As the top six contestants walk into Josie Bones in Melbourne they’re met by the judges, owner and former MasterChef Australia season one contestant, Chris Badenoch. Chris is now living his dream running his own nose to tail restaurant and bar.
The contestants are split into two teams of three and will be serving lunch to Josie Bones customers. Chris will be their mentor in the kitchen and will run the pass, and the judges will be eating with the guests in the restaurant.
Each team will be making three dishes each – two popular meat dishes from Chris’ menu, the third a vegetable dish of their own creation which must compliment the two meat dishes. The judges will be tasting the dishes and taking into consideration Chris’ feedback about their performance in the kitchen. The least impressive team will go into an elimination challenge tomorrow.
The teams are captain Lynton with Christina and Emma and captain Lucy with Samira and Rishi. The team that least impresses will go into elimination tomorrow.
The dishes they must cook are -
Team Lucy (red) will do Chris’ deboned pig trotter stuffed with chicken mousse with sweetbreads and smoked potato mash and Kangaroo Carpaccio dressed with pine nuts, rocket and bone marrow croquettes
Team Lynton (blue) have Hanger steak with sauteed pine mushrooms, a raw egg yolk and fresh horseradish along with Goat cooked in Mountain Goat Beer, an onion curry sauce and pappadams.
Lynton and Christina are doing the goat while Emma will do the vegetable dish with the hanger steak. Lucy will do the Carpaccio, Rishi the trotter and Samira the vegetable dish – even though Chris said two people should be working on the trotter. Lucy is helping him with the mash but will that be enough?
Christina has made the curry sauce and it’s way too spicy, so she decides to add yoghurt but there is none, so they go with cream. Chris tells Lynton and Rishi that they are falling behind while Samira is doing pumpkin two ways and Emma is doing pearl barley and goats cheese with root vegetables. Badenoch is bossing them around and is annoying even me, never mind them.
Jeepers, Miss 50′s Christina has left the cream to reduce and has let it boil over, but it’s not burnt and she tastes the new sauce and it’s all good. Lucy is STILL doing her mash – that’s all she’s done! Only 2 people from each team are allowed in the kitchen at once and this means Samira can’t do her pumpkin because Lucy is farting about. The blue team are working like a well oiled machine as red is about to crash and burn.
Lucy is all over the shop and Gary is worried about her too, she freezes the kangaroo to make the carpaccio but brings them all out of the freezer at once so they defrost – she’s lost the plot big time! Now it’s Emmas turn to freak out, she’s too scared to cook the steak rare – WTF you are on MasterChef.
The doors open and Rishi and Samira are fighting and Chris tells them to play nice, while Lucy and Christina turn into wait stuff. Rishis plating is atrocious and I’ve never seen him this put out, but he seems to get there as the blue team start to crumble.
The blues have steaks on fire, the customers are all waiting for their dishes and it’s all falling on Lyntons shoulders. Emma is now the one fluffing about – what did these girls have for breakfast?
Judgement time -
Red Team
Kangaroo Carpaccio – The marrow has disintergrated, the whole dish isn’t sophisticated.
Pig Trotter – It’s a bit too jelly like.
Vegetable – Yum, they can’t get anymore off the plate. A beautiful job.
Blue Team
Hanger Steak – They like it, well caramelised.
Goat – Oh yeah! It’s perfect.
Vegetable – A winner.
The judges disagree on who had the best vegetable dish and it’s off to the MasterChef Kitchen to see who won. Christina wins the dish of the day and the blue team are safe!