Speaking of Curtis Stone, he would be guest chef in tomorrow’s team challenge and also one of the American challenges when remaining contestants cooked at his restaurant Maude in Beverly Hills.
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Interesting episode in which eliminated contestants fought their way back into the competition. It came down to Theresa and Cecilia with their desserts. While I was happy to see either of them regaining her spot in the main competition, I was shocked the judges rewarded Theresa with a power apron for the next episode.
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Really? She’ll probably get to pick each team colour in tomorrow’s ep. Big deal. The power apron is a total fizzer, and Ten should be embarrassed at promoting this on-screen all week in the form of a watermark.
I thought it was the best ep so far. Great quality, you could really see the passion in the returning comtestants tonight.
Amazing effort and result by Theresa 
Curtis Stone (AKA face of Coles)!
Tonight’s challenge was really good, great TV.
Curtis Stone is fantastic, a popular veteran really (despite some people not liking him and/or Coles).
Looks like a massive elimination & an interesting one at that. George looks tense at the end… Can’t wait
Why were Chloe and Nicolette so stubborn and did not listen to Curtis Stone’s suggestion to make a rich dessert? The girls let the other teams down with their sorbet and spoiled the whole degustation course. Theresa returned to the competition with a bang, she and Elena made the tangelo refresher and tangelo explosion which was popular with the judges.
Had Trent and Elise decided to cure the prawn at the start of preparation, it would have been more tastier and the team would not have fallen into elimination. And why did they put such a small portion on a large plate?
Matt and Heather were very lucky, they misjudged the cooking time and the duck were unevenly cooked. They were saved by other ingredients.
Great episode tonight overall.
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The judges going crazy over the look and taste of tangelo segments tonight laughable. Of course, if you bring a contestant back then they’re not really going to be up for elimination for a while, are they?
The same judges then moaning and groaning about the last course, not because of the dish itself but because of Curtis’ law that it must be rich was equally pathetic.
Incidentally, anyone else sick of the contestant’s hand movements during confessionals? If I have to see Harry twirling his hands around each other, or Mimi shaking her body about while talking, once more, I think I’ll hurl. No, producers, the confessionals are not more vibrant and interesting if you train people to be animated with their hands.
On top of that, most of the dishes weren’t even cooking tonight. A chunk of beef, or a slice of salmon? Yawn. Hated that episode.
Noticed some images of MasterChef UK. No monogrammed aprons for the BBC just laser printed clip on name tags!
Tonight was one of the closest elimination challenges I have ever seen on MasterChef. While the promo concentrated on the first round, there were bits not seen until the actual episode, such as the power apron not in play, the theatrics used by Trent and Chloe to enhance their dishes to impress the judges, and Nicolette’s breakdown.
Three of the four dishes in the first round were top class and it was very hard to separate Chloe’s chicken dish from Trent’s beef dish. Similarly in the second round, either Chloe or Nicolette could win the round with her dessert creation. Sad to see Nicolette go, she has a bright future ahead.
(Before the show began, one of the judges said some applicants grew up watching MasterChef and waited until they were old enough to apply for a spot. One of them was Nicolette.)
Another observation: Star World in India began showing this season of MC last month, one week after Australia, but for some reason the channel began to fall further behind. This Friday’s episode is the team challenge at the Hellenic Republic restaurant in Kew which aired on Ten on June 1. It could have something to do with the extended mystery box/invention test episode on Sundays which (due to its length) can’t fit into the one hour timeslot allocated by Star World each weeknight, and therefore each episode has to be shown over two nights. If Star World also shows the MasterClass as a separate episode, Indian viewers will be even further behind us.
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The US series has the contestants Twitter handle on their aprons.
Such a shock for me… So sad to see Nicolette go 
Only 19 years old, won first immunity & was smart.
She’s dedicated, passionate & will go far!
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This Sunday sees the return of team relay challenge. Last time it happened (fourth episode of Marco Pierre White Week in week 3 last season) John Carasig of the blue team was widely condemned on social media for deviating so much from the intended dish, leaving Georgia Barnes only five minutes to come up with a completely new dish, and she nearly single handedly saved her team from facing elimination. Would history repeat itself?
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That was painful to watch last year. Hopefully they will cope better, but with the promo declaring Sunday’s episode “Brett’s Big Gamble”, we’ll just have to wait and see.
With only 12 contestants remaining, the opener has been shortened too.
Elena became the second contestant this season (after Anastasia) to win both mystery box challenge and invention test. Elena won the advantage with her butter bug, horned melon and celeriac dish.
The relay challenge again featured a change of dish, this time Brett of the yellow team switching from the trifle envisioned by Harry to a meringue tart. It was panned by the judges for a half cooked pastry and not being inventive enough but the team scraped through because the tart was tasty. The red team won as it was able to stick to its original dish - braised duck with honey, lemon and whiskey sauce - although the carrots would have added more flavour had Carmen not forgotten about them until the last 30 seconds of cooking. The blue team was sent into elimination mainly because the preserved lemon syrup tasted like medicine, and Theresa did not think clearly of a dish her team wanted to create at the start of cooking.
The episode will be shown tomorrow night.
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From Sunday 26 June
Heston Week - Heston Blumenthal returns to MasterChef Australia in the biggest week ever. In a world first, the top 10 contestants open four Heston inspired & supervised MasterChef Australia popups in four days.
According to online guides and promo at the season premiere back in May, the pop-up Heston restaurants were held in early March at places such as the Melbourne Star observation wheel, Brighton Beach (3.30pm on a Wednesday as Chris recounted) and the underground carpark at University of Melbourne. At the end of each restaurant, at least 1 contestant would face elimination. In all 7 contestants would cook to save his or her spot in next Thursday’s episode. This means there must be at least one team challenge to have multiple contestants facing elimination.
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I was surprised it was Anastasia who was eliminated tonight as she performed well in the kitchen in the weeks before. She struggled like every other contestant who was competing the pressure test the first time. She spent too much time peeling the beetroot and fell behind the other three girls, then broke down with 30 minutes to go. After some encouragement by George, Anastasia picked herself up and completed her components by instinct. It meant the greens were too salty and the dates not smoked enough and she was out.
As for the dish, it’s like the vegetarian version of beef wellington with the beef replaced by beetroot. My father (a retired pastry chef) did not like the dish, he could not believe it was created by 17-year-old Flynn McGarry and reckoned Flynn’s latest restaurant would not last.
Anastasia failed to realise George is stupid and listened to his advice to read 62 recipe steps to begin with rather than start cooking.
Did we actually find out why Chloe needed 500mL of beetroot water and not roughly 450mL as she had? We had to spend 15 minutes watching everyone stress out over it…
And how unfair last night that the judges let everyone out of the secret room so the team could tell Karmen to pull out the carrots before the time ran out.
Great immunity challenge episode tonight. Given Karmen is really good at making desserts I expected to win the skills test, but out of the blue Matt came from behind to claim victory and got the chance to compete against Victor Leung from Lee Ho Fook of Melbourne CBD. Surprised that both men went for seafood (I thought one of them was going for beef or lamb). Both of them got high scores, but Victor got perfect 10s from the judges which was unbelievable. However was it really necessary for them to show the score cards simultaneously? That suggested they knew who cooked which dish during blind tasting.
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I second this