Lauren and Carmine’s Instant Restaurant


lauren and carmine

Source: Twitter

Lauren and Carmine are cooking in their instant restaurant tonight. Can they top last night’s MKR scores? The highly competitive married couple from Adelaide have an Italian background and believe they can use this to their advantage. For entree, Lauren and Carmine are making zucchini involtini with homemade ricotta. For main course, they are making Seafood spaghetti in a bag and for dessert they are making a rum baba with lemon custard recipe.

The team do their shopping and come back home to set up their restaurant, number 32. They have a lot to do, first off the bat is making the pasta for the spaghetti and putting it in the fridge, Carmine is happy with it, but it looks dry.

Lauren starts on making her ricotta. She isn’t happy with the first batch, it wasn’t curdling. She starts on a second batch, but looks back and the first batch is starting to work. She goes with the first batch.

Carmine de-beards the mussels for the main and gets onto making the spaghetti. Meanwhile, the guests arrive, Lauren and Carmen show them to the restaurant. They get back to their entree, charring the zucchini on the grill. Laurent checks on the ricotta, it’s perfect, she adds some herbs, seasoning and lemon juice.

zucchini involtini with homemade ricotta

Source: Twitter

Their entree is pretty much done before the judges arrive. They move on to more elements of the main course. Once the judges arrive, they start assembling their entree. They have a bit of trouble assembling their involtinis, they make cylinders out of the zucchini, but they aren’t standing up.

They have lots though, so weed out the bad ones and are able to continue assembling the dish. They pipe the ricotta into the top of the zucchini cylinders, top it with prosciutto, pine nuts and a basil oil.

The entree is taken out to the judges. Colin and Rachel taste the dish. Colin says the dish looked great and the ricotta was nice but the zucchini has let you down. He can’t taste the charring on the zucchini. Rachel said the zucchini was not charred enough as well but she loved the creamy ricotta. Colin said the dish was simple but not really wow. The guests taste the dish. They enjoyed the ricotta. Tim and Dee were underwhelmed by the dish.

Carmen and Lauren get back into the kitchen and begin preparing the squid. Lauren gets started on the tomato based sauce. Carmen is having trouble cleaning the squid and it is taking them a lot longer to prepare than they thought.

Seafood spaghetti in a bag

Source: Twitter

They cut it up but the pieces are not a consistent size. They add the prawns and mussels to the tomato based sauce and took it off the heat. They cooked the pasta and put it into an ice bath. They mix the pasta through the sauce and place it into the paper bags that they are making.

They are running behind schedule. Lauren says the bags need to cook in the oven for about 10 minutes to allow the mix to steam. They take them out of the oven, plate up the paper bags and take them out to the judges.

Colin and Rachel taste the dish. Colin says the seafood was closer to sushi than it was being cooked. The pasta is overcooked and mushy. He said it is just a very bad dish. Rachel said usually when you open the bag you should get steam, aromas and heat. She didn’t get any of that.

The other contestants open their bags and taste the dish. Dee says she is very hungry and has waited a long time for this dish, she hated it, it belonged in the bin. Most of the contestants couldn’t eat the dish.

Lauren and Carmen head back into the kitchen to continue preparing their dessert.

rum baba with lemon custard

Source: Twitter

Lauren is very happy with how her custard has been made but her Baba’s have overflowed in their tins in the oven. She takes the cakes out of the oven and out of their individual tins. The cakes are cooked well. They dunk the sponge in the rum sauce and squeeze out the excess liquid. Lauren pipes the cream filling inside the cakes and they top them with chopped up strawberries.

They take the dish out to the judges. Colin and Rachel taste the dish. Rachel says it looked beautiful, the custard was delicious. Colin says it’s golden and technically spot on but the cream could do with more lemon. Rachel said the cake could have been oozing with rum but it wasn’t. The other contestants taste the dish. Dee says it tastes like baby food. Some other contestants said it was nice but not a wow dish.

It’s time for the MKR contestants to score their meals tonight.

MKR Scores

Chris and Cookie 4/10

Dee and Tim 3/10

Eve and Jason 3/10

Stepdaughter 6/10

Best friends 4/10

Dad and Golfer 5/10

Combined score 21/50

Colin

Entree – 6/10
Main – 1/10
Dessert – 7/10

Rachel

Entree – 7/10
Main – 1/10
Dessert – 8/10

Grand Total Score: 51 / 110

This places Lauren and Carmine at the bottom of the MKR leaderboard.

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