MasterChef Recap: Seafood Boy Band

For someone who spends an inordinate amount of time watching cooking shows, I don't exactly have the most sophisticated palate. I don't know what truffle oil tastes like, I've never had a souffle, and I actually hate duck. So, while I enjoy pretending like I know something about the dishes contestants on MasterChef and Hell's Kitchen are cooking, I'm mostly making it up and being judgey for no reason, which is why I live on the Internet.

But tonight I found my calling. Back-to-back challenges with seafood and donut themes, respectively? Frankly, I'm mad I wasn't brought on as a non-celebrity guest judge. CHRISTIAN, YOUR BBQ SHRIMP GRITS NEED TO BE IN MY BELLY RIGHT NOW.

Anyway.

Technically speaking, we should have entered this episode with 19 contestants remaining, but at some point between last week's challenges and this week's, Little Gordon fell ill with some sort of mystery sickness and had to drop out and now we're down to 18. I thought they might eliminate two people this week to ensure an even number for next week's team challenge, but they didn't and I just picture last season's wedding episode, when team captain Natasha had Krissi sit out and Krissi had a meltdown. (Fun Fact! If you Google "MasterChef annoying contestant," Krissi pops up first...and second. And so she shall live on in infamy.)

After several warnings about how whatever was underneath the Mystery Box being alive and dangerous (and a lot of terrible guesses about what might be under there, like snakes and a snapping turtle), the contestants reveal a bag full of live shellfish. At first I scoffed at Kira's jumpiness about the moving food, but that was before I realized how active live prawns are. But even more jumpy is Ahran, who has been waiting these past few episodes to finally get her chance to shine.

And shine she does. This is really our first sighting of Ahran, an 18-year-old high school student from California. The important part of that description is "high school," as Ahran brings with her all the fun drama and angsty bitterness we all miss from our high school days. She harbors an unhealthy obsession with Courtney, who seems to remind her of some queen bee she crossed paths with at the pep rally. Not only that, but she thinks the judges are unfairly favoring Courtney and stupidly tells Joe so. And then HE said, "Are you kidding me?" And she was all, "You know it's true!" And I was like, "OMG, can I have that last five minutes back?!"

While all this fun was going on, there was also a Mystery Box challenge being conducted. The top three wound up being Francis B (fast becoming a threat after several strong showings), Ahran (she and Francis both presented similar spicy seafood stew-style dishes) and Christian (whose BBQ shrimp and cheese grits were a nod to his New Orleans roots and LOOKED AMAZING). All three won praise from the judges, but Ahran's was the only one Graham singled out as a "seafood boy band," I'm assuming for its sweet harmony and nonthreatening, slightly androgynous good looks. So Ahran clearly won.

To her credit, Ahran refrained from celebrating with a hearty, "IN YOUR FACE, REGINA GEORGE!" Instead, she retreated to the back room, where the judges told her she did not have to compete in the next challenge and that she would be choosing what everyone else would have to cook: muffins, cookies or donuts. She chose donuts, clearly the most difficult item and the one most likely to have at least a few contestants who had never made them before. The group was tasked with making a dozen, and making them uniform enough to fit in a box.

Right away, there were struggles. Regina Courtney messed up her first round of dough and didn't have enough yeast for a second batch. Thankfully for her, Scottish Francis took the entire pantry with him and was kind enough to share. She rewarded him with a kiss; he rewarded her with a playful "Don't kiss Scottish Francis!" That and the fact that he decided to make 12 different types of bizarrely flavored donuts, knowing the judges would only taste three total, makes me hope that Scottish Francis will be around for awhile.

Courtney wasn't the only person with problems. Kira added shortening at the wrong time. Francis B. strangely opted for donut holes that looked terrible and would never fill the box provided. And Leslie...well, nevermind, Leslie's in his happy place, so let's just leave him alone.

The clock stops and everyone's done. BUT WAIT. Ahran gets another present for her Mystery Box win. She gets to look at everyone's donuts and elect to save someone. Most adults would opt to save someone that is weak, like Kira or Cutter, in hopes that a stronger person will go home in their wake. But in the 45 minutes that we've actually gotten to know Ahran, it's pretty evident that maturity is not her strong suit and she saves her friend (and dreamboat...and threat to win the whole show) Francis B., despite the fact that his horrible donut holes would almost certainly have gotten him eliminated. She does so under the guise of "wanting to beat the best," which is just something reality show contestants say when they want to save someone they like even though they know it's a terrible idea. (I'm looking at you, Woo!)

Leslie, Victoria, Daniel and Scottish Francis all got good reviews for their donuts, the latter shocking all the judges with just how good they were considering he did 12 times the work everyone else did. In the end, Leslie and Scottish Francis took the win, with Leslie nabbing the slight edge.

The bottom three were Kira, whose donuts looked good, but had no filling and were a strange consistency; Cutter, who also somehow missed putting filling in; and Courtney, who might have mistaken salt for sugar and horrified everybody.

Based on this particular challenge only, I would think that Courtney would have been a shoe-in to be eliminated; she didn't take enough of a key ingredient and then mixed up two very basic ingredients to make something inedible. But the judges often take past performances into consideration (or are simply playing favoritism, according to Ahran) and so they got rid of Kira. Oh Kira, whose name I just learned today, we hardly knew ye.

Dish I'd Most Like to Try: Christian's BBQ shrimp and cheese grits, by far, with one of Leslie's zesty donuts for dessert.

Dish I Made Myself: I'd like to say that I knew a pastry would be one of the challenges tonight and that's why I had chocolate chip pie for dinner. That is a lie. I had chocolate chip pie for dinner because it was left over from Father's Day and it was delicious and I wanted to have it for dinner. I regret nothing.

MasterChef Recap: Killer Seaweed!

After a year's hiatus and a move to a new location, I'm finally back in the land of the recaps. Helping me out is Fox's decision to scatter the seasons of Hell's Kitchen and MasterChef so I could take on just one at a time instead of two. So, without any further ado, let's get on with the show.

Before anything really happened on MasterChef's premiere, two big things were evident: One, that Graham Elliot left half of his body on the most recent MasterChef cruise (order your tickets today!) and two, that we were skipping over the first round, where we got to see people trying out in a big, intimidating factory-floor-looking room. Frankly, I almost didn't want to go on. Half the fun was hearing these bizarre backstories and then watching Gordon choke down macaroni and cheese made with breastmilk. Remember Johnny B's lobster crackerjacks last season? You know somebody served meatloaf ice cream and we all missed it.

Instead, the top 30 arrived to the MasterChef kitchen, with dreams of $250,000, their very own cookbook, and, most importantly, an ugly trophy dancing in their heads. However, don't fret about missing people cry over Joe Bastianich handing them a nondescript apron - these folks still had to earn their aprons by serving their signature dish, and thankfully they were provided a cutting board mirror to remind themselves who that signature dish is supposed to represent (SPOILER ALERT! It's them). The judges also reserved the right to eliminate people in the middle of the cooking process if they didn't like what they saw. Indeed, they did toss out Gavin, notable for his bowtie and complicated-sounding dish, and Tanya (Latanya?), not at all notable for any reason (sorry, Tanya/Latanya!).

After the judges made the rounds, testing various dishes, they selected 17 people to move forward. Some of the selected:

• Courtney, whose five jobs couldn't support her through college and led her to work in a "gentleman's club." Her on-screen descriptor calls her an "aerial dancer," which is one of the most impressive euphemisms for "stripper" I've ever heard. Anyway, Courtney is a fan of her Italian heritage, made gnocchis, and celebrated with some choice four-letter words that made the FCC think it was editing Hell's Kitchen.
• Big Willie, a pleasant-looking guy who leaned on his Southern roots for his dish. His performance in the pantry was one of my favorites, as he frantically rushed from side to side, trying - and failing - to not knock people over with his girth. 
• Tyler, a hunting aficionado who overcame a subpar chimichurri sauce because the man knows how to cook a deer.
• Elizabeth, whose attempt to make a fancy version of PB&J made Gordon scoff but was apparently successful.
• A bunch of other people.

The remaining nine had one more chance to earn their aprons, but this time, things were a little more complicated. First, it was kind of a Mystery Box challenge but sponsored by an appliance company so it was a Mystery Refrigerator challenge. The "mystery" was that it was all food you could find right now in any person's fridge except mine because bacon doesn't last more than six hours in my house. Mostly, the challenge was for the contestants to come up with the most creative way to say that they're serving chicken and mashed potatoes. Second, they had to cook alongside Gordon, in a move that was supposed to either intimidate or inspire them.

After everyone gushed at how a world-class chef could produce a world-class dish in an hour with no pressure, five more contestants earned aprons. They were:

• Little Gordon, whose seared chicken breast and potato puree got decent reviews but whose retention on the show is really a thinly veiled excuse for the judges to refer to him and Gordon Ramsay as Little and Big Gordon.
• Leslie, a 56-year-old stay-at-home dad who dresses dapper and likes to trashtalk in a strange, polite sort of way, like if your nerdy uncle got a little too caffeinated before playing Scrabble. Uncle Leslie served enough chicken breast and mashed potatoes to feed his 75 children but it was good enough for Joe to overlook the terrible plating.
• Astrid, whose biggest claim to fame was that she kept throwing her food trash on the floor while she cooked. She was running around amid onion skins and peeled potatoes before Joe figured it out and yelled at her. Somehow she didn't get eliminated on the spot and she redeemed herself with seared chicken and potato hash. (Side note: I can't be the only person for whom the name Astrid only brings up The Office, right? And then you spend the rest of the night thinking her name is actually Astird? No? OK. End side note.)
• Francis. We learned a lot about Francis right off the bat: He has a hard-to-place accent (Scottish, maybe?). He favors full-bodied plaid suits. He looks a little like Mycroft Holmes. He's pals with Big Willie. He enjoys chemistry and cooking with chemicals and sciencey-equipment. That last part might have been his downfall in the first round, when the syringe he brought from home broke and he was forced to create something out of an eighth-grade science fair to compensate. He kept things complicated in the second round, making spinach pasta from scratch and then plating it in a way to make it seem like the shrimp are running away from seaweed (represented by the pasta). Needless to say, I'm a Francis fan. 
• Elise, who just wants to escape her cubicle farm in real life. Elise's expertise is clearly pastries and after not passing muster with mini blueberry pies in the first round, follows it up with chicken pot pie in the second. Seriously. Two pies. There is a 100% chance she has a "365 Pies" page-a-day calendar on her desk at work. The chicken pot pie might have been one of the least appetizing things I've ever seen, but either it tasted amazing or the judges were charmed by her desperation.

So there are our top 22, all aproned out. We lost eight along the way, but the producers did a fine editing job to ensure we didn't get too attached. Although I think we all enjoyed seeing the proud Idahoan improperly cook a potato. Next week, we get right into the Mystery Box challenges and team challenges and elimination challenges and all that fun stuff. So who do you like? Not like? It's pretty early and we haven't even met half the people yet, but I guess if I had to make an early pick to win, it would be Courtney, although I'm not loving my choices so far. 

Dish I'd Most Like to Try: Francis' shrimp-escaping-the-killer-seaweed-pasta. I'm in favor of any dish that involves murderous plantlife and an exhaustive backstory.

Fancy Dish I Made Myself Today: Cereal. With milk!