Good Lourdes! A contestant performs a flipping miracle in the barbecued dessert challenge

After the torture inflicted by Jean-Christophe’s demented dessert experiments last night, the MasterChef amateurs wake up to a new day and their first experience of a bleaker, Khristian-less existence. But there is little time to process their grief or plot their revenge, because they are off to the kitchen, where cloches await – what horrors might lie beneath them?

The answer to this question arrives instantly, and they discover coloured aprons and unpleasant foodstuffs. In teams of three, they must cook with these ingredients, including frozen corn, tinned chickpeas, tomato sauce, olives, tofu and most revolting of all, swedes. In round one, only one member of each team will actually be cooking, while the other two go away to screw in lightbulbs. The best dish will send its maker and their teammates into the second round, cooking for immunity.

“Today immunity is more important than ever,” says Sue, without any evidence to back this up. She has decided to make swede gnocchi, which is certainly not the act of a woman who cares whether she wins or not. “I can make gnocchi in my sleep,” she says, but honestly that doesn’t seem like a good idea. Meanwhile, Sumeet has correctly identified that the problem with tofu is the taste, and works on anti-heroing the ingredient. Sav plans to lean into her tomato sauce, which is going to make a terrible mess. She is trying something new, but claims the flavours are in her DNA, necessitating urgent study to find a cure.

The judges meet to mock the contestants’ pain. Andy declares tomato sauce to be perfect the way it is, and condemns his colleagues for their ketchup-shaming. American Josh is making olive oil and honey panna cotta, which sounds awful. “I know that I’m capable of pulling it off,” he says, a personal detail that frankly nobody asked for.

Meanwhile, Mimi is making corn ice cream, which sounds just disgusting enough to work. Worried that it might not be unpleasant enough, she grates some parmesan over the ice cream, causing the saints in heaven to weep. Sav’s worry is that her tomato sauce soup might taste too much like tomato sauce. Perhaps she should try a tomato sauce ice cream instead. With one minute to go, American Josh claims that “the panna cotta is not where it needs to be”, ie in a bin. Instead it’s on a plate, which is the last place you want an olive-flavoured dessert to be.

Tragically, the judges must now eat the dishes. All the contestants are nervous, worried that they may not have met the brief of making their horrible ingredients into something even worse.

Worried that it might not be unpleasant enough, Mimi grates some parmesan over the ice cream, causing the saints in heaven to weep.

One by one they step up: Mimi’s corn ice cream, chips and parmesan is delicious if you believe the judges which I don’t; Darrsh’s coconut curry with chickpeas is just fine, but “a bit mono” according to Andy, who loathes classic rock; Sue’s swede gnocchi is OK I guess; Sumeet’s chilli tofu is too close to being classified as a biological weapon; American Josh’s olive pannacotta didn’t set and is a disgrace to all involved; Sav’s ketchup and prawn soup is as wonderful as it doesn’t sound. In the end the corn ice cream wins, which should terrify us all. This means that the brown team – Mimi, Lourdes and Lachlan – will cook for immunity.

To do so, they must go into the garden, where three barbecues await. “I’ve never cooked with a flat-top barbecue before, but how difficult can it be?” asks Mimi, in a classic example of what we professional writers call “foreshadowing”. The task is to use the barbecue to make a dessert – have they gone MAD? Yes! The best sweet barbecuer gets immunity from Sunday’s elimination.

As the three hopefuls get to work, Poh fantasises about barbecued bananas and waxes lyrical on the beauty of burning things, with a look of faraway ecstasy in her eyes. Lourdes announces what she’s cooking, which involves pancakes and bananas and miso, but takes way too long to say. Poh and Jean-Christophe demand to know what Lachlan is making. He says he is making a sweet roti with grilled bananas, but refuses to look the judges in the eye, knowing how ashamed he should be. Meanwhile, Mimi says she is barely coping, probably because she can’t see over the top of the barbecue.

Lachlan is confronting the intolerable stress of roti. He starts by putting too much oil on the bench. He tries again. He forgets to put oil on the barbecue. His nickname, “Lachie the Man Hated By Oil”, is beginning to make sense. He makes a third attempt at making the roti. He drops it on the ground. Observers are agreed that God hates Lachlan. Against all logic, the fourth roti works, and joy in the garden is unconfined.

Mimi has left her pancakes on the heat too long and they have become very dark, continually talking about death and watching Darren Aronofsky movies. They are also bitter, having expected better things from life. Mimi needs to compensate for this, and so glazes them with honey, although personally that’s never cheered me up.

In the twinkling of an eye and the burning of a pancake, time is up, and the brave judges once more open wide. Lourdes dishes up her pancakes with bananas and miso and butterscotch and cream and walnuts and a thousand elephants and dancing monkeys etc. “You’ve surprised me,” says Andy, still processing the fact she’s called “Lourdes”. The pancakes work and everyone is bathed in euphoria.

Mimi slings her own pancakes, with peanut and sesame and so forth. The judges bring up the darkness in a very impolite way. “I’ve never had that pancake before,” says Poh, which seems pretty obvious – Mimi only just cooked it. Sofia and Jean-Christophe agree that Mimi is not quite ready to tackle anything as complicated as pancakes.

Finally, Lachie and his lucky roti arrive. “I want immunity,” he says, but the rules have changed and you don’t just get it from asking anymore. He’s grilled banana, he’s grilled pineapple, he’s stuffed his roti — in a positive way — and he’s brimming with confidence. And so he should be, because the judges are unanimous in the view that his roti is technically food.

In the end, Mimi, without whom the others wouldn’t even have been in the immunity cook, is dismissed out of hand, and Lachlan and Lourdes, who did absolutely nothing to get themselves there, are showered with plaudits. It’s Lourdes who takes the immunity though, thanks to her skill with pancakes and Lachlan’s limited stuffing skills. So it is Lourdes who will watch from the balcony, laughing maniacally, as the others sweat bullets in the elimination.

Tune in on Sunday, when the judges drive a railway spike through the brain of another dream.

Come back after Sunday night’s episode for Ben Pobjie’s next recap