Well here we are. Week Five of the competition is here. It’s a milestone, which Gary is obliged to point out because we, as an audience, don’t really give a crap. We don’t care what week it is. We keep coming back for the staples: Emma drowning her beanie in tears, Cupcake Barbie atop her golden pedestal, and seeing what number from Hipster Alice’s hideous technicolor spectacle collection will be donned tonight.

Gary also brings up a long-running sticking point. The boys are being seriously being out-cooked by the girls. In particular, the four strongest this year: Deb, Mindy, Audra and Amina. Not surprising, since they have the likes of Filippo with a seriously creepy bread obsession, Taco Ben who specialises in Old El Paso dinner kits and Andy who spends half his cooking time adjusting the level of product in his hair and the other half being totally clueless to the challenge.

In tonight’s Mystery Box, our budding gastronomes have pork, marshmallows, pineapple, rum and ciabatta to play with. As usual, the best three will be tasted and there’s sixty minutes on the clock.

Ocker bloke’s bloke, Beau, is cooking his specialty, good old Aussie man food. This time round it’s a crumbed pork cutlet. Amina makes a surprising choice to cook with pork, which as a Muslim, is a no-no. She’s wearing gloves and won’t be eating it though, so apparently it’s okay.

Singaporean-born Dalvinder and Audra are both making their take on sweet and sour pork, avoiding the bad cliches from chop suey restaurants. Audra is making crispy pork with caramelised pineapple tomato sauce. Dalvinder’s is a pork stir-fry with tomato and pineapple sauce.

The top three dishes go to Audra, Dalvinder and Beau. Audra’s pork is innovative and showcases Audra’s usual flair for a great balance of flavours. Dalvinder’s stir-fried pork in tomato jam, pineapple and dumplings is a hit with the judges. Beau serves up his best looking dish so far in the competition. 

Dalvinder wins the Mystery Box. In a fit of joy, she channels Bollywood with the “screw in the lightbulb” move which cuts to all the contestants performing a dance number in the lush Swiss countryside, while Bandy chase each other through some trees, never actually making any physical contact whatsoever.

The Invention Test theme is seduction. There’s open choice this week of three classic combos: strawberries & cream, champagne & caviar, and roses & chocolate. As winner of the Mystery Box, Dalvinder isn’t limited to these combinations and gets to choose whatever ingredients she pleases. A final piece of good news applies to everyone; there’s no consequences this round. No one is going into eliminations from this challenge.

Preston comes over to see how Cupcake Barbie Jr. is doing. He asks Kylie who her inspiration is for the dish. Who is that special someone back home? It turns out there isn’t one, she’s single. When asked what kind of guy she’s after, she replies with the breathing kind. Holy salted caramel macarons, Batman! MasterChef fanboys around the country now think they actually have a shot. Listen up, boys, you don’t.

It’s time to taste. Filippo approaches the judges with a note from his little daughter, Sarah, with “I love you Daddy” scrawled on it. Enamored by his heartfelt story and delicious strawberry cake, George can’t help but give him a big man-hug (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Filippo says it’s okay because does it all the time.

Taco Ben explains he’s no Casanova, so seduction is not his aim with this dish. He’s cooking for his family. Preston asks about his girlfriend. Turns out he’s newly single. The show has taken its toll on their relationship. Perhaps he could hit it off with Kylie if he wasn’t too busy with his Andy bromance. 

Tregan baked Lover’s Pillows, meringue layers with strawberries and marscapone (mispronounced, again) cream. In a gag-inducing moment, she proceeds to spoon-feed Matt.

Someone else unlucky in love is Mindy. Recently single, cooking is a substitute for love for her, as it seems to be for half the people on the show. Next week’s guest is going to be Dr. Phil.

Sam’s cooked the best looking dish of the day, “Seafood for Two”. Inspired by his girl back home, it’s a combination of champagne, prawns, oysters and caviar.

The top three dishes are from Tregan, Filippo and Sam. In the end, it’s Sam’s that wins. The judges tell him that his reward will make him a very happy man (from tonight’s theme, conjugal visit?) but is not revealed in the episode. Looks like we’ll find out tomorrow.

Next, Preston reveals that this week will be spent in the heartland of fine Australian produce, Tasmania. Our chefs-in-waiting look like they’ve just won the lottery. Seriously, it’s Tasmania.

Things we learned from MasterChef tonight:

1. Filippo likes to hug dudes and does so on a regular basis.
2. Kylie may have had a past relationship with a ghost/vampire.
3. Tregan still can’t pronounce commonly pronounceable ingredients correctly.
4. Tasmania is apparently the Ibiza of the MasterChef universe.

It’s dark days for the losing Red Team. Their confidence seriously shaken, they enter the MasterChef kitchen for the third straight elimination.

Hipster Alice gets some screentime to tell her backstory. In a startling revelation, family photos reveal she’s actually incredibly attractive without her ludicrous glasses and silly top bun. When it cuts back to her talking in an ironic tuxedo t-shirt, that attraction immediately evaporates like when an obscure indie band goes mainstream.

Cupcake Barbie’s arrogance resurfaces as she reveals that she’s not used to failure and life has pretty much gone her way because she’s tall and attractive. Sure, that’s why you’re a legal secretary and not a lawyer.

Tonight, the elimination involves poultry. In round one, there’s a line-up of ten birds. The first five to incorrectly identify a fowl, go into round two.

The first one’s easy and each contestant identifies chicken. The second bird is also no problem for most except TK, who can’t tell what a duck looks like, even though she’s Viet and should know better. She thinks it’s pheasant. Deb’s playing a game of Duck, Duck, Goose, writing the nursery rhyme fowl on her card. 

The third one is a tiny little thing called quail and everyone gets it right. Bird four is a monster and everyone picks turkey, no probs.

The fifth bird is another ambiguously small one. Tregan thinks it’s poussin but it’s squab. Cupcake Barbie thinks it’s a partridge. Apparently it’s poultry that wishes it was a Brady. Finally, Hipster Alice thought it was spatchcock and completes the quintet.

As reward, the winning Blue Team head to The Bridge Room and learn how to cook squid and beetroot on a 400 degree charcoal robata grill from Ross Lusted. It’s a bromantic double date opportunity for Bandy (Ben & Andy) and Bwade (Beau & Wade).

In round two, the contestants have an hour to cook one of the birds. Alice gets first pick, as she held out the longest. She goes with chicken. Cupcake Barbie picks duck. Tregan gets quail. Deb takes the spatchcock. TK has little choice left and all the birds are unfamiliar to her. She settles on the least foreign, turkey.

TK decides to cook a Japanese style noodle and steamed turkey breast. Cupcake Barbie is making a warm duck salad with honey-roasted carrots. Tregan’s making a Middle Eastern quail with an ear-gratingly mispronounced pistachio (piss-tah-chee-oh) sauce. Alice is preparing a tarragon-stuffed chicken breast. Deb’s cooking a Mediterranean style spatchcock.  

With just ten minutes left, Gary tells TK that steaming was a bad idea and the turkey tastes dry and overdone. She changes her gameplan and makes a turkey noodle stir-fry instead.

Tregan’s quail is tasted first. The biggest concern is whether it’s cooked perfectly and it is, falling off the bone like her and Preston talked about earlier. Definitely safe. 

Hipster Alice’s chicken looks a mess, is slightly overcooked but tastes great.

Deb presents her spatchcock and again prevails with wonderful flavours until Preston takes out a filling biting into a olive pit. 

Cupcake Barbie lays her duck salad in front of Gary and Matt. Her greatest fear was the duck being overcooked. Looking at it though, it’s actually rare and undercooked by about a minute. The upside is that all the flavours are great.

Finally, TK is up with her stir-fried chicken. Presentation is stellar, with Gary giving props for bold (but correct) bowl choice and “bird’s nest” stacking. However, it tastes over-powering with excessive use of sauces, giving it a “food court” flavour.

Tregan, Alice and Deb are all safe. So the final two are Cupcake Barbie for her undercooked duck and TK for her food court dish. In the end, it’s little TK that bids farewell for her plain “Tuesday night” stir-fry.

Wednesday night is here again and that mean’s team challenge in the world of MasterChef.  Immediately after returning from Mindy’s immunity victory, our ragtag band of cooks find red and blue aprons in the MasterChef house. They’ll be working to raise money for Oz Harvest, a charity that uses restaurant left-overs to feed the homeless. Their aim is to scrounge as many ingredients as they can in three hours from restaurants to cook a three-course charity lunch for twenty-five of Australia’s food elite (really, we have an “elite”?). It’s like American Pickers meets The Amazing Race meets Ready Steady Cook.

There’s no team assignments, so it’s a chaotic free-for-all as contestants punch and shove their way toward blue aprons. Blue Team has won both challenges so far this season. It’s luck of the draw (supposedly) on captaincy as well, depending on which apron you pick up. Amina is Red’s captain and Taco Ben is at the helm on Blue.

It looks like Blue has a winning team yet again in Mindy, Audra and yes, even Taco Ben. He can actually cook when he’s not distracted by his crippling Mexican obsession and was first up for an immunity challenge. Tonight, it’s not actually Team Blue, it’s Team Alpha. Nearly all the men (with the exception of F-Bomb) are strong, dominant, leader types. We have Bandy (Ben and Andy reunited so the bromance continues), Sam and Beau & Wade (the second dose of guy-love). Red has Andrew and Mario. ‘Nuff said. Rough menus get decided and both teams hit the road.

Each team has two cars. Blue has a clever strategy of including Sydney-siders, Sam (ex-Sydney boy now living in Perth) and Cupcake Barbie Jr, Kylie, in each car, who know the terrain and the best restaurants to pick.

Blue and Red both head for the Hilton. Red arrives first, beating Blue by mere minutes. Both next head down the road for Darrell Lea’s chocolates. Red has reserved the goods but Blue arrives before them and swipes the stash. It’s game on and Red take their gloves off, although it wouldn’t be much of a fair fight. They are up against Team Alpha, after all.

Blue’s second car sticks around Surry Hills and it’s looking like a smart strategy given the notorious Sydney CBD traffic. They hit up several restaurants including Red Lantern, Bill’s and Toko.

Both teams are struggling to formulate dish ideas with the small quantities of ingredients they’re getting. They desperately need to snag a whale.

Red still need to get some quality dessert ingredients. Wildfire donates a kilo of fine dark chocolate but Cupcake Barbie still needs her eggs. Blue finally hit the jackpot at the Intercontinental with a five kilo barrmundi.

With five minutes to go, both teams head to Pasta Vera, conveniently just down the road from the MasterChef kitchen in Pyrmont. Blue get lost and Red arrives first, picking up three large boxes of ingredients and thirty eggs. Karma sure is a bitch.

It’s the next day and time to start cooking. The goal is to raise the most money from their dishes based on what the diners feel they’re worth. It just so happens that Matt Moran is an Oz Harvest ambassador and will be mentor for both teams. Curiously, George is missing. His absence is attributed to a little bouncing chef convention in Darling Harbour. They have two hours to cook.

Blue is serving barramundi tartare with sweet soy entree. We get a flashback of the Intercontinental chef instructing them to pan-fry it. Taco Ben believes a tartare will be fine for that fish though. Moran and Gary suggest that given the extra fish they’re not using, he should make a fish pie. He decides to go with that idea instead, with ninety minutes left. Only problem is that no one on Blue has ever cooked a fish pie.

Red’s menu is a salmon tartare with wasabi mayo entree, braised beef main, meringue and chocolate & strawberry mousse dessert. Gary and Moran think Amina’s main is too boring, so she decides to make koftas instead.

The guests arrive and Red are up first with their salmon. The flavours of the dressing could use more seasoning and wasabi but is generally well-received as fresh and restaurant-worthy.

Taco Ben thinks it’s a good idea to announce each of their dishes stating where the ingredients were sourced from, keeping in line with the Oz Harvest ethos. It’s really just an excuse for Bandy to do their cute double act. When Blue’s fish pie is served, it goes down well.

Red are struggling with how to plate up their main and finally settle on Deb’s simple and clean design. Ironic, given Deb’s got the precision of a three year-old. When it does go out, it’s hailed as the best dish so far by one of the guests.

Plating up on Blue’s main is even more chaotic. Hands are flying all over the place and there’s no communication. It’s like watching a Greater Western Sydney footy game. Finally Taco Ben yells “STOP!” so he can explain the main to his team but even he can’t get it right because it’s not Spanish-sounding enough. The diners, however, think it tastes great.

Finally, it’s down to a battle between the (self-proclaimed) Dessert Queens. In the Red corner we have Cupcake Barbie and in the Blue corner we have Cupcake Barbie Jr. Red’s dessert again proves troublesome plating up and it’s decided to crumble the meringue instead of serving whole. It looks a mess but when it comes to the eating, it gets the thumbs up. 

Blue’s got a peanut brittle crisp and a creative use of olive oil for their chocolate mousse, due to lack of eggs. The way it’s plated up though holds an uncanny resemblance to a fresh dog turd. It’s overwhelmingly sweet and the presentation isn’t helping any.

Signs are pointing toward a win for Red.

Service ends and the combined total raised by the teams is a staggering $32,012. In a surprise reveal, one dish alone raised $20,000, care of Commonwealth Bank. That dish will ultimately decide the winner of the challenge.

Before Preston reveals which team received the $20k, he reads out the totals without it. Red raised $3,056.50. Blue raised substantially more with $8,955.50. Preston keeps the suspense rolling with the obligatory “but”, reiterating one dish earned $20,000. And that dish was… Blue’s fish pie! That’s a total of $28,955.50 for Blue and $3,056.50 for Red. With that monstrous shellacking, Blue’s winning streak remains untarnished. Preston adds that it was Blue’s decision to formally introduce each dish that swayed the $20,000 donation in their favour.

A dismayed Amina remains adamant that red aprons are cursed.

Golden girl, Mindy, has another shot at immunity tonight. Gary feels a distinct sense of deja vu since it was just a week ago she was standing before them with hopes of earning the coveted gold pin. George does a great shady watch salesman impression by revealing the immunity pin on the inside of his jacket. Caught off-guard, Gary thinks it’s a suicide bomb and runs for cover. 

Tonight she’s up against sushi specialist, Sake’s Shaun Presland in a challenge “with a twist” - no stoves or ovens - completely raw food. Mindy chooses the two strongest cooks in the competition, Amina and Audra. Take a good look, these guys will be the final three this year. It’s early days but my gut tells me it’ll be them.

They have sixty minutes to plate up entree main and dessert. Shaun’s team have only thirty minutes. One final twist is there’s only one power socket that both teams must share.

Shaun has the honours of picking the core ingredient and settles on kiwi fruit for its supposed versatility.

On Mindy’s team Amina’s making entree, a raw Thai beef salad, using kiwi to cure the meat. Audra’s making a Thai style sashimi salmon main and Mindy’s making a kiwi and mango fruit salad dessert.

Shaun’s team is making entree scallop carpaccio main seafood (lobster, tuna and salmon) ceviche served in a lobster shell and kiwi & coconut cream dessert.

With only thirty minutes, the boys blitz through their dishes, not even needing the power socket. At the end, they even have a minute to spare. In the best moment I’ve seen this season, Shaun comes over and helps Mindy plate up! But the joke’s on her when the cornelled cream he makes for her collapses (ambiguous whether it’s intentional or not).

The finished result highlights the vast difference in experience. The girls’ presentation is seriously lacklustre except for Amina’s beef. The boys’ Japanese training shows with their stunning presentation.

Judgement time and both entrees arrive. The judges comment on how beautifully presented they are. They taste the scallop carpaccio first from Shaun’s team. They can’t taste the kiwi coming through and the flavour balance isn’t quite right. Amina’s cured beef with Thai dressing is next. It’s a winner with kiwi shining through and loads of flavour. The shortfall though is the roughly cut and pasty beef.

Mains are up and the judges’ eyes immediately go to Shaun’s seafood ceviche in the lobster shell, something that harks Japanese elegance and the pedigree of its cook. It tastes fresh, clean and is a hit. Audra’s sashimi of salmon tastes amazing. It’s something original and incredibly flavoured. They initially criticised the use of carrot in the dish from a presentation perspective but find it’s a necessary texture element.

Dessert is served and the kiwi lime cream with coconut & pistachio from Shaun’s team looks very attractive. Mindy’s mango and kiwi carpaccio with vanilla maple syrup, however, looks incredibly amateur. Mindy’s is tasted first. It’s universally slammed. Gary going so far as saying he hates it. Everything from the presentation to the overpowering maple syrup is criticised. The kiwi lime is next and it’s a bit heavy-handed with the cream but looks and tastes good.

The results are in and they reveal Amina’s Thai beef as the winner. It’s Amina’s second win for a dish in an immunity challenge. Pity it’s not her own. To keep the suspense going, they reveal the dessert result next. It’s the kiwi lime cream from Shaun’s team that takes it out. For the second week in a row, Mindy’s dish didn’t win in her own immunity challenge. Saving the best for last, the judges say this dish was the best of the day. The winner is Audra’s salmon sashimi. An emotional Mindy and Audra take a few seconds to realise she’s won. In part due to a cryptic delivery of the news by George; he simply opened his jacket to reveal the pin and motioned with his eyes. Not something you’d like to see George doing most of the time. By choosing the strongest cooks in the competition, they carried her through to win the first immunity of the season.

I’ve been a fan of Audra’s since she made the beautiful chocolate raspberry cake to get into the Top 24. She’s super strong and an even stronger contender to win this year, in my opinion. Yay for Audra!

After suffering at the hands of a troublesome core ingredient in the form of cactus and prickly pear last night, Andrew, Kath and Cupcake Barbie are fighting to stay in the competition in tonight’s Pressure Test. 

The ever-delightful Maggie Beer is the guest chef tonight and receives a rock star welcome. Our foodies need to recreate her grape cake, raisin wafer and olive oil & verjuice ice cream. The contestants must tip the finished cake out in front of the judges. To add extra pressure, they have just ninety minutes to complete it all.

It’s a dessert challenge, so we already know that Cupcake Barbie will go through. Between Andrew and Kath however, it’s a tough call. Kath’s a great cook but being the arty type, she doesn’t follow recipes, which may be her downfall. This is proven early on as both Andrew and CB fly through making the olive oil ice cream. However Kath misses a crucial element by not including the sugar syrup, so the ice cream will have no sweetness to it. She fixes it quickly though.

Meanwhile, Mindy, Dalvinder and Hipster Alice wearing obnoxiously giant bright red glasses (number twenty-three from her collection) and an ironic “I ❤ NY” t-shirt, get to meet Buddy Valastro AKA The Cake Boss. With a thick New York accent and Italian-American swagger, Buddy looks like he’s stepped off the set of The Sopranos instead of a wedding catering truck. He impresses with his cake decorating skills, making edible roses blind-folded and using a pastry turntable as his indispensable trade tool. Alice is upset it’s not an actual record player so she can listen to the obscure indie LP she brought along. 

Andrew’s now in trouble with not enough time to bake his cake. CB is also cutting it fine, having gone into her forty-five minute baking time. Surprisingly, Kath has her cake already in the oven. However, she and Andrew hit a speed bump with both cakes not cooked in the centre, minutes before plating up.

CB presents hers first. She admits what we all knew, that she had some arrogance coming into the competition and that she still has a lot of learn. Hear, hear, your Royal Smugness. The moment of truth arrives and she flips over her cake and it looks fantastic and almost a mirror image of Maggie’s. Maggie already knows from the colour of the caramel it’ll taste great. George cuts into it and the knife comes out cleanly, perfectly cooked. Maggie’s face lights up when she tastes the ice cream. All her elements are perfectly executed.

Andrew’s next up, standing in front of the judges with some trepidation, revealing he hasn’t been true to himself in his cooking. He’s felt like he’s been trying to be someone else. Gary touches the cake and we see liquid seeping out from the middle. When George cuts into it, the middle looks like pudding. The ice cream and wafers are both good, though.

Finally, Kath is up. Hers is also raw in the middle and collapses, although she got it in the oven first. The judges attribute her free-flowing, arty nature and habit of not following recipes as the reason. The upside is her wafer is judged as the best of the day.

Predictably, CB is the first one safe, with the judges finding nothing to fault. Between Andrew and Kath, his was more cooked and hers collapsed. So Andrew is safe and Kath gracefully accepts defeat. It’s sad to see her go. Kath was a unique character, always in good spirits, who brought great fun and life to the show.

It’s a fresh week of MasterChef and that means Mystery Box and Invention Test.

Tonight our contestants face larger than usual Mystery Boxes. They are told the contents can be cooked either sweet or savoury but it must be sweet for this challenge. It’s biscuits in sixty minutes. Cupcake Barbie (Julia) and Cupcake Barbie Jr. (Kylie) high five, having a challenge playing to their dessert strengths. The red-blooded male contestants are disappointed there wasn’t more physical contact between this season’s token eye candy.

Only the top three will be judged. As per usual, the winner will choose the core ingredient in the Invention Test.

Cupcake Barbie Jr. is making a fancy tuile with lime zest and white chocolate ganache. Cupcake Barbie is making melting moments with raspberry jam. Taco Ben is making ANZAC Biscuits in the shape of sombreros. Amina’s making a Middle Eastern biscuit that I have no idea how to spell. 

Cupcake Barbie Jr.’s tuiles are rocking it. Perfectly formed into delicately thin golden brown cylinders. The Ganache is proving a problem. Not set, it’s a melting mess all over the plate. Sammy’s Monte Carlo’s look good, albeit “rustic” in presentation. Cupcake Barbie’s Melting Moments will most likely take it out. All the elements, biscuit, jam and cream are perfectly made.

Surprisingly, Amina is called up first. Cupcake Barbie is annoyingly smug (as she has been throughout the show), doing her signature FIGJAM walk to the judges as they call her next. The camera lingers on Cupcake Barbie Jr., as they announce Taco Ben in the final spot. Cupcake Barbie Jr. tears up on camera. How can ganache be so cruel?

Cupcake Barbie’s Melting Moments are tasted first. Beautifully presented, Gary digs in first and then calls the boys over. They make the ridiculous facial expressions and sounds of pleasure that we’ve come to know and loathe on the show. 

Amina’s Maamoul is next, some filled with pistachios & Turkish Delight and others with dates & orange water. George bites into it and there’s such an explosion of icing sugar, he wipes his forehead and neck. He says it’s the best Maamoul he’s ever eaten. That could just be the sugar rush talking, though.

Finally Taco Ben hands over his ANZAC Biscuits made with cranberries and white chocolate. Preston eats his way through the ANZAC with a twist (bastardised) and thinks the additional ingredients work great for a modern take on the Aussie classic.

Cupcake Barbie is (predictably) crowned as the winner with Preston adding they’ll be talking about that biscuit for a long time to come. When was the last time you talked about a biscuit and then kept on talking about it? I thought so.

Gary reveals the Invention Test will be Mexican. Taco Ben high fives his bromantic partner in crime, Andy. Cupcake Barbie gets to choose the core ingredient. The choices are corn, prawns and an unusual ingredient you tend to see as foil to Wile E. Coyote, cactus (and prickly pear). Doing her best game show girl impression (robotic as she is), she unveils the cactus and pears to the contestants and there’s utter disbelief. We hear a Mexican Wave of “what the?”. Andy say’s he has no idea what’s going through his head. So it’s  business as usual for him them. There, there, Andy. At least you’re pretty and have big arms.

They again have sixty minutes to cook. Confident, Taco Ben is making, er, tacos, with scallop, cactus and prickly pear salsa. Cupcake Barbie is making a lime panna cotta with prickly pear syrup and fruit salad with prickly pear and tequila syrup. Mindy is making jalapeno poppers. My ears grate as she consistently pronounces jalapeno with an English “j” sound rather than the correct Spanish “h”. Lost a little bit of my respect for you, Mindy. 

Top three dishes go to Mindy, even if she can’t pronounce jalapeno properly. Where’s the justice?. Also Hipster Alice, excruciatingly bouncy as usual. Props to her for the neck strength to support her three kilo glasses whilst jumping uncontrollably, though. Her chili churros with prickly pear & tequila syrup were the best churros ever made by a MasterChef contestant. Finally Dalvinder who made a raw scallop salad with cactus and pear salsa. Preston throws around a series of bad Bollywood meets Mexico adjectives and everyone cringes. Taco Ben couldn’t get it over the line tonight with a mish-mash of flavours. The winner of the challenge and up for the Immunity Challenge is… Mindy, yet again, and the clear front-runner for the MasterChef title.

Bottom three are Andrew, Kath and Cupcake Barbie. Andrew made a tortilla stack with chocolate sauce chicken (yes, chocolate with chicken and he wonders why he’s in the bottom three) and prickly pear. Kath made an oily Mexican chicken soup with cactus. Cupcake Barbie’s panna cotta wasn’t set, the yoghurt was curdled and she didn’t remove the intrusive seeds from her prickly pear salad. These three will face-off in the Pressure Test elimination tomorrow.

My first ever attempt at homemade peanut butter ice cream with hot chocolate fudge sauce, super rich and gooey. Compliments of ex-MasterChef contestant Dani Venn’s recipe: http://danivenn.com/2012/05/16/peanut-butter-sundae-of-love/

It’s elimination time and we open with Deb not claiming responsibility for her team’s loss. Young Matty, however, takes it on the chin. Sure he was swapped to the Red team and subsequently up for elimination but he accepts his fate like a man. See Deb, that’s what a true leader does. And Matt learnt all he knows from the Hungry Jack’s School of Management.

Round one of the elimination is a taste test. Gary pulls out a tagine and asks, “what kind of tagine is it?”. Not exactly a cheap one, judging by the Scanpan logo on it, Gary. It contains a North African dish with twenty-five ingredients they need to correctly identify one by one. Andy tells us he didn’t even know North African cuisine existed. Face palm. Really, I have no words. None. The first five to incorrectly name an ingredient go into round two of the elimination.

First up to taste is Amina (purely coincidental, I’m sure), the only one in the group who knew that people actually eat food in North Africa, since her Dad’s Egyptian. She indulges in the flavour explosion a little too much while George reminds her it’s a one hour show. She correctly identifies okra. The line moves along for a full rotation until Deb incorrectly identifies peanuts, which aren’t in the dish. Payback sure is a bitch. Andrew, Matt, Emma and F-Bomb join Deb in round two.

For round two, they have forty-five minutes to use any five of the ingredients from the tagine to cook a great dish. Worst dish goes home.

The gorgeous beachside setting of The Bather’s Pavillion in Balmoral serves as the Blue team’s reward for winning the Yum Cha challenge. They get a master class on chicken ballantine and kick back for lunch. It looks like Big Sammy is starting to sprout a handlebar moustache. This ain’t Movember, Sam and even then it’s unacceptable, so put it away.

The clock starts in the elimination and we have Andrew cooking fennel three ways. Emma’s cooking pistachio encrusted lamb cutlet. F-Bomb has no choice but to cook something other than bread, so does a fennel salad and ambitiously, a granita to cleanse the palate, given the short forty-five minute timeframe. Matty is making braised fennel a garlic fennel puree and a lamb chop. Deb’s got braised fennel salad going but Preston questions whether it constitutes a whole dish or a side.

Best moment of the night is when Emma tells Gary she’s confident she won’t go home because she’s controlling her emotions more, got her crying it check and Gary tells her she’s kidding herself, she’ll always cry, just like George and his bouncing. You just can’t weed that out of somebody.

Deb’s first up for tasting. George loves the full-on fennel flavour of her braised fennel and almond salad. Preston and Gary both agree. She’ll be safe for sure.

F-Bomb’s next with a Sicilian fennel salad and date & pistachio granita. Impressive. Both dishes go down well but Gary failed to see the connection between the two, since the salad was already crisp and refreshing, making the granita redundant as a palate cleanser.

Matty’s lamb is up next, looking the least impressive so far. Poorly presented and it’s borderline raw. Big trouble. 

Emma’s pistachio lamb is a hit. George says it looks like a tasty Golden Gaytime ice-cream, except made out of baby sheep. Safe.

Andrew’s fennel three ways is last up. Gary loves it but knows the distinct preserved lemon flavour will most likely turn Preston off. Preston tastes and tells us a story that he associates the preserved lemon flavour with the pungent lemon scented urinal cakes in the men’s bathroom of a football stadium (you wish I made that up). Thanks for the vivid image, Matt. I don’t know how you know. I don’t want to know. You do realise a lot of people eat dinner while they watch the show, right?

Judgement time and dish of the day goes to Debra. No surprise there. This woman can cook, shame about her bitchy attitude toward others. Andrew and Emma are both safe. It’s between Matty and F-Bomb. We already know who it’ll be. All the clues were there for us. Kind of like The Sixth Sense for kindergarteners. He was swapped onto the losing team. We had the foreshadowing of him not wanting to return to flipping burgers. Sorry, Matty, but back to Hungry Jack’s you go. He’s only eighteen and George encourages him to get his apprenticeship. Cue the waterworks from Emma.

In the end credits, we learn Matt’s been promoted to a manager at Hungry Jack’s Again, I wish I made that up but Channel Ten, you make my job so much easier when you deliver gems like this. If I knew a stint on MasterChef was all it took, I would’ve done that years ago. Sure beats performing sexual favours.

It’s early morning in the MasterChef house and Taco Ben reckons that today will involve some kind of dumpling making. It’s not like he’s psychic or anything, it’s just that they got a dumpling master class the previous night. This dude gets smarter with every fish taco he eats (it is full of brain-boosting Omega 3, after all). Marble (or was it Marvel? Either way the guy’s got a rad name) of Chefs Gallery blitzes through making three types of dumplings. The whitest Asian girl in Australia, Mindy, tries her hand at Chinese to the name the morsels, because we all remember how well it went last time when she pronounced her Malaysian “murtabak” by its Arabic name, ”mutabbaq”. Honestly, did you really live in Malaysia, Mindy? Just sayin’. For the record, Marvel made char siu bao (pork steamed bun), siu mai (pork dumpling) and har gow (shrimp dumpling).

The black motorcade prominently displaying this year’s automotive sponsor logo pulls up to the Chinese Garden in Darling Harbour and our heroes and villain (I’ll get to that) are told it is indeed a yum cha challenge. Taco Ben buys a lotto ticket. The Red and Blue teams must each create five dishes and must include a dumpling, steamed bun and spring roll with the remaining two up to the teams to decide. It’s also a people’s choice challenge with the visitors to the Chinese Garden voting for the best team. This time, instead of contestants picking teams, fortune cookies will assign them.

As our foodies pick the fortune cookies, there’s a distinct bias of six Red aprons with no Blues assigned yet. Deb can’t believe it. I can. It’s called reality TV editing, Deb. Outback Jack (Beau) steps up and opens a Blue captain cookie, the first Blue. Next up is Deb who reveals she’s never eaten or cooked yum cha, which can mean only one thing. As the cookie cracks open, the Red captain is assigned. The cookies keep going until everyone is teamed up. Dessert Barbie Jr, Kylie, says that her Blue team is the clear underdog today and everyone loves an underdog. We can already see who’ll win now based off of that comment. Thanks, Ten, for throwing the suspense out the window, yet again!

Before the challenge gets underway, there’s a dumpling making comp which gives the winner the opportunity to swap a team member. Deb cries foul because she knows she doesn’t stand a chance. She is, after all, probably the only person in the country that’s never eaten yum cha before. Outback Jack says he wants Audra if he wins. Game on and Beau has a clear lead. Tregan says he’s a master at smoothing out the dough because he’s “good with his hands” and gives a wink to the camera. Beau’s the clear winner and gets Audra. He swaps Hungry Jack’s worker, Matt (again, who is screening these contestants?) over, because when was the last time you saw a Double Bacon Deluxe dumpling? They have $1000 budget to get their ingredients from Chinatown and the team with the most votes wins.

OJ shows his leadership skills from the outset organising shoppers and the menu in a flash. Bad news for Red is that is Deb clueless and has no control over the team. Amina and Alice start chatting about plans for the weekend. This is not good.

Blue team are already shopping. Best moment of the night - when Audra reverts to Singlish as soon as they hit Chinatown, “I need a basket, man!”.

Meanwhile Red are still deciding the menu. Game over. Without a clue what to do, Deb promotes Mindy as her lieutenant who sets off shopping. F-Bomb is in charge of, you guessed it, dough, for Red’s pork buns. He thinks that even though it’s an Asian dough, his gut feel will get the consistency right. Amina seriously disagrees. So do we.

On the Red team, TK is professing her love for Andy’s rippling biceps just as his shopping bag breaks and smashes a fish sauce bottle, causing delays and a foul stench. Way to jinx it, TK.

Blue return with their shopping and three hours, ten minutes to serve. The first dish quickly goes out, Big Sam’s panko-battered prawns. The ravenous crowd devour it in a matter of seconds. The other free choice dish is banana fritter.

Red’s shopping finally returns with two and a half hours to go and no dishes served. Their non-compulsory dishes are chicken wings and a dessert spring roll. Tension mounts as Deb feels no love and stops everyone from cooking because no one’s listening to her. Hey Deb, maybe if you just let your team cook, you might actually get a dish out? Serve food, get votes. It’s not rocket science.

Blue are already onto their second dish, vegie spring rolls. Red, on the other hand, still haven’t got a dish up and have a hungry mob that are on the verge reaching for their pitchforks. This is going to be landslide. Deb continues her Stalinesque reign and yells at the team without reason. Chick’s lost control.

Things are running smoothly for Blue but then Audra realises she forgot to buy wonton skins for siu mai (CANNOT LAH!), one of the three mandatory dishes. It’s up to Bald Eagle, Wade to run back to buy some. Sure, send the out-of-towner on a time-critical shopping mission to an exact location. Great plan.

Red finally has chicken wings going out as their first dish. Then quickly followed by vegie spring rolls. A teary Emma praises the real leader of the team today, Mindy. Siu mai also goes out. Looks like Red have caught up and have even more dishes out than Blue now.

Blue team’s Wade is totally lost in Chinatown.

Red look to be running smoothly now since they’ve decided to just listen to Mindy who’s showing the same poise held during the immunity challenge. Even F-Bomb says Deb looks confused. It’s best thing he’s ever done on the show.

Wade’s still lost and running around George Street now. Wade, you’re way off. He finds a friendly parking inspector and gets his bearings. There’s a musical crescendo as he finally gets to the wonton skin shop. Now Tregan is in trouble on Blue for soggy banana fritters. She’s run out of canola oil and has to buy more but decides to use olive oil to save time. These mistakes allow Red to continue serving dish after dish.

Time’s up and the results of the vote are ready to be revealed. Preston says that it’s not even close. One team got 97 votes and the other 148. Ad break. So the winners are… Blue. It was touch and go for a while there with a bumbling Wade and a late comeback by Red thrown in for a bit of suspense. Blue’s MVP is Sammy for this prawns accounting for 73 votes alone. A proud Beau says his team was cohesive, each member knew their role and Red’s Mindy nods in agreement. Red’s LVP is F-Bomb who gets called up for the terrible dough in his buns. Your ego back in check now, bud? The judges ask Deb her thoughts on the challenge. She goes on to say that she had no support and throws Mindy under the bus, pretty much blaming her for the result. BOOM. Wait, who led the team because you couldn’t, Deb? I thought Lydia was bad. There’s a new bitch in town. So it’s Red up for elimination tomorrow while Blue get to eat it up in Balmoral.

It’s Immunity challenge time and our favourite blonde dynamo and daddy’s girl, Mindy, is pitted against a boy band trio from the Three Blue Ducks restaurant, led by tall drink of water, Darren Robertson. There are some sparks there, no doubt.

Mindy is given a choice of either choosing her team or choosing the core ingredient, which tonight is either cheese or wine. She quickly opts for the former because she wants the best team backing her. In this case it’s Dessert Barbie and Amina. The Ducks get to choose the ingredient and go with cheese because they’re worried about their behaviour around attractive blondes if intoxicated.

To even out the odds, Mindy and her team get Matt Moran as mentor and have ninety minutes to cook three courses and the Ducks get sixty. They get cracking with Amina making a beetroot and goat’s cheese salad for entree, Mindy doing a quattro formaggi ravioli for main and Dessert Barbie making a poached pear with ricotta filling. All’s well in the kitchen, with Mindy leading the troops and remaining cool under pressure. With thirty minutes of sitting around time, the Ducks spend it wisely by perving on the competition. 

At the sixty minute mark, the boys start, albeit with a casual saunter through the pantry, until Matt Preston threatens to sit on them which quickens their pace. Entree will be a herbed tagliatele served with buffalo mozzarella and tomato salsa. Main is a mushroom, parmesan and reggiano cheese risotto. Dessert is pumpkin, pear, blue cheese and burnt meringue. Taco boy, Ben, yells out that no risotto dish has ever won in the history of MasterChef. Head Duck, Darren, thinks he’s taking the piss because he’s wearing dodgy op shop reading glasses which lend him no credibility. It takes Matt Moran to confirm it’s true.

To take his mind off the risotto decision, Darren comes around to Mindy’s bench pretending to check out the dishes but really he’s checking out the “dishes”, if you know what I mean. You can cut the sexual tension with a paring knife.

Taco Ben decides to tell us that winning immunity is important because it would mean another week in the kitchen. Thanks, Captain Obvious.

All the dishes get plated up without issue and it looks like it’ll be a really close one. Entrees get served to the judges and they really like both. It’s a blind tasting so they have no idea which team did which. Fearful of beetroot stains, Preston spends five minutes untying his cravat. Cut to ads. We return and he’s still fiddling with it. Eventually they’re ready to taste Amina’s goat’s cheese and beetroot salad. It’s fresh, clean, tastes great and the cheese is the star. The pasta and buffalo mozzarella has great flavours but the pasta was intentionally served cold. Gary and Matt are torn because the cold pasta reminds them of too many 3am hangover cures (true story). In the end, the salad won the round.

Next the mains and Gary reveals to us that he’s actually a comfort eater (he sure had me fooled). He hates the look of Darren’s risotto. It’s too wanky for his taste but he loves he look of Mindy’s ravioli. Gary’s mind changes when he eats the risotto and it actually works. The ravioli is solid but lacks balance of flavours.

Desserts and again it’s traditional presentation vs wank factor. The boys spend the next few minutes debating it with concerns about the amount of blue cheese on the Ducks’ dish. Dessert Barbie’s poached pear and ricotta works and ticks all the boxes. The Ducks’ pumpkin, blue cheese, pear and meringue has some interesting and compelling flavours but George is turned off by the blue cheese overload.

It’s decision time and both teams anxiously await the results. Happy days on Mindy’s team as they learn the salad won the entree round. The Ducks bow their heads in shame but are redeemed by a stellar risotto, taking out round two and breaking the dreaded curse. So it comes down to the desserts and they were the best dishes of day, so tough call. In the end though, the Ducks take it out, leaving Mindy without immunity. Matt Preston tries his hand at relating with the younger demographic saying he thought the girls would get “absolutely pwned” (seriously, he actually said that) by the Ducks. The Ducks’ pride is upheld and Mindy leaves without an immunity pin. But something tells me this won’t be her last shot at it… as long as it involves Asian food.