Welcome to the horrors of sentience.

Let’s all go shout about prawns together.

A Two Course Race

This week’s trio of celebrity guest judges was a bit of a hodge podge with the designated representative of the Celebrity MasterChef Champions Chamber being John Partridge who is apparently angling for the lead role of whichever 1970s serial killer Netflix wants to ill-advisedly dramatise the life of next

and sadly Judi Love doesn’t get her title of Celebrity MasterChef Christmas Champion 2021 recognised and has to settle for Semi-finalist instead

Why can’t you give her the respect she is entitled to?

and why do I know FAR too much about this show? I could have used this memory space for useful things like Algebra or my National Security Number.
The last member of the judging panel was last year’s finalist Mel Blatt

whose main contribution to the discussion was a vendetta against jus (be careful how you say that.)

It was a strong start to the round with Amy making a trio of prawn starters, a threesome of prawns if you will – she’s been thinking a lot about prawns for some reason…

a trio of anything is quite ambitious given they have to make four plates of each dish and all of her components had things that coudl easily go wrong – with a Prawn Toast, Prawn Gyoza and Coconut Crusted Prawns all on the menu

I was very impressed with how absolutely perfect everything was, and the diners all appreciated it too which was nice because Amy was very excited about getting to meet Judi Love

so the two of them can bond over a mutual love of shouting for prawns

women don’t want men, women want prawns.

Amy’s main course was Teriyaki Beef which didn’t receive quite as warm a reception as her Prawn Amalgam

the beef was a bit raw for John Partridge, which was a surprise because he was dressed like someone who might appreciate a fleshy meal, but the biggest issue was with the texture of her coconut rice

somehow too firm to be actual rice and yet not firm enough to congeal into a weapon capable of blunt force trauma – such is the unpredictably mysterious majesty of rice on Celebrity MasterChef.

Luca’s menu was starting off with the main course of Risotto, which John and Gregg were being incredibly patronising over because Luca eats risottos like a big boy

guess who’s getting to watch Ratatouille with Max George this weekend! Jamelia will chaperone.

There have been a lot of risottos on MasterChef (both real and fake – CUBES OF POTATO IN A BROTH IS NOT A RISOTTO) and most of them have been Mushroom Risottos, Luca however was being much more interesting by flavouring his with taleggio cheese and smoked goose – neither of which we see very much on the show, if ever, as you can tell from Gregg Wallace going into Inquisitive Turtle Mode

neither the goose nor the Taleggio Cheese really explains at which point his risotto became the colour of American Government Cheese™ though

the extremely synthetic looking shade of yellow being slightly misleading as everyone expected it to be very cheesy and ending up slightly disappointed that it was so mild.

Luca was the only one opting to make a dessert with his Chocolate Torte topped with Kumquats, the latter of which he pronounced like a 16 year old winging their way through a French oral exam (Kum-Kwaas)

it’s a tough race to decided whether this torte or Amy’s trio of prawn starters was the Dish of the Day

but when you talk about Luca’s you get to say “Sugary Kumquats” so he wins

or should we say <absurd_French_acccent> Sugary Kumquaaas </absurd_French_accent>.

Apl was continuing to cook his favourite Filipino food, opening his menu with a Prawn and Vegetable Tamarind Soup known as Sinigang

and you knew this wasn’t going to go down well with anyone because they had to cut to John and Gregg first to soften the blow of everyone wondering why it smelled so unpleasant

MasterChef has such a rigid and predictable format and edit (right down to the time stamps, I take notes, I know), it truly takes something special for them to break from that. So well done to Apl, your soup may not have been great but it has a unique power of its own.

The concerns over Apl’s menu continued into his main course of Bistek, which is meant to be thin strips of beef braised in a marinade – Apl however had succumbed to a case of The MasterChefs and was sort of deconstructing it into a more straightforward steak and sauce dish

and there were a few issues – the steak was a bit over for some people but the true consternation was over the sauce which had a very special ingredient: Definitely Not Sprite

which the diners weren’t privy to knowing about, so Judi Love had to sit there going insane because surely nobody would serve you a Sprite sauce? SURELY!

This has plagued her for months. She has a conspiracy theory pinboard at home, the Coca-Cola company has blocked her email address. Big Lemonade is trying to silence her.

A Two Course Menu Dish Ranking
1. Luca’s Torte by the Skin of a Sugary Kumquat.
2. Amy’s Prawnstar Threesome
3. Luca’s Pantone Violating Risotto
4. Amy’s Steak by Virtue of Not Including Sprite
5. Judi Love vs A Hint of Lemonade
6. Apl’s Format Breaking Prawn Soup

It wasn’t that much of a surprise that Amy and Luca were going through to the semi-finals, they’d each had one really good dish and one middlingly fine while Apl’s were both quite divisive – but he served his MasterChef purpose and skated through for long enough on Good Vibes™ alone

I wonder if they could convince him to do Strictly?

And so, after four weeks we finally have our Semi-finalists!

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