Our two youngest competitors -- Whitney and Slim -- are expecting to have trouble with this challenge. Whitney's never really had a boyfriend and never had to cook for a fellah before. Between this and her "oh I've never cooked a pork chop before" act, I'm beginning to wonder if Whitney was one of those bubble kids who's only recently been freed to see the outside world. As for Slim: "I suck at romance," she says flatly. You'll get no argument here, young lady.
Anyhow, the contestants have one hour to "seduce us with your dishes." (Gordon's words, not mine.) Speaking amongst themselves, the judges decide that the last thing you want to do with passion fruit is cook it. "Once you go over 212 degrees, it starts to coagulate," Graham observes. I have a feeling we're going to see contestants boiling the hell out of passion fruit before the night is out.
We see what different contestants are working on -- Whitney has shrimp, Mike (and his hat) a beef dish, David a spicy saffron shrimp with some type of mango salsa. Gordon stops by Slim's station to find her making her a lamb chop and shrimp dish that she's going to serve on skewers, fondue style. Gordon makes a face like a muppet who's been asked a difficult math problem. "Not much passion there," Gordon says during the judge's catty corner.
Sharone, still steaming over his loss in the Mystery Box challenge, decides to throw all caution to the wind and sous vide his filet. He's never used that technique before, by the way, and it's not going well. "On the verge of absolute stupidity or absolute genius," Gordon observes. At this point, I don't think that's a difficult determination to make. Anyhow, with some divine intervention from Gordon, Sharone finally manages to get his sous vide bag to seal properly. "If Sharone pulls this off, this could be the best dish ever in MasterChef," Gordon tells his fellow judges. Better than that dish you tasted five minutes ago? High praise, indeed.
Shall we just skip past Tracy burning her collard greens and Lee babbling incoherently about prawns and romance and beef tenderloin and having fun with his girlfriend to the end of this challenge? Yes, let's. Time for the judges to taste all nine dishes. We'll start with Sharone's porcini-encrusted tenderloin with candied passion fruit, line-prepared using that damnable sous vide machine. Graham declares that the beef is sublime. So score one for that sous vide machine.