It was another three round elimination challenge that saw Emily depart the Masterchef Kitchen.
In round one, contestants had 10 ingredients and 30 minutes on the clock to present their best dish, with the top four safe from elimination.Emily was excited by the challenge, choosing to cook her husband’s favourite dish, sweet and sour chicken.
She cooked with confidence, but knew her greatest weakness would be presentation and plating up. The judges agreed, commenting that Emily should have been more restrained with her sauce to allow the rice flour crispy coating of the chicken to shine through.
With six cooks now desperate to be safe, the stakes were high: three would be saved and three would go into the third and final elimination round.
Emily fried blue swimmer crab and paired it with smoked truffle honey and apricot jam, paying homage to a dish her mother made. Matt warned her to be careful of the big flavours. Emily knew it was a risk, but said that “if you don’t try you’ll never know”, hoping to make her parents proud. During the tasting, the judges agreedthat while the crab was well cooked, the flavours just didn’t go together.
Emily went into the final third round cook off. Competing against Sean and Steven, the contestants had just 10 minutes and three ingredients to get a dish on the plate.
Emily placed her faith in an old favourite, banana fritters, but was forced to compromise when she realised there were no eggs. With the clock ticking down, she substituted eggs with sweetened condensed milk and panko breadcrumbs.
The resulting dish was too starchy. Unfortunately for Emily, the judges were unanimous that it was her time to leave the competition.
Since she left the MasterChef Australia kitchen, Emily has begun an apprenticeship at Black Bird Bar & Grill in Brisbane. She is also running weekly traditional Asian cuisine cooking classes at Vanilla Zulu cooking school
Masterchef airs 7:30 Sunday-Thursday on Ten.
