Welcome to the Able And Game recap of the Masterchef Australia Tuesday Night Immunity Challenge.

Everyone is in a car park at a fancy house on Mount Lofty, just out of Adelaide.
Jenny, Samira, Khanh and the bling boys, Reece and Sashi are competing for a pin today.

A long table is set up with many identical cloches.

Gary tells everyone they are not going strawberry picking today.
Reece says he doesn’t want to go strawberry picking, he wants to go pin picking.
Shannon tells them a pin must go off today, it is ALL about him. Shannon needs this. I think this has something to do with his week off when Gordon was here, he reeling he wasn’t allowed on the show.

Jenny is extra motivated because she doesn’t want Sashi and Reece to get two pins. It’s too dangerous.

Round One
It’s the ultimate culinary cloche quiz. TUCCQ!
If they get it wrong, they are out. Last person standing goes to round two.

Reece loves guessing challenges, he thinks he has a broad knowledge of food. He says all the cloches look the same, there is no indication as to the ingredients he knows and doesn’t know. He is going into this literally blind.

Guessing commences:
Reece – Fennel Blossom YES
Khanh – Fish Sauce YES
Samira – Doesn’t know. It’s pigface. Pigface will haunt her for the rest of her life. OUT.




Jenny – Swedes (Gary gives her a mock aawww like she has it wrong) Of course it’s Swedes!
Sashi – Garfish YES
Reece – Lychee YES
Khanh – Quail eggs YES
Jenny – Horseradish cream? No. Dijon Mustard OUT.
Sashi – Juniper Berry? No. It’s Muntrie, a native berry. OUT.
Reece – Coriander YES
Khanh – Belachan YES
Reece – Smoked Paprika
Khanh – Apples (LOL, SO EASY AND OMG YOU EVEN KNOW IT'S PINK LADY! WOW)
Reece – George’s Signature edition tweezers YES (SERIOUSLY?)
Khanh – Vanilla Slice (It looks like someone cut it in two and ate half. I'm blaming Gary for that)
Reece – Grapefruit? No Pomelo. OUT.

Khanh wins round one. Welcome to Khanh Week!


Round Two

Khanh is cooking against the chef from the restaurant they are at right now. It’s Hardy’s Verandah Restaurant’s head chef Jin Choi.


Khanh has 75 minutes, Jin has 60 minutes and won’t know what he is cooking with. Due to location restraints he will not get locked in the Masterchef pantry, instead he is offered a seat out the front of his own restaurant. It only shows him sitting from torso up, so whether they use foot restraints is sadly unknown.

The two ingredients Khanh can choose from to hero in his dish are ……. Vegemite or Peanut Butter.
Khanh is not impressed. The other contestants are, they are all LOLLING because they are not involved in this caper. Khanh thinks it is a joke.





Khanh has decided to go into full tactical mode. He suspects Jin knows how to use peanut butter, so he is going to go strategic and select something they both don’t know how to cook with, Vegemite. Khanh feels that this decision will throw Jin and he won’t know what to do.



Khanh doesn’t know how to cook with it, but he does know how to cook with fish sauce and he thinks they are similar so he is going to makes a broth and sub out the fish sauce and use Vegemite instead.

Jin is nervous because a) he doesn’t usually cook outside and b) he doesn’t know what the main ingredient is. But he is a professional with 15 years of experience. When he finds out he is cooking Vegemite he is concerned. A face palm level of concerned.



Jin is confused, why didn’t Khanh choose peanut butter? He wanders around the outdoor pantry, baffled as to why Shannon hasn’t given him inspiration, and by inspiration he means full instructions on what he should cook, including recipe.

He is taking a long time to select ingredients, for a while his basket contains a single 500g pack of Western Star unsalted butter.

Khanh is making a chicken mousse for the inside of his dumplings.

Jin has decided he knows what he is cooking.
Vegemite butter with a prawn risotto. He says it sounds weird and Shannon has this look on his face that is both concern (Jin is cooking something that does sound weird and also terrible) and elation (he has stated on multiple occasions that he wants Khanh to win a pin).

Khanh makes small talk with Jin. He asks him how he is going, and Jin says he is cool, just concentrating on what he is doing. This is code for shut up and don’t talk to me.

Jin is mixing Vegemite and butter, not for ease of breakfast toast action, but to add to the risotto at the end.

Shannon tells Khanh he has so much to do and even he, a professional chef, would struggle with the work load. He used this line last season, and again it seems somewhat unhelpful.

30 minutes to go!

Samira says Khanh and Jin are very different in their approach. Jin is going simple, Khanh is going ALL THE ELEMENTS.

Shannon tells them they want to make the judges happy little Vegemites. (although this is not a food pun it is most certainly an eye roll moment)

Khanh has left his dumpling dough out too long and it is splitting.
He just needs three dumplings, if he doesn’t get three on the plate he has lost. And there will be angry men chasing him down the lofty mountain.





Reece doesn’t think the ingredients Jin has in the risotto are going to work together. He has put nori sheets, prawns and tomato in so far. He has also made pickled ginger and the Vegemite butter will finish it off.

Shannon is frantic, get it on the bloody plate Khanh!

I am very interested to see what Jin’s Risotto is like because it looks like slop. But we’ve been fooled before by the professional chef’s serving up slop that the judges love.

Tasting
The judges talk about Khanh’s surprise choice and how it leveled the playing field between a cook and a chef. They really thought he would choose the Peanut Butter.

Khanh
George pours the broth over the dish and the whole room is enveloped with the smell of breakfast.
George says it smells wonderful.
Gary says he can see bits and bobs and he hopes the Vegemite isn’t too strong.

The Vegemite is obvious but gentle.
It is a clever and sophisticated dish.
They are 100% certain this is Jin's dish.

Jin
It is rather unfortunate that risotto, a dish that should be served immediately, had to go second. The judges look at it with contempt. George wants it to blow his mind.




Jin’s risotto has officially missed the mark. Everyone at home knew this the moment the nori sheets went in, but we gave him the benefit of the doubt because he is a professional.

The judges think there is too much going on, the flavours are a distraction. Whoever cooked it was under pressure.
They are 100% certain this is Khanh's dish.

Results
They ask Jin what he cooked and he tells them the Risotto and the judges mask their surprise. They ask Khanh what he made, even though basic logic tells us that if Jin made Risotto then Khanh could only have made Chicken and Vegemite.

Jin
Matt – 5 George – 6 Gary – 6
17/30
We struggled in all honesty to make sense of the dish.

Khanh
Matt - 8 George -9 Gary – 9
26/30
We in all honesty did not struggle with putting the bits and bobs in our mouths and chewing.

PIN IS ALL YOURS KHANH!
Khanh week is actually a thing.


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