Italian week continues on MasterChef Australia tonight and on the menu tonight; pizzas! Makes sense…
Nicky’s elimination last night has given contestants fight for today’s challenge. They arrive at the kitchen which has been transformed into a pizzeria. It’s their first restaurant service! They will have to serve both in-house customers and home delivery! It’s time to pick the teams.
Pip, Faiza, Neha, Rishi (leader), Noelene, Jules, Emma and Christina form one team. Vern, Daniel, Lucy, Liliana (leader), Kelty, Totem, Samira and Layton form the other. They are the green and red team respectively. They have to perform well, make good pizza choices and make them taste great. Customer and judge opinion counts. They must create four pizzas and have two hours to do so. They have 90 minutes of service time. The losers go into elimination tomorrow. Simple!
The pantry run begins the challenge before ideas begin getting thrown about. The green team plan a mixed mushroom pizza, a prawn pizza, a meat pizza and a Bocconcini. The team decides to scrap the mushroom idea shortly after its creation for a ‘white’ pizza with potato and all that. The red team meanwhile come up with a margherita pizza, a spicy Italian pizza, a caramelised onion and fig with blue cheese pizza and a Middle Eastern Pizza.
Jules is nervous that the potato pizza will be too time consuming. It’s Rishi’s call who seems on top of things. On the red team, they have problems with the slicer which is not cutting their meat properly. Totem has to throw some uneven meat in the bin, but George isn’t happy at the waste. At the benches, Kelty is annoyed that Vern is taking over the grills. At least they know how to prepare dough. The green team just whip it up and throw it on the floor near the rubbish! Later on, they find out the dough is a bit dry.
Contestants begin to cook their pizzas as customers begin shuffling in. Rishi is under the pump. The pressure seems to be rattling him and his directions aren’t clear. When service begins, the biggest problem seems to be contestants being able to yell the orders loud enough to be heard. The green team also seem to get their orders confused as Faiza can’t get her head around all of them. They also get a bit of criticism from the crowd for doughy pizza. Waiting customers are yet again another issue, mainly with the red team.
After quite a hectic first half of service, Jules does her best to act as pseudo-captain to get the sinking green ship back on course. On the red team, team leader Liliana is able to do that job herself. Meanwhile, the home-deliveries begin. Some of the pizzas look awful, but one happy customer digs in at the door! Pip hits a…pip when she leaves someone’s pizza back at the kitchen! Oh, dear! Seems like she can’t even go back and get the missing pizza- she has other orders to tend to! Back at the kitchen, the red team are now scabbing customers waiting on green team pizza. Jules puts this down to the red team having more time to make extra pizzas due to a lack of orders.
It’s time for the judges to look at the pizzas. They seem to like the majority of the red team’s pizzas. They especially like the caramelised onion and fig pizza. Samira’s Middle Eastern Pizza is branded ‘smashing’. The spicy Italian pizza is a crowd-pleaser. To the green team’s pizzas now. The look of them is great however the judges think the dough looks biscuity. They’re not sure about the taste of the margherita pizza. Their white ‘Bianca’ pizza is a hit despite the initial controversy. The other two pizzas are a hit as well.
After a little longer, service is over and it’s time for the results. Both teams are praised for a great effort. After going through the main problems tonight, the judges get down to business. The winning team is…the red team. The green team will all head to tomorrow’s elimination.
