”
Fish Tostaditas Re-Imagined (Amy Shields & Brent Owens) – It is just odd how this recipe was attributed to Amy only on MCA site, she may have done the fish part but I thought Brent took the lead with the recipe on how the whole dish came together in the end?????
Choc Chilli Lava Cake (Renae Smith)
MasterChef eliminated contestant Colin Sheppard rejects Tash Shan’s claim she was ignored
Ep 47, Sunday, July 6, 2014 – Barter-System Mystery Box & Retro Invention Test
Barter Box (60 minutes): With the same six items in each contestant’s Mystery Box, they all must barter with each other to get a variety of ingredients.
Amy – radicchio
Ben – walnut
Brent – honey
Emelia – beetroot
Jamie – pear
Laura – lemon
Renae – sage
Sarah – blue cheese
Tracy – fennel
Nobody wanted sage, hahaha. In the end, Renae ended up with lots of sage, 1 beetroot and 1 blue cheese.
Do you get the feeling the contestants were told which bench/Mystery Box they were to stand in front of? Judges’ favourites, Laura, an Italian gets lemon, and Sarah who cooks French gets blue cheese! And the boys all get nuts/fruit and dessert ingredients, the other women all get vegetables/herbs…
Best Dish: Amy
Invention Test (60 minutes): Re-Inventing a Retro Dish
Retro Dish Choices: 60s’ Prawn Cocktail, 70s’ Apricot Chicken, 80s’ Nouvelle Cuisine (beef fillet medallion with pomme fondant)
LOL, today is Sarah’s turn to make black food! The squid-ink coated chicken looks like charcoal chicken… Not inviting at all!
What, did Gary really said Amy with all the advantage today? Are you kidding, don’t think Amy got any more advantage than anyone else after winning Mystery Box today.
So George hated dish in the promo is Sarah’s!
Laura was protected lucky she was told by Gary that her dish did not look good ten minutes before the end of cooking time, then got hint from George in the pantry where she was fluffing about what to do…
Top 3: Amy, Laura, Ben
Bottom 3: Sarah, Emelia, Tracy
Renae will go into elimination if Tracy plays her immunity pin tomorrow.
Raddichio Tortellini with Blue Cheese Cream (Amy Shields)
Cheese and Fennel Salad (Brent Owens)
Blue Cheese, Sage and Beetroot Tart (Renae Smith)
Chicken and Apricot Curry (Amy Shields)
Apricot Chicken with Spinach and Stuffed Rice (Ben Macdonald)
Polenta with Apricot Chicken and Pangretata (Laura Cassai)
Ep 48, Monday, July 7, 2014 – Nick Palumbo’s Pressure Test
Pressure Test (2 hours + 15 minutes assembling): 4 × Choc-Top Ice Creams
Tracy played her immunity pin, so Renae stepped in to take her place.
Yum, yum, yum, how delicious does that ice cream look?
Noooooo, Sarah over-processed her almond meal and it turned into almond paste…
They just played a promo for next week, it is going to be Heston Week! I’m sure Emelia is still around for Heston week from old promo, so we know who’s not going home today!
Emelia is going too smoothly, something is going to happen especially when she just talked to Gary about if one thing goes wrong, everything will go wrong…
Renae burned her caramel… Fireball!
But did she? LOL…
Sarah is running behind due to that over-processed almond meal that she’s trying to rescue.
So everyone finished on time once again…
Renae is up first for tasting. She nailed the salted caramel! Good overall!
Sarah is next. Something is wrong with Sarah’s soft-serve ice cream… Fireball! It tasted like salty milk, said Nick…
Emelia is the last one up for tasting. Best presentation out of the three. Cone is the best, but once again ice cream is also not very good.
It is between Sarah and Emelia…
Eliminated: Sarah, again
Choc Top Extraordinaire (Nick Palumbo) – LOL, who has soft serve machine at home to make this?
Sarah Todd eliminated from MasterChef after failing Choc Top test
Why we’re all screaming for Gelato Messina thanks to MasterChef
Heston Blumenthal creates a boiling point on MasterChef Australia
Ep 49, Tuesday, July 8, 2014 – Final Immunity Pin
Well, well, well, the promo tonight just gave away who’s cooking against the chef in Round 2, it is Amy if you want to know!
So the first round which is to identify parts of beef is really now no suspense at all, except maybe playing at home to identify beef parts, but I suspect they will not show the viewers anyway…
Round 1: Cow Jigsaw
Re-assembling cuts of beef to the diagram. No helping from the sideline.
LOL, Laura’s just throwing anything onto the diagram! And the first to raise her hand… 5 mistakes…
Amy got it!
Round 2 Against a Chef (amateur 75 minutes vs professional 60 minutes): John Lawson
Core Ingredient Choices (John’s choice): Bitter, Sweet
Amy is just squandering her time advantage not knowing what to cook…
Why isn’t Kylie helping Amy with the plating up instead of John who is so nice to come over and help Amy? I thought Kylie was the mentor! LOL.
Don’t be daft, Gary! Really, you can’t tell who cooked which dish? Plonking up by Amy, more like, than plating up… Amy’s dish looked so clumsy with a big lump of lobster tail and a few leaves (equivalent to how a diner would plonk some food on their plate in an all-you-can-eat Smorgasbord or Buffet restaurant – now if she had cut the tail into medallions and arranged them with ‘negative space’ à la Brent, that would be a totally different story, LOL), whereas John’s dish is finesse, sophisticated and shows a lot of techniques in the cooking (as in what you would be served in a fine dining restaurant)…
Scores:
Amy – Gary 8/10, George 7/10, Matt 7/10 = 22/30
John – Gary 9/10, George 8/10, Matt 8/10 = 25/30
No immunity pin given out.
Lobster, Citrus and Sorrel (Amy Shields)
Hohoho, finally an Asian team challenge tomorrow, and not one of the Top 8 are good with Asian cuisine… Will be interesting to watch… LOL, they also have to bring in mentors for the challenge, can see Shaun Presland and Frank Shek to cover the Japanese and Chinese/Cantonese sides of thing, also spy Vietnamese but don’t know the mentoring chef, the fourth Asian cuisine is also a mystery.
The top 8 are really a dull bunch to say the least, where’re the bubbly personalities like Poh, Justine, Marion, and Alvin from the first two seasons? The closest we got is Laura, but she’s more a girlish enthusiasm more than anything.
Also with the final immunity challenge tonight, does it mean just two more weeks left for season 6? By the end of next week, guess is top 6 or 5 remains, and final week one elimination per night?
Ep 50, Wednesday, July 9, 2014 – Asian Street Food Team Challenge
Team Challenge: 4 Asian Street Food Stalls outside MasterChef Kitchen for 200 MasterChef fans
Mise en Place: 2 1/2 hours
Stall Opening: 90 minutes
Team chosen by drawing coloured chopstick from a bamboo steamer basket.
Blue Team: Jarrod Hudson (Thai mentor), Laura, Jamie
Red Team: Shaun Presland (Japanese mentor), Renae, Ben
Green Team: Adrian Li (Vietnamese mentor), Brent, Tracy
Yellow Team: Frank Shek (Chinese mentor), Amy, Emelia
LOL, they still haven’t learnt from the Vic Market Challenge! Still thinking of multiple dishes, 1 dish, 2 dishes? JUST DO 1 GOOD DISH, that’s generally how all Asian street stalls sell! Blue is still making 2 dishes!
Boring dishes, so western thinking of Asian street foods, they are like the meat-and-3-vegs kind of Asian street foods… Chinese and Japanese broth, what are they really? So non-descriptive and generalization of both cultures! Just chuck in some Asian ingredients and call them Asian! Thai green papaya salad, Vietnamese rice paper rolls, really, that’s all they can come up with… For delicious common street foods, what about something like Vietnamese Caramel Pork Belly served in Vietnamese rolls (bánh mì are always popular sellers), or something simple like the deep-fried Japanese Tonkatsu or any of the grilled Japanese yakimono dishes, or Pad Thai, or any of the Thai gaeng dishes (but sadly I don’t think any of them know a green Thai curry from a red Thai curry), even Thai Chicken Rice is delicious… For Chinese, any of the dimsum-style dishes would have been better than the non-descriptive broth.
LOL, just had a thought why they were doing broth/soup, maybe non of them know how to do stir-fried noodle dishes?
Brent kept calling their Vietnamese dish “tacos”? LMAO… There is a reason why the Vietnamese don’t cook rice paper sheets that way!
Noooo, sambal in a Chinese dish, what the?
LOL, even the customer is giving them advice…
Yellow running out of food… Now they are giving customer only one spoonful to taste, LOL
Blue: 79 votes
Green: 51 votes
Red: 11 votes
Yellow: 59 votes
Green and Red Teams into elimination.
Coconut Braised Chicken (Blue Team)
Seared Tuna with Green Papaya Salad (Blue Team)
MasterChef’s ratings resurgence gives Network Ten hope
Ep 51, Thursday, July 10, 2014 – Dave Verheul’s Cryptic Elimination Challenge
Elimination Challenge (2 hours): Recreating Pear Sorbet, Caramel & Walnut dessert without a recipe, without tasting it and without seeing it.
The four contestants must recreate a dish from Melbourne’s The Town Mouse. The catch? The only thing they’ll have to guide them is Matt Preston’s review. A test of both their skills – and his.
Dave will be available to mentor the contestants during the challenge but without revealing too much.
The clues –
Matt Preston’s review:
Mortaring the pear to the plate is a sticky slick of treacle-dark soft caramel whose nut-butter notes echoe that nest of salty sweet roasted ganache “spaghetti”.
Contrasting this fruitiness is a bitter-sweet blitz of walnut praline unevenly scattered with salted walnuts – both smashed to a rough rubble and as a soft powder – and sweetened by the molasses-hit of very good brown sugar.
Crisp threads of desiccated pear skin over the sorbet bring more texture to a dessert that is all about contrasting the creamy with crisp and crunch… but then the bird that laid this egg is all about balance.
It is smart enough to rein all that sweetness with the bitterness of toffee takes right to the edge… the refreshing palate-cleansing use of pear, the subtle sourness of buttermilk and the judicious addition of salt…
I actually like this challenge at this stage of the competition. It will test the skills and abilities of the contestants without them hiding behind a given recipe.
Eliminated: Renae
Buttermilk poached pear, walnut, caramel, roast chocolate & pear sorbet (Dave Verheul)
MasterChef contestant Renae Smith eliminated after ultimate dessert re-creation challenge
Ep 52, Sunday, July 13, 2014 – Heston Week House Challenge & Invention Test
MasterChef 2014 recap: Heston Blumenthal gets a-salted
Heston Week begins! It starts with Heston sitting in the MasterChef House kitchen, enjoying a cup of tea, early in the morning waiting for the contestants to wake up. Hilarious seeing the blurry-eye contestants still in their pjs entering the kitchen and finding him there… Then the first challenge is to cook a dish using ingredients from the house pantry and refrigerator on portable stoves.
House Pantry Challenge (1 hour): The winner gets a one-on-one time with Heston and an advantage going into the next challenge.
Top 3: Laura, Jamie, Ben
Winner: Ben
LOL, the one-on-one time is only the drive from the MasterChef house to the MasterChef Kitchen. Ben’s advantage is to know in advance of the next challenge, which is not that big as it only means he gets a bit more time to think about what he will be cooking…
There will be only one elimination this week which is at the end of the week. Every challenge this week is set by Heston. Winner of every challenge will get an advantage going into the next challenge. Loser of every challenge will go straight into elimination, and will not cook again until the elimination.
Next week will be the Finals Week!
Invention Test (90 minutes): Native Ingredients, Family & Creativity
The challenge is to cook a dish based on family dinner using local and native ingredients, and they must show a twist to the dish using their creativity.
Ben had the advantage but he has to re-do his dish 15 minutes before the end of cooking time…
Noooo, Jamie with “the best sauce” he had ever made, and he forgot to put it on the plate, LOL
Good to finally see a judge like Heston giving TRUE honest critiques, and not the usual and lame mollycoddling of some favourites weeks after weeks by the house judges!
Top 2: Brent, Ben
Winner: Brent
Bottom 2: Amy, Tracy
Elimination: Tracy
Apples and Grapes with Toasted Almond Crumb (Ben Macdonald)
Fish Stew with Prawn Head Oil (Laura Cassai)
Chicken, Cauliflower and Herb Emulsion (Jamie Fleming)
Roast Lamb for the Family (Brent Owens)
Salt and Pepper Snapper with Mustard Emulsion and Charred Cucumber (Ben Macdonald)
How Ten reheated MasterChef and didn’t get burned
Ep 53, Monday, July 14, 2014 – Heston’s Beetroot Risotto Challenge
Contestants must cook one of Heston’s dishes: Beetroot Risotto. With no recipe, they must keep up with Heston as he cooks the dish in front of them, but they must finish cooking at the same time.
Keeping-Up-with-Heston Challenge: Brent’s advantage is to get to read the recipe which has 44 steps and go through it with Heston before the other contestants arrived.
Laura is flustered and falling behind.
12 minutes in, Brent discovered his scale was on the wrong setting, meaning all his measurements were wrong, so he has to start again and more multitasking for him.
LOL, this has to be the most difficult of keeping-up challenges in all the series of MCA…
Everything is falling apart for all six contestants with the Crème Anglaise, well, maybe except Ben, and Heston has to stop cooking and help… LOL.
Hahaha, everyone has red hands from handling beetroot…
Finally here comes the liquid nitrogen for the ice cream. And Ben’s ice cream is making clanking noice, LOL
Jamie looks to be safe, maybe.
Ben’s ice cream has crystallised bits in it, no wonder it was clanking…
Amy also looks to be safe, except too much chocolate on the plate.
Emelia seems OK too, except for small mistakes.
Laura could be safe too, except presentation is not the best.
Brent’s risotto hasn’t got the umpf…
Top 2: Amy, Jamie
Winner: Amy
Bottom 2: Ben, Brent
Elimination: Ben
Beetroot Risotto (Heston Blumenthal)
Ep 54, Tuesday, July 15, 2014 – Service Challenge
In the off-site challenge, Heston sets the task for the five contestants cooking. They must pimp the menu of a local Melbourne pub and run the service for 120 customers, with Heston at the helm.
Pub Service Challenge: The Hotel Albion at Port Melbourne
Mise en Place: 2 hours
Service starts : 1pm
Each contestants must re-invent a pub classic. Amy gets the advantage of choosing her dish first.
Amy – Surf & Turf
Brent – Parma
Laura – Pasta
Emelia – Roast
Jamie – Fish/Catch of the Day
LOL, surprise, surprise (NOT!), there were exactly 30 spatchcocks for Emelia in the pantry…
Laura has not really challenged herself, still sticking to Italian cuisine after all this time… If she’s in the final, we can expect an Italian Feast for her finale dish! That’s the problem with young contestants, this is NOT a “competition” based on talent, this is a competition based on skill! However talented or have instinct about cooking, young contestants just do not have the skill or knowledge to back up whatever they have in talent… It is Callum all over again. It just makes a mockery of the competition with the judges speculating about this could be the year with the youngest contestant winning (which I don’t think will happen by the way). Really, even if that happened, who is going to buy a cookbook written by a teenager, the under 12?
Tonight, or this week, just proved the point, Heston was not there to mollycoddle the contestants and without the constant help, praise and encouragement from the 3 judges, Laura just didn’t seem to be the same person from the last whatever weeks the competition was on… She seems to lack energy, lost and unsure of herself, and this from the girl who told a professional chef not to overcook the protein previously!
Top 2: Amy, Emelia
Winner: Amy
Bottom 2: Laura, Brent
Elimination: Brent
The question is, did Laura re-invent anything with her dish which was the brief? Yet none of the judges brought that up because she is young, only saying it was the easiest dish out of the 5 during tasting, anyone else would have copped that with regard to not meeting the brief and put into elimination!
Surf and Turf (Amy Shields)
Spatchcock with Lentils and Madeira Jus (Emelia Jackson)
Ep 55, Wednesday, July 16, 2014 – Five Senses Challenge
MasterChef 2014 recap: Sensing failure missing from Heston’s palette of ‘senses’
The contestants must make a dish inspired by the five senses. Each cook has to include taste and the remaining senses are allocated between the contestants to include in their dish.
Sensory Challenge (2 hours): Taste (compulsory), Sight, Smell, Sound, & Touch
Planning: 30 minutes
Cooking: 90 minutes
Amy with the advantage gets to choose her preferred sense first, and she chooses sound.
The other three has to do the knife-pull to decide which senses they need to use.
1 Jamie – smell
2 Laura – sight
3 Emelia – touch
Amy cuts her thumb right at the start of the challenge!
Laura is lost and confused again! She keeps looking up to the three up on the balcony. Do you get the feeling they gave her the beetroot idea, maybe not directly but something to light the bulb in her head? That smile she gave Ben says a lot!
Here comes Gary, trying to help Laura again, jeez…
Emelia is in a mess with her emotion…
Jamie presented a good theatrics of smell but the dish itself is flat…
Amy’s about half good, half not too good…
Laura looks to be safe…
Emelia is safe, Heston loves it!
Safe, through to Finals Week: Laura, Emelia, Jamie
Elimination: Amy
Apples and Lemons (Emelia Jackson)
Citrus Cured Salmon with Beetroot Jelly (Laura Cassai)
Ten’s MasterChef continues to rise
Ten tops Nine for audience share as Masterchef and Offspring surge on lacklustre night
Heston Blumenthal serves up MasterChef’s biggest 2014 audience
Ep 56, Thursday, July 17, 2014 – Channelling-Heston Elimination
MasterChef 2014 recap: See who misses Heston Blumenthal’s farewell party
Deception Challenge (2 hours): Contestants must create a dish that is not what it seems (4 plates per contestants).
Planning: 30 minutes
Cooking: 90 minutes
So basically this challenge is what Laura had to cook yesterday, let’s see how her dish compared with what these four can put up tonight.
Noooooo, Brent’s emotional idea was rejected by Heston for not fitting the brief…
Thank goodness after a talking to by George, he came up with the pile-of-dirt idea which sounds good.
Really like Amy’s dish, wasn’t that the dish that has been shown on the promo? So presumably she’s safe…
Tracy’s dish sounds the weakest out of the four…
LOL, Ben, this is definitely the right time to do black/charred food…
Ben’s “Bonfire” dish looks impressive! Especially with the smoke… Judges love the dish!
Must say Brent’s dish turned out looking good too, now only a matter of taste… It is like digging for treasures in that pile of soil, judges love it too!
Amy’s dish did not taste that good, quite surprised!
Tracy’s dish is not deceptive enough according to the judges…
Safe, through to Finals Week: Ben, Brent
Lastly, Tracy scraped through to the Final 6 based on the taste of her dish…
Eliminated: Amy
Campfire (Ben Macdonald)
Diggin’ in the Dirt (Brent Owens)
MasterChef’s Amy Shields is desperate for a baby and will immediately try IVF again
Ep 57, Thursday, July 17, 2014 – Heston’s MasterClass
Gin and Tonic Nitro (Heston Blumenthal)
Fish and Chips (Heston Blumenthal)
The BFG (Black Forest Gâteau) Hot Chocolate (Heston Blumenthal)
Pavlova (George Calombaris)
Lamb Hot-Pot with Kidneys and Crisp Potatoes and Freekah Salad (Gary Mehigan)
Ep 58, Sunday, July 20, 2014 – Mystery Box & Pressure Test
MasterChef 2014 recap: Recipe for disaster
The contestants open their Mystery Boxes and find ingredients chosen by their loved ones. They now have 45 minutes to cook something spectacular using those ingredients.
Mystery Box (45 minutes)
It will be difficult to keep up with the episode tonight as the TV reception has once again been very bad tonight, in fact the whole day on Channel 10, 1 and 11, about 1/3 of the time is good clear vision, 1/3 of the time is scrambled vision, and the rest of the time just blank screen!
Top three will be safe and bottom three will face the next challenge where one of them will be eliminated. Anyway from the promos, from stupid channel 10, shown the last few days, we already know one of the contestants who is going into the next challenge…
Top 3 (safe): Brent, Emelia, Tracy
Bottom 3 (elimination): Ben, Jamie, Laura
Pressure Test (2 hours): Dessert by Nick Palumbo, Christy Tania and Darren Purchese
Apparently from what I could gather from the broken visions and sound bites, each chef brought in one element/component which made up the dessert that the contestants have to make.
Looks like Laura is getting plenty of help once again, no surprise!
Can’t really hear or see the judging of the 3 dishes… So can’t tell whose dish is good or bad…
Jamie is safe.
Eliminated: Ben
White Chocolate Pannacotta with Coconut (Brent Owens)
Snapper with Roasted Pineapple and Praline (Emelia Jackson)
Chicken with Cauliflower 3 Ways (Tracy Collins)
Banana Split (Darren Purchese, Christy Tania & Nick Palumbo)
MasterChef contestant Ben MacDonald eliminated after banana split pressure test
Ultimate challenge for MasterChef 2014 contestants!
Ep 59, Monday, July 21, 2014 – Invention Test
MasterChef recap 2014: The disaster that sends Tracy home
In an emotional Invention Test, the remaining five contestants are surprised to learn that there are no rules or restraints; they can cook whatever they choose with full access to the pantry.
Well, can’t receive any signal from Channel 10 again, so unable to do any update, sorry! Might as well watch the final of The Voice which I have totally lost interest this year due to dull contestants, LOL… It started well with what I thought the strongest team from Team Ricky consisting of C Major and that tattoo guy who sings operatic/musicals, the two most interesting/entertaining contestants this year… And then later Sabrina who started to shine, then nothing, we all know what happened and Team Ricky ending with a saved contestant from Team Kylie and none of his original team…
What, did I just hear Darren said the finale is broadcast live to NZ as well tonight?
No way, now Channel 9 is also suffering from no-signal syndrome… I don’t want to watch Channel 7 and it is the only station giving me clear signal!
Hahaha, Channel 9’s problem is only temporary, can now watch again…
LOL, it is now 8:25pm, Channel 10 is back… Now clear signal to show me lots of commercials for the ad break…
Back from ads, Emelia is up for judging… Her dessert looks good! George is talking gibberish, I thought he didn’t like it, but then he said it is amazing, make up your mind, George!
Laura is up… Gary is in heaven… Did he help Laura to cook the dish? He must have, they always praise the component of the dish that they help the contestant with… LOL
Brent is next, boom, commercial time…
No way, he finally cooked the dish for his father that Heston rejected! Matt likes it saying it has creativity, but George said it needs refining.
Tracy is next… Ad break again…
Uh, oh, TV signals starting to go again…
Wet, wet, wet, that’s all I can hear in between the lost signals… Not sure if they like the dish or not…
Top 3: Emelia, Laura, Jamie
Eliminated: Tracy
Grilled Quail with Artichokes, Mushroom Panzanella and Red Wine Jus (Laura Cassai)
‘Cyclone’ Tracy Collins criticised for her kitchen mess as she falters with lobster dish in ‘No Rules Invention Test’
Former MasterChef contestant Poh Ling Yeow launches new menu at PappaRich Chatswood on Saturday
Ep 60, Tuesday, July 22, 2014 – Duel Challenges
MasterChef recap: Laura, the queen of Italian cuisine, steps up to the plate as front runner
The top four contestants must cook off in a duel challenge over three rounds. There’s a great deal at stake as the winner of the third round will secure a place in the semi-final.
Who cares anymore!
LOL, seriously, another night of no Channel 10. Just for fun, I dragged out my old analogue TV with an old set-top box which only tunes to standard digital stations (no HD stations) just to see if it is any better. What do you know, it actually has better reception than my digital TV! Yes, it is not that much better, but at least it is giving me scrambled pixelated screen images with broken sound bites which is better than the silence blank screen my digital TV is giving me…
From what little reception I could get, why is Laura getting an advantage of choosing the cuisine and who to cook against? Blatant favouritism, it is set up for her to get into the semi-final, surely! The manipulation from the producers are getting very obvious, and they don’t even try to hide it anymore! Laura either regurgitates her nonna’s recipes or gets lots of sympathy help from the judges when she has to attempt other cuisines…
Even I’m suspecting the winner last night on The Voice was manipulated by the same production company which also made MasterChef. It shouted rigged voting for the only female, a wildcard coming out of nowhere, in the final 3 to win, following the favourite pattern of alternating male/female winners that they have done on MCA. They may push for Laura to get into the final for the headlines but I think they will ultimately choose a male winner this year… In saying that, I don’t even care who the winner is this year. The final six are just like robots, cooking the same thing over and over again, seared a protein a.k.a. meat or seafood, coupled with a salad/veg and finished with a sauce, no variations or surprises, and on top of that, all six only ever cooked either French or Italian/Greeks by choice, and it is getting very tedious to watch.
Dare I even say it, there were more interesting and varied dishes on MKR this year, even with all the disaster consequences, than what we saw on the last few weeks of MCA6. They also showed a bit more knowledge on Asian cuisines than the last six on MCA this year… Sacrilegious, I know, but seriously! Yeah, the best ever cooks who are constantly out-cooked by a girl who cooks comforting Italian food, are you kidding me? Maybe my TV is so outraged by the manipulation it automatically pixelated the screen to save me the outrage myself, LOL.
I’m assuming Laura is through to the semi-final? It is so simple an idiot could predict it! Tomorrow is a challenge in a restaurant, the producers are protecting their “youngest ever” contestant in case she couldn’t hack it based on her last performance in the restaurant challenge and fallen before the final where she’s destined for… Why? So that they could promote the hell out of the possibility of the “youngest ever” winner… And there must be some sort of pride on the judges part not to risk putting Laura in another restaurant challenge and see her fail again to put up good dishes in the pressure cooker situation in a real commercial kitchen and shame the judges in front of real customers.
Seared Tuna with Anchovy and Tomato Reduction, Salsa Verde toasted chestnut (Laura Cassai)
Soft Shell Crab with Curry Sauce (Emelia Jackson)
Spiced Kangaroo Fillet with Babaganoush and Tabouli (Laura Cassai)
Shame on you, producers of MCA, they were probably too busy plotting to put Laura into the semi-final, they disregarded important detail by placing India’s flag upside-down… This is what happened when the emphasis is on manipulation to get desired result rather than respect for other countries and their cuisines!
MasterChef Australia should not display India’s national Flag disrespectfully!
Ep 61, Wednesday, July 23, 2014 – Restaurant Challenge
MasterChef recap: when eggs go to custard
With one contestant already through to the semi-final, the remaining three contestants compete in a service challenge at the three-hatted Vue de Monde restaurant in Melbourne.
That’s it, I think MCA6 is finished for me this year with another no reception night from Network 10. Might as well wait for the recap tomorrow if there is one…
Now should I watch The X Factor on 7 or The Voice Kids on 9, ah, decision, decision, decision…
Oh my gosh, glad I watched The X Factor, the harmony by the Brothers 3 just send a shiver down my spine, they are good!
Wow, another spine tingling performance, this time from Erin!
Wow again, Sydnee, great emotional performance!
Vue de Monde Beef (Shannon Bennett)
Ep 62, Thursday, July 24, 2014 – Martin Benn’s Elimination Challenge
MasterChef recap: Hearts bleed and chocolate melts for Jamie who misses out on final
Three contestants must cook off in an elimination pressure test with one contestant leaving forever.
It’s a miracle! The episode is actually viewable tonight, just hope it will last until the end of the episode.
Elimination (3 hours): Martin Benn’s Chocolate Forest Floor
The Finals Week this year is really weird. So last night episode was just to choose a winner to get the advantage of seeing and practising the recipe overnight which is Brent… If they are going to give someone advantage, they should have done it every night starting at the beginning of the week with the final 6.
Unbelievable, so all three have problems and Gary and George went around and told them to figure out a solution for themselves! It would have been a different story for Laura if she’s cooking tonight with specific help, I’m sure!
Emelia is first save!
Eliminated: Jamie
So Top 3: Brent, Emelia, Laura
Chocolate Forest Floor (Martin Benn)
Jamie Fleming ‘absolute devastated’ at missing the MasterChef finale by a matter of days
Blumenthal goes under the knife
Ep 63, Thursday, July 24, 2014 – Final MasterClass
The contestants sit the final MasterClass, joined by special guest chefs Curtis Stone & Kylie Kwong.
Interesting, did my eyes deceive me, Tash was not at the final MasterClass?
Slow Roasted Lamb with Flatbread and Mayo (Matt Preston)
Basil Seed Horiatiki Salad (George Calombaris)
Ten wins the night on the back of Masterchef and Commonwealth Games
MasterChef and Commonwealth Games cook up a rare victory for Ten
MasterChef Australia grand finalists Emelia Jackson, Laura Cassai and Brent Owens assess chance
George Calombaris lists five favourite recipes from MasterChef Australia
No more stewing over past for Masterchef contestant
Reality of life after MasterChef
Ep 64, Sunday, July 27, 2014 – Semi-Final
MasterChef 2014 recap: Class warfare leaves two standing in race to the finals
The stakes are high as the three remaining contestants fight for a place in the finale.
Service Challenge: Each contestant has to prepare 1 main and 1 dessert for 20 customers + 3 plates for the judges, 46 plates altogether for each contestant
Mise en Place: 4 hours
I think having to cook at every challenge last week were good practice/experience for Brent and Emelia, and could end up being a disadvantage for Laura with her fast tracking.
LOL at the eliminated contestants having to stand for 4 hours watching from the balcony! And what a subdued bunch they were, polite clapping only and not much support for the three cooking below! Do you get the feeling something happened below that signalled favouritism to one particular contestant and they already knew who were going through to the finale?
Laura is falling behind. Her menu said smoked quails and she nearly was not going to smoke them until George pointed it out to her.
Emelia has nailed her beef cheek main.
Brent has also nailed his pork belly main, Gary is in heaven again with the crackling.
Judges loved Laura’s quails as well. She said the timing for the last 3 plates for the judges were iffy and might be under, but the judges said they were cooked spot on. Funny there were no comments from the customers, I refuse to believe by cooking to order that Laura cooked all her 23 portions of quails to perfection! So how many were overcooked or under? The judges were also commenting on Laura not having enough chestnuts to make puree, I wonder if she served miniature serving of the puree like her last service challenge, LOL
Both Laura and Emelia had problems with one element of their desserts.
Brent’s dessert was good.
Emelia’s missing mandarin curd may cost her spot in the finale.
Laura was making up lost time copying the forest dessert she missed out making last week. Gary is in heaven again.
Wonder if the they are going to judge on their performance in the kitchen…
Brent is the first one through to the finale.
Laura is through too. So kitchen performance no consideration at all! I wonder how far behind she was with her service… Also if George had not pointed out her “smoked” quail mistake, what would have happened! No comment on her unset mousse at all after the judges nitpicking on Emelia’s missing curd… I also refuse to believe that Emelia did not plan her dessert completely. Give us a break, didn’t the contestants need to provide a list of ingredients so they can stock them for the cook-off? I think it was more likely a case of the judges questioning her dessert before the start of cooking to mess with her head (as her elimination was on the card?) and she had to come up with that element of the mandarin curd on the spur of the moment, as she had fresh citrus on her plate after all for the tang already. Really? They got time to plan the menu and she left the dessert planning out?
It is a farce to only judge the 3 plates the judges tasted and no references to the other 20 plates for the customers, how do we know how many of the customers’ plates were not up to standard? The whole point of the service challenge is to judge the OVERALL standard of all the dishes served!
Eliminated: Emelia
Pork and Apples (Brent Owens)
Apples with Pistachio and Fennel (Brent Owens)
Smoke Quail with Pine Mushrooms, Chestnut and Polenta (Laura Cassai)
Chestnut Forest (Laura Cassai)
Glazed Beef Cheeks with Jerusalem Artichokes (Emelia Jackson)
Mandarin and Chocolate with Fig Leaf Ice Cream (Emelia Jackson)
Eliminated MasterChef contestant Emelia Jackson reveals she nearly walked out in the first week
Ep 65, Monday, July 28, 2014 – Finale
MasterChef 2014 grand final recap: Who takes the money, the trophy, the book deal?
The massive finale will be played out in a culinary duel over three rounds.
Another night of crappy TV reception, so will do my best to update, but for every 2 seconds of good reception, there’s at least 1 second of blank screen, LOL… So it is quite hard for me to follow what’s going on…
Coupled with the crappy editing page on WordPress the past few days, can’t even see what I typed as the page keeps jumping up and down, LOL. So update may be slow as I have to type on Word document then copy and paste to the editing page!
Round 1 (60 minutes): Mystery Box, ingredients picked by the contestants alternately
Round 1 Scores:
Laura – Gary 8/10, George 9/10, Matt 8/10 = 25/30
Brent – Gary 9/10, George 9/10, Matt 9/10 = 27/30
Round 2 (90 minutes): Chef’s Table, cooking one savoury dish for their loved ones as they looked on at the chef’s tables
LOL, nonna’s here to help get Laura over the line, she will win this round for sure!
Laura is repeating her dish again, panzanella again with mushrooms…
At least Brent is re-inventing Lancashire Hotpot… But no surprise lambman cooking another lamb dish…
Round 2 Scores:
Laura – Gary 8/10, George 8/10, Matt 8/10 = 24/30
Brent – Gary 7/10, George 7/10, Matt 7/10 = 21/30
So Laura has snuck in front by 1 point…
Round 3 (3 hours to cook, 20 minutes to assemble 4 plates): Peter Gilmore’s Pressure Test – Chocolate Ethereal
At least twice as hard as Snow Egg according to Peter!
Here we go again, Laura making a mistake and the judges coming to help, jeez…
Now the people upstairs are helping…
Second mistake from Laura, yes, cry your heart out, Laura baby, that’s what the producers are hoping for, DRAMA.
LOL, am I cruel? I’m actually enjoying the meltdown… Slap myself hard, no use, still LMAO, hahahaha
How did Laura get caught up and did all the elements in time? And Brent missing one element…
LOL, another mistake from Laura during plating up, this time judges not there to help as they are in another room, funniest thing ever…
LOL, judges can’t even break up Laura’s nougat bar…
Surely Laura can’t win from here!
Yes, very, very difficult and heart wrenching decision from the judges, NOT, still trying to give Laura the win I see, LOL
Can’t see Adam from season 2… Was he busy with his latest TV series, or some other reasons?
Round 3 Scores:
Laura – Gary 8/10, George 8/10, Matt 8/10, Peter 7/10 = 31/40
Brent – Gary 8/10, George 9/10, Matt 9/10, Peter 9/10 = 35/40
Bullshit scoring from the 3 judges (but then again we know they are just puppets, the scores were fed from the producers), Brent’s dessert was clearly far better than Laura, but scores still so close…
Only Peter is giving honest scores!
Laura 80 points
Brent 83 points
Brent has got it, Season 6 winner!
Called it, a male winner…
Scampi with Textures of Barley (Brent Owens)
Re-invented Lancashire Hot Pot (Brent Owens)
Scampi with Anchovy Butter, Roasted Garlic Cream and Pickled Cabbage (Laura Cassai)
Lobster and Scallops with Chestnuts and Mushrooms (Laura Cassai)
Chocolate Ethereal (Peter Gilmore)
MasterChef secrets: What you didn’t know about Ten’s cooking show
MasterChef 2014: Brent Owens wins reality TV cooking show
Brent Owens wins Masterchef Australia final from Laura Cassai
Corner Café 
I am big fan of MasterChef I never want to miss the episodes but sometimes i missed that. So I download that episodes through Free YouTube Downloader which is very fast. Now I can watch every episode of MasterChef whenever I want.
Comment by Richelle — April 22, 2014 @ 10:13 pm |
i like this awesome tv program,
MasterChef australia, 🙂
alway watching that with my family
thxz
Comment by Alen — April 24, 2014 @ 4:21 pm |
cant wait to see it againnnn………..
Comment by nada — May 5, 2014 @ 4:29 am |
can u pls tell me where it is being shown?
Comment by shreyasi — May 6, 2014 @ 1:54 am |
Australia at the moment, other countries will have to wait depending on your broadcasters whether they are fast-tracking the show or not to your country.
Comment by SeaDragon — May 6, 2014 @ 8:45 am |
Anybody link?
Comment by Joris — May 6, 2014 @ 1:29 am |
Not that I’m aware of, but there are illegal downloads somewhere I’m sure, not that I’m encouraging you to watch illegal episode online, LOL.
Comment by SeaDragon — May 6, 2014 @ 8:50 am |
can u pls tell me where is masterchef australia 2014 being shown?its not coming on star world at 9 p.m…pls help me
Comment by shreyasi — May 6, 2014 @ 1:53 am |
Australia at the moment, you have to go to Star World website and ask them when they are broadcasting season 6 of MCA.
Comment by SeaDragon — May 6, 2014 @ 8:46 am |
When will it air in India ??
Comment by Mini — May 6, 2014 @ 4:43 pm |
Sorry, no idea. Ask your TV station when they are going to show this series.
Comment by SeaDragon — May 7, 2014 @ 10:05 am |
they are aired in indian tele, mon to sat 9pm in star world premier….they r about a week late though
Comment by za — June 14, 2014 @ 9:27 pm |
mi piace più master chef australia che quello italiano che quello americano i giudici sono simpaticissimi e saluti e tanti auguri per il programma da teresa da nocera inferiore provincia di salerno campania italia
Comment by teresa lambiase — May 7, 2014 @ 12:55 am |
I love masterchef this season but due to work and school i have missed most of the episodes so far
because of this blog, i can still catch up with the latest progress
thanks a lot :))
Comment by Eddie — May 27, 2014 @ 9:02 am |
Wonder who is Gna be eliminated next love
Comment by Ally — May 29, 2014 @ 5:45 am |
What happend to masterclass? Omg I was enjoying to see the judges Cook
Comment by Connie — May 31, 2014 @ 9:12 pm |
They must have scaled down the number of MasterClass episodes since they are the least watched episodes for the week.
Comment by SeaDragon — June 1, 2014 @ 9:09 pm |
Really wana knw who ppl really vote fr or whos their favourite contestants n who they think will win nice to just knw 🙂
Comment by aadillah karani — June 2, 2014 @ 3:03 am |
Hey admin,i am aa big fan of masterchef and from india.i use to check your updates about it everyday as i can’t get these episodes in my country.i am very disappointed about tash.she don’t deserve to be in bottom .she should be saved by the judges if they have brains.and i think ben or rachael is gooing home because i am 100% sure that brent isn’t gonna leave tomnorow .and can you do me a favour,if you know how to add episodes and elimination table to masterchef’s wikipedia page.please do so please.i would be very thankful to you.i tried to alter the page by adding there but failed everytime.please do this job.thanks.
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 5, 2014 @ 1:08 am |
Sorry, I don’t use or check into the Wikipedia pages, so have no idea how to edit the pages there.
Comment by SeaDragon — June 5, 2014 @ 9:37 am |
Admin you just relived me!i was very nervous about tash.but it’s all okay now!
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 5, 2014 @ 8:35 pm |
Everything fair has happened in today’s elimination.just very happy that tash’s not going home today.
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 5, 2014 @ 8:39 pm |
Yes, good result. 🙂
Comment by SeaDragon — June 5, 2014 @ 8:47 pm |
I think you are also on tash’s side and you should because she’s a great cook.did you remember the words said by george on episode number 3 that the contestants which are going straight to tommorow’s elimination are both great and good cooks.he used great for natasha shan there.
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 6, 2014 @ 12:29 am |
I think you are also on tash’s side and you should be because she’s a great cook.did you remember the words said by george on episode number 3 that the contestants which are going straight to tommorow’s elimination are both great and good cooks.he used great for natasha shan there.
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 6, 2014 @ 12:29 am |
I do like Tash, but the main reason I wanted her to avoid elimination this time was because of the stupidity of her 3 team members. It would be a shame if she was eliminated due to that.
Comment by SeaDragon — June 8, 2014 @ 3:31 pm |
Good afternoon admin!ease tell me what’s the name of sunday’s challange and what the beautiful theme is it gonna be?
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 7, 2014 @ 5:00 pm |
It is a chocolate challenge, they have to make a savoury and a sweet dish using chocolate. That’s all the promo showed, will have to wait until tonight to see.
Comment by SeaDragon — June 8, 2014 @ 3:34 pm |
Who are the bottom 3 today admin?
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 8, 2014 @ 8:42 pm |
Don’t know yet, the judges are still tasting.
Comment by SeaDragon — June 8, 2014 @ 8:45 pm |
Please reply me the moment you gget to knoe who are in bottom and top
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 8, 2014 @ 8:47 pm |
Top and bottom 3 revealed, see post.
Comment by SeaDragon — June 8, 2014 @ 9:02 pm |
Oh my god!what a relief!tash’s safe now.no worries whose’s gonna eliminate but i think sam is going home.
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 8, 2014 @ 9:03 pm |
It is difficult to say, as tomorrow’s pressure test is making sushi/sashimi from a Japanese Masterchef. It depends on who’s good with knife skill.
Comment by SeaDragon — June 8, 2014 @ 9:15 pm |
It would be byron or sam that is going home tommorow.
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 8, 2014 @ 10:30 pm |
I knew sam would be going home.
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 9, 2014 @ 10:16 pm |
What’s gonna happen tommorow admin?
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 10, 2014 @ 12:54 am |
Immunity pin. Not much in the promo, something about “choose your weapon of choice” in three cases…
Comment by SeaDragon — June 10, 2014 @ 8:56 am |
Fabulous post! Thanks for all the updates 🙂 x
Comment by mmmarzipan — June 10, 2014 @ 1:28 am |
You are welcome.
Comment by SeaDragon — June 10, 2014 @ 8:59 am |
Can anyone plz tell me whats the next episode about didnt get to c the promo
Comment by aadillah karani — June 13, 2014 @ 6:27 am |
The next two episodes will feature Marco Pierre White.
Comment by SeaDragon — June 13, 2014 @ 5:22 pm |
May tash not be going home tommorow.please lord save her
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 15, 2014 @ 9:22 pm |
Quick spoiler 22/06 Episode
Missed the beginning, so didn’t know how they decide which two contestants compete for first part.
First part : Tracy versus Renae
Tracy won → Top 10 and has the chance to win immunity
Renae → Pressure test
Second part : Team invention test
Team America : Brent, Jamie, Emilia
Team Morocco : Colin, Ben, Kira
Team Vietnam : Laura, Georgia, Amy
Team Vietnam lost and goes to the pressure test with Renae.
Team Americ and team Morocco are Top 10 now.
Who is the next one going home ?
From the preview, it seems like Laura did really badly during the pressure test…
Comment by Eddie — June 23, 2014 @ 9:37 am |
Thanks for the summary, even though I’ve set the recorder to record the encore to watch tonight, at least I’ve an inkling of the episode if the recording turns out blank for the encore too. Hopefully Channel 10 is back on my TV screen for tonight’s episode.
Comment by SeaDragon — June 23, 2014 @ 12:43 pm |
Ii was 100 % sure that sarah would be returning because on wikipedia page it was written in her status “eliminited in episode xx ,returning tba” and that made me feel happy.good to see her back.india rocks and so does sarah.
Comment by apoorv tyagi — June 24, 2014 @ 8:53 pm |
Sarah is my fav contestant ! happy to see her back to the competition !!!
Comment by Eddie — June 26, 2014 @ 7:36 pm |
thanks for the updates – was out of the country for the last week and have just caught up on what has been happening! Can’t wait to tune in again tonight.
Comment by D — July 7, 2014 @ 4:51 pm |
No worries.
Comment by SeaDragon — July 7, 2014 @ 8:45 pm |
The views on youtube are very low because Shine are closing down the videos or channels.
Comment by zag — July 7, 2014 @ 8:49 pm |
Does anybody remember that joke Brendan made in the comeback episode? It goes something like “my priority is to show you that the last time I was here was a case__ __”. Further, he says he had 2 months to make that joke. I just can’t remember those 2 words and it’s so annoying!
Comment by Upasna — July 8, 2014 @ 12:09 am |
I think it was ‘Kwong Place, Kwong Time’
Comment by Nat R — July 10, 2014 @ 4:46 am |
Ahh! Thanks for the reply!
Comment by Upasna — July 16, 2014 @ 5:08 am |
You may need to retune your TV to get C10.
Comment by NGP — July 21, 2014 @ 7:53 pm |
Already retuned a few times the last few weeks… LOL, I think the problem is location…
Comment by SeaDragon — July 21, 2014 @ 8:06 pm |
What a blow Jamie got eliminated
Comment by Rafael — July 24, 2014 @ 9:07 pm |
He didn’t have a chance really, Brent got the recipe the night before, Emelia is better with dessert.
Comment by SeaDragon — July 24, 2014 @ 9:22 pm |
why Jamie got Eliminated 😦
Comment by fordes09 — July 25, 2014 @ 9:58 pm |
Well, Tash made it all too real by going and claiming that she felt marginalised by the contestants in the MasterChef house. Hence the absence on final masterclass? I just think that invariably everyone seemed kind of self-centred at the start. It was only after Marco week that they opened up a bit. Tash might have taken it personally, for reasons best known to her.
Comment by Upasna — July 25, 2014 @ 11:19 pm |
The sequence of events is actually the other way round, what she claimed was said after the finale had been filmed, that is after that masterclass was done and dusted. We know Heston week was filmed in April when Heston was in Melbourne at that time, so the finals week would have been filmed sometimes in May the latest.
As you said the contestants seemed to open up after Marco’s week at about the time Tash was eliminated. That actually fit in with what she said, the remaining contestants would have realized if they didn’t start displaying emotions, they would end up like Tash, who appeared to refuse to play the producers game, being eliminated. The “marginalisation” may have been the result of her not playing the game, most of the others may have been willing to do whatever the producers wanted to stay in the “competition”, of course all of these are just my speculation, LOL.
In saying that, I have a suspicion Sarah was also eliminated, twice, for not crying enough! She may have been given a second chance to CRY, CRY, CRY, and she didn’t.
Comment by SeaDragon — July 26, 2014 @ 11:50 am |
You’ve made a keen observation there and I have to agree with you on that. It baffles me that a show like MasterChef Australia needs to be subjected to such gimmicks. With a brilliant format, affable judges (unlike their American counterparts) and a set of very talented contestants – It’s plain unwarranted. There was no need to turn smug Emelia into an agony aunt Emelia for crying out loud!
Comment by Upasna — July 27, 2014 @ 10:50 pm |
[…] Masterchef Australia 2014 top 24 [Network Ten via Corner Café]. Tracy is in red, because she’s the […]
Pingback by Masterchef Australia: Why the Power Apron Needs to Burn. | Britt in Boots — July 28, 2014 @ 7:31 pm |
Out of the two finalists, I would have liked Laura to win. She really does screw up her desserts, doesn’t she? She only just scraped through the ‘banana split’ elimination challenge which sent Ben home. At least, one could anticipate a good Italian cookbook from her. (Okay, she’l come out with it anyway). But what are we to expect from Brent? Lamb dishes plated up with “negative spaces”? :p
Comment by Upasna — July 29, 2014 @ 11:22 am |
LOL, yes, would be interesting to see what sort of cookbook from Brent. In saying that I have no interest in both the finalists anyway. I don’t think Laura is good with dessert, only the savoury dishes. Didn’t the Bliss twins from Junior MasterChef already put out a nonna’s Italian cookbook? I think they are better than Laura to tell the truth and are more proficient in both savoury and sweet dishes.
Comment by SeaDragon — July 29, 2014 @ 4:10 pm |
When did it air in the UK…. this new series. Have only just realised that it’s back on. 😦
Comment by joanne cox — September 17, 2014 @ 4:13 am |
I just googled… and I think Series 6 has just started to air in the UK this week.
Comment by SeaDragon — September 17, 2014 @ 8:56 pm |
I loved your reviews. Was downloading and watching the series, but this turned out to be more entertaining (not to mention time saving!), so lost interest in that and switched to this instead. Also, I agree with your conspiracy theories, sad as they are.
Comment by Nix — September 18, 2014 @ 12:14 am |
masterchef is the best
ananya
Comment by ananya — September 26, 2014 @ 2:52 pm |
its really shame of master chef Australia producers to put a nation’s flag upside down..(Indian Flag).
its shows the less importance given to other nations and lack of respect …
Comment by Deepthi — October 4, 2014 @ 3:41 am |