Masterchef Recap: In The Chilli Bin

The two faces of fish

Heat Week continues, with the producers surreptitiously raising the temperature gradually each half hour until by the end of the week the contestants will be suffering from fatal exhaustion The amateurs enter, with Casper heading to the balcony as befits his official status as Handsome King Of Everything.

Once more, the top dish will earn its maker immunity for the week, and today they will be cooking with chillies. The judges reveal that the Masterchef garden contains four types of chilli: birdseye, jalapeno, red cayenne and green cayenne. Poh informs them that each variety has its own flavour and characteristics, but she’s probably just saying that. They’re chillies, you know? Whatever. They must use the chillies to make their dishes hot, and whoever causes the judges the greatest amount of gastric ditstress wins.

The amateurs run to the garden to pick chillies like they’re freaking Amish farmers or something, god have we not progressed past this point in western civilisation? Is there anything more degrading than picking your food from a garden? It disgusts me.

Anyway they pick some chillies and run inside. “I am loving the energy in the room,” says Poh, giving thanks to Origin for supplying it. Andy explains that chillies can be used to give food the taste of chillies. “There is no limits,” says Jean-Christophe, who hopes to see the contestants break the surly bonds of earth and kiss the face of god.

Poh visits Annabel, who is not only the only woman left, but also has nobody beside her at the bench. The producers are working hard to isolate her and damage her mental health, just for a laugh. Yet to understand just how much they delight in her suffering, Annabel smiles and tells Poh that she is making Thai red curry paste and putting it on a fish. Poh thinks this is a great idea, because she stopped listening ages ago. “I don’t want this to be a curry,” says Annabel, making her decision to use curry paste a bit curious.

Meanwhile Pat is using three varieties of chilli in his dish, so LA DI FREAKING DA. He is making patatas bravas, in honour of his heritage as someone who once saw a picture of Spain. Patatas bravas of course is Spanish for “brave potatoes”, and the key to a good patatas bravas is to fully test the potatoes’ courage. Pat makes sure to threaten the potatoes and tell them that he plans to kill their families, before putting them on a communist blacklist.

Luke is having visions of the time he was a child and ate a chilli and woke up three years later on the back of a llama in Peru. He is also cooking a fish, and is concentrating on removing the bones from it in such a meticulous manner, while emphasising how crucial it is for the fish to have no bones, that it seems basically inevitable that when he serves his dish it will have bones in it.

Aaron shows us some pictures of himself as a child, of which he seems to have an inexhaustible supply. I don’t think any Masterchef contestant has ever shown as many family photos in a single series. There must be some kind of contractual arrangement going on here. I don’t know what he’s cooking, but it’s something to do with his grandparents as always

Vinnie reveals that his first introduction to chillies was at his nonno and nonna’s house, much like his first introduction to meat, vegetables, fruit, sauce, fresh air, carpentry, underpants, spoken language, the visible light spectrum, the works of Nietzsche and nipple cripples. I don’t know what was happening to Vinnie when he wasn’t at his nonno and nonna’s house, but it must’ve been deathly dull.

“I want to do something really creative today,” says Petro, unwisely. “What’s going on here?” asks Sofia. Petro answers that he’s going to do a dessert, with chilli in it, reasoning that what is needed at this stage of the competition is something that nobody on earth will ever want to eat. “Good,” says Sofia, before walking off muffling her laughter.

Andy pulls the judges together to tell them for the second time today how excited he is. He fills everyone in on what they can see for themselves. Poh is thrilled by the news that Pat is cooking potatoes, the highest of all callings. Jean-Christophe brings up Aaron and his mud crab and Andy goes berserk, acting out a strange little improv skit about the judges fighting over a claw. It has been a long season and it’s taken its toll on Andy.

Luke continues to pick bones out of his fish, and the editor continues to leave it all in the final cut, and the certainty that this fish is going to have bones in it grows ever more solid.

Annabel is also mutilating a fish, and admits that the reason she entered the medical field was her love of cutting into flesh, a piece of footage that may be used in some kind of official hearing in future.

Up above, Casper looks with utter disdain down on his inferiors, hardly believing that there was a time when he was like them: sweaty and desperate and pathetic. He sees Aaron telling Jean-Christophe that he plans to lightly crack his crab and put the sauce inside and make everyone get sticky fingers. This is what is known in the culinary industry as “barbarism”.

Pat is finishing his fiery red sauce, having put his potatoes in the fridge to make sure they understand the danger they’re in. Suddenly, horribly, it occurs to me that you can’t spell patatas without Pat. That’s going to come back to hurt us later on.

Luke is making a sauce, as if that will help. “This dish is all about balance today,” he says, wrongly: it has been made clear that the dish is all about chilli. Put more chilli in. Burn these fuckers. As if listening to my pleas, Luke’s frying pan bursts into flames, which apparently was not his plan. He quickly adjusts his plans, deciding to centre his dish around the flavour profile of ashes. “What is that?” says Sofia, after seeing an enormous column of flame shoot into the air. The other judges explain that it is a thing called “fire”. Sofia gasps in wonder.

Luke decides that he should cook his fish again, rather than burning it. He regrets spending so much time taking bones out of it, and also his entire life more generally.

Meanwhile Vinnie is thinking about the consistency of his nduja, which is a word he just made up to describe a brown paste that he has inexplicably found in his pan. He is cooking prawns on the Hibachi and has put pickled chillies in his salad, to make sure it is in no way refreshing.

Pat is happy with his sauce, which is nice and smoky, much like Luke’s fish. “At this point of the competition, immunity is everything,” he says, which is at best a wild exaggeration.

Aaron, meanwhile, is carefully cooking his crab. “There’s nothing worse than overcooked crab,” he says, apparently never having heard of the Black Death. He admits he won’t know whether his crab has been cooked properly until the judges eat it, and even then he won’t really know because they will lie to him.

All of the judges gather to watch Annabel cook her fish, having run out of all other entertainment options. She cooks it by putting it on the Hibachi and then putting a manhole cover on top of it, so it gets a real rich, smoky, gravelly flavour to it.

“I am thinking maybe I should go with pineapple,” says Petro, who has gone completely rogue and no longer cares what anyone thinks. He’s following the whims of his wandering mind, running to the freezer, running back, burning his pineapple, staring into the middle distance, sacrificing a frog, shaving his legs. “Petro you’ve got to hustle,” says Casper, amused by his pain. “Shut UP!” Petro doesn’t scream because I never get what I want.

Luke is running out of time, because once you’ve established a brand you really have to stick to it. “I’m trying to work on my sauce but I realise I’ve completely forgotten about my fish,” he wittily quips. The fish has been in the deep fryer too long, as Luke keeps on finding innovative new ways to ruin protein. As the judges count down he throws a bunch of stuff on a plate, but doesn’t actually finish his dish, and once again wonders if he should give learning from his mistakes a try one day.

Time to shove these chillies down the judges’ throats. First, Awun. Awun? Oh no, Jean-Christophe means Aaron. Aaron has served a Malaysian style chilli crab, using his sauce to draw a tiny picture of himself with his grandpa on the plate. The judges all get crabs from Aaron and find it delightful. They all get disgusting sticky fingers and it’s frankly an indictment on our culture. The judges show how low standards have fallen by saying Aaron’s robbing of their dignity was pleasant. Aaron is overjoyed to have corrupted four more souls.

Next is Vinnie and his so-called nduja-glazed prawns, and brazenly acts as if that’s even a thing. Andy says he likes the concept, meaning he thinks it sucks. He finds the pork coarse and unsuited to polite society. All the judges are agreed: Vinnie is a disgrace.

Next is Pat with his brave potatoes. They certainly look very neat and tidy, lined up in parallel lines. I…I kind of want to eat it…I’m sorry, I don’t like it any more than you do, but I do. “Colours are so beautiful,” says Poh, and she’s right - in fact one of the great privileges of being human is the ability to see in such a broad spectrum. Sofia responds to the dish by saying she wants to be in San Sebastian with, quote, “a really textural white wine”. What the frigging hell does THAT mean? A TEXTURAL wine? Why are we not interrogating this? Does she put croutons in her wine? Anyway Sofia loves the patatas bravas but Andy finds it confusing - there is too much in it and it makes his head hurt.

Next is Luke, as the chimes of doom sound above. He has served a big mess, which is allegedly a fish but looks like the dried-out corpse of the xenomorph from Alien. Luke explains that he spent so much time butterflying the fish that reality ceased to have any fixed meaning, and he could no longer remember a time when he wasn’t removing bones. His sauce suffered, as did the viewers. Poh tells Luke that she appreciates what he tried to do today, but has less appreciation for his completely inability to do it. She tells him that he is a cowboy playing Russian roulette, which is a dreadful combination of tropes. “Only do a technique if it’s worth it,” says Andy. Luke nods wisely and walks away, already planning what he’s going to run out of time to finish tomorrow.

Petro serves a chilli ice-cream and coconut and tapioca pudding and the soundtrack becomes bizarrely emotional, as if he’s a Disney character rebuilding his father’s house in a climactic montage. Sofia says it’s the most refreshing chilli dish she’s ever had, which isn’t saying much because chilli dishes are not refreshing. “It’s different, it’s interesting,” she adds, going on to say that it’s nice and unusual and that Petro should look at her. “That is probably the best granita I’ve had,” says Andy, recklessly making unverified claims as usual. “But I couldn’t get my head around the pear,” he says, which is a pretty damning admission. It’s not hard to get your head around a pear: you literally just put it in your mouth. “It’s a shame about my pear,” says Petro, looking sadly down at his chest.

Here is Annabel! She has made a delicious King George whiting with pipis and Thai red curry sauce, a fish dish that is colloquially known as an “Anti-Luke”. The judges think it’s great, and that’s that. Pretty boring really. Petro applauds with tears in his eyes, wishing that he had been more like Annabel, who cannily did not put a pear in her dish. “I think putting the fish and the curry together was a risk,” says Andy, but thankfully, by the grace of God, everyone has survived.

There are no surprises in the judging. Annabel wins immunity and Luke wins the title of Luke Of The Day. Annabel therefore will join Casper on the balcony, where he will bend her to his will.

Tune in tomorrow when Luke will try to do too much for the time available, Aaron will show some photos of his childhood, and Vinnie will reveal that something reminds him of his grandparents’ house.