MasterChef recap: Heston Blumenthal churns through a pretty drippy dessert challenge
Five of the best amateur cooks left in Australia after the first twelve seasons of MasterChef face off for immunity from the next elimination, and to win it they must confront their greatest challenge yet: a task set by the culinary world's master innovator, the man who put the "WTF" in "WTF is he cooking?" It will be a test not just of their skill and ingenuity, but their ability to refrain from rolling their eyes on camera.
It is of course the climax of Superstar Week, so there was always going to be a major celebrity appearing before the series moves on to less glamorous weeks, like Gruel Week and Stealing Food From IGA Week.
When the five hopefuls enter the kitchen, there is weird purple lighting and an array of screens showing whimsical yet affordable CGI images. Then the normal lights come on and the judges enter to build the suspense a bit more, which is pointless because everyone has already guessed that it's Heston. And just as the prophecy foretold, a huge bald head appears on the screen and commands them to bring him the Wicked Witch of the West's broomstick.
There will also be some light cooking required. Heston explains how he invented bacon and egg ice-cream and has yet to be successfully prosecuted. He wants the five hopefuls to do as he did, and turn breakfast into dessert. Each amateur will pick a screen, which will then display a traditional breakfast ingredient, which they must then feature in a dessert.
Pete picks first and gets bacon. Linda gets tea. Aaron gets cornflakes. Depinder gets avocado. Conor gets Vegemite. Some are happier than others, but there's no doubt that every one of them will make something truly disgusting.
Linda tells Jock she's making French Earl Grey ice-cream. Jock pulls the face that everyone should pull when they think about French Earl Grey ice-cream. Aaron explains that he was first inspired to be a cook by seeing how often Heston failed when creating something new. This gave him the confidence to fail frequently in his own life.
Up on the balcony, Dan starts making cereal puns and has to be sedated for the public good. Meanwhile Linda is concentrating on balancing the Earl Grey flavour perfectly, i.e. making it completely undetectable. Elsewhere, Pete is making bacon and egg ice-cream, as he has always dreamed of being a successful plagiarist. "Choosing to do a bacon and egg ice-cream like Heston is like challenging Mike Tyson to a fight," he says, inaccurately.
With an hour to go, Heston pipes up to remind the amateurs to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Depinder is making avocado ice-cream. In fact all five amateurs are making ice-cream, having been inspired by Heston to unleash their complete lack of imagination. They have heard of desserts that aren't ice-cream, but they're pretty sure it's just an urban myth.
They're doing the mispronunciation of "microwave" thing again. It's more annoying every time.
Aaron's anglaise is not cold, but he doesn't have time to wait for it to get cold before putting it in the churner. Thinking outside the box, he decides to make warm ice-cream. Meanwhile Pete is trying to think of a way to add onion and capsicum to his dish, purely out of masochism.
Linda tells Jock she hasn't got her ice-cream in. Jock is disgusted. She tells him she's using nitrogen. He asks her if she's ever used nitrogen before. She says she hasn't. Jock drops Linda's equipment all over the floor. The sexual tension is at an all-time high. Linda begins applying the liquid nitrogen to her ice-cream. She has no idea what she's doing. Clouds of smoke billow everywhere. If the ice-cream doesn't work out Linda is in a good position to stage a 1980s music video.
Pete is trying to make an onion and capsicum dust. Nobody knows why. He starts by setting the microwave on fire, then pauses to ponder his next move.
With ten minutes to go, Heston appears again to remind everyone that there's no place like home.
Aaron is in the weeds, and they're not even edible. His experiment with warm ice-cream has failed, and he must now, like Linda, turn to the nightmarish extremities of science to save himself from ignominy.
As the timer ticks down, the crowd on the balcony goes absolutely mental, cheering and screaming and clapping madly in a powerful tribute to the benefits of drugging your audience before you start a show. Everyone is extremely proud of their revolting creations.
The first amateur to plate up is Depinder, who says she wants the judges to feel like they're eating a Heston dish: an impossible dream, as Depinder's dish is not ridiculously overpriced. Her avocado ice-cream meets favour with the judges, who agree that she shall be allowed to live.
Next is Linda's Earl Grey ice-cream, which has already driven a wedge between her and Jock. There is too much tea in it, even by the standards of MasterChef judging weirdos who think it's OK to put tea in ice-cream at all. Linda has fallen into the trap of thinking that when you're given an ingredient, your dish should taste like that ingredient. Rookie mistake.
Aarons serves his cornflake whatever. "I think you did a really good job with the texture," says Andy, using the established euphemism for "this tastes like crap". "I love the way you think," says Melissa, very deliberately not saying how she feels about the way he cooks.
Conor serves his Vegemite abomination. It's terrible, which is surprising because Vegemite ice-cream seems like the kind of thing you just couldn't go wrong with. Still, Jock likes the texture.
Finally, Pete steps up with his shameless rip-off of Heston's bacon and egg ice-cream. The judges love how unoriginal he's been. "The ice-cream is bacony," says Jock, using a phrase that 99 times out of 100 would be a savage insult.
Pete and Depinder are the amateurs who haven't made the judges retch, so it's between them. In the end, Pete wins because bacon is obviously a much better food than avocado. He is safe from elimination on Sunday. So it only remains for Heston to tell everyone that they've actually had a heart all along, and that all they need do is click their heels, and Superstar Week comes to a bittersweet end.
Tune in next week, when some people who never even won MasterChef strut around like they're somebody.
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