It’s Knockout Week on MasterChef Australia, and now that we’ve reached the Top 10, the challenges are getting juicier, and the judges are certainly not holding back with their critiques.
Last night, Poh Ling Yeow stood out to fans after she served some honest feedback during the show’s ‘Pick Your Fridge’ challenge – most notably telling Hannah to “practise the basics” of French cuisine. Not what you want to hear in the Top 10 stage!
With four fridges – one for each judge – filled with ingredients unknown to contestants, the home cooks were tasked with selecting a fridge and cooking whatever dish they liked in 75 minutes, using only the ingredients inside and whatever pantry ingredients were stored at their station.
What’s more, there was a $5,000 gift voucher from LG on the line for the night’s top dish.
While Petro appeared to be landing in the bottom two dishes throughout the episode, particularly after Poh expressed some serious doubts about his “Gr-asian” pandan and coconut filo cigars, he ended up landing the top dish of the night, and thousands of dollars richer to deck out his kitchen.
Speaking to WHO, Petro revealed what was going through his head during the challenge, and what it’s really like receiving feedback from judges when the pressure is on.
‘I love risk’
When Petro first described his dish to Poh, her face immediately expressed doubts, and she didn’t hold back when she told him that “there might be a reason why [he] hasn’t seen any Greek-Asian desserts.” However, this didn’t faze the chef, as he revealed to WHO that he continued to “trust [his] gut” and swapped out the strawberry flavours he initially intended with coconut.
“To be honest I wasn’t too concerned,” Petro said, after receiving a word of warning from Poh. “I love risk, I took her advice on board and just trusted my gut. Trusting your gut is the
most important thing you can do in this competition I believe.”
He did admit that “there were so many hard parts to this challenge” that made his cook stressful right up until the end.
“There were so many hard parts to this challenge,” he said. “Using a set of ingredients out of my comfort zone, making filo properly in 75 minutes and pulling off a conceptual dish that the judges had doubt on. Definitely has to keep working as fast as I could and eliminate any doubts I had. I really was pushing until the last second!”
However, if he learnt anything from this win, it’s that “uncertainty” is something to be leant into, rather than avoided.
“I learnt that I can lean into uncertainty and out of my comfort zone, and with the right belief and approach pull off something I never expected I would be able to in this competition,” Petro said.
Big reason risk-taking is not for everyone
While risk worked in Petro’s favour, fans believe the strategy certainly isn’t for everyone – most notably, Luke.
After developing a pattern for trying dishes he’s never tried before (remember the tortillas from this season’s first service challenge?), fans aren’t sure how much longer Luke can scrape through. Initially tapped as a potential winner, his performance of late has caused some doubts for fans.
“Poor Luke, though,” one fan wrote. “He tries to do something different and challenging, though execution falls through.”
“Surely at this point you have to knock off points for a massive lack of pattern recognition though,” another viewer rebutted.
“He’s too green,” another fan suggested. “But he seems capable; he just needs to go to culinary school and proper training. I think he’s very good if there’s a recipe or specific brief that he has to follow that reins him in, haha.”
While viewers can never really understand the pressure and atmosphere of the MasterChef Australia kitchen from an edit (and yet we sure love to judge!), choosing to make Portuguese tarts in an air fryer despite never making them before feels like a risk that was set up to fail from the start.
As Petro has been tapped as this season’s “dark horse” after his performance last night, time will only tell if these types of risks will work for everyone.
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