Up next on MasterChef: The Insurance Fraud Special!

And thus begins my Incredibly Personal Grudge of the Series.

Basic’d

It was mostly a trip to the Fruit and Veg aisle for this Basic to Brilliant Challenge – the only person defying conventions being Ben (as long as we’re letting Abi claim Plain White Onions™ were the star of her dish and not the whacking great slab of premium beef fillet.) He opted for a prawn dish which was actually two prawn dishes coming together to maximise their joint slay and… not being overly successful about it

he probably should have concentrated on making a decent prawn pasta dish because his pasta work was actually really good. Although if you’re going to serve a single Raviolo, you should really make it bigger than what you’d serve as multiple Ravioli. But I fully get the fear that serving just pasta and a sauce might not feel like enough so you start chucking in fennel snow, wasabi and watercress purees and the smell of an intense need to be validated by John Torode for a bit of flair. Especially when you’re used to only eating dinner at about midnight because of your ~process~

this in no way will be an incredibly frustrating recurring incident…

The runaway winner of the challenge was Tatiana who may or may not have been aided by an ancient Viking spirit she unearthed in Sutton Hoo

she was highlighting carrots with an entirely carrot-based taco which upon first glance I was highly suspicious of because it sounds like 2015 Instagram health food. However, John and Gregg assure us it was an incredibly nice dish

I just love that John and Gregg waxed lyrical about Marmite Carrots

So with Tatiana firmly winning the challenge, everyone else was left to fight over second place like a flock of vegetarian (not you Ben) seagulls. Although, Abi was less of a seagull and more of a bystanding wading bird who had been dragged into this veggie bum fight entirely against her will

he disinterested vibe was because she didn’t want anyone to suspect she was using Roscoff onions because she is afterall a mayonnaise heiress

friends, I fear she is my ride or die this year. The utter lack of urgency as John Torode began keying 999 into his phone is the sort of state of lizard calm that people spend years practising meditation to achieve

they scheduled her heat on a Leeds match weekend and she was going to make sure everyone’s lungs payed the price for it

as for what she was making when she wasn’t immolating sesame crackers – she was making a trio of onions to serve with a Beef Tataki

it did sound like a very nice dish but even if she’d not scorched her crackers, which is what John and Gregg mostly critiqued her for, I don’t think the dish shows enough process to have ever got her the apron right off the bat.

Abi had at least ensured that the onions felt central to her dish by preparing them three ways and hiding her premium beef fillet underneath them like a heart beneath the floorboards that was still gently mooing

Yogita however wasn’t generous enough with her stuffed brinjal having only thrown one sacrificial aubergine into her coconut rice volcano which was never going to be enough to secure the benevolence of John and Gregg

if we end up with another 35 degree heatwave this year, I will be blaming it on Yogita for an inadequate sacrifice.
The Beetroot raita was also possibly better on paper because I think we live in a moment of reality where the public reputation of pink sauce has been dealt a blow they cannot recover from

maybe a TikTok ban will save lives.

The last of the main courses came from Khinley and I would like it on record that the first thing I said to my mum when Khinley came on screen was that he looked like a philosophy student got lost on their way to an exam and not even 5 minutes later… BAM! It turns out I have a GayDar for philosophy students, I call it my “de GourneyDar” (too niche?)

the floppy-haired blood of Socrates courses through his veins – there was no way he was ever going to be anything but a philosophy student, it was fated from the moment he was born.

Khinley’s Basic to Brilliant thought experiment came in the form of showing that the even the humblest of potatoes could rise to greatness in the form of Gnocchi which he was serving with a Korean pork stew and a Mango Muchim on the side

for some reason only Khinley called it a Muchim – everyone else either called it a salad, a salsa or a “sort of relish” and I just think they could have made the vague effort to call it what it was because it does become glaringly apparent that the only food they ever do this to are dishes from East Asia. They’ll put on a phoney French accent for a Bouillabaisse but if you dare make them try to pronounce 2 Korean syllables it’s a salad or death.
Unfortunately for Khinley the muchim was a bit of a sticking point with it not really complimenting the dish – which was already a little bit confused with the gnocchi getting completely lost within the stew.

Lastly we have Max who was ending things on a Banana Tart, which I was a little disappointed by because I wanted to see the Banana and Roti dish that it was inspired by

but this is MasterChef so he tried to make his own pastry which didn’t exactly go to plan

but he tried to hide the damage beneath a Salted Caramel which looked more like an Assaulted Caramel

it’s a bit of a disaster but it was a tasty disaster, and John, like Tatiana digging up an ancient Viking burial site, could at least appreciate the work put into the last remaining bearing wall

Here Lies Ragnar, son of Agnar.

A Basic to Brilliant Ranking:
1. Tatiana’s X-ray Vision Tacos
2. The Best Preserved Pieces of Tart History
3. Abi’s Stealthy Beef
4. Yogita’s Insufficient Sacrifice
5. Half of Ben’s Dish
6. Some Potatoes Just Don’t Become Gnocchi

Our first set of apron-wearers were naturally Tatiana and then for having done perfectly adequately Max was joining her

he’s quite lucky he was in this group because in any other he would’ve struggled to clear second place.

Putting the Egg in Gregg

For their chance at redemption and to earn their aprons the remaining contestants had to create a brunch dish that had to feature both a poached egg and a hollandaise. Or if you’re Abi, mostly just a poached egg and hollandaise sauce

the nduja slathered over her raft of buttery asparagus was doing most of the heavy lifting and both John and Gregg wished they had something for mopping the plate with.

While Abi kept things overly simplified, Ben… was not as he stubbornly refused to learn a goddamn thing

suddenly I entirely understand how my therapist feels when she spends an entire session talking me through the irrationality behind my imposter syndrome only for me to come back the very next week like a deeply insecure boomerang lamenting the fact everyone hates me and I’m not good enough.

Ben’s Everything Brunch ended up being mostly everything except the Hollandaise as he put the merest of drizzles across the top

would he learn anything from this? No, because sadly John and Gregg have more composure than 2005 Tyra Banks

every now and again, there is a contestant who would have benefited from having their head sandwiched between two slices of bread and called an idiot sandwich

I think they should let John and Gregg do it once per series just to spice up the jeopardy of the format.

Ben wasn’t the only one suffering from a bad case of the Everything Brunch as Yogita treated the challenge like it was an all you can eat hotel buffet and she couldn’t make up her mind

there’s a dish in there somewhere but it’s definitely not in the guacamole that everyone refused to call a guacamole

ok, maybe I was too quick to judge them on the anglicising of a muchim.

Lastly we have Khinley who was the most nervous going into this because he had no experience making a hollandaise. John was not making things any easier as he watched the first batch go wrong like someone craning their neck to get a good look at a 6 car pile-up

despite the first batch splitting because he added the butter in too fast, his second one turned out alright but his Brunch did look quite sad and anaemic and nobody wants to eat the Freud of brunches

they were more complimentary of it than I thought they would be when I saw him ladelling out those watery looking mushrooms but the fundamental failure of the dish was the uncooked flatbreads and the fact John’s egg yolk had gone AWOL

to be fair, if I saw what Yogita had done to her egg yolks I would have fled the building too

I’m glad MasterChef continues to be a haven for people who just want to do really awful things to eggs.

A Brunch Dish Ranking:
1. Abi’s Gluten-free Life Raft, I Guess?
2. The Freud of Brunches
3. Yogita’s Eggs-periments in Brunch Theory
4. Whatever The Opposite of Personal Growth Is

This was not the strongest of redemptions for anyone. Abi may have gone too simple but it was at least coherently simple so she was the easy choice for the first of the two spots in the next round. As for the other three, you could’ve tossed a coin to pick the next person (those famous three-sided coins.) In the end, they favoured Ben and we ended up losing Khinley and Yogita

which was a bit frustrating because Ben would go on to make the same errors like a fly ramming its head against the window in a bid to escape the kitchen. AND I hadn’t even made my Khinley, Tulibu dibu douchoo joke yet

the things Ben took from me.

A Two Course Race

Between Eggageddon and now, Ben had been a busy boy having gone home and proved himself to be the Jules Romains of menu design because he hadn’t done enough already

somewhere around him having to scrap several elements of his main course John seriously began contemplating that Idiot Sandwich Rule

he did very clearly run out of time but his starter managed to make it to the diners in its entirety, even a little too much entirety as he hadn’t had the time to slice his tuna so they had to do that themselves

which was probably for the best because at least then he didn’t know he’d served the steaks up too raw

the reason I love Civilian MasterChef so much is because it is the only edition of this franchise where someone would serve an entire tuna steak up as a starter because they live blissfully unaware of mark-up costs. And then of course follow it up with premium venison fillet which was at least the middle school abridged version having cut out the lengthy B-story about the venison bonbon, the kale and the pickled blackberries causing mischief in Rumšiškės

I can’t believe they sacrificed my opportunity to make Voltaire jokes just to put Saliha into a deeper state of depression than any piece of Venison since Bambi’s mum ever has

“I wonder if I could use that dessert spoon to dig my way out of here?”

While Ben continued to be the YouTube prankster that refuses to learn a single thing from their numerous near arrests, it wasn’t a stellar round for a lot of the contestants. The diners struggled to get enthused about Max’s Chicken Ballotine and Butter Chicken Sauce because it was all a little bit dry

John however was just pissy because he felt he had been short changed on the dry chicken sausage

to be fair it was a main course and maybe everyone should’ve received a whole chicken sausage each but at least they could fill up on a whole tuna steak starter.

Max’s dessert was better received as everyone raved about the combination of Vanilla Panna Cotta with a Mango and Chilli Puree

it could have potentially looked a little prettier but I also might look a little worse for wear if I’d been subjected to three magnitude 9 earthquakes at the same time

panna cotta is just sensory play for people over 35.

Tatiana had a very similar run to Max with her Tagliatelle alla Puttanesca failing to impress because the pasta was overcooked and the dish too salty because she’d slung capers at it like confetti at a wedding

personally I am of the belief that one can never have too many capers but I also come from a family that has salt shakers that live in the living room. *Googles the symptoms of too much salt* Oh… that explains a lot.

Tatiana’s dessert was a very interesting take on Poached Pears – soaking them in bourbon and flambeeing them then serving them alongside a black pepper gingerbread and creme fraiche

it did bring me my favourite moment of the episode as Thomas Frake was trying to insist he liked it while looking frantic and slightly sweaty

like John insisting anything with cayenne pepper in it isn’t bothering him <3

Abi was the only one to get through the round unscathed with her Scallop and Prawn starter getting deemed Dish of the Day by Nisha

it’s very clean and elegant looking which is a nice way of saying “a bit boring and clinical” but she’d cooked everything well and the bisque she served it with was great. It was unfortunate that the sauce she’d made for her main was a little too thin but it still tasted great and her Lamb Loin and Fondant Potato were both perfectly cooked

which is a rare occurance on this show. Especially from someone who started their run by being a fire hazard.

A Two Course Menu Ranking
1. Abi’s Clinical Seafood
2. Max’s Fine Dining Fidget Spinners
3. Abi’s Lamb Jus Juice
4. Tatiana vs Thomas Frake
5. Just Some Nice Puttanesca™
6. John Torode’s Quest For My Sausage
7. Ben’s Heavy Debted Restaurant
8. Ben’s Abridged Venison

With Max, Abi and Tatiana all having at least 1 very well received dish, it could only mean that the most frustrating run on MasterChef I can remember had to come to an end

which was a relief because there’s only so many blood vessels I can pop.