SkimIt
Rather than feeding hoards of people on location per se, it was nice to have the twist of the home cooks having to do it from the confines of a food truck. Also, we got to see teams of three rather than two, so it was a welcome change to have things switched up a bit.
Power moves
In Venice Beach, California, we see three food service trucks come rolling in ominously. Monti is excited as she says it's her dream to own one of these someday. I don't know why, but I like Monti Carlo. I also like Monte Carlo.
Anyway, since Stacey was the last challenge winner, she gets a lot of say in how this food truck competition is going to go down. First, Stacey is to pick the three home chefs she wants on her team, Gordon instructs. Stacey chooses Tali first, which sends a buzz around the others. Well, he is one of the worst chefs so far. Stacey says she knows what she's doing and picks Frank, followed by Becky to complete the rest of her team.
One truck, two truck, red truck, blue truck
Then, Chef Ramsay instructs Stacey to decide who will be on the other two teams. Stacey's teams are Monti, David, Anna and Tanya on one, and Felix, Christine, Mike and Josh on the other. The final say Stacey has in this challenge is to pick the color of each food truck that each team will have. She will have to go on the color alone as Gordon won't reveal the cuisine theme matched with each until after Stacey's choice. Stacey picks the red truck for her team and the blue one for Felix's group. Yellow goes to the remaining group.
Chef Ramsay says Red is Mexican food, Blue is Indian and Yellow is American.
Cashing in
After a lot of furious cooking in cramped spaces, the groups don't even have any time to fight. The food is almost ready to be sold off the trucks to the waiting beach crowds, but Gordon has to check for quality. The Indian chicken on the blue team and the tons of tacos on the red team all seem fine.
He finds a complete lack of quality on the yellow team though, since David is making seriously raw burgers. How in the hell can you screw up such a basic thing?
Even worse than that is David's attitude that it's not his fault since there is so much pressure on him to not keep the crowds waiting. Oh yeah, it's much better to make them severely sick rather than keep them waiting? Ridiculous! The three judges - yes, Graham and Joe are there too although they must just stand there and look pretty while Gordon does everything - count up the money each food truck team made. The yellow did the worst, while the red did the best and now $2K total will be donated to charity, so that's good.
Get stuffed
Gordon congratulates Stacey on winning and for her excellent game strategy. Joe tells an extremely worried yellow team that the individual Pressure Challenge is going to be making filled tortellini - from scratch, of course. Joe gves them a lesson, but this is still one tough task to press out the dough, add a properly prepared filling and seal the little pasta shapes before boiling them al dente.
Poor Anna noticed too late that her pasta pot flame was too low and with the clock ticking down, she's not going to have enough time to cook her tortellini properly. At the tasting, the judges are not impressed. Tanya cried a lot about her totellini and the judges hated it too. David's tortellini are actually called "beautiful" by Joe, so the raw hamburger chef is safe. Damn it. In the end, it's Anna who is eliminated.
Are you loving or hating MasterChef this season?
