Masterchef Recap: Teamwork and Ice-Creamwork

The unbearable horror of working with others

Perfect Pairs Week continues with a challenge in which the amateurs must compete in teams of two, so that takes care of the “pairs” part of the theme, while rendering the other part darkly ironic. It is at least a white apron day, which means nobody has to face the horror of home and family today, and everyone can just sort of fuck around and not bother trying to do anything good. Which is how some of them act on black apron days too, of course.

“Hope you’re ready to have some fun,” says Poh, knowing that readiness to have fun makes it all the more entertaining when they don’t. Each contestant has a cloche in front of them. Poh asks what they think might be under them. “A pair,” says Emily. “A pair of what?” asks Poh. “A pair of pears,” says Emily. Everyone has a good laugh at this delightful bit of banter. Really we should end the show right there, the vibes are just so good.

In fact what is under the cloches is Reese’s chocolate and peanut butter treats. Yes, today they will be cooking dishes inspired by the film ET: The Extra-Terrestrial.

The ultimate pair

Haha! Just joking! I’m like Emily the way I’m flinging the zingers!

Actually the Reese’s are both literal and figurative. Literally, they have to cook something with chocolate and peanut. Figuratively, they are cooking in pairs, much like Reese’s pairs chocolate and peanut to create a taste sensation. How delicious will these couples be? Well just to look at, they range from the vaguely toothsome - Casper and Petro - to the mouthwateringly moreish - I can’t really say but I bet you can guess.

There is at this point a strange revelation. Vinnie is on the balcony. He did not cook yesterday, and nobody noticed. Well, I didn’t notice anyway, and I didn’t ask anyone else. Why didn’t he cook yesterday? No idea, but it means he won’t cook today, and he will cook tomorrow, when it’ll be an elimination featuring the four worst of today’s cooks plus poor old Vinnie. Given today is a pairs challenge and if Vinnie were in it there’d have been an uneven number of contestants, it’s actually a bit…well. You know. I’m not a conspiracy-minded person but this thing goes all the way to the top. If you’re reading this now it means that I am dead.

Anyway, the cooking. Poh says she wants to see someone “stick their neck out a bit”, all the better to bring down her bloodied axe. Jean-Christophe makes the point that today’s challenge is very easy and anyone who fails has lost his respect forever.

Dot and Pat are on a team together, and keep on saying how happy they are and how much they’ve longed to cook together for ages, which probably means they hate each other. “I’m not just doing this for myself, I’m also doing it for Pat, and Pat’s also doing it for me,” says Dot, as Pat quietly seethes with resentment at the way Dot keeps putting words in his mouth.

Hannah claims to be happy with the challenge, and with being paired with Annabel, which means they can go by the name “Hannabel”. It also means that the two amateurs who are constantly grinning are in the same team so nobody else has to put up with it. Andy instructs Hannabel to make their dish perfect, which is unfair because he hasn’t told anyone else to make their dish perfect, so they won’t know they’re supposed to. Hannabel is making something with chocolate and peanut but I don’t know what because I wasn’t listening. But Annabel gives Hannah a taste of what she’s making and Hannah smiles. But then Hannah smiles at everything. As does Annabel. It is impossible to know what either of them are thinking.

Jackie and Emily, AKA Jackily, are working together to make a crumble, and exhibit the cold, emotionless commitment of the professional assassin. Meanwhile Aaron is very happy to be working with Jack, who he just met this morning. Luke and Grace have been paired together as the only team whose combined age is under twenty-five, and are very confident. “We’re on par with salt and pepper,” says Luke. I’d like to think he meant Salt n Pepa, but he wouldn’t even know who they are, the callow little embryo that he is. He just meant the stuff you put on food. Ugh.

Obviously Grace is Salt

Sofia and Andy demand an audience with Casper and Petro. “We’re going to do a tart,” says Casper, which offends Sofia. “So you’re going to do a peanut butter cup in tart form,” says Sofia, which offends Casper - this is an extremely reductive interpretation which utterly ignores the many nuances and subtleties of his artistic practice. Petro thinks it’s pretty accurate though. Sofia and Andy warn Casper and Petro, AKA Castro, that aiming for the middle can be a dangerous game, but it is what all armed police officers are instructed to do, so that can go both ways. “There’s playing it safe, and there’s bringing up four underwhelming versions of this dish,” says Andy, and walks away without telling Castro which one they should do. They are desperately confused, but Casper is at least going to temper some chocolate, which is impossible.

Lydia and Alyona, AKA Lydiona, are making a chocolate peanut butter swirl cake with ice-cream and caramel and other diabetes-forward elements. “We’re going to bring it,” says Lydia. “Yeah, we’re going to bring it,” says Alyona. Rumours begin to circulate around the kitchen and surrounding areas that they are going to bring it.

Pat and Dot, AKA Pot, are making a banoffee pie, best known as the dessert that is used in a really funny line from Little Britain. Remember that? Brilliant. Anyway, it’s a kind of pie, filled with banoffee. Poh advises them to be careful with banana, which is really a good lesson for us all to learn. Dot is extremely careful with banana, chopping it so slowly I have to check whether my TV is working properly.

Some demons from Hell enter the kitchen

Hannabel are making four individual tarts, because that is a requirement of the task, so I don’t know why they think it’s such a big deal. Hannah works on the caramel, and asks Annabel if she wants it darker. Annabel does want it darker, so Hannah adds a subplot about the caramel’s son dying and coming back as a murderous revenant.

Meanwhile Jack and Aaron, AKA Jaaron, are…well, there. Technically.

Lydiona find that their peanut butter tastes like peanut butter, which is exactly as they planned it. It’s all coming together…the ice-cream, however, is becoming problematic. It’s not turning into ice-cream, and the ice-cream is crucial to the dish because the dish has ice-cream in it, and a dish with ice-cream in it that doesn’t have ice-cream in it is contra-indicated by all available data. Lydiona may need a plan B, and hastily draw up a scheme to steal copper from a nearby church.

Jaaron has their peanut butter cups in the oven and a creme pat (not to be confused with a Creme Pat, which has a thicker beard), which they will turn into a diplomat. This takes four to six years of training and on-the-job experience in an embassy or high commission, which means they really have to get a move on.

Meanwhile Luke and Grace, or Lace, are enjoying some controlled chaos, but may run out of time because they keep leaving the kitchen to do comedy sketches in the diary room.

Grace and Luke in a private moment

Pot has a bunch of chocolate, a bunch of peanut, a bunch of banana, a bunch of cream, a bunch of pastry, and intriguingly, also a diplomat, an idea they stole from Jaaron. They taste their elements and start doing a weird little dance which really should result in disqualification. “It’s giving banana, it’s giving peanut,” says Dot, intent on being today’s most aggravating cook.

With ten minutes to go in the cook, nobody seems panicky enough to be truly entertaining. We have to fall back on Lydiona’s ice-cream, which still hasn’t set, causing heavy piano chords to enter the soundtrack. Alyona runs to the pantry and gets some mascarpone, because that’s her answer to everything. “We have no choice,” says Lydia. They agree that poisoning the judges is the only way.

Andy is impressed by Castro’s introduction of miso to the dish, to add that little bit of unpleasantness that the judges value so highly. Casper then makes a tactical blunder, severely cutting his hand. Though done with the best of intentions, it doesn’t work out and they both agree that they’ll have to plate up without the human blood element.

With three minutes to go, Annabel is trying to temper her chocolate but it’s not getting cold enough no matter how much she disappoints it. She gives up on tempering the chocolate and decides to try provoking it to anger instead. With two minutes to go Hannabel have nothing on the plate and are worried they might not even manage to serve a dish, but luckily at the last minute they remember that everyone always gets their dish on the plate and this is just artificial suspense manufactured through misleading editing. Despite this, they manage to only get two of their dishes on the plate, when they need four. This will mean the judges have to share, the thing they hate the most. “I’m so sorry,” says Annabel, staring past Hannah to an invisible horizon. “It’s OK,” lies Hannah.

The first dish to be tasted is Pot’s. Banoffee pie with a little sticky banana slice on top. It has chocolate shavings sprinkled around the plate so it looks like it’s recently been dug out of a pile of dirt, which is very appetising. Sofia says the pie is jig-worthy and asks Pot to do their jig, which they do, causing thousands of complaints to be logged by Channel Ten’s switchboard. Sofia does a jig too, but it’s a different jig to the amateurs’ dig, so I don’t even know what the point of all of this is. Anyway the pie is good or whatever.

The second dish is Castro’s. Miso salted caramel tart. It looks a bloody mess - almost literally given Casper’s wound. “I reckon we’ll eat your tarts,” says Andy with more than a hint of menace. And they do. Andy likes it. “Obviously looks were not consistent,” he says, gesturing to his fellow judges, but that’s really beside the point. The tarts are good and Casper has not been maimed in vain.

Next is Lydiona, and the judges are literally starting to use the nicknames I made up. What the FUCK, man. Fucking plagiarists. Anyway they’ve made chocolate and peanut butter cake with peanut mascarpone but it’s hard to care honestly. “Was there a ice-cream that didn’t make the plate?” asks Andy. The cooks reply that no, actually there was AN ice-cream that didn’t make the plate, if Andy could maybe improve his grammar, there’s still such a thing as standards. Eating the dish, the judges declare that the cake sucked because there’s no ice-cream, which just feels really mean of them. A truly classy judging panel would not have mentioned the ice-cream. Poh complains that the cake is doughy which is unfair because the cake is literally made of dough. Andy doesn’t even like the mascarpone, which just shows how ignorant he is because mascarpone is actually really nice. “It’s not some of your finest work,” he says, even though I believe it’s the best thing either of them have done in their lives.

Next is Jackily, who Poh calls Jamily which is nowhere as good as mine. They’ve made ice-cream, so I guess these nasty ice-cream loving judges can eat it and love it and go marry it in an ice-cream church and have a bunch of ice-cream-human babies. Fine.

Next is Jaaron, who Andy calls Jackon, which is wrong. They’ve done a tart with a diplomat to ease tensions. The tart is, arguably, all right.

Next, Lace, or as Jean-Christophe calls them, Gruke. Which…OK that’s actually not bad. Chocolate and peanut profiteroles. Poh enjoyed the flavours but hated the pastry. “The shoe is soggy,” says Jean-Christophe, hoping that if his contact is in the room they will reply with the correct code phrase, so the documents can be securely exchanged.

Up steps Hannabel, who are not at all confident, given they’ve only got two plates for the four judges, forcing hunger and deprivation upon them. Poh gazes at them with a look of such pure hatred Satan himself cowers. It’s a peanut and chocolate tart but only two of them. “What happened?” asks Sofia. Annabel tries to explain, while Hannah stays silent, showing admirable restraint to not say, “Annabel fucked me big-time”. The judges taste the dish, revelling in the futility. “Ladies, you’re killin’ me,” says Andy, but he’s exaggerating a bit, they’re really just standing there. The tarts taste great and therefore win Most Ironic Dish of the Day.

Finally time for judgment. The best team was Pot. Pat flaps his arms like a bird for some reason. Honestly I don’t know what is going on with those two anymore. The worst teams were Hannabel, who didn’t serve four plates as required, and Lydiona, who the judges just have some kind of inexplicable grudge against. These four will cook in tomorrow’s elimination challenge against Vinnie, AKA Vinnie.

Tune in tomorrow to see the nature and very existence of time come into question.