Australia’s favourite television doctor, Matt Le Nevez (aka Dr. Patrick) has broken the hearts of the nation yet again, with his duck dish failing to keep him alive in the MasterChef kitchen for another day.
Tonight’s elimination challenge marked a new week in the MasterChef kitchen, and it was Rebecca and Nick who took out the win in the service challenge last Monday night, giving them both immunity from being eliminated.
As they walked into the kitchen, Tilly, Collette, Dilruk, Matt, Thorpey and Archie noticed six plinths at the front of the room, and the judges announced that the elimination challenge would take place over two rounds. Round one was a MasterChef classic, the taste test.
The judges rolled out a long table displaying sixty different ingredients, all re-sized down to one-inch cubes. The celebrities had to rely on their palate to identify the ingredients as they tasted them blindfolded.
The first three celebrities who failed to correctly identify their one-inch cubes were Matt, Tilly and Dilruk, and they were sent into round two. In round two they had 75 minutes to cook a dish using the same sixty ingredients that were in the taste test.
Tilly was up first for tasting and the duck was perfectly cooked, and the skin was nicely rendered. Melissa loved Tilly’s duck fat roasted potatoes, and while the judges joked about her unique plating choice to put a ring of potatoes around the duck, they really enjoyed it.
The judges loved the filling in Dilruk’s chicken paratha sandwiches and said his use of thigh instead of breast had definitely paid off. Andy said Dilruk’s mint chutney was the best sauce in the competition so far, but pointed out that all the hard work Dilruk had put in to perfecting his paratha was undone by compressing it in the jaffle maker.
Matt was nervous as he was presented a duck dish that was quite similar to Tilly’s. Jock said Matt’s duck breast with a duck sauce and Paris mash was 90% there, commending him on the flavour of all three elements. However, Matt’s Paris mash was a little grainy, and Andy added that the duck skin was slightly unrendered.
Tilly’s dish was the clear frontrunner, and she was deemed safe. It came down to Matt and Dilruk, and ultimately, Matt’s dish had more flaws and he was the third celebrity eliminated from Celebrity MasterChef Australia
