Celebrity MasterChef 2023, Episode 5: Fistfuls of Unsexy Noodles

Nothing has ever felt more like a hostage situation.

Deep down, we all feel like Mrs. Doubtfire.

Pairs

So, they at least got what they obviously wanted out of this challenge this episode as the moment Terry realised he wasn’t in control he decided that the world was going to burn around him

and while Shazia braced herself in feline alertness for the ever increasing likelihood that Terry would start throwing eggs at her

Max and Remi were getting along like the Wonder Twins as they made a plate of stuffed squid that looked like it was straight out of the pages of a Fanny Cradock cookbook – something about the squid cup of salsa seems very… Her.

and of course it made sense to make Remi the team leader as she led Max through a self-defense class to ready himself for the inevitable Cephalopod takeover

and once they’d practiced their war cries and ripped the innards out of the squid, they just had to stuff them with a filling of tomatoes, red peppers and croutons before garnishing it with a caper salsa and served alongside an aioli that they’d both put off right to the end because neither of them really knew what an aioli was

they did do really well, but I do feel like the stuffed squid was a much simpler dish to get through and they probably could have given Shazia and Terry pre-made pasta instead of making them guess how many eggs you’re meant to use

which would have at least meant that the poor production assistant wouldn’t have had to make an emergency run to the nearest supermarket to get more eggs as Shazia and Terry tried to balance their initial dozen on top of dollops of ricotta like circus elephants on a ball

leading to the greatest yolk massacre you’ve ever seen

We lost so many lives on this day.

They did at least both get 4 ravioli made though…

kind of, Terry’s were actually full, Shazia’s were a sort of myserty pasta loot crate – you might get an egg yolk, you might just get a puff of over-boiled egg steam

so if you’re still hungry there’s a pan full of Omelette Water

you’re all banned from using eggs ever again.

Pro, Pro, Pro Your Boat

For the pro kitchen round, the teams had been re-split up and we’re going to generously assume it was because of scheduling conflicts and not because Shazia and Terry have started a Shakespearean blood feud

unfortunately for Shazia, Remi was not team leader this time as the two of them took on a lunch service at the Colony Grill under the watchful eyes of Ben Boeynaems

I love his name so much, it’s like the fake name you give your Arcane Trickster Rogue when they try to infiltrate an evil necromancy cult.

Shazia could not escape the pasta menu though as she found herself in charge of the pasta interloper, Gnocchi – her biggest challenge (alongside having to make enough gnocchi to feed the suspiciously casually dressed guests who were filing in to a restaurant selling £20 gnocchi) was to try not to have herself thrown out for her terrible gnocchi jokes

it’s the greatest challenge she faced all episode, which is saying something. She did cope pretty well with the service though, her gnocchi caught a couple of times and I think her attention was much less divided than the other celebs – she mostly just had to fry gnocchi and check that Remi hadn’t let her love for the blowtorch get the better of her

Remi continued to strengthen her affinity for seafood with a cod and cockle chowder dish

and I think with a little more practice she could have really got the hang of the kitchen – she managed to handle the cooking of the cod perfectly throughout the service and she was born to be a chef if the three exclamation point shout is anything to go by

but she did get a little sloppy with her platings at times because how could she forget her G!

meanwhile with Max and Terry…

oh.

To pay for his crimes against eggs and Shazia Mirza, Terry’s community service was to prepare and cook Remi’s war trophies

it was quite a complex dish as both the carcass (such an appetising turn of phrase) and the fillets had to be deep-fried and with so many orders on the go Terry did kind of just start chucking fillets into the fryer all willy-nilly and very quickly lost track of which one was the first one

but it seemed like his game of fish fillet roulette mostly worked out quite well – there never seemed to be a case of raw food going out but he did struggle with the game of dead fish Jenga

I still don’t know if you’re meant to actually eat the deep-fried fish corpse or if it’s like a spooky parsley garnish that you shyly nibble on at end of your meal and the waiter judges you for trying to.

Meanwhile, Max was making fistfuls of unsexy noodles

sadly the footage of head chef, Zaw Mahesh, telling Terry that his dead fish weren’t sexy enough was lost in the editing room.

It is something of a miracle that these two made it out of this kitchen alive because they were not having fun and Zaw was certainly not having fun playing the Generation Game’s Conveyor Belt Memory Test with Max’s bowls of unsexy noodles

one cannot be sexy without a wonton.

Truck Almighty

As is probably to be expected for the next several weeks, the Food Truck Challenge gave us another burger, except this time Remi was putting a stop to the tyranny of the Brioche Bun by reinventing bread entirely and sandwiching her chicken thighs between a pair of purposefully made rice bludgeons

it is an ingenious way to solve the ever expanding populace of Badly Made Celebrity Rice. John and Gregg however did not fully appreciate her population control measures because they simply could not work out how to operate the burger

it’s like an infomercial in which the fragile nature of eggs mystifies the average American

so if Remi wants to, she could make an absolute killing in Kentucky if she started manufacturing Remi Burgz’s Big Burger Bib.

Remi’s Rice Burger does raise an interesting dichotomy within the Sandwich Alignment Chart

a burger would ordinarily adhere to Hardline Traditionalism, however the substitution of the bread for rice takes it very swiftly to the Structural Rebel side of the board – and she wasn’t the only one creating sandwich discourse because Max was serving a Chilli con Carne, Game of Thrones-style

it’s a structural rebel through and through, but as the distant Mexican cousin of the Sloppy Joe does not stray to far into ingredient rebellion. And yes, John and Gregg both got their own bread bowls which intimidated John just a little bit, but they were more than happy with the flavours of the chilli – praising Max’s “secret ingredient” – dark chocolate! Which is a bit like your dad claiming the secret ingredient to his Bolognese is Celery Salt like it’s an old family recipe and not something her learned from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in 1998.

More sandwiches! And more ~Mexicana~ as we depart from Max’s coup of his friend Bob’s Big Chilli Picnic Table

to visit Terry’s Tortilla Truck where you just know he’s wearing a sombrero, a poncho and aggressively shaking maracas at anyone who walks within 5 feet of him

he would also be wearing the fake moustache but it fell in the guacamole and won’t stick to his upper lip anymore – the whole thing has a very sinister 2007 Come Dine With Me vibe to it, but his chicken tortillas did work out for him (we’ll ignore the accent work)

also, technically a sandwich under subclass Burrito, species Taco.

Shazia was the only one stopping me from going mad with sandwich power, although I suppose wrapping it in the newspaper technically makes it a – [OH MY GOD, ARIADNE SHUT UP THIS BIT ISN’T WORKING]

the newspaper served two purposes – to preserve the authenticity of the British Fish and Chips but also, completely mummifying it within the pages of the local gazette somewhat hid the fact the skin of her fish had stuck to the bottom of the fryer

and with the batter containing most of the masala spices, it did mean that the curried flavour wasn’t quite strong enough. But she’d made really good chip shop chips which are legally required to be slightly soggy.

A Food Truck Dish Ranking
1. Terry’s Mildly Insensitive Mexican Food Truck
2. IT’S MAX’S CHILLI TABLE NOW, BOB!
3. Shazia’s Mummified Masala Cod
=. Remi Burgz’s Big Bad Burger Debate

Ultimately it came down to either Shazia or Remi getting axed ahead of the second quarterfinal with Shazia’s dish lacking some technical prowess and Remi’s apparently requiring a masters degree in burger engineering to eat. I did think it was curtains for Shazia based on the overall rounds and because how dare you eliminate someone with as much charisma and joie de vivre as Remi, BUT ALAS, Remi is gone

I really liked her and now who’s gonna keep Max safe and out of the influence of Terry Christian?

And so, on to Quarterfinal 2:

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