Concept Idea: MasterChef: Family Feud. Everyone thinks they’re competing as family teams only to then find out they’re competing against their own family members in the initial heats.

It’s all gone a bit Pete Tong.

Ye Olde Invention Test

Knockout Week was kicking off with half of the remaining contestants taking on, what we were promised was, an old fashioned Invention Test

IMMEDIATELY I started rubbing my thighs at the thought of a Steak, Ale and Errant Strawberry Jam Pie brainfart. ALAS, by “old fashioned” they mean a fully stocked larder with the world as their oyster instead of the Days of Yore when they were given a hamper of 10 ingredients and pushed out into crocodile infested waters like Baby Moses without any of the motherly love. In the end we still didn’t *not* get a beef and jam brainfart…

Despite being 20 series into this show and Invention Tests abiding by one simple rule: STICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW, DUMB DUMB! Lee, whose entire personality up to this point has been “Take-aways, amirite?” decided he was going to show that he’s more than deep-fried chicken and high concept kebabs

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a contestant look more like they just wanted to crawl under the oven to become one with the cockroaches than Lee did with still half the challenge time ahead of him

that’s a man being hit by a metric Kenneth Branagh of hubris and all he could do to “save” his duck dish was to bury the burnt skin somewhere behind the studio and serve as little of the overcooked breast meat as he possibly could

it’s kind of an iconic disasterpiece – the unpeeled carrots that are slowly shrivelling in on themselves, the lumps in the puree that can be seen from space, the aggressive pickle that has no job being there? It’s a dish that fills me with a profound sadness. The saddest thing of all though is that if Lee had just stuck to making his fancy takeaways instead of swinging through 8 lanes of traffic without indicating, he probably could’ve sailed through to the next round which was a work experience placement in a fine dining restaurant.

If Lee’s fate wasn’t decided from the moment he reduced his duck skin to an Ash Wednesday accessory, then Mary choosing to also do a duck dish was basically nailing his coffin door shut

and hers looked beautiful, I’m mildly obsessed with her potato daisy chain

John spent a lot of time worrying that with her crispy potatoes, the cavolo nero and the duck bonbon that her dish would be too dry having completely forgotten that roast dinners are Mary’s religion – her holy trinity is Gravy, Roast Potatoes and More Gravy. She was fine.

The person who did struggle with sauce providing was Aaron who seemed to be trying to make a bibimbap – emphasis on the word “trying” because ^(rightfully) nobody ever called it that and Korea will not be claiming this student’s mid-week bowl of sad leftovers as their own

this is on a level with Mince-stuffed Mushrooms for me – none of this is a real dish, least of all the apple laden mince that confusingly tasted like trying to eat a bolognese smoothie

but my favourite part is the quail egg that he clearly grabbed just to be ~fancy~ and potentially because he didn’t want to interrupt Tom having his rom-com meet cute with the chicken eggs

and for his first date with his half dozen new partners he was making creme brulees, you know The Food of the People

ok, calm down Jean Valjean.

Tom’s relationship with the eggs did hit a rocky patch though

he did manage to make it up to them with a promise of a romantic getaway to a remote hunting lodge in the highlands

his brulees were slightly curdled but ultimately tasted quite nice. The highlight of the dish though was his shortbread which was his family’s Super Secret Family Shortbread Recipe

not to pick a fight with all of Scotland but shortbread has three ingredients, there’s only so special your grandmother can be. Eventually we all have to just admit it’s a Phoebe’s great-great-great grandmother Nestlé Toulouse situation.

Farmer Louise had decided to forgo the meaty offerings in the larder to create a dish that John described as “almost completely plant-based”

before listing off a series of components that were only plant-based including roasted pumpkin, pumpkin puree, jerusalem artichoke crisps, garlic mushrooms, cavolo nero and chive oil

WHERE DOES THE “ALMOST” COME INTO IT? Despite John potentially considering pumpkin an animal, he did enjoy the dish A LOT – declaring it as “tasting like autumn” by which I assume he doesn’t mean of cream chunky knits and brown suede knee-high boots

it’s Roasted Pumpkin Veloute Autumn this year, girlies.

Abi and Vera had both opted to do fish dishes, Abi assuming she had hit the jackpot because she had everything at her disposal to make a dish that she had already tried and tested on her mother

and technically, she had done really well with the preparation of the sea bream and cooked it just as well. Where the dish kind of fell apart was when it came served with 3 sauces and no potatoes

although to be honest, the most unhinged part of the dish might just be the equilateral three (3) deflating cherry tomatoes. Vera’s take on sea bream was just as confused but had the added downside of being difficult to eat because it was just a piece of fish surrounded by Vongole Henge

clams are enough of a greek punishment to eat on their own, dicing up everything around them into tiny pieces with minute dribbles of sauce outdoes even the most absurd punishments Zeus came up with. And he chained Prometheus to a rock and had an eagle eat his immortal liver every night. Do they mention that in the Percy jackson novels?

Lastly we have Ecrin who may have taken the old K.I.S.S method of Keeping It Simple, Stupid a little too far with her mushroom stuffed tortellini and sauce

in a 45 minute invention test? Sure! But when Lee has enough time to conduct a full viking funeral for a dead duck, you could at least roast a vegetable or stuff a chicken with some sausage meat as a little treat

everyone needs a gimmick.

An Invention Test Dish Ranking:
1. John’s Confusing Classification of Vegetables
2. Mary’s Duck Flex
3. Brulee and Grandma Paterson’s Shortbread Recipe
4. Abi Likes Sauce. A Lot.
5. Ecrin’s Tortellini and 25 minutes of Thumb Twiddling
6. Vera’s Zeusian Punishment
7. Aaron’s Bolognese Smoothie
8. Lee’s Anatine Viking Funeral

Aaron and Lee we easy no-brainers for elimination this episode as nothing really redeemed their dishes

and then it came down to a choice between Ecrin and Vera – the outcome being to yeet Vera which ultimately serves to feel cosmically unfair given Ecrin is about to woozily waddle into the middle distance never to be seen again

I will avenge you.

Pro, Pro, Pro Your Boats

Well, well, well. We meet again my mortal enemy: The Professional Kitchen Round That Is Unabashedly Just An Advert For An Unaffordable Central London Restaurant. This week’s Crimes of Overly Expensive Waldorf Salad being Nessa in Soho

perhaps we can forgive the expensive salad because who knows where those golden raisins come from. HOWEVER, I will absolutely not stand for their Year 8 PowerPoint Presentation on How Cities Earthquake-proof Their Buildings looking ass font

The criminal behind this obscene abuse of kerning being Tom Cenci (and sadly not Hot Incidental Background Chef)

Tom was a very good teacher and mentor to everyone – even Abi who didn’t quite understand Standard Restaurant Time (SRT) and was frying Tom’s last nerve but at this point my expectations of head chefs is so rock bottom, my heart melts if they don’t shout at someone for being a little over liberal with the parsley garnish.

Ecrin had made this round a little easier to deal with by making less of it. She’d taken one look at the faberge baked alaska she was meant to be making and exited stage-sudden-miscellaneous-illness

and we’ll never see her ever again. I hope they hold an emergency Wild Card Round and it’s just Matthew coming back to have the same trajectory of having two stellar rounds and then being overtaken by a brainslug and cooking one of the weirdest things you’ve ever seen.

Mary and Farmer Louise were on starter duties. Mary taking on the Super Popular and Definitely Viral Celeriac Carbonara That’s Absolutely Blowing Up On Instagram Right Now #CarbonaraGang

I’m not sure there’s anything that’s a bigger restaurant red flag to me than one that talks a lot about it’s social media metrics. That’s how we ended up with the whole Salt Bae Restaurant Circus. I don’t really know how you can even really call it a carbonara given he’d done away with both the pasta and the parmesan – the latter in favour of Unspecified British Cheese

I need to know how Gino D’Acampo’s bewheeled grandmother feels about this.

The only part of the service that Mary struggled with was getting to grips with spiralising her social media influencing celeriac – the rest of it went far too well for her, much to the chagrin of Abi’s innate desire to not take anything seriously

she’s still my ride or die this year – the show is nothing without Abi narrating everything like she’s making a seventeen part TikTok about a minor and completely unrelatable inconvenience.

Farmer Louise’s starter was a cod dish, which she was in charge of preparing in its entirety, fishmongering the scary fish and all

given it was her first time she did really well and Tom even let her walk away with a war trophy that I hope she starts wearing as a bandana

she didn’t have quite a smooth ride as Mary did come the actual service. She had a couple of temperature issues and undercooked pieces of cod but by the end of it she’d got the handle of the whole experience.

Abi and Tom were on Mains. Abi’s being Lamb on Creamed Spinach – her main struggle being to keep up with the pace of the restaurant and keep things synchronised with Tom who was preparing a chicken dish on a grill that looked like it belongs in a National Torture Museum

it’s very convenient because you can perfectly cook a steak dinner while brutally extracting information from a prisoner of war – the Tudors really did think of everything.

As ever, the indoor grill is by far the most unpleasant place to be in the kitchen, except for maybe the Ralph Fiennes Biblical Punishment Pantry. So with Tom not having any mishaps of overcooked or raw chicken coming out, I do think he deserved the special commendation he got at the end

and a polite little golf clap for getting through the whole experience without making a single barbecue anecdote even though he’s practically genetically bound to having a novelty The GrillFather apron

I’m sorry Tom, for some reason you’re the man I’ve decided to project all of my trauma on this year. It’s an honour, really.