MasterChef India Season 7 Episode 26 is titled ‘Importance Of Culinary Knowledge’ and the synopsis reads – The Home Cooks are tested on their culinary knowledge along with technical cooking skills in this episode on MasterChef India.
The judges of the show include Vikas Khanna and Ranveer Brar, who are joined by Garima Arora, the first-ever female chef to be a judge on the show. The cooking competition show is a nationwide quest to find the best ‘home cook’ and draws out some of the most brilliant chefs from across India. The judges sample recipes from various cuisines that the contestants prepare in their search for India’s ‘MasterChef’. The show is produced by Endemol Shine India and it is directed by Neeraj Shetty.
-MasterChef India Season 7 Episode 26 Review and Recap Contains Spoilers-
In a new week, the home cooks are welcomed by the judges with a number of new ingredients on one side and a screen on the other. The cooks take position in front of the small tables which have a slate and a pen on them. The judges first introduce the ingredients kept on the side and explain that they have to make a dish with one of these ingredients as a core one.
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But to get the ingredient they will have to play a quiz and answer correctly & fast. The first person to raise the right answer gets to choose the ingredient first and so on. The first question asked to them was – Which family does the banana belong to? Gurkirat answers it correctly by saying berries and then takes raw coffee as his core ingredient.
The second question asked was – On heating which vitamin gets destroyed? The answer was Vitamin C which was answered first by Kamaldeep, who took Sorghum (jowar), followed by Sachin who took raspberry and Deepa who took edam cheese. In the next question, Nazia took nectarines, Priyanka picked Brazil nuts and Aruna took black carrots. The next question was about the hottest chilli, which is Carolina reaper but Santa answered wrong, Nayanjyoti answered correctly and took lamb racks, while Priya picked nutritional yeast.
The next question was about the biggest spice market, which is Khari Baoli in Delhi, Santa answered right and picked chicken and Suvarna automatically got the last ingredient – Kashmiri garlic. Along with it, there was another twist kept inside a timer bomb of 20 minutes. Once the 20 minutes will be over, the cooks will have to add whatever object/ingredient in the box, to their dishes.
They were given 60 minutes to cook with 2 minutes in the pantry. The contestants started picking out ingredients quickly and started cooking, however, some were not able to get all the ingredients that they needed and had to improvise. After 20 minutes, the time bomb box got opened and it was revealed to be a steamer. Thus, now they have to use a steamer in their cooking process and keep at least one ingredient made in it.
On the bright side, the pantry was now open for the remainder of the 40 minutes and they can take what they want. After 60 minutes, Kamaldeep was called upon first and she had made fresh sorghum hummus with salad, falafel and steamed bread. The judges liked the overall flavours of the dish and said that if only the bread was perfect, they would have sent her to the safe gallery.
Next was Priyanka who made an eggless chocolate cheesecake with orange semolina cake with Brazilian nuts and orange jelly. However, the main ingredient was not highlighted in her dish which was otherwise visually appealing. Nayanjyoti made lamb chops with couscous, where the lamb was overcooked and the elements on the plate didn’t go well together in terms of taste.
Suvarna made steamed tacos with Kashmiri garlic but the judges found it uncooked, while Aruna made carrot marble cake with halwa and cream cheese frosting. The judges spoke a few words but they all were of high praise like soul-touching, brilliant and Chef Ranveer’s famous tagline – swaad aa gya.
Gurkirat made a steamed almond cake with coffee flexi ganache, which was praised highly for technical presentation but in terms of taste, they didn’t go well. Sachin made a raspberry mousse, Priya made zucchini noodles, Deepa made a queso relleno (stuffed cheese dish), Santa made a confit chicken and Nazia made a nectarine frangipane. None of them got any good remarks from the judges for their dishes.
Final Thoughts: MasterChef India Season 7 Episode 26
After tasting all the dishes, the judges chose Aruna and Kamaldeep’s dishes to be worthy of getting safe for the week. It must have been an easy decision, looking at all the dishes today. I think this is the only MasterChef where so much food gets wasted every episode, either the contestants burn the food they are cooking or drop it etc.
I wonder if the creators chose these contestants solely on the basis of how sympathetic their backstory looked on the screen or on their actual cooking skills. Because so far, it seems like the contestants go back to making the 4 dishes they know whenever something goes wrong and definitely don’t seem competitive enough to even present the complete dish.
Most importantly why is the pantry limited, if they want to see innovation and creativity then they should give everyone enough ingredients to work with and not fight with other contestants over eggs and oranges.
MasterChef India Season 7 is currently streaming on SonyLIV and a new episode is released from Monday to Friday at 9 PM.
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