MasterMidwife hasn’t been quite so successful.

We have a new frontrunner in the Doing Awful Things to Eggs stakes.

The Itty Bitty Canape Committee

In order to earn themselves a place in Semi-finals Week the contestants were having to create 9 portions of a canape for Gregg to play Chubby Bunny with

yes Gregg, we are well aware that you can easily fit 9 blinis in there.

There would’ve been 2 eliminations at this point but Ecrin had to nope out of the competition on the grounds of Unspecified Sudden Acute Illness

so only 1 person would be falling foul of a tic-tac-toe board of tiny morsels.

Only Mary decided to go for a sweet option, doing a take on Poires Belle Helene. This was the biggest leap in terms of presentation for her and if you told the Prison Food Mary of Yore that one say she’d be doing sphericalisation and serving things in pipettes she’d have whacked down a ladle of slightly grey chicken stew and told you to get out of the way

she did specify that the pear liqueur was to be injected into the tartlet, however Gregg’s intrusive thoughts got the better of him

the speed at which Gregg Wallace would fail a Saw trap needs to be studied, and I know just the person to carry out the experiment

speaking tangentially of Dr. George, he and Mary seem to have built up some sort of alliance

and because he’s really committing to turning this into a game of Survivor, he of course had to have a super secret second alliance with Brin

it’s probably for the best considering that Abi has a newfound approach to the competition and someone already had to mysteriously leave the competition

Abi was going to have to get those Showgirls marbles ready too considering she served up a set of unsettlingly grey steak tartares

she had at least kindly given them as little of it as possible to make it easier to avoid eye contact with the rapidly oxidising beef

despite them praising the flavours, we all know that 95% of a canape’s success rests on how pretty it is, so it was backstage to ready that poison-tipped dart for Louise

unfortunately Louise managed to power through the fog of batrachotoxin to produce 9 perfect chicken liver caneles that were never going to be enough to sate Gregg

the contestants could measure the success of their canapes based entirely on how long Gregg might spend chasing the waiter carrying the tray around the room for. This was largely Dr. George’s saving grace as Gregg struggled with the idea of deep throating a whole king prawn in public

but he was prepared to run a full marathon to get the tray off the server, if anyone was wondering about Gregg’s fitness regime.

Chris was also going for a seafood canape and given how prominently his lobster and scallop mousse waffle cones feature in the trailers and opening titles, they’re undoubtedly a Dish of the Series

it’s a very clever and well executed idea, I’m not entirely sure I was as thrilled by the idea of a bowl of Krustacean Krispies as John was

I’d rather have a bowl of Coco Pops.

Dinta had also gone for a novelty approach, choosing to make a teeny tiny full English Breakfast with Indian flavours. This did mean she needed extremely small eggs and quails weren’t going to cut it. So if you thought George’s Hard-boiled Confit Yolks were going to be the weirdest fate inflicted upon an egg, I have news for you. Ladies, Gentlemen and Those That Have Excused Themselves From The Gender Venn Diagram, I present to you: Injectable Eggs (eggjections?)

I’m not saying you should, but I do believe you could easily convince most far-right podcast hosts that this was a legitimate alternative to steroids. I mean, they did all start taking horse dewormers without any critical thinking.
In the end, Dinta’s canapes did look very cute

I mean this entirely complimentarily, they look like something a dog-friendly cafe offers as a breakfast for you dog. It was a bit of a Frances Quinn situation though with the dish very much being gimmick first, flavour second as neither John nor Gregg really got a hit of the Indian flavour she’d promised. At least her co-workers know where those syringes went now.
Someone in the comments of the previous post brought up the fact George gets called Dr. George while Dinta, A GP, never does – and I realise I have been part of that problem, I had genuinely forgotten that she was also a doctor because it’s buried so deep in the edit and they decided George’s one personality trait is being a Doctor With a Wife and Dinta’s is… Indian fusion food. It’s weird optics whichever way you look at it.

Tom continued to power through the British Dad Playbook with his take on Beef Wellington

interestingly, there’s more steak on one of those canapes than you’d ever get on a fillet steak main course on MasterChef: The Professionals. It was a very good canape though with perfectly cooked steak and a nice balance of horseradish.

Brin was doing a fancy take on his favourite takeaway, which feels a little bit like kicking Lee when he’s already down and out. The main obstacle facing him was, well, the fact he apparently treats Crispy Duck Pancakes like they’re the Ninja Warrior obstacle course

but he pulled if off and they were certainly daintier than some guy called Maxwell whose marriage fell apart because he spent their entire life savings building an obstacle course in the back garden of their mid terrace house only to fall off the monkey bars within seconds

there was no flopping about or monkey bars to be seen.

Lastly we have Cliodhna whose salmon and smoked haddock fishcakes were kind of so ordinary I may have forgotten to take notes and only realised I’d skipped them after rereading this recap before publishing it

it doesn’t help that my only note next to her name is “she’s worried about size” – aren’t we all? They were incredibly well made though.

A Canape Ranking:
1. Chris’s Mr. Pinchy Cones
2. Only 5.5kgs More Chicken Liver Required
3. Brin’s Bib-free Duck Pancakes
4. Page 7 of the British Dad Playbook
5. Cliodhna’s True Neutral Fishcakes
6. Deepthroating Prawn Stars
7. Mainlining Pear Liqueur
8. The Curious Case of the Missing Syringes
9. Abi’s Rapidly Aged Beef

It was a narrow escape for Abi this week, I thought Dinta actually having a display of process beyond finely dicing beef and confiting an egg yolk might pull her through – and probably should’ve – but at least Abi had the self-awareness to look like she’d got through act 1 of a zombie movie (that or she’s realising she’s invincible and her Magneto Arc starts now)

and sadly Dinta will not get the opportunity to add “MasterChef Semi-finalist” to her Instagram bio

I’m sorry they made us forget you were a fully licensed Doctor, Dr. Dinta had a better ring to it and everything.