Welcome to a very special (and slightly lethal) review of Australian Come Dine With Me, the Waterloo episode. Spoiler alert: this episode's contestant, Erin Patterson, is dishing up drama — and something a little vengeful. On the menu? A classic Beef Wellington, delicately infused with death cap mushrooms, a touch of hatred and a pinch of psychopathy. With apologies to the real Come Dine With Me, this review focuses less on culinary delight and more on forensic intrigue.
Come Dine With Me, The Murder Edition
Verdict: Guilty
Host: Erin Patterson
Contestants: Heather Wilkinson (sister-in-law of Erin) and Don and Gail Patterson (parents-in-law of Erin)
Menu - 2.5 out of 10
I've long felt that a Beef Wellington is a very old-fashioned dish to serve up at a contemporary dinner party. No-one really knows the precise provenance of Beef Wellington. This piece of meat, rolled in pastry and accessorised with a layer of mushrooms was a thing before the 1st Duke of Wellington became its champion and namesake. Some say it was his favourite dish. Others said it was named after him in celebration of his definitive defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The honours came in thick and fast for the dashing Arthur Wellesley who was given the title along with his beef after removing The Imperialist from the mix. There's also another theory in circulation; that the dish looks a little like the Duke's preferred shodding — the Wellington boot — but I find this particular theory hard to swallow.
Beef Wellington is the kind of dish that lived comfortably in the era when Gorgonzola stuffed prunes wrapped in bacon and the deliciously antiquated trifle were the heavy hitters on the menu. Now that we're all cooking with exotic ingredients like zatar and tteokbokki, fusing all our cuisines in startling new combinations — Japanese and Mexican, Korean and North African — you may well wonder about a host who has the temerity to serve up a dish that hit peak popularity in 1815.
And yet, that's exactly what Australian hostess Patterson presented to her now tragically departed in-laws and to her in-law adjacent family members. I suppose she was playing to her audience but as any casual observer of the episode would agree, the menu choice was terminal. Perhaps she wanted to transport her guests back to their glory days in the 80s when this sort of thing was very swish and fancy but really, I think it's in poor taste to summon up the ghosts of Christmas past like this.
To be fair to Patterson’s menu choice, there's now a movement to reinvent traditional dishes with a modern twist. If I had to interpret her decision on the Beef Wellington generously I'd say that the fact that she foraged for her mushrooms gives her some credibility points. Foraging in the wild, en plain air for your ingredients is still a thing. Michelin stars aplenty have been awarded for just such worthy endeavours and, for extra points, she dehydrated her own mushrooms, which surely must count for something.
Also in her favour is the fact that mushrooms are having a moment right now, and not just for their hallucinogenic properties, which I feel her diners might have retrospectively preferred. A little trip to the astral plane with a return ticket to temporal reality in the here and now would have been infinitely preferable to the far more permanent trip to “the beyond” that Patterson had in mind when she Googled the properties of the death cap mushroom and the co-ordinates of their last sightings.
Table Scape 1 out of 10
I have to come out and say it: this episode of Come Dine with Me was brutal. Frankly, Patterson’s choices of plating and table-scaping were suspect from the start. The mismatched plates were a red flag for me. Yes, she made individual portions of the dish for each diner, catering to dietary and allergic constraints. Apparently both she and her children aren't keen on the death caps. The rest of the guests were violently allergic but had not indicated this before the fatal meal. To be fair, Patterson at least gave the impression of having made an effort to decorate her dish with an even hand. Is matching plates too much to ask for?
Mood - 0
As everyone knows, the ideal hostess is charged with lifting the spirits of her guests. She must keep the conversation flowing. She must lighten the mood with charming banter and witty anecdotes. Patterson was the life of the party — quite literally. As a host, one shouldn't freight the dinner with one's emotional baggage and then guilt-trip the guests with a blatant lie about one's “cancer diagnosis” for dramatic effect. That, my friend, is a total clanger. No wonder the guests started feeling nauseous shortly after departure. Anger is a deadweight of an emotion to bring into a convivial reconciliatory atmosphere. The Buddha said, holding onto anger is like swallowing poison and hoping it kills the object of your anger. But, sometimes anger is like serving a Beef Wellington to your enemies and hoping that it kills them. And then, guess what? It does.
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