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Cleo cut from MasterChef

A costly mistake of the MasterChef rules has led to an early favourite being eliminated from the game.

There were shocked faces in the MasterChef kitchen last night as one of the early favourites, Cleo Kerameas, was eliminated after a costly mistake.

Kerameas, 45, breached the rules -twice- by cooking two pastry dishes at once, which placed her in the bottom three.

After George Calombaris told her she could not cook both a ganache and toffee at the same time, she stopped work on the ganache. But once she had completed her toffee she resumed her ganache dish, instead of starting it again from scratch.

“I thought I was following the rules but because of the high anxiety of the challenge, none of it sunk in – it was a total brain snap,” says Cleo, who was judged only on her sponge and custard to be fair to other contestants.

“I misunderstood the instructions; I obviously heard the rules but I didn’t hear them. If I had focused more and not been in such a ‘zone’ then I would’ve been fine.

“When the judges actually told me I needed to stop the toffee and ganache, I was so perplexed – it was a total misunderstanding – because I didn’t comprehend exactly what they were saying at first.

“As an executive assistant I follow instructions every day of my life – and on this occasion I really needed to and I didn’t. My normal job requires that I multi-task, but that multi-skilling in this pressure test was to my detriment.”

It wasn’t the first time a MasterChef favourite had been unceremoniously dumped from the show. Last year’s Marion Grasby left viewers shocked when she was cut. She was followed by Jonathan Daddia. In 2009 Poh Ling Yeow and Justine Schofield were given a lifeline to return, but there are no second chances in 2011.

“My first reaction was complete shock to be eliminated,” says Cleo. “What I produced was quite good. I was disappointed in myself and I feel that I’ve let myself down. I wasn’t ready to go home and I reckon my cooking could’ve got me further, but in the end, the pressure got to me.”

Amended.

31 Responses

  1. In previous years, generally the participants seemed to have basic cooking skills to a reasonable standard and were able to be creative in what they produced.
    Some participants, this year, immediately question their skills to produce the required task given and then go onto confirm the correctness of their own assessment.
    The gems of quality cooking by the chefs and the contestants rising to the challenge are what excited about the show.
    Mostly now, I remember races to get tasks done, fires in kitchens, uncooked food presented in the challenges and ongoing near disasters.
    Annoyingly, we have vignettes of participants, catastrophising and recapping what is happening often talking down to tthe audience who iare probably way ahead in understanding what is going on.
    Some who appeared to show skills at cooking like Tom & Cleo are gone.
    The elimination process seems to not be able to let the best cooks come to the top and allows the poor cooks to stay in.
    It cannot now claim to be seeking excellence in cooking skills and George cannot claim that the participants are the “best (? number) amateur cooks in Australia’.
    I found something else to do on Friday and Sunday night.

  2. The judges are fast becoming the weakest link on this show. I taped Thursday’s episode for a family member and watched it again last night. I agree with posters about George not telling Cleo to start her ganache again (I didn’t pick up on that when I originally watched it). Instead of gossiping with Matt about it like a couple of fishwives, he should have made it much clearer to her that she should have binned the ganache she had started and do it over again. This instruction was not made clear to her. It was a stupid challenge anyway, given that they only had 75 minutes to get five elements perfect. Absolutely ridiculous and not a time pressure they would ever encounter in a commercial kitchen. I don’t know about anybody else, but so far this season I have not really enjoyed any of the challenges and there is no break-out contestant that engages me such as Marion, Jonathon, Justine, Chris, etc, from past seasons.

  3. The judges should have told her that she was breaking the rules as soon as they noticed, and they should have told her that she had to start her ganache over. Instead, they waited for her to mess up, whispered about it to each other and then eliminated her for it. I’m guessing it was to create drama, which is somewhat of a trend I’ve been noticing this year. I’m not a Cleo fan, but it’s a shame that she was eliminated, not for the quality of her food, but for a situation that could have been avoided if the judges weren’t so dramatic.

    And she’s not coming back into the competition because they’ve said from the outset that they will not be bringing any eliminated contestants back this season.

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