In the MasterChef final, Nat and Pisa compete to create 113 desserts. Who prepares the dishes and who carries the big shiny plate?
So here we are. After months of blood, sweat, tears and umami, Head chef The festival is approaching, a programme that we can say without exaggeration is the most important annual cultural event in the world.
Who will win? Will it be Josh, the simple country boy who challenged
Was this what angered thousands of angry tweeters with his insistence on cooking the food people love? Or will Nat win? Only time will tell.
As always, we begin with an emotional opening sequence that gives new meaning to the word “stuffing.” Josh and Nat’s families enter the kitchen, having been held hostage by the producers for the past three months. Finally, four hours after the last episode, and therefore only 18 hours before the end of the episode, we get to the subject of food.
Fennel, lemongrass, black peppercorns, mint, and baby shallots. A good name for a progressive rock band? Sure. But it’s also the five ingredients that have been placed in front of Josh and Nat, who must take turns eliminating them one by one to reach the one ingredient they must use in their dish for the first round of the final. After a not-so-brief but very useless elimination process, it is decided that pepper is what they must each infuse their dish with. The first round will be worth 40 points.
Josh immediately leans into his strength: meat. Nat leans into her strength: impressing the judges. “I want to make a classic pub meal, but I want to make it Thai,” she declares. She then tells Andy she’s making a Scotch egg, which is pretty confusing unless I’ve been mistaking the words “classic,” “pub,” and “Thai” for all these years.
“Do you want to know why I’m worried?” Andy asks. Nat doesn’t want to know what’s wrong with him, but out of politeness she lets him tell her. He’s clearly worried because it’s his job. He says that Scotch eggs are tough, and makes sure Nat doubts herself, before moving on to tell Josh that his plan to make Brussels sprout puree is a terrible farce.
Josh gives a heartfelt speech about how much he wants this win. “I’m tired of coming in second,” he says, a remark that’s largely insensitive given that his wife is right there in the room. Meanwhile, Nat is concerned that her dish has so many flavors that it might be hard to make out the peppercorns. Fortunately, the spectators on the balcony shout “You can do this,” which helps a lot.
“It’s time to put all my love into this pepper sauce,” Josh says, somewhat disgustedly. On the other bench, Nat’s culinary instincts kick in, a bit like Spidey’s sense for runny eggs. She runs to the garden to pick flowers so her plate contains that inedible staple. Both finalists are happy with their work as the first round—perhaps one of the most important of the day—draws to a close.
Nat’s Sai Oa Scotch Egg is delicious, gooey and the ultimate proof of God’s existence. Josh’s rib eye steak with chili sauce is great but his Brussels sprout puree is unfortunately made with Brussels sprouts, which costs him a fortune.
In the first round, Nat got 36 points out of 40. Josh got 33 points out of 40, and felt deeply ashamed of the shame he had brought upon his family. He said to his family on the porch, “I’m sorry.” They thought hard about whether they were willing to accept his apology.
It’s time for round two, the final round of Golden Snitch. It’s a stress test, where Nat and Josh have to make a homemade dessert. Claire Smyth, British Michelin-starred chef. The dish is a “Core-teser” of Smith Encore Restaurant. He. She
It’s basically a giant malteser with a puffy cloud of sugar on top and served with the Game of Thrones theme song playing.
The chefs take a deep breath as they contemplate the ridiculously complicated task ahead of them. Josh looks at his family, who look at him silently, vowing to change their name if he loses. The finalists only have four hours until Nat is declared the winner, so time is running out.
Nat is nervous that desserts aren’t her strong suit, while Josh, as a butcher, is a connoisseur. “I’m going to do what I know best, which is make a menu,” she says, which could be a mistake, as menus often lack intensity of flavour. Meanwhile, Josh declares that he loves reading recipes, explaining that he loves reading recipes, adding: “I think he loves reading recipes, but I don’t.” Head chef It really has a disturbing effect on the brain.
While Josh is busy making dessert, Nat sticks to her plan of reading the recipe and waving her arms. She makes the rookie mistake of starting the dish, forgetting to add the whipped cream and having to start over. “I feel like a lot of things aren’t going the way I want them to right now,” she says, meaning “a few hours ago, while Head chef “The final I won and which I now describe in the past.”
Meanwhile, Josh’s English Hazelnut Recipe is great, if you’re into that sort of thing. “Your daddy’s turned into Willy Wonka,” he says to his kids on the porch, wearing a top hat and tormenting them.
The finalists continue to perform bizarre and bewildering stunts with chocolate, aided by the observers on the balcony, who shout helpful hints like “Let’s go” and “Yes!”, and the judges, who periodically stop at their seats to waste their time. Halfway through the challenge, Josh seems much more relaxed than the restless and agitated Nat: the contrast could not be more stark if this were a TV show deliberately created to generate maximum suspense through judicious editing.
Nat’s chocolate is crumbling in a cruel metaphor. “Watching this makes me feel so anxious,” says one of the men on the porch who may or may not have been a contestant this year. Nat has no idea how to save her chocolate. She briefly considers infusing it with the bright, vibrant flavors of Southeast Asia, but she doesn’t have the courage. With no other option, she resorts to her last resort: a monologue about how she’s never felt like she belongs anywhere until now.
Fortunately, this was the next step in the recipe, and it works perfectly. Meanwhile, Josh is feeling much better, so he’s in trouble.
Nat and Josh are working on the Molten Sugar Puff, but they do it differently from each other. Josh’s puff is thin, Nat’s puff is thick. That’s bad news for someone. On the balcony, the audience is confused, and their feet are hurting. Who gets this element right will decide who gets the Molten Sugar Puff, which the judges quickly decide is the most important thing in the world, after making sure that… yes, Josh messed it up.
Nat’s ball is a big, puffy mess, and Josh’s is a brown mess. “It turned pear-shaped pretty quickly,” Josh says, but he’s wrong: a pear would be much better. He tries it again, and the result is the same.
The show becomes extremely depressing when Josh once again thinks about the fact that he always comes in second, and that life has given him a knee in the pubis again. Tears stream down the eyes of all the observers, and their hearts soften only when they notice that Andy is wearing a Colonel Sanders tie.
The horrific death march of this finale approaches, as time runs out and the dark farce of tasting must now be performed. Josh’s family gathers around him to weep and tear their clothes. Nat’s family gathers around to open the champagne.
Josh serves dessert, but without the puffy part. He admits that he feels like he let his family down. “There are a lot of ways a man can let his family down,” Andy says, promising to give him a list to tick off after the show. Josh’s dish is perfect, but it’s missing a key ingredient, and it’s unfortunate that the judges flipped a coin earlier to decide that this would be one of those episodes where leaving things out matters, not one where they don’t care what you leave out.
Nat makes a dessert that has it all, but it’s all awful. Everyone sighs in relief when they realize it doesn’t matter. Nat admits that she had a lot of trouble in the last challenge, and the only thing that kept her going was knowing she was the winner. The judges find large chunks of undissolved gelatin in the mousse and the whole thing is unpleasant to eat, and if this were some kind of cooking competition, that would be a real problem.
The judges have a tough decision to make, but having decided the winner in April, it seems a bit unfair that they should change their mind now, so the winner is…
Nat? What a surprise. That came out of nowhere. Proves that this show can still surprise you, doesn’t it? The judges decided that Nat’s inability to make a good dessert and Josh’s inability to make a perfect dessert were equal, and since Nat was already in the lead, she won.
Everyone cheers and Nat collapses with joy. Or at least he pretends to, as they film two endings and what we see on TV is actually everyone faking their reactions because they don’t know which one is the real one. What a great production decision: There’s nothing more satisfying than watching reality TV contestants pretend to be happy.
So Nat is the winner and gets a trophy, a title, $250,000 and a temporary job at the Alumni Restaurant – although it’s fair to say that everyone who has ever been on this show Head chef He eventually gets a job at Alumni.
And so ends one of the greatest seasons. Head chef Always, season was
It’s a thrilling film in its unpredictability, unless you see it. We learn a lot about food, about the human heart, about ourselves. But perhaps more than anything else, we learn that Curtis Stone recommends Coles pork. See you next year.
