Pitch Idea No. 475: Mortal MasterChef Kombat for the Nintendo Switch 2.

How long could you survive The Abi Experience?

After whittling the cast down by half through a mixture of challenges and on-set medical experts, we emerge from the nebulous quagmire of Knockout Week with our 8 semi-finalists

and because I am still hyper fixating, here they are as their Animal Crossing ‘sonas

– Ariadne, did you do this just to make the Chris as a pig villager joke?
– How dare you presume something so completely true.

Happy Anniversary!

We’re kicking off Semi-final Week with the obligatory Big Banquet Challenge as the contestants take to Fishmonger’s Hall to cook a 3 course dinner for 70 diners. The guests being a veritable Agatha Christie dinner party of people directly and tangentially involved with the show over the last 20 years. Sadly niche recappers weren’t on the guest list.
The cast of our Murder Mystery Dinner of course being the hosts of the evening

the detective who has ~eccentric~ methods of solving murders

the incredibly obvious red herring

the special guest, the mysterious spiritualist who conducts an after dinner seance

the anxious priest who is uncomfortable with the whole thing but is also too socially awkward to say anything so kind of just sits there sweating in his cassock

the recent widow who wears a shade of lipstick that the matriarch of the family considers “too gauche for a mourning period” and naturally communes with her recently dead husband during the seance

the boarish older son who annoys everyone throughout the evening and becomes the body in the library because everyone has motive

and of course, the murderers!

obviously, you’re always going to suspect the man dressed as Peewee Herman but the addition of the eccentric spinster as his accomplis comes as a surprise. And if you don’t like this 33 chapter MasterChef Murder Mystery Dinner FanFic I’ve written, it’s got to be better than William Sitwell’s WattPad erotica

the world objects to this marriage.

In order to fully celebrate MasterChef: A Historic Landmark, the entire menu was frankensteined together by taking inspiration from dishes cooked by previous champions in their final menus. Of course, to cope with the mammoth workload of catering for 70 people, they were working in teams, on starters you had Chris & Louise

on mains it was Tom, Brin, Cliodhna and the The Void Cliodhna Was Shouting Into

and on dessert duties it was George, Abi’s Corporeal Husk and Mary

teamwork would be the only help they were getting because despite the dishes being decided and designed for them, they were having to play a guessing game when it came to quantities

WHY? Can you imagine if someone on Great British Menu was asked “How many kilograms of strawberries do I have to prepare for your Tubby Custard panna cotta?” and all they did was shrugged? Andi Oliver would shove them in the industrial oven and no jury would commit her.

The duo on starters had a relatively smooth service which was a surprise considering Chris was having to do some serious Jesus Feeding The Many maths (also known as: Girl Maths BC) by turning 25 red mullet into 70 portions

meanwhile Louise was going through a fishmonger baptism of fire by having her first experience of preparing scallops being to do it 70 times over

it’s up for debate whether that’s an easier or harder punishment than being left to finely dice 6 whole jars of baby gherkins

but the two of them worked really, really well together to get their dish done on time

I don’t know if it’s the best looking dish, I think it needs a little more contrast or to be served on a black plate. As is, it’s all a little bit pallid. That’s not Chris or Louise’s fault, John was the one in charge of all and looked like someone struggling to keep their lycanthropy under control

there’s always one contestant who inches John ever closer to that mental breakdown that he’s long overdue. In this case it was George and his attempt to negotiate with the unimpedible concept of time

he was on dessert duties, but for now we’re concentrating on the main course of a Duck Breast and Pigeon Wellington which was designed almost certainly just to take the mickey out of Tom who was left to remove the stems from each individual spinach leaf

and if you want to know how much spinach is needed to create dishes for 70 people, here’s a visual

so it’s no wonder he’d accidentally forgotten to put the fenugreek leaves into his enigmatic and ambiguous quantity of mushroom duxelle

the disaster of nobody being able to detect the trace amounts of dried fenugreek avoided, the rest of their prep went quite well, even if their wellingtons were on the wrong end of the rodent size spectrum (don’t trust Brin with your hamsters, he’ll use them as pigeon wellington practice)

it would be wild if someone were to make a dish based on an operating table haha…haha… ha?

I cannot tell you how excited I am to recap Episode 20, it is UNHINGED in a way that only ammeture home cooks can achieve. Like 6 people dropped acid during a Great British Menu marathon.

Unfortunately the main course service became a little rocky right at the end as Brin concentrated on writing a speech to earn himself the first ever pre-wedding divorce

and Tom was off somewhere picking an enter field of spinach out from under his nails, leaving Cliodhna to scream into the void about needing pigeon wellingtons out of the oven

she could’ve maybe been a little more proactive in the situation but I don’t think I would be in the most logical headspace either if I had had to peel 140 tiny carrots and listen to a man with pigeon blood covered hands talking about operating on guinea-pigs

the wellingtons did end up being a little bit overcooked but it was still an enjoyable enough dish, the sauce being a particular attraction for most of the diners

Over on desserts, the theme was Everyone Is Having An Awful Time as Abi just did her best to disassociate after having her tactic of trying to never make a dessert ruined

the cracks in the Mary Is Just Your Nice Grandmother facade were slowly being chipped away by the fact Abi was astral projecting to Malaga

and George was setting off so many alarms you’d have thought there was a nuclear reactor about to blow

ice cream machines continue to be a menace to the culinary world as the big expensive one broke, forcing George to use the cheap Argos catalogue one instead

everyone thinks to the robotic apocalypse is going to be instigated by those military Black Mirror robo-dogs or the robocop egg timers

and always seem to overlook the fact ice cream machines have proven capability of ruining people’s lives. So, I don’t really blame George for trying to forgo culinary technology altogether – if he’d had half the chance, I do think George would have made a trek to the Arctic to freeze that ice cream rather than risking arguing with an ice cream machine in morse code

oh, so we have machines for whisking but nobody has thought to make a mechanical spinach stem remover? PRIORITIES PEOPLE, PRIORITIES!

Over in Mary’s Own Personal Hell, she was just hoping that the yuzu juice was alcoholic to take the edge off

this was because of the pastry and definitely not because Abi kept puncturing every tart case she tried to put into the tray

I believe you Mary…

In the end George managed to neutralise the threat of an AI take over and Abi and Mary had gone through a yuzu flavoured couple’s therapy, so their dessert was lovely

the only critique was that the ice cream could’ve had a stronger mango flavour. I think everyone would have been a lot more grateful had they known George had just reenacted the entire plot of I.Robot in the kitchen.

Seven, Hate, Nine

As a reward for doing so well during the banquet, Chris and Louise were spared the Cook Off and got to go and chill out on The Island of Forgotten B&Q Home Decor

the rest of the contestants were fighting for the four remaining spots in the competition. In order to decide which 2 would be leaving, they had to cook a dish using an ingredient that they dislike. Or in the case of Mary, your mortal enemy

her hatred of rabbit stemming from non-Watership Down induced childhood trauma

she definitely had the hardest time in her commitment to method acting her way through a one woman production of Fatal Attraction. The resulting dish being at least somewhat worth the surprise round of exposure therapy. The rabbit was very well cooked but Gregg had a few issues with the sweetness of the tomatoes

however John was smashing that EMERGENCY MARY PLOT ARMOUR Button like his life depended on it

not that he needed to considering Cliodhna once again became a cropper to a chocolate dessert. Her first attempt at a Chocolate Orange Cheesecake curdling, resulting in a banishment to the sink to think about what it had done

this left her with 20 minutes to remake her cheesecake AND a bitter chocolate mousse. The mad dash resulting in a dollop of chocolate mousse that I will be immaturely giggling at for at least the next week

it’s only the second worst thing to happen to chocolate this year…

and at least this time there were no monsters climbing out of the walls

given the last minuteness of the whole ordeal, the cheesecake hadn’t set BUT, it was at least still all in its container and not across the MasterChef kitchen floor like last time

but you knew she was going home when Gregg offered her the saddest second “buttery biscuit base” as a consolatory compliment after she’d gleefully told him this was the main reason she’d decided on a cheesecake

before dropping the most unfortunate pun considering her initial curdled cheesecake sat in the MasterChef oubliette contemplating its crimes of inconvenience

Phrasing.

I do enjoy this repeating of history theme for the returning contestants: Farokh never learned to manage his time, Matthew had 2 good rounds then went absolutely insane and Cliodhna continues to explore the Bristol Stool Chart through the medium of calamitous chocolate desserts. We’ll have to wait to see if Mary snaps and starts plating things up with a Mach 5 speed ladle again.

The only other dessert in the room was from George who has a deep-seated repulsion to pears that I would love to use as a case study in the counselling course I’m currently doing (The counsellee is becoming the counsellor!)

I did worry that a lot of these dishes would end up being cop-outs in how the disliked ingredient was incorporate, however George was going pears to the wall with his pear three ways (and none of them an ice cream)

it’s a very pretty dish and most of it was well received, the only critique was that his almond cake was a little bit too dry but at least he’d given them custard

despite the remaining contestants all doing main courses, George wasn’t the only using fruit as their disliked ingredient as Brin had chosen Grapefruit

grapefruit is an excellent shout for this challenge – it tastes like an orange as played by hagsploitation era Bette Davis. Brin’s idea for incorporating the grapefruit being to use it in as many ways as he could but still distract everyone with the moral dilemma of cooking an octopus

it’s a stunning looking dish and received rapturous compliments from both John and Gregg about how beautiful and technical it was. I’m sure Brin is a deadcert for the final and potentially should’ve kept this in the arsenal for it

but I have faith he’s got things up his easy-clean latex sleeves.

Tom was also going for a seafood dish, hoping to overcome his fear of the shape of a mussel

don’t make the joke. don’t make the joke. don’t make the joke. don’t make the joke. don’t make the joke. don’t make the joke.

In the end, he’d failed to make the most of his mussels, featuring a paltry trio of them amongst what I can only described as a fruit salad you’ve tasted twice

this is… horrific? And only making it worse was that the fish that was lurking underneath it all was overcooked and his mussels were underdone, as demonstrated by John going the full Freddy Krueger on them

well, someone better change it back to “0 DAYS SINCE SOMETHING AWFUL HAPPENED TO SHELLFISH”

Lastly we have Abi whose hated ingredient was blue cheese and the inevitability of aging

her blue cheeses of choice being Cambozola and Dolcelatte – the job of specifying she would leave to India Fisher over fear of contributing to the precariousness of literally everyone’s international relationship at this moment

there’s only so many apologetic muffin baskets we can send the Italian embassy before they begin sending them back with a horse’s head in them.

For her Blue Cheese dish, Abi was serving a Blue Cheese Dauphinoise and Croquette alongside pieces of fillet steak

and she’d certainly succeeded in using the entire plate of blue cheese she’d been given as she struggled to not turn her nose up as soon as she got within 5 feet of the plate

but for the approaching septuagenarians in the room (John and Gregg are both only in their late 50s) it was a rather lovely dish, save for the absurd brainfart that was the plum sauce used only in sticking the croquette to the plate

it’s so… bloody looking.

A Disliked Ingredient Dish Ranking:
1. Brin’s Great-fruit and Octopus
2. The Portrait in Abi’s Attic
3. Mary’s Childhood Trauma
4. George and the Giant Pear
5. Cliodhna vs Chocolate 2: Cheesecake Boogaloo
6. The Shape of Water in Reverse

We had to lose two contestants at this point and Mary full believed she was getting the trapdoor treatment as she nearly woobied herself into being Ecrin’d

however, she’d only smothered rabbit in ketchup whereas Cliodhna had served a dubious mousse and Tom had made one of the worst looking plates of food I’ve seen in quite a while

at least they can put MasterChef Semi-finalists in their Instagram bios. That’s at least worth a Kenwood sponsored post at some point.

And so, we march on towards the most unhinged dishes in MasterChef history: