But firstly another intro:
In the first few episodes when they were introducing the contestants and it showed Jess's Mum complaining that she needs to stop buying bake ware, I decided Jess was one of my favourite contestants on the show. The watery purple liquid she is pouring over the cake is possibly a mirror glaze? I don't know much about mirror glazes but I am sure if I go to Pinterest they will start appearing in my feed because I just typed mirror glaze into my computer and the algorhythms will pick this up and advertise to me accordingly.
The First Team Challenge Of The Season
Team challenges are the perfect place to see what each contestant is really like. They have to cook dishes other people have made up and deal with the pressure of their stuff up causing others to end up in an elimination challenge. There is no I in cook, but there are plenty in elimination.
The contestants are on day release from the Masterchef Prison Kitchen and walk onto the MCG and everyone is amazed. Not Maggie Beer amazed, but still amazed. Gary is almost at Maggie Beer amazement levels and starts repeating WOW over and over again like a real life DOGE meme. Gary and George inform them that Matt was not given permission to leave the Masterchef Prison Kitchen so a footy man is with them and Khanh is impressed with his tattoos.
The team challenge is cook dinner for 100 football players and entourage. Football players are elite athletes so need to eat delicious, but also nutritious food. And it has to be protein.
George splits them into teams, they choose team captains and the team captains do a coin toss because what else are you going to do to decide who picks the protein? Have the teams compete in 4 quarters of football? Tim wins and picks the meat protein and is given a red apron. Sashi loses, is left with seafood, a blue apron and tears to match.
The teams start brainstorming with large sheets of butchers paper and it's like one of those awkward work meetings where a bunch of bad ideas are tossed about and you have to smile and pretend it sounds awesome but inside you are very unsatisfied with having to be out of the house and communicating with other people using their shouting voice.
Blue team is edited to seem like a bunch of unorganised and vague people in middle management trying to solve a problem nobody really understands. They also do that annoying thing where they agree with something even though they clearly don't understand what is going on, but they hope that they can disappear into the background and play snake on their phone and nobody will notice.
Red team is edited to see like they have their shit together and everything is great because Tim tied a long bit of meat up with one bit of string so it will be easy to cut. Aldo stops what he is doing (pulling stalks from a celery) to tell everyone to push, then continues to pull stalks of celery.
George is on the warpath tonight. He seems to be interested in questioning contestants on what kind of equipment they use in their workplace outside the Masterchef kitchen. He is very displeased with the equipment Khanh uses and tells him this to his face before walking off in disgust.
Gary decides to join in telling someone they look hot and harassed.
The teams start prepping canapes and Red Team's beef is ruined with fat. Remember, the footy man didn't ask to smash fat, he asked to smash protein so this is a big problem. They decide to turn what looks like 40kg of meat into tiny cubes and I can only assume they ate the rest to check it tasted okay, dangling it in strips above their heads and relishing in the fatty bit running down the centre.
The judges are joined by footy man and footy man's partner, who introduces the food.
Canapes that do well:
Red Team - Sope
Blue Team - Prawn with tamarind sauce
Crapnapes:
Red Team - Beef cube
Blue Team: Shiitake mushroom tart
The teams then move onto main course and George goes back into the kitchen and back on the warpath. Blue teams salmon has just come out of the oven and before they even have a chance to lean in to check on it he is yelling WHERE IS THE SALMON, then screams IT'S OVERCOOKED. He is meters away from it when he makes this assessment. He then tells them it's a big disaster and walks off. Turns out much of the salmon isn't overcooked, so a bit of an overreaction from George. They manage to pull it together, flake it up and not get too stressed despite having to deal with a very stressed man yelling at them in a manner one could call unhelpful.
Red team are on fire with their lamb and a big salad that they keep telling us is really healthy like we can't believe that a bunch of grains, vegetables, nuts and olive oil could actually taste good.
The judges taste the mains, they love them both and at this point I realise that the Blue team might not lose. I was 100% convinced they were going to lose at the start when they were flapping around and Khanh and Michelle had that "peas and mint or maybe peas and tarragon, what do you think? I don't know.." conversation.
Both the teams are making mango sorbet and when they plate up their desserts they look pretty similar, but the judges make a happy face for the blue dessert and a really sad face for the red dessert. I'm assuming the unhappy face is due to the quinoa. Turns out they were right, the quinoa is yuck, it gets stuck in their teeth. Red team went TOO HEALTHY.
The judges deliver their verdict without the footy player because he had to go home, I'm assuming because his partner was vomming up the prawn she didn't want to eat because she is allergic but was forced taste it.
So, everyone loves the underdog coming up and well done on creating a story arc that gave us that narrative. Blue team wins, seafood CAN be a protein according to footy players and sucks to be red team because someone is going home tomorrow night (which is actually tonight but I'm a day behind and I'm admiting this here because I assume nobody got this far ;)
