MasterChef SA: Season 3
 

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Press Release Episode 3

With only 24 contestants surviving the first day of Boot Camp in Cape Town harbour, the stakes were high on MasterChef South Africa on Thursday night (28 August) as they faced the final battle for a place in the MasterChef kitchen in Paarl.
 
And what a battle it was, as judges Pete Goffe-Wood, Benny Masekwameng and Reuben Riffel tested the home cooks’ inventiveness with an unlimited open pantry of some of South Africa’s finest quality produce and products.
 
“You dream it, you can cook it,” Pete told them, pointing to the mounds of fresh ingredients. “If you cannot manufacture something fantastic out of this pantry then you don’t deserve to be here.”
 
“We have to cook the dish of a lifetime because today they want their socks to be blown off,” Adele, a 35-year-old property manager from Johannesburg realised.
 
Refilwe (36), a service consultant from Carltonville, considers herself more of a baker than a cook so she decided to make an egg snow with custard, and 29-year-old Johannesburg management consultant Joven also decided to stick with the familiar.

“I wanted to do something that I’m fairly familiar with so I was thinking chicken,” he said. “In sixty minutes you can prep it easily and you can get it going.” Meanwhile Durban waiter Simphiwe (24) decided to show off a bit with rib-eye steak and polenta.
 
But as always in MasterChef SA there was a sting in the tale: as the judges quietly conferred in the corner of the kitchen about the contestants’ choices, Reuben mischievously wondered if any of them even noticed that there were no tomatoes in the pantry ...
 
Meanwhile 25-year-old Melissa-Lee Sutherland, a lodge manager from Vaalwater in Limpopo province, shared her food dream as she got going on her dish of potato gratin and pan-fried duck. “My food dream is that I want to start a non-profit organisation that feeds underprivileged kids in schools,” she explained.
 
Viewers also got to know Abigail (38), the dental technologist from Cape Town, a little better. Abi explained that her dream is to bring fine dining into the townships. “I know it may sounds like some pie-in-the-sky,” she admitted, “but I think if I can see if I can see that coming true, I’d be over the moon.”
 
And then, just as Reuben declared the pantry officially closed, Chef Pete dropped the other shoe as Benny came into the kitchen on a forklift with a huge covered box, containing an ingredient that Pete explained they would have to incorporate into their half-finished dishes somehow.
 
“The tomato! In all its shapes and forms!” Benny announced dramatically.
 
Reuben explained that this last-minute new ingredient didn’t necessarily have to be the hero of the dish, but it had to integrate harmoniously with all the flavours that the contestants had already created, which didn’t help 26-year-old Pretoria teacher Jillianne one bit. “I’m making a dessert,” she sighed. “So I thought, tomatoes?”
 
With ten minutes to go Ndumiso (28), a mobile bar owner from Durban, was in trouble, with a thick cut of meat that he still had to get cooked all the way through. “I’ve got this piece of meat, my sauce is too thick ... My nerves are shot!” he panicked.

But when it came to the tasting he got good reviews for his open ostrich sandwich with a fig, watercress and strawberry salad. ”If I was coming to your house to come and watch the game, this would make me very happy,” Reuben grinned.
 
The judges also approved of Abigail’s chicken roulade with a mousse and sundried tomato filling, and the marrow and mascarpone raviolo with brown butter and roasted tomatoes that caused 48-year-old Johannesburg life coach Philippa so much grief. “I’ll say one thing for you, Philippa – you stress a good dish!” Pete teased.
 
But Joven’s so-called deconstructed chicken salad was a disappointment. “Joven, to me that looks like a chicken salad. And this is MasterChef ...” Reuben scolded.
 
But still the final battle for a place in the MasterChef South Africa kitchen was not yet over. Before the judges announced the Top 12, Mel and Jillianne still had to battle it out for the final place by baking six perfect scones, with no recipe!

After wowing the judges on day one with her angelfish and squid ink pasta, Jillianne’s cheesecake in tonight’s episode was totally underdone and quite literally flopped all over her plate. Mel’s duck breast was perfectly cooked, but her complete dish didn’t have the judges totally convinced.

And so it was down to a simple scone bake-off to determine the recipient of the final MasterChef SA apron.
 
“I had a smile on my face because that very morning I had looked at a scone recipe!” Jillianne announced happily, but in the end it was Mel who took the final place in the Top 12 with her consistent and perfectly textured batch of scones.
 
The MasterChef South Africa season 3 Top 12 are:            

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Shows in this post: MasterChef South Africa

Channels in this post: M-Net

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