Snacks unknown.
In Australia, the Prime Minister is too busy so the Tibetan spiritual leader is hosted by the most powerful judges in the land: Matt, Gary and George on Masterchef. Maybe he's hoping they'll get their friends at the UN to vote again on human rights abuses back home. He's seen those New York episodes.
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Reflective ... The Dalai Lama is served. Photo: Channel TenFade to the prelude, where the jetlagged seven find another of those enormous envelopes revealing the next thrilling destination: Paris? Rio? No, they're off to the SECOND MOST LIVEABLE CITY IN THE WORLD, but nobody seems excited. Dani doesn't even mention she's from Melbourne.
Kate ponders the fortune cookie message that came with their plane tickets: "I sometimes think that the act of bringing food is one of the basic roots of all relationships".
"Who could it be?" she wonders aloud. Oprah? Yoda? She gives the camera her can-I-go-now glare.
Next scene, we're at the Convention Centre.
"Convention centre," says Michael. "Those words scare me."
So they should. It's full of broken wretches still searching for the 2008 Sexpo franchise opportunities seminar in Room 101.
Our contestants are ushered to an aircraft hangar furnished with what appear to be the contents of the nearest Oxfam shop.
"Tomorrow, you will prepare a meal for a man who transcends celebrity" says Matt. This guest is followed by celebrities and world leaders. He has 600 million followers. Oh no, thinks Dani. We have to cook for Charlie Sheen?
Even though the Dalai Lama is only a sometimes vegetarian, it's the perfect opportunity to roll out this year's vegetarian challenge, and give the word "protein" a welcome holiday.
Junior Masterchef would reject as too easy the conditions set for the seven best amateur adult cooks in the country: they've got three hours to cook a vegetarian meal that serves eight small portions.
But here's the kicker, says Matt. "This is his main meal of the day. It must be ready to presented on the dot at 12 noon." Yeah, you think he's a sweet old man, but when his blood sugar drops, he gets really irritable.
George steps in to remind the contestants that they're not really Buddhists here on Masterchef, they're Darwinians. There will be a "winnah" (Austral. slang, "winner") and a bottom three fighting it out for survival in the primordial ooze... which they'll have to cook perfectly before they can climb out. A cacophony of Asian gongs means that Matt's fallen over the props... or that George is making a Serious Point.
Kylie Kwong appears to represent the @DalaiLama's millions of followers on Twitter. Sorry, to be a celebrity Buddhist. Leonard Cohen couldn't make it. She's going to share a few tips on cooking for the 14th leader of the Yellow Hat branch of Buddhism (thank you wikipedia), as she has prior form. "It was the greatest honour of my life," she says. Probably this life, but she didn't specify.
So, His Holiness (probably this one, not the Pope, but she didn't specify) hates sour food, as it turns that smile upside down. He loves bread, cheese, tofu, mushroom, coriander (Kylie mentions this twice) and has a sweet tooth.
Sadly, nobody takes this wonderful opportunity to demonstrate my favourite Buddhist joke and make him one with everything.
Matt tells them to let go of ego, which is difficult as Michael hasn't been eliminated yet, and cook from "here", which frightens everyone badly as he's pointing to his own gut.
The next day. Relief. The ingredients have not been pre-masticated by Australia's least incognito food critic. They're in the kitchen. Michael is making Borscht and tortellini, celebrating the contributions to peace and sobriety made by the Russians and the Italians.
Billy is cooking Buddha's Delight, which suggests the Buddha was easily pleased: it's stir-fry in tofu skin. Maybe it's too simple for the judges, says Billy. "The hard part is the rapping." You fool, that's Gangsta's Delight. But we'd love you to drop some Fiddy Cent on the Dalai Lama: "Papa said we bang bang boogie We get em oh goodie Keep the hoodie when your f***in wit me me me..."
Ellie predicts that her mushroom and cheese gnocchi will go horribly wrong, which isn't that uncanny when you consider her previous form.
Hayden is making a clear soup with fresh noodles, because that's apparently how the Tibetan spiritual leader wants his life to be. Clear. And he really, really wishes someone would photoshop him with a wig made of noodles on his head. That would be hil-air-ious.
Kylie demonstrates a method of smashing open a coconut that seems too brutal to be Buddhist, but Dani gets the hang of it when she imagines each coconut is the skull of one of her rivals.
The extremely funky coconut machine "doesn't seem to be want to be my friend," Kate says forlornly. Get Ellie to flirt with it.
He's behiiiiiind you. The guest of honour appears at the door. The contestants' awe and excitement makes the Dalai Lama laugh like a drain. I bet you act like this with all the special guests, he thinks, even the chefs nobody's ever heard of. He's a man of keen insight.
Although Dani notes how helpful the vibe is today, there's enough sabotage on screen to trigger a parliamentary inquiry. Kate "accidentally" lowers the heat on Alana's pumpkins and then grumbles that she must live with the guilt. Michael's walnuts are shrivelled.
Someone turns up the heat on Hayden's broth, which clouds the issue and makes it difficult for him to get a clarification. Nobody helps Ellie except Gary, and he doesn't actually cook her food for her. No wonder she looks confused. "I'm not 100%" Ellie says in what cannot be called a late-breaking newsflash.
"Stress levels are rising rapidly, " says Dani. "Cream and milk are over-boiling. Kate's running around like a headless chook." She realises it's time she, too, started running randomly around the kitchen as if it were Masterchef the Pinball Game. Which I would totally play. Kate starts ranting that she needs more arms and more
legs, but for that you'd need a Hindu deity in the kitchen, not a Buddhist monk.
Ellie pulls what appears to be a boiled toilet roll from her saucepan, and confesses she wants to run away, "seriously run away". The 109 light-rail outside the door would take Ellie straight to Station Pier,
but she tries crying instead. Kylie says maybe just serve the mushrooms. "Wait 'til you see his reaction, OK?" Then you cry. Better strategy.
Midday arrives and the master is hungry. A trio of throat singers unsettle the contestants more than the standard drums of doom. They should perform for the next elimination.
At a high table, resembling a group of elders debating battle protocols in distant galaxies, sits the Dalai Lama, the judges and some holy-ish people who are also happy for mass market Masterchef exposure. We must give thanks that neither the Masterchef nor the Qantas logo appear on anyone's robes.
Most of these people have some interest in feeding the poor, which is nice. Maybe they can take away all the prop food left in the larder.
The Dalai Lama is still giggling, maybe because Matt just introduced "seven beautiful contestants". For a minute, this jolly monk thought he was judging the Miss Universe pageant, and his favourite bit, the talent show, is about to begin. Such nice ladies, so keen on world peace.
Everyone gets polite thanks for cooking except Ellie. She gets her hand rubbed by the coolest religious leader in the world (sorry, Pope) by weeping about the disaster in the kitchen. The others want to start an Ellie disaster relief telethon, they're so moved. Dani also cries, but that's white-hot fury. Who spotted Ellie's almost secret smirk before the fireball?
Grace is said at the Masterchef table, eight times, which is kind of nice, even if Tim Costello has to bring everyone down by mentioning starving people.
Hayden, who is a chance on Miss Universe if he shaves more often, wins approval from Ronnie Kahn because his consomme has clarity, like the Tibetan spiritual leader. And noodles, because the Dalai Lama uses his noodle.
Tim Costello enthusiastically backs Alana's Middle East solution, a pumpkin tagine, but the guest of honour raises his eyebrows. Dani's Sri Lankan thali attracts the most disturbing metaphor, when The Reverend Bill Crews says her dish reminds him of humanity: all so different, yet "the taste of all of us is nice". Especially with a nice chianti.
Not Buddha's Delight again, the Dalai Lama doesn't say. But you can totally tell.
Michael's dish looks bloody but his beetroot pasta pleases everyone, especially George, who goes on about the sweet taste of Michael's walnuts.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the producers have turfed the series' long rule about finishing on the deadline while Alana and Dani help fry up Ellie's gloopy gnocchi. Dani: "I want to help her" ... but not too much. Plating up greasy, raw gnocchi will look noble but won't do any good. The Dalai Lama is used to that kind of token effort, though usually from world leaders.
The Dalai Lama is not impressed. Who booked me on this show? he wonders. He was hoping for Dancing with the Stars. He tells the judges that, as a monk, he's happy to get any kind of food. So, no big deal.
He tells the contestants, too, how much he cares: "A Buddhist monk has no right to prefer this food to that food. Whatever you get, you must accept." Unless it's Ellie's fried gloop. There are limits, even for hungry monks.
"He's just a man," says Hayden, "but symbolises so much more. Like the way this show's totally lost the plot. Couldn't be clearer if we had to waterski over a tank full of sharks."
The judges appear to do the crass judge-y work the Dalai Lama wouldn't do. He has, however, agreed that the winner gets 24 hours' bonus good karma.
It's Dani, in a triumph of brunette happy face over blonde tears. Michael is reminded that if he keeps coming second, he could be second in the grand final too. Then it's time to choose the worst three.
"Hayden and Alana, you're safe. You're boring but you're safe."
The losers are Kate, Billy and - tah dah - Ellie. She had to spend a sleepless night debating whether to use her freakishly acquired immunity pin, or to compete against two contestants who know how to cook all by themselves.
The suspense is terrible. No doubt it will last past the first three ad breaks.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/masterchef-recap-humanitys-a-dish-best-served--with-chianti-20110718-1hkl3.html#ixzz1ScrAytlN
1 comment:
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