He’s unlocked empathy!

I hope you like flatbread.

As usual the quarterfinalists had to cook a two course menu with this week’s guest judging panel being made up of a trio of previous winners: Kadeena Cox, Phil Vickery (Rugby’s Version) and Lisa Faulkner

imagine being in a marriage that mandates an annual subjection to the roulette wheel that is a Celebrity MasterChef quarterfinal – it’s certainly a unique dowry. Also, I am a big fan of Kadeena’s Sergeant Pepper costume.

Kicking off the quarterfinal was Terry who was of course very quick to remind us once again that he’s much too salt of the earth for fancy starters and desserts

and like hell was he going to risk his working class clout, so Celery Soup straight out of the rationing era it was

this bowl of anaemia would somehow become the most divisive dish of the series with the guest panel being of the opinion that it lacked celery flavour unless you took a mouthful of leaves

and so the only thing they could really praise were the croutons which did exactly what croutons were born to do. John however was not pleased with his cubes of burnt toast

but he and Gregg were fans of the celery taste

it’s “the dress” of soups – perhaps you see a good soup with bad croutons or maybe you see a bad soup with good croutons! I just see soup and that alone upsets me.

Terry’s main course was much less divisive because everyone could agree that the meeting place of Tandoori Chicken, Pesto and Caribbean Spiced Chantenay Carrots (?????) was a very confusing one regardless of the lack of sauce

it’s the sort of dish that you can only really amass at from the final dregs of a street party buffet – which was kind of the point because it was inspired by the mix of cultures of Old Trafford but unfortunately for Terry everyone else was in Salford

send sauce and maps.

Shazia was next and continuing her ardent advocation of bread, which is a genuine rarity on Celebrity MasterChef, starting off her two course menu with a Paratha stuffed with potatoes

or at least they were meant to be stuffed with potatoes, unfortunately Kadeena got a bit shortchanged in her paratha loot crate

one day Shazia will grasp the art of stuffing one food with another food, but at least everyone enjoyed how light and well cooked her flatbread was, which is a good thing because there’s more where that came from. The bread would continue to be the best part of her dish with the beef koftas being a bit lost in a tomato sauce that needed a little more cooking to remove the overpowering tomato acidity

if Shazia wants to flatbread her way to the final, I will support her – Wikipedia informs me that there’s at least 141 global varieties of flatbread for her to work her way through.

Lastly we have Max who has been immersing himself in culinary cinema in order to get himself into the right frame of mind for Single White Femaling Zaw Mahesh

as he basically just made the exact same dish he made when he worked in the professional kitchen in the last episode (I have to admire the galaxy brained power move of it)

apparently he didn’t learn the greatest lesson of all – that one cannot be sexy without a wonton

and Max’s noodles were unfortunately a sort of congealed mass of unsexiness (which is what I write on all my dating profiles)

but the rest of the dish was highly praised, especially given he had the best cooked meat of the day which isn’t *high* praise given Terry and Shazia both cooked vegetarian starters then Terry desiccated his chicken and Shazia’s koftas were but a gateway drug to more flatbreads.

Max was seeing his menu out with the classic Sticky Toffee Pudding and sort of winging his way through making his own ice cream which worked shockingly well considering how ice cream making can go on this show

and the moment he set that house brick of toffee covered sponge down on the table, everyone’s day was made

and it lived up to everyone’s expectations, so I think he can say it was definitely worth having to brawl with that tiger that lives under the counter

at a certain point you have to concede that your jeans are no longer jeans.

A Two Course Menu Dish Ranking
1. Max’s Sticky Toffee Tiger Fight
2. Aloo, Aloo, Where Are You?
3. Fistfuls of Unsexier Noodles
4. More Flatbreads, sir?
5. The Most Divisive Soup in Christendom
6. Terry’s Buffet Lunch of Regret

With his Sticky Toffee Pudding being declared Dish of the Day, Max was easily through to the semi-finals – and as a reward Maisie is going to let him watch Ratatouille this weekend! Or sorry, that’s just “my girlfriend”

I just need him to say her name one time – just to acknowledge that we do all know who she is.

Even when it came down to Shazia and Terry, I think given the dishes it was still pretty obvious how this was going to go and Terry did go home, which I have to say was a bit of a relief, I’m not sure I could take much more of his cartoon villain snideness

and I hope he has fun plotting his act of revenge from within the Shame Chimney James Buckley’s Lair of Chaos.

So our second semi-finalists are Max George and Shazia Mirza. Next Week someone gets a BAFTA for putting Cheryl Hole and Jamelia in the same heat!

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