Saucy dishes and seriously bad puns are the order of the day in the team immunity challenge

After last night’s Miracle of Lourdes, when four judges managed to achieve the apparently impossible by deciding that the person who couldn’t even get multiple elements of a dish on the plate was NOT the one who should be eliminated, we move happily into tonight’s culinary adventure, with not a trace of bitterness or outrage because obviously that was a totally fair result that shouldn’t make anyone incandescently angry at the injustice of it all.

Anyway. As I was saying.

It’s a team challenge tonight, so the amateurs will have to put aside their seething hatred for each other yet again. In the quest for immunity, they will be engaging in the infamous Team Relay, as a crucial part of MasterChef’s mission statement to test contestants’ ability to perform tasks that have absolutely no relevance to the real world.

As the first cook in each team steps up, a weird little guy walks in with a crate of heirloom tomatoes, which are like ordinary tomatoes except they were originally owned by your great-grandmother. The teams must use these tomatoes in their dishes, which is a massive challenge: how on earth are you supposed to come up with a dish featuring such a rare and obscure ingredient?

The lead-off cooks begin. Darrsh is cooking lamb in a pressure cooker. Andy points out that his teammates will be unable to see inside the pressure cooker. This will be a huge problem unless Darrsh possesses the power of speech. Meanwhile, Harry puts his tomatoes in a saucepan of water and pokes them with a knife, demanding they tell him what they know.

Australian Josh is thinking of salsa. “You know, gourmet it up a bit,” he says, raising serious questions about whether he knows what “gourmet” means. Juan, though, is thinking of a salad, but is worried that it might be a bit simple, and in a challenge in which success depends on effectively communicating the nature of your dish to a teammate in 30 seconds, the last thing you want is simplicity.

The first stage of the relay is almost over, and we’re about to find out which cooks are deliberately trying to sabotage their teammates. Harry forgets to tell David that the dish has to include heirloom tomatoes. This could be a problem, but only if they want to win. In contrast, Australian Josh did a great job of convincing Snezana that tomatoes were central, to the extent that she has developed a frightening tomato monomania. Tomatoes swim before her
eyes and the world itself becomes a huge tomato spinning in space as Snezana drifts into an heirloom otherworld.

Juan has made things very simple for Sue, and god knows he needed to. “We can make it look like one person made the dish,” she says, but this is unlikely, as it’s being filmed and there will be documentary evidence that this did not happen. Meanwhile, Darrsh has failed to inform Steve of the flavour profile, leaving Steve to flounder desperately in a vortex of howling ignorance.

The third shift comes on. Lachlan tastes Steve’s sauce and finds it disgraceful – no flavour profile, you see. Steve told him it was Italian style, but Lachlan has reached for the chillis.

Watching from the backroom, Steve is outraged – he went to all the trouble of making an Italian sauce and here Lachie is treasonously pulling a South American screwjob.

“Harry’s made a very smart decision,” says Sav, though this seems unlikely. She’s glad that Harry put trust in his teammates to make their own decisions, which is a positive spin on his failure to impart any useful information. Sav wants to pack as much flavour as possible into her sauce. Ever notice how MasterChef contestants are constantly saying this? “I want to pack as much flavour as possible into this,” they say, as if that’s a bold and revolutionary tactic.
Like other contestants are at their benches trying to keep their dishes as flavour-free as possible.

Next are Darrsh, Steve, Lachlan and Mimi, who have called their dish “red team had a little lamb”. Hey guys, how about you just cook the damn food and leave the jokes to professional recappers?

Anyway, Gill, having taken over from Sue, who took over from Juan, is defying Juan’s decision to make a Caprese salad by pronouncing “caprese” funny. She’s also making it hot rather than cold, and thus Katy Perry’s prophecy comes true. Andy suggests that her dish is very simple, to which Gill retorts that she’s boiling water, so that’s him told.

Snez told American Josh in the handover that he needed to cook fish. Accordingly, American Josh begins to cook fish. Andy and Jean-Christophe visit to tell him that there is 35 minutes to go, so why the hell is he cooking fish? American Josh stops cooking fish. Snez gasps and asks why the hell is he not cooking fish? American Josh puts the fish in the oven, which is another way of cooking fish. The crowd erupts at the action rollercoaster unfolding before
them.

The final changeover arrives. Sav tells Sumeet that they’re making fish curry. Sumeet explodes with joy. Gill suggests Nat put the pasta in boiling water, blowing Nat’s mind. Lachlan tells Mimi he’s put chilli in the sauce, which Mimi finds depressingly predictable. Alex asks American Josh what she needs to do, but he finds it difficult to tell her because Alex keeps saying “what do I need to do?” over the top of him telling her what she needs to do.

“I’m feeling a bit fish out of water at the moment,” Alex says with a chuckle that suggests she thinks she’s making a joke. After last night’s “truffle kerfuffle” incident, it’s becoming entirely possible the police may have to be called on Alex at some point. Meanwhile, Sumeet is backing her instinct, which seems like a singularly bad idea.

Via the magic of television, the 20 minutes of the last leg are over quicker than you can say, “what is the point of all this?” The teams get together to weep over their dishes and the shared experience they have all gone through, something that will bond them for the rest of their lives. In a very real way, this has been their Vietnam. All that is left is the tasting, which as tradition dictates will take far too long.

First to serve are Harry, David, Sav and Sumeet. “During the cook my brain turned into a tomato,” reveals Harry, a bombshell that puts all we have seen into a new context. Their dish is a seafood curry. It tastes like a seafood curry. “Harry, I loved your leadership,” says Andy to the man who failed to tell his team about the one ingredient that had to be in the dish. “I can taste every one of you in this,” Andy continues, disgustingly.

Next are Juan, Sue, Gill and Nat, whose dish is called “heirloom-inous pasta”, a pun which hopefully will see them disqualified. “I’ve got to take my hat off to you,” says Andy, who is not wearing a hat and can no longer keep track of his own lies.

Next are Darrsh, Steve, Lachlan and Mimi, who have called their dish “red team had a little lamb”. Hey guys, how about you just cook the damn food and leave the jokes to professional recappers? “Let’s see if the tomatoes sing,” says Poh, which feels like shifting the goalposts – nobody ever mentioned that they had to sing. The tomatoes do not sing, and the lamb lacks punch.

Finally, here are Alex, Snezana and the two Joshes, who have cooked red emperor and potato rosti and tomato sauce etc etc. It tastes so good that Andy is hallucinating that he’s drinking riesling. Jean-Christophe thinks the tomato sauce is wonderful, recklessly enabling Snezana’s mania.

When it comes to judging, the winners are Alex, Snez and the Joshes, thanks to their superior ability to showcase the tomatoes. They have narrowly edged out Harry’s team, who might’ve showcased the tomatoes if Harry had let them know they were supposed to. Still, great leadership.

Tune in on Sunday, when another elimination will make you scream at the TV.