The celebrity theatre goes quiet as the screen above the stage lights up with two familiar faces – George Calombaris and Gary Mehigan. Rocking around in a boat at sea, they look uncomfortable, waiting with their fishing rods to get the catch of the day. Bored, tired, newspaper read, they pull the pin on filming only to uncover that they are just sitting in a boat off a jetty in Williamstown. Ahhhh television, the illusion and the dream, you got me again.
And after the announcement is made that in the live show the chefs will explore the theme Celebrations of the Sea, they take to the stage. The crowd erupts and, let’s face it, so do I.
They are jet lagged, that’s what they tell the crowd. They have been in Australia for just a day as MasterChef Australia had taken them off to New York City. But they are vibrant, full of oomph and an energy that is contagious. They are both bouncing on the balls of their feet as they tell us tales of the Big Apple, including a 14 course meal they consumed. It left Mehigan promising never to eat again and Matt Preston asking for more, as he went out to grab another New York burger, which he matched with a night of gin and tonics.
The banter makes me smile and feel nostalgic about why I fell in love with these two chefs in the first place. Series one, MasterChef Australia. There was something so cheeky about the both of them together, a cheek that wasn’t censored as no one – not even a highly rigid and planned television production team – could second guess what would come out of their mouths.
People are commenting that the second and third MasterChef Australia isn’t as good as the Julie Goodwin series and I think that’s what it is. Television may have just watered down their banter and replaced it with a scripted version of what they think they would say. The camera isn’t catching the cheeky glimmer in Mehigan’s eyes, or the boyish charm of Calombaris, and it’s really not showing the solid friendship that you get when you see them in the flesh. Maybe Channel 10 should just show us the out-takes, throw the scripted banter out and perhaps stop getting the contestants to say “I just want the hero of the dish to shine”. Rant over, back to the show, Celebrations of the Sea.
Calombaris starts by cooking a millionaire’s moussaka – a modern take on a traditional classic. He layers marinated fennel, boiled egg slices, boiled potato, Western Australian crayfish and tops with bechamel sauce and pops it in the oven to bake for 20 minutes. While making the dish, Calombaris gives the history of moussaka. With its origins in the Turkish dish imam baldi, moussaka was first made in Greece after a Greek chef was trained in Turkey and bought it back to Greece with the addition of bechamel sauce. Mehigan jokes with the crowd that this is another way the Greeks tried to save money and make a cheaper version of a dish by using flour and milk on top. Calombaris gets his own when Mehigan struggles pronouncing kefalograviera – which he added to the bechamel. He tops the cooked dish with salmon roe to give it an exaggerated opulence.
Mehigan follows by making oysters with a black bean and ginger dressing and gives all a lesson in shucking oysters. Calombaris runs through the crowd for the first time looking for an ‘oyster virgin’ to taste the dish. I feel for the 18-year-old who took to the stage to swallow the slimy mollusc for the first time for all to see. Calombaris’s turn again, this time he makes anchovy and caramelised onion cigars, wrapped in home-made filo. He says that when his mother used to make filo from scratch, she’d roll it out with a rolling pin, while Calombaris doesn’t break a sweat as he rolls the pastry out in a KitchenAid. Personally, I think he’s lying. Never in a Greek household have I ever seen a rolling pin. Waste of money. I bet his mum, like all Greek mums, used a curtain rod. Calombaris then races through the crowd with a tray of cooked anchovy and caramelised onion cigars and takes a seat right at the back while the crowd gather to sample more goodies.
Mehigan finishes up with a fritti misti and saffron aoili. Showing the crowd a fresh calamari, the groans are deafening as Mehigan points to a lady in the crowd and brings her centre stage to clean the calamari. Cutting straight through the eyes and releasing all the black ink, she shows she has a long way to go. Calombaris in his joking way cleans the calamari quill and plays hairdresser. The show itself lasts for just under an hour and for two jet lagged chefs, they still whipped up four dishes that showcased the amazing produce that is available in the waters of Australia.