I’ll fight you on that.

Is everyone having a competition to see who can plate up the fewest things on a plate?

Basics

Well, well, well, look who the plant-based cat dragged in

admittedly it wasn’t hard to track her down given the trail of bloody breadcrumbs she’d left in her wake

the return of Charlotte, or as the show only ever refers to as, Vegan-Charlotte does raise the peculiar question of “where did this heat’s 6th person go?” because surely there should’ve been 7 contestants this episode?

and because Vegan-Charlotte had had to eat someone to absorb their place (a real moral dilemma) she did have to prove that it was a worthwhile haman sacrifice with her vegetable and chilli potsticker dumplings

once you get over the ominousness of a black dumpling floating in a red sauce, it’s a very striking and good looking dish! John and Gregg were also both extremely pleased with how well she’d balanced her use of the chilli as the dish never felt overwhelming.

As ever there were a few contestants using the Wicked Wango Making My Own Pasta Card – not that it paid off particularly well for them. Especially Vera, who is going to go through an arduous court case in order to prove the authenticity of her claims of Italian childhood to the Official Pasta Authorities of Italy after having misidentified Tortellini

and further rubbing salt (or the lack thereof) into this slight was the fact her pasta was bland. But at least it looked like a smiley face complete with adorable boopable nose

and featured my favourite recurring MasterChef Brainfart: erect vegetables

the way she lovingly planted them into that mushroom puree like she was building a fairy house in the woods really tickled me. Italy might be keeping her at an arm’s length, but I for one love the least Vera looking Vera that’s ever existed

she’ll grow into it.

David was the second Pastaneer of the round, his being used in order to showcase a Crown Prince Squash that his mother grew for him. Unfortunately he did kind of crap the dish up and the whole thing ended up looking a little bit like a nuclear waste spillage

he absolutely didn’t need to make the seafood bisque because the dish would’ve been more about the squash if he’d just served the Properly Authenticated Ravioli™ and Grilled Squash dressed in the Parsley Oil. But I was still rooting for him at this point because he reminds me of a seminal moment in my appreciation of reality TV: Nathan James on ITV’s Superstar in which they were looking for The Perfect Jesus

it was the first show I ever recapped on a now long forgotten blog that is probably languishing somewhere in the backwaters of the internet. Truly the moment I fell well and truly in love with reality TV was when Andrew Lloyd Webber, on live television, chastised Nathan for sharing fanart of himself wearing a crown of thorns (and in my memory had printed the picture off to wave in front of him?)

imagine being the, assumedly 13 year old, theatre kid who drew that having been so pleased when Your Fav™ shared it on their socials and then Andrew Lloyd Webber actively using it against him? I hope they’re ok because I think about them a lot.

Speaking of Vintage Reality TV, we had a throwback to MasterChef’s origins with James having been a contestant on the Gary Rhodes 2001 version of the show

the good quality evidence only serves to prove the entire MasterChef back catalogue: my Holy Grail, my White Whale, my Fountain of Youth, my Dark Mystic Armour In 2007-Runescape-Specifically does exist

I spent 2 weeks laboriously chopping yew trees to look that low poly slutty. And I’d do it again. Name your price BBC, I’ll get you as many yew logs as you want for access to the MasterChef archives.

True to his vintage MasterChef origins, James was serving a dish that amounted to mostly being Meat and Two Veg while saying the word “bistro” has many times as possible to make it sounds fancier

but with most of the other contestants crapping their dishes up with unnecessary bisques, pears and cultural deception his dish did stand out for its clean simplicity, even if the chicken did feel more like the star of the show than his parmentier potatoes.

The last of the savoury dishes came from Sami who was telling us he and his boyfriend love pears while not acting like it at all

a melon baller hasn’t been wielded with this much threat since April Ludgate

I know what everyone is thinking, “you said this was a savoury dish and yet Sami is using pears” which yes, is kind of bonkers, especially when you find out he’s putting them in a gorgonzola risotto

it is actually a real dish and assuredly very nice and popular. JUST LIKE ME. I just wonder if Sami got the right kind of pear because I imagine the standard British supermarket conference pear selectively bred to be very sweet might not be the intended variety? But while I can’t really determine whether Sami’s dish was correct or not, I can tell you right now with no uncertainty that Patricia’s Milk Tart was in no way, shape or form a Milk Tart

BABE, WHY DO YOU THINK IT’S CALLED A MILK TART????

There were wild scenes in the Griffin family living room as the events of this custard wolf in melktert clothing unfolded. My dad literally makes one for just about every family get together

she has become his sworn enemy and I don’t know what he found more offensive: the lack of pastry, the fact she was making it with condensed milk or the fact she served it with fruit and a measly amount of cinnamon

I wish I could have filmed my parents’ reaction to this. They’ve been living in the UK for 20 years now but within the span of 12 minutes, Patricia had undone those two decades of acclimatisation: their Zimbabwean accents were flaring, Afrikaans was being flung, my childhood trauma was being relived. Things would not get better.

A Basic to Brilliant Dish Ranking
1. Vegan-Charlotte’s Finger-free Dumplings
2. Francophonic! At the Disco!
3. David’s Maternal Environmental Hazard
4. Vera’s Pasta Court Case
5. Sami… Likes(?) Pears
7. Charlotte’s Lost Fingertip
6. It’s On Sight, Patricia.

Easily getting their aprons this round were James and Vegan-Charlotte

it’s a relief she did so well, or we’d have a lot of consolatory apron conspiracy theories.

Squashed Hopes

For their redemptive Invention Test, this heat’s contestants were having to make a dish that featured butternut squash which at least meant David was happy

I do kind of wish he’d just made the same dish as he did in the previous round but with the changes Gregg and John suggested. Instead we got an equally ugly looking Butternut and Lentil Curry

which did stand out as one of the best dishes because he was joined by 2 soups and Patricia.

Vera and Sami had both opted for the safe and simple Butternut Soup option. The latter of the two had made the fatal error of telling John that he could’ve done something more interesting

well, because about 2 minutes ago someone stood in the corner saying “Soup would be great” a little too loudly?

why risk gnocchi when the person judging you has just ordered Soup of the Day?

and it was an OK soup! The only real critique was that he could’ve used more cheese and that it was a bit disappointing that both his dishes so far had been made in a pot which is only marginally better than Patricia only making things that are One Thing In a Bowl (And Sometimes That Bowl is the Same as the One Thing)

it’s Bunny Chow in theory alone. We do not claim it. The issue for John and Gregg however wasn’t the continued bastardisation of South African food but the fact most of the butternut wasn’t cooked at all. A probably more valid critique.

Lastly we have Vera’s Soup which she was serving with a vegetable fritter to show a little more culinary technique

although Gregg proceeded to call it a Rosti but kept pronouncing it like Sean Connery which isn’t wrong and is the correct German pronunciation but does sound wrong when he says it.

A Butternut Squash Dish Ranking
1. Soup (tone indicator: positive)
2. David’s I Can’t Believe It’s Not Soup!
3. Soup (tone indicator: Negative)
4. Charlotte’s Trail of Blood
5. It’s Even More On Sight, Patricia

Finding himself on the wrong side of the soup line was Sami for playing it a little bit safe

and joining him in an early exit and having to stand in the corner to think about what she’s done was Patricia

I’m morbidly curious to know quite what she could’ve done with koeksisters and bobotie.

A Two Course Race

For this heat, the contestants were going to have their dishes judged by Kenny Tutt, Tom Rhodes’s Hair and Natalie Coleman who I always forget used to work as a part-time techno DJ

sadly she has not combined her love of food and making inkjet printer noises. The Techno Music world’s loss.

David was getting the ball rolling with a fate tempting tandoori lamb rack that just about bleated as he prodded it

despite grimacing his entire way through the plating up of the not-quite-dead-enough lamb, Gregg still ate far too much of it

sir, it does not take 5 mouthfuls to declare a dish raw.

David’s main course was a lot better with the diners all being very impressed with the cooking of his gurnard which is my favourite fish that also sounds like the villain in a Hunger Games novel

I do think he suffers from a chronic case of Beige Man Syndrome – literally just 1 piece of greenery as a garnish would’ve made the dish seem more alive. But everyone was happy to overlook the unexciting appearance and slightly al dente rice

“the other way” being the Italian word for overdone.

The other three quarterfinalists had all gone for Main Course and Dessert combos. Vera making it her mission to get on the good side of The Italian Pasta Authorities by correctly identifying tagliatelle

we’ll ignore Kenny pronouncing it with a soft “g” and nobody giving him a second take. Overall it was a really strong dish for Vera that showed a lot of skill with the making of her Squink Pasta and the perfect cooking of her charred prawns.

Vera’s dessert was continuing her Italian Theme and with only two MasterChef safe options to go off: Tiramisu or Panna Cotta she went with everyone’s favourite edible fidget toy

sure it was another vanilla panna cotta but she’d also made a pistachio creme anglaise to go with it for no real reason other than to be a little different and everyone very readily demolished the whole thing (or at least smeared most of it around the bowl)

and she may well have already won the competition

when does the SoundCloud collaboration drop?

Charlotte continued to keep her food finger-free, starting off with a vegan remix of Buttered Chicken, so it was neither buttered nor chicken really (at some point you have to just call the dish something else)

it was a dish that everyone liked more in theory and one she probably just didn’t have enough time to actually pull off as everyone felt the spices were both not cooked out enough nor her tofu marinated for enough time

absolutely not a good enough reason to use the word “penetrated”.

Her dessert was a lot more crowd pleasing as the entire dining room went wild for her brulee topped lemon tart and blackberry coulis

it’s definitely in contention for being one of the stand out dishes of the series.

Lastly we have James who was fulfilling his destiny as Designated Retro Throwback by choosing to do the MasterChef classic of reinventing Fish & Chips and of course not forgetting to chant “French Bistro!” throughout

at this point James using the word “Bistro” is my only drinking game. I’m not *entirely* sure I’m willing to even really call his dish a take on Fish and Chips though because… it’s just a dish that happens to have a piece of fish and potatoes on the plate

by the same token a tuna stuffed baked potato is reinventing Fish and Chips. It was a very well received dish though with John complimenting his perfect seasoning and cooking of his sea bream.

James’s dessert didn’t go quite to plan, which you kind of knew when his chocolate fondants came out of their cases looking like bowler hats

on one hand, the chocolate fondants may not have been the gooey centred delights everyone wanted. On the other, James has pipped everyone to the Charlie Chaplin post on Great British Menu’s inevitable 75 Years of BAFTA series.

A Two Course Menu Ranking:
1. Vegan-Charlotte’s Greatest Hit
2. Piscenic! At The Bistro
3. Vera’s Redemptive Pasta
4. The Panna Cotta Goes BRRRRRRR
5. David’s Beige Gurnard
6. Charlie Chaplin, a portrait in Cocoa Powder and Espresso.
7. Vegan-Charlotte’s Poorly Penetrated Tofu
8. Baa. Ram. Eww.

With three of the four chefs having at least 1 dish with glaring issues, there was some debate to be had about who had the biggest mistake. It was obviously David, but they still tried to add some suspense

I’ll miss you, my own personal Jesus.