This is my favourite renaissance painting.

This recap is somehow not free of CATS (2019) content.

A Right Pig’s Ear…

There are A LOT of iconic ways this episode could’ve gone with Rhys walking the knife edge of a mental breakdown from the moment he crossed the threshold

and Louise daring the show to shower her with Kenneth Branagh levels of hubris

(they wouldn’t dare, SHE’S A SAINT)

and then out of left field, like the Boudican Revolt, what I am choosing to believe is the tip of Charlotte’s finger still stuck on the blade of her knife came out of nowhere

Charlotte asking for a plaster as her finger profusely bleeds? The close-up of her hewn off fingertip? JOHN POINTING AT IT FOR CLARITY? The fact her vegan dish became the least vegan dish imaginable in the span of a gentle camera pan?

Absolutely perfect, she’ll always be *my* MasterChef Icon of 2024.

This does mean that Aman’s wife now has stiff competition for being his favourite vegetarian given that Charlotte Mark Antony’d herself out of the competition, this increasing the odds of him getting an apron

and he was going to need it given that John and Gregg weren’t particularly fond of his experimental Gochujang Paneer Curry and Frustratingly Dispersed Chutneys

one should never have to scoop up a condiment with all the infuriating clumsiness of a seal on land. Nobody got screwed over harder by evolution than seals – Born to swim, forced to flop around aimlessly while screaming

maybe I just hate them because I recognise myself in their futile struggle against the ground?

Rhys and George had both decided on mushrooms as their favourite ingredients and were similarly both going for pasta dishes. Although George’s was more of a Parmesan and Friends dish

extremely me making unblinking eye contact with the server at Ask Italian as I refuse to use the safeword to stop them grating the parmesan over my Spaghetti al Pomodoro.

Despite the gale force parmesan that hit them, John and Gregg’s bigger issue with his dish was that it looked a bit like it might come with a side dish of Ant and Dec putting them through the worst banter of their lives

OH. So *NOW* you think crispy rice looks like maggots?
Once they got over the general suspicion of a kangaroo’s anus around the corner, they did actually quite like the dish. His sauce was a little bit too thick but the positive feedback hopefully meant he could loosen up beneath the carpet

does the tense carpet match the tense drapes?

As for Rhys’s ventures through mushroom pasta, he had made his tagliatelle really well and his mushrooms were very well cooked but they did find the combination of white wine, mustard and capers to be too sharp

it was also nice to see a bowl of pasta that didn’t look like it would make whoever was going to eat it fake a faint so comically bad it makes the average junior school nativity play look like Shakespeare

I know she’s One of the Bad Ones, but I would allow them to put Gillian McKeith on 1 episode of Celebrity MasterChef if they forced her to make chocolate mousse and promised to eliminate her immediately which I imagine wouldn’t be too hard because I do not believe anything she cooks sees a single iota of seasoning.

On the more positive end of the spectrum were Ecrin and Saint Louise, the latter of which was going with a very simple dish of Jamaican Pepper Prawns and a Roti

the simplicity of it ended up really appealing to John and Gregg with both of them loving the spicy prawns and commending her for perfectly cooked roti.

As for Ecrin, she was showcasing the food of Turkey with her lamb dish, Sac Kavurma with a red onion and pomegranate salsa

they both really loved her lamb but the salsa on the side was the highlight for John

GIRL, NO! You ride that recipe to the bank! Do you know how much Waitrose would pay to learn how to do something else with pomegranates?

A Basic to Brilliant Dish Ranking:
1. Saint Louise, The First of Her Name.
2. Ecrin’s Waitrose Bankrolling
3. Gregg Wallace’s Visions of Maggots Future
4. Rhys’s No Sharps Allowed Pasta
5. Aman Might Need Another Favourite Vegetarian

Easily getting the aprons for this round were Ecrin and Louise who both had relatively simple but excellently executed dishes

Prawn Stars

In order to redeem themselves, the contestants whose fingers were still in tact had to create a dish using a bowl of prawns

and this immediately became the worst day of Aman’s life if the way he looked at his prawn curry is anything to go by

he’d never cooked prawns before but to his credit he’d at least prepared them correctly for his Default Setting Curry

I don’t think I would have personally diced them up because that seemed to defeat the purpose of a prawn which are basically bite-size chunks by design.

Rhys and George faired much better – George drawing from his time spent in Vietnam to make Summer Rolls and Zero Carb Prawn Toast (which I have declared as my mortal enemy) that he served with a duo of dipping sauces

it was by far and away the most successful dish of the round – the only shortcoming was that his rolls could’ve done with a few more herbs in order to make them taste a little more vibrant. Rhys also went with an Asian dish, although he had no specific demonym in mind, it just had noodles and pak choi

there was nothing to really get the judges wildly enthused about his dish and the only thing that really pushed him ahead of Aman was the fact he had prepared his prawns slightly more interestingly by butterflying them? You still cannot convince me they didn’t go backstage to flip a coin between the two of them though.

A Prawn Dish Ranking:
1. Some Are Rolls and Some Are Not
2. Rhys’s Gesturally Asian Broth
3. Aman May Have Made The Same Thing Twice

Having already said goodbye to Charlotte within 3 minutes of starting this episode, we were only losing one chef which The Coin of Fate had decided was Aman

he can at least go home knowing it wasn’t the worst thing that’s happened to a prawn in the name of appeasing John Torode.

A Two Course Race

This heat’s two course menus were going to be judged by friend of the blog Alexina Anitole, Digger Dean™ and Steven Wallis who has finally given up on trying to make cravats happen

but he will continue to strike his signature wistful eating pose like he’s an ancient Greek philosopher contemplating the fragility and futility of human existence and not just some guy eating an pineapple upside down cake

and then like many an ancient greek philosopher would just decide to put sea creatures into a tier list of ranked sexiness

ok, calm down Troy McClure

Louise was the one falling short of Steven’s exacting standards of piscine allure with her main course of Coley served with Pumpkin Veloute, Fried Okra and a Scotch Bonnet Sambal

Gregg however was swiping right

he’d never met a more seductive lump of white fish. However her veloute could’ve done with a little more body-ody-ody as everyone thought it was a touch under seasoned and watery.

Her dessert was more crowd pleasing because how can one not be thrilled by the nostalgia of a pineapple upside cake?

and just to stop it from feeling too much like a revisiting of nursery school trauma (William Sitwell perks up) she’d dowsed it with enough rum to get even the most worn out nursery school teacher through the day. (This is a joke, I do not believe my nursery school teacher drank on the job even if it would explain quite a lot.) She did very nearly get the “this is too sweet” critique for the amount of rum caramel she’d used and having made a condensed milk ice cream. However, they like Louise so it was Extremely Sweet (tone indicator: positive)

I imagine they’re also a little wary because we’re still unsure of how much divine clout Saint Louise commands.

Ecrin was starting her menu off with a deceptively simple dish of Turkish Lentil Soup which she was ~fancying~ up by using coconut milk and burnt butter. The biggest concern for everyone was mostly about how do you surprise anyone with a bowl of soup

that is a brave thing to say Mr. Wallace because I guarantee you there is some young, impressionable chartered accountant out there so dissatisfied with their job that they’re going to make it their life’s mission to serve you Soup Cubes next year. But for now, bowls of soup it is

and as far as “it’s just a bowl of soup” goes, it’s an interesting and pretty looking bowl of soup. It was also quite possibly the most crowd pleasing dish of the night – potentially just because everyone’s expectations were rock bottom for lentil soup. But what is MasterChef but a game of culinary ambush?

For her Main Course, Ecrin was making what is absolutely just another starter with her take on the Portuguese dish Bacalhau a Braz which in every recipe I’ve looked up comes with some form of a content warning like it’s a Mogwai

usually it contains saltfish, however Ecrin was swapping it out in favour of prawns

my mind does slightly balk at the raw egg yolk sitting on top, but you could always try your best to remove it from atop the potato without popping it like a gastronomic Saw trap. Which I think everyone wished they’d done because the dish was a little bit too wet for everyone. We cut now to Ecrin’s bowls of soup

I think if they’d all known what Bacalhau a Braz was, this wouldn’t be an issue but there isn’t much worse in life than unexpected dampness.

For some reason Rhys was still hellbent on proving himself in the prawn arena with his main course of Prawn Dumplings in a Thai Red Coconut Curry Broth. Even on paper that is a confusing dish because surely a “Thai Red Coconut Curry Broth” is just… a Thai Red Coconut Curry Sauce? Any sort of attempt to wrestle with that conundrum goes out of the window because for absolutely NO REASON Rhys started plating his sauce-broth through the colander?

I think I love him? What can I say, incredibly nervous men who look like they do stage magic for a living are 100% my type

and now you all know why I saw CATS (2019) 6 times in theatres. I have talked to my therapist about this. But back to Rhys’s Confusing Broth

nobody liked it. Except Dean

but he is basically the somatic cell that every Default Setting Man that appears on the show has been grown from so no real surprise there.

Rhys was rounding off his menu with a more sensible sounding Ginger and Rhubarb Creme Brulee

unfortunately for the flustered chicken of a man, his brulees had mostly curdled so Gregg had ended up with more of a Rhubarb and Ginger Scrambled Egg

and not helping his case was the fact George had also decided to make a creme brulee and let’s just say of the two Rhys’s was definitely the one that gets locked in the attic and fed nothing but buckets of fish heads

and George had started his menu off on equally good footing with his pan-fried sea bass and a cauliflower veloute that everyone raved about

it is unclear on how sexy or unsexy the seabass was for Steven Wallis.

A Two Course Menu Ranking:
1. George’s Good Twin Brulee
2. SURPRISE! It’s Just Soup
3. Pineapple Upside Down Cake (Tone Indicator: Positive)
4. George’s Potentially Sexy Sea Bass
5. Ecrin’s Eggy Mogwai
6. Stop Body Shaming The Coley
7. Rhys’s Illegal Use of a Colander
8. Rhys’s Jam Omelette

We did have to lose one of the chefs and from the moment Gregg lifted up that spoonful of rhubarb ripple scrambled egg, I knew it was Rhys who was going to the Heaviside Layer

I never forget you, my nervous little man.