Tonight was the first episode of the MasterChef super stars. It was Poh’s Mystery Box Challenge. The mystery box tonight had prawns, palm sugar, chillis, lime, cocounut and a few other asian inspired ingredients. The contestants had to use one of these ingredients in their dish and in the first round, the judges will taste 5 dishes.
There were quite a lot of variety in the dishes. Stephen was cooking a rice pudding and Rose, a palm sugar and lime cake. Georgia was making eclairs with palm sugar caramel. Reynold was making butter poached prawns with a lime vinaigrette.
Time was running out and Stephen took his cakes out of the oven, they looked under. He took on out of the tin and it pretty much collapsed and were raw in the middle.
The first dish to be tasted was John. He made a Bibinka sticky rice cake with palm sugar ice cream recipe. It was a dish from his heritage. Poh said “that’s awesome”, it had a really springy texture and a punch of flavours. Gary agreed, it had complex flavours and was beautiful.
The next dish to be tasted was Georgia’s coconut and lime eclair with rice filling and lime caramel. Gary said there were technical problems with the profiterole, but loved the idea of the eclair. The other judges agreed, it was the base of a good dish but needed work.
Next up was Reynold’s butter poached prawns with vinigariette and lime aoli recipe. George thought it was a really beautiful dish.
Jessie’s Cucumber soup with coconut prawns and chilli oil recipe was next. It looked great. Poh liked the richness of the fried prawns, it was really balanced and a pleasant dish to eat.
Finally it was Rose with a lime upside down cake with lime and chilli caramel recipe. It was “lovely and dense”, Poh said it was really really good.
The winner of the mystery box is John. He wins the advantage going into the invention test.
Hayden Quinn has entered the Masterchef kitchen. They all walk into the pantry to see which core ingredient John will choose. In the pantry there are some of Hayden’s favourite ingredients. The first ingredient is pork. the second ingredient is mussels and the third ingredient is beef.
John has chosen pork as the core ingredient for today’s invention test challenge.
Time is up and all of the contestants have completed their dishes. Kristina breaks down in tears at the end, she is worried about going into a pressure test.
Georgia has made a dessert. She has made an apple and bacon crumble. The judges love it and said it is delicious. George says she could win this competition.
John is next. He has cooked pork sinigang. Gary loves it. Hayden says it’s nicely balanced but is missing a hit of chilli.
Ashleigh is next. She made a pork cutlet with apple puree. Hayden says it was nice, but underwhelming. Gary is not super impressed either.
Next up is Jacqui. She has made kaiserfleisch with pan fried gnocchi. George says there is too much going on with the dish.
Rose is next. She is has made pork kibbeh. Hayden likes the flavours although the pork is dry. George says there should be a texture difference between the outside and inside. He says there should not be cracks in the outside either.
Anna is called up next. She has made roast pork with crispy kale. Matt says it’s an elegant looking dish. The crackling sounds great and Matt says it is delicious. Hayden loves it.
Kristina is next and she has cooked roast pork with spring onion pancakes. George says the pork is quite leathery. He says there is a lot of pork that isn’t cooked. Hayden says he loves the pancakes and the fried anchovies but was looking for the crackling in the pork.
Ava is called up next. She has made sticky ribs with coleslaw. Hayden loves the coleslaw, spicy cashews and sticky ribs. Matt says it’s comfort food and she should be proud.
The top three dishes tonight belong to Georgia, Anna and Ava and they will be cooking for an immunity pin.
Ashleigh, Kristina and Rose are going to elimination tomorrow night.