Masterchef – Erm. Marines eat a lot.

In the second hour of Masterchef last night, we find ourselves down to the final twelve remaining amateur cooks standing on the beach. Overhead are scary choppers. Military tanks roll up from all sides. And out pops my Gordon, Graham and J.B. Seems we’re at Camp Pendleton, where the troops go through over 700K pounds of meat and 200K pounds of veggies every month. That Marine-ing is hard work, after all. And those men and women need their fuel.

Gordon explains that the cooks will now be divided up into teams, and will prepare dinner for four hundred marines and family members that night. Since he won the last challenge, Mike is allowed to pick his team members. Wow. That was a key challenge to win. All of you fans of Hell’s Kitchen know what I mean. Your team can make or break you.

I think Mike had a strategy here, forming the Blue Team. He picked Tracy, Lee, Tony and Sheetal. All of them respectable cooks, but personalities he could easily control to emerge as a leader. He also chose Jake. As we saw, Mike came to regret that later. Jake is pretty talented himself, and no pushover. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Red Team consists of Faruq, Whitney, Slim, Sharone, Conceited David, and Jenna. So far, only Whitney has been a positive standout. In fact, Faruq came very close to going home in the Chinese food challenge, and blubbered like a preschooler whose tricycle had been taken away. In fact, the guy has cried a lot so far. Either he really wants to win this, or he’s a bit of a mamby-pamby. The jury’s still out.

Anyway, let’s feed the troops!

In the Blue kitchen, they decide on a menu of pork tenderloin, scalloped potatoes, corn salad, and puff pastry with cream. (Gordon found that dessert choice kind of ridiculous and I agreed.) Jake’s in charge of the tenderloin, and tempers begin to flair when Mike starts bugging him about the way he’s cooking it.

Here’s my observations about Jake, the construction worker. Jake is  meticulous. He is slow and steady. He looks rather scary with the goatee, muscles, and tats. But then he’ll come out with some amazingly beautiful dish. In short, I like him.

Mike is strong too. But his way of getting from point A to point B is completely different. As in he flies there. Really. They guys literally runs through the kitchen, talks a mile a minute and is a complete bag o’ nerves. He does well in the challenges, and is obviously one of the more talented cooks there. But he’s got to take a Valium, or listen to James Taylor on his iPod more often or something!

My Gordon notices this, and in a judges huddle, points out that the Blue Team seems scattered. Joe Bastianich adds that neither team has been discussing portion size, and the amount of food it will take to feed everyone. And even though J.B. is a pain in my left side, he’s right!

And this is where the Red Team made their hugest tactical error which ultimately lost them the challenge. They knew that they were feeding at least two hundred Marines. Quite possibly more, depending on how many soldiers chose their menu. And they made THREE, yes THREE trays each of potatoes and vegetables. Huh? I eyeballed the size of those trays. And even from my cushy armchair, I could see that they needed WAY more food! I would venture that each tray held maybe 20 average sized servings. That means sixty people would have been fed comfortably. Not several hundred! Idiots! And people of the Marine persuasion as well! Marines bust their asses all day! They eat a lot, and rightfully so! Oh, the stupidity! Only Sharone even voiced a tiny concern to Faruq. And he didn’t push it hard enough. So there you have it. Even though more Marines chose the Red menu, and their food tasted better, they lost. Punishment? Someone will go home in the next challenge.

Judge Graham Elliott whips up a Texas Chili, and each member of the Red Team has to list as many of the twenty ingredients as possible. Whitney did well by guessing the most at twelve. She’s a spunky lil gal, and knows her stuff. Homemaker Jenna only came up with seven, and is headed back to Texas. I think she wanted to go home anyway. She seemed overwhelmed, unhappy and yearning for her kids at the ranch. So, what was in the chili, you ask? Well, stock, beef, onions, celery, green peppers, jalapenos, tomatoes, cumin, garlic, salt, beans, oil, cilantro and I DON”T KNOW! They never did tell us, did they? Whether that was to protect Graham’s secret recipe or to keep us guessing is um … anyone’s guess. I can tell you there’s no chili powder though. Hmmmmm. If you have any ideas about the missing ingredients, please let me know in the comment section below. Cause I’m stumped!

Next week, we’ll see everyone go but the final four. I’m calling Whitney, Jake, Mike, and Tracy. Geez. I hope I didn’t just put the evil eye kibosh on them all!

Clacked by Tara Shrodes
on Aug 19, 2010 @ 17:29 EST5EDT