Masterchef Goes Large

Torode displaying his empathy for the working man there.

Why does Torode ALWAYS get his way on split decisions?

because the other guy is a grocer?

the big guy should have won tonight.

the big guy with the shaved head and beard was amazing, his smoked scallops dish was off the hook

really think they should get rid of the restaurant section and replace it with the 'following classic recipes' section from professional masterchef w/michel roux

jed with the truthbomb re:wallace as grocer... ow

lots of times if it's a toss-up, the cute girl will win too

torode is obv a perv

love the format, episodes are the same every time, including candidates' motivations, comments when rejected ("i'm more determined than ever etc."), the decision making & arguments of torode and wallace, expressions ("best blahblahblah i've had in a very very long time"). and they tend to go for promising over solid in the first rounds, which i don't mind at all.

i agree that the passion- and ingredient rounds have to go though.

and i like cozen's suggestion wrt following classic recipes a lot! also right about the amazingness of bald/beardy guy's two course meal.

oh, i didn't liek that guy. i thought sticky toffee pud woman should have won.

that episode really shd have been the final, they were all really good

last night's heat was amazingly good too. the contrast to the previous night was ridic. the woman who won monday's was probably a worse cook that me.

god yeah the monday one was awful!

we shd have a masterchef: final party : D

didn't see the monday episode but the guy with the potatoes+chickpeas+corn dish was classick.

in which british military training camp will the finalists be dropped this year?

czn yes!

potatoes chickpeas and bacon guy was apparantly "the worst contested we have ever had on masterchef" but i thought i could have eaten that dish if i really had to. the big woman the previous week who made the risotto and then decided to blend it into a soup? that looked literally inedible.

potatoes chickpeas and bacon guy was apparantly "the worst contested we have ever had on masterchef" but i thought i could have eaten that dish if i really had to.

I would've made that dish. Everything I ever cook is like a nightmarish invention round, where I haven't quite decided what I'm doing and adding more spices just so it tastes of something (I blame this on having to cook for a vegetarian having lived off meat'n'veg or meat-in-sauce for most of my life). The voiceover would call me an 'experimental chef' and they would worry that I'd put too many flavours in. But I've never considered blending risotto.

Whilst watching monday's episode of high hilarity (the guy who chopped his thumb off must be glad that other guy came along and did that other thing) I said to my girlfriend "they should send these to somewhere like Wagamama 'cos they're all useless". And then they did, and apparently it was really hard (I didn't see it last night).

Another of my disastrous cooking experiments involved tuna and sweetcorn, and a whole load of other stuff I kept adding to try and get it to taste nice, all cooked together in a wok that was filled almost to the brim. And it was a big wok as well, allegedly stolen from a Chinese restaurant. The end result was disgusting, looking like anaemic rhino diarrhoea. No-one would eat it.

wasn't the guy who look liked he murdered his food - "the worst contested we have ever had on masterchef" - a vegetarian who cooked bacon? that could explain a lot.

I think the only thing that was really hard about the Wagamama shift was the workload. Dishes looked very simple and were preprepared to a large extent imo.

risotto into soup (or rather, mush) woman was major lolz

xpost why then would he use the bacon in the first place?

What did he say? Not being able to taste the food is "a barrier I'll have to get over". Good luck with that one.

Risotto woman tried to pass it off as 'a rice soup'. I have never heard of a rice soup.

I was rooting for the Aussie girl with her batshit combinations in the really high quality quarter final, probably because I quite fancied her.

How do some of these people get on TV, they can't cook.

including candidates' motivations, comments when rejected ("i'm more determined than ever etc.")

i could really do without this bit, personally...

I think they chuck a few in for deliberate comedy value.

xpost

yeah, they should do a 10 minute iplayer version where they cut out all the bullshit about motivations and "it doesn't get tougher than this" etc.

I was rooting for the Aussie girl with her batshit combinations in the really high quality quarter final, probably because I quite fancied her.

You are a sick man.

a hoy hoy otm

alba otm : )

has a vegetarian chef (who cooked only vegetarian) ever showed up on masterchef? wasn't there a vegan gastromoleculist on america's next top chef?

I'm sorry, gents, but cooking doesn't get any tougher than this

omg that guy Jeremy was so hot.

xpost he says that every week!

i was glad Julian didn't win last night although i totally thought he would. another posh middle aged man who loves french classics. as soon as i saw him i thought he was gonig to win the series.

ugh I would've barfed

loved the grocer's performance when he was eating the winner's pud

is the word engorged?

and he started giggling and everything

http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/10092/1233914208/gregchomp.gif

I'm not enjoying the returnees as much as the newbies.

LOLLLOLLLOOOLLLL @ gif

i know, who the hell wants to watch 10 minutes of them not poaching eggs properly? poaching eggs is difficult anyway and it takes a while to learn to do it the catering way (making it more like a ball rather than flat like a fried egg that's been poached) not being able to do it doesn't make you a bad chef and it's boring to watch.

having said that, last night's cook off was really good.

in terms of last week i was really amazed that cypriot guy made it to quarter finals let alone the semis.

that gif is repulsive.

I couldn't begrudge cypriot guy being let through because he seemed like such a sweetheart.

That pigeon pasta thing looked amazing and made me hungry.

it was good to see that guy andy go through to the semi finals, he was definitely the most talented. the shine was kind of taken off it when it was revealed that two of the six semi finalists would be eliminated on monday though - does this not strike you as a huge waste of time? just like the elimination after the ingredients test where they could easily just have all four contestants in the cook off. getting rid of two contestants in one day basically just renders two of the preceeding six weeks a complete waste of time.

also, i have to say that in the first half of last night's show Michelle was given a pretty rough deal having to make eggs benedict and smoked salmon w/ scrambled eggs while the woman with the red hair was being praised for her omlettes. eggs benidict is pretty complicated and there are 4 distinct constituent elements which have to be co-ordinated (& a hollandaise is quite difficult to make) whereas an omlette is a one pan dish that's pretty easy to make well by most people's standards. add to that the fact that michelle was also in charge of the smoked salmon w/ scrambled eggs, i just couldn't see how those tasks were supposed to be evenly matched.

I thought the same thing.

I'm evolving a theory that all of the food that the contestants make actually tastes awful--for all that John+Gregg try to make themselves come off as 'tough' judges (cooking doesn't get any tougher than this!), the food is for the most part judged to be quite good. You'd think, with the difficulty of the challenges, there'd be a lot more absolute disasters, no?

A lot of the time the highest praise John seems to manage is "I would eat all of it" - the way I was brought up eating all of it was the only option. Also if everything tasted some sort of average but they were saying it was great, the awful guy with the ham+tomato sauce must've been actually inedible.

i do remember reading that by the time the judges get to taste the food, most of it is cold

Ain't they heard of microwaves?!

Haha, peach and potato cake! PEACH AND POTATO?

Yeah that was awes. I totally wanted Denisse (or however she spells it) to go through though instead of fat baldy ;_;

yeah i'd have chosen dennise over fat baldy or cypriot guy. 4 guys in the final is just much less interesting.

Last year's winner's last year.

I wonder how many of the guys they served lunch to 'today' still have their jobs.

kinda losing interest in this now the girls are gone.

Yeah me too; I'm excited about absolutely none of the remaining contestants. (I'll predict Andy to win.)