I am *still* trying to work out what John was overreacting to here.

Time is a circle and history is perpetual.

A Blast From The Past

Continuing the nostalgic theme of the 20th anniversary series, in order to decide who would get to go on to Finals Week and the world’s most stressful trip to Singapore since the first series of Race Across The World the remaining semi-finalists had to create a dish inspired by a previous contestant. This once again meant the BBC proved they are needlessly keeping the MasterChef Archive under lock and key as they recycled footage from as far back as Thomasina Miers winning the first series in 2005 when the MasterChef set used to be about as well lit as an amateur porn film that didn’t want you to notice the stains on the carpet

if they released the back catalogue of MasterChef to me, I would pivot entirely to retro recaps of the series. Which I realise probably isn’t a decent offer on my behalf. RELEASE THE TAPES.

The contestants were allowed to choose someone from any series of MasterChef. Louise was the only one opting to go for someone from The Professionals series, purely because she wanted to show off the selfie she got with Adam Handling (my greatest regret is not getting a selfie with Jono of Ruining-Grace-Dent’s-Life-With-a-Bone-Marrow-Brulee fame when I went to his restaurant)

sadly nobody had opted for a Celebrity MasterChef contestant, I would have loved someone to try and redeem Gemma Collins making a Cointreau and Mango Curry

I just want to know if someone could make it work.

Louise was remaking Adam’s Cod and Whey dish with an additional Crab and Curd Fritter on the side – the only thing missing to really round out the Miss Muffet experience being a giant spider (she could have at least borrowed a cricket from Chris)

for the most part it was a well received dish – John and Gregg both loved the fritter because they don’t watch it with their mother who upon hearing someone is cooking with brown crab meat will tell you “Brown crab meat tastes like poo!” every single time without failure. John did have issues with his particular piece of cod being overcooked

however, Gregg for once had managed to score himself he premium perfectly cooked dish with his cod being great. He does deserve a little bit of a treat every once in a while considering how often he has to play a game of Raw Chicken Roulette.

Abi had also gone for a fish dish having taken inspiration from Tim Anderson of Winning Series 7 Fame when the trophy used to be a glorified cinderblock

she was cooking Haddock two ways – butter poaching one piece and forcing the rest of it into being a sausage casing for a scallop and brown shrimp mousse

I just think ballotines are one of the most absurd things that we associate with fine dining. I also love that Wikipedia considers them close enough to a Turducken to link to it under the See Also section of their article on ballotines

consider the French humbled.

As well as her Haddock she was cooking mussels and continuing the tradition of amateur aspiring chefs desperately trying to make purple potato look like anything other than the breakfast eaten on a Disney Channel sitcom about aliens

me and my family did sit there in stunned silence for a moment when I said I would take inspiration from my all time favourite MasterChef Enigma, Stefan, famed for driving Jane Devonshire to madness through the medium of whatever this was

and then Abi proceeded to whip out white fish and purple potatoes. So what I can conclude from this is that Stefan is just Tim Anderson’s evil attic-dwelling twin

I will not however be dissuaded against my opinion that purple potato anything is completely absurd but that’s all part of the Civilian MasterChef charm and it suited the 2011 throwback.

The last of the main courses came from Brin who was using last year’s Omar as his inspiration. The particular dish he was drawing inspiration from was Omar’s Lamb and Chocolate dish which also came with grapes just to up the absurdity of it all. Brin was only adding to the chaos with whipped feta, romanesco broccoli and taking the time to pebbledash his grapes

the resulting dish did look very pretty which isn’t that surprising from Brin who has always had very refined presentation

the pebbledashed grapes turned out to be something of a religious experience for Gregg

and John wasn’t too far behind and in desperate need of a lie down

to be fair, I think I would have also needed a lie down just to gear myself up for whatever it was that Chris had planned for dessert

truly everyone else is playing checkers while Chris is playing interdimensional chess. His source of inspiration was the very first winner of MasterChef’s rebooted format, Thomasina Miers from 2005 when they didn’t have a trophy so all the winner got was a bouquet that was 90% cellophane wrapping

particularly her Mexican street food – thankfully choosing to leave out the part of the Wahaca menu dedicated to throwing feta and halloumi at Mexican food. His dessert was a Tres Leches Cake, however of course it couldn’t just be a tres leches cake, it had to come with crickets, a corn cremeux, tequila churros, a horchata meringue and mangonada lolly

Horchata and Mangonada are both Mexican beverages – Horchata being a plant-based milk drink and Mangonadas are mango and lime smoothies layered with a chilli chamoy sauce to give them the look of a frog trying to tell you its poisonous

it’s a classic Chris dish – completely surprising and toeing a line of being enjoyable and feeling a little bit like someone is playing a trick on you

I can’t help but feel that should’ve been captioned as “You make shocking WERK” but sure.

Lastly we have Mary who was taking inspiration from David Crichton, specifically cooking a dish he made in the challenge that she got eliminated during

she really looked the unofficial History Repeating Itself theme of the series directly in the eyes with this one, huh? Because sadly for Mary she was not winning gold for her Olympic Pineapple Tarte Tatin

she got the classic dessert critique of it all being “too sweet” but she did also have soggy pastry

but they did at least like her rum and coconut ice cream, even if they felt it was, again, too sweet to go with everything else.

A Past Inspiration Dish Ranking:
1. Putting the Can in Mexican
2. Brin’s Chocolate-coated Religious Experience
3. Stop Trying To Make Purple Potatoes Happen
4. Little Miss Muffet Sat On A Haddock
5. The Participation Trophy in the Pineapple Olympics

With Mary and Louise being the only two to have issues with their dishes it would inevitably be one of them losing out on the title of Finalist. Once again, the mocking machinations of history echo through the wormhole of time that is The MasterChef Hangar and Mary once again finds herself eliminated by a pineapple tarte tatin

truly Final Destination was a documentary.

And so, we have our 4 finalists!