The Gregg Wallace conspiracy theories deepen.

Today we ask the important question: “Is Creme Fraiche a dipping sauce?” (it’s not.)

At a Cloche for Words

While MasterChef: The Great Unwashed decided to experiment with their format like a mad scientist with dead bodies and lightning, Celebrity MasterChef hobbles around in the corner like the comic relief Igor it is as we start with the usual test of lifting DEFINITELY NOT PRE-ASSIGNED CLOCHES

Evangelical Christians have The Big Gay End Times Smurf From Paris 2024, I have The Celebrity MasterChef Cloche Test Is Rigged. Case in point being Craig “Wait-That’s-Not-Gethin-Jones” Doyle getting sweetbreads

proceeding to mention he has definitely never cooked them before so many times that it began to sound suspicious before perfectly preparing them and deep-frying them – Your honour, I rest my case.

is the dish kind of nonsense? Yes, it’s lamb neck McNuggets on a bed of coleslaw with a dollop of creme fraiche on the side? However, it’s slightly less nonsense than H from Steps serving whole prawns with a pile of rice and a similar dollop of creme fraiche that he valiantly tried to pass off as “a dipping sauce” in what feels like the finger food version of the Allegory of the Long Spoons

granted, he did better with this challenge than most people who get hoodwinked by surprise crustaceans during these rounds by virtue of not even trying to prepare them. Meanwhile, Charlotte Crosby was across the way making what was once a pigeon look like The Thing

STOP! HE’S ALREADY DEAD!

Did… did you have to ask?

Charlotte has already cemented herself as my favourite purely for how often the show will cut from someone like H having a genuinely sincere Miss Congeniality moment about how he’s trying to improve his cooking for his family because he’s trapped in a Daedalian labyrinth of pre-cooked chicken and this show is his golden thread (Hi, I’m the Greek Myth girlie)

to Charlotte hooting “I AM SO PROUD!” for no reason other than the fact she just identified a head of broccoli while Edith “The Ghost of a Scullery Maid” Bowman descends into pure panic

She’s perfect and her Pigeon dish was mostly pretty great too! Or at least the pigeon was perfectly cooked – she hadn’t actually ended up using her broccoli, I imagine she’d imprinted upon it a little too strongly

The only real issue was the slightly lumpy mash and the fact she’d taken the Weyward Sisters approach to making a red wine jus

sadly, it’s only a silver in the Horrible Things Done To Sauces Olympics as the Witchy Jus is edged out by Breadsticks Rue

sadly Snoochie Shy did not lift that cloche to reveal a platter of debranded Schar grissini and instead came face to face with baby aubergines and an experiment to run

where there’s a will, there’s a way.

As is want happen to any amount of decloched aubergines, they immediately became a miscellaneous curry because nobody knows what else to do with them except throw them in a saucepan and hoping it would eventually stop being a really off-putting shade of pink

her curry wasn’t actually bad – usually they’re a textural nightmare that tastes like you’re licking turmeric off the skirting board. Where she had stumbled was choosing to put it in a dog bowl

it really doesn’t help with the Anonymous Slop aspect of it. BUT! Between her and H we’re two for two on celebs actually managing to cook rice! I feel like Charlotte Crosby holding some broccoli

and seeing the challenge out was Edith Bowman who was apparently taking a method acting approach to the competition and had come dressed as Mrs. Beeton

she’d lucked out with apples which you can turn into the most mid crumble and get away with murder. She was however going for a reverse Saxon-ing and stealing Germany’s precious pastries (WE’LL TAKE YOUR CURED MEATS NEXT!)

her Scottish bootleg strudel just being a filo parcel that she’d at least taken the time to decorate because she was killing time trying to decide what to serve with it without having to use the ice cream machine

eventually she’d decided on half a bag of icing sugar and what was described as “a creamy apple sauce” which I do not want to have to talk about

Gregg however will be releasing the most unhinged sex tape of the century

let’s all sit with that mental image for a bit and process our emotions about it. That’s called ✨distress tolerance✨.

An Under The Cloche Dish Ranking:
1. Edith’s Sex Tape Strudel
2. Charlotte’s Actual, Real Dish
3. My Inexplicable Craig Doyle Grudge Made Me Do It
4. The Most Impossible Finger Food
5. Snoochie’s Dog Bowl Curry

Dinner Saboteur

In order to see how justifiably they can send home Snoochie Shy, (VERY JUSTIFIABLY IF HER RICE STRAINING METHOD IS ANYTHING TO GO BY!)

MA’AM?????? Absolutely feral behaviour.

The celebs all had to cook a two course dinner party menu consisting of a main course and a dessert. In true Celebrity MasterChef fashion this did result in a cheesecake, a crumble and at least two chocolate fondants which was just Craig Doyle realising his destiny

he just hadn’t counted on Charlotte Crosby stealing his moment

although he did still edge her out because while both of their fondants had gooey middles, Charlotte’s was less of a gooey middle and more of a Gooey Entirety (tone indicator: positive)

I still think she wins because hers were bigger and we all know that’s what counts in a dessert. Is there any feeling better than ordering a dessert in a restaurant and finding out it’s the size of your head?

Craig’s main course was the standard “celebrity who has obviously thought a lot about this competition” fare of a pan-fried hake risotto with dill oil and crispy kale

I’ve already started the series’s inexplicable grudge with Craig so I think we can guarantee he makes it to the final. It’s too early in the competition to be cooking such normal food. Embrace chaos, shove a tiny cocktail umbrella in some cream cheese, dowse it in a syrup that looks as though if you ingest it you become a monster the Power Rangers have to defeat

worryingly, H didn’t seem entirely sure why it was so green but it was a very good dessert because there was so much tequila in it John could barely see straight anymore which meant he couldn’t really focus on the toxic green syrup melding with the biscuit below the surface in what looks like a display of badly disposed of toxic waste

and Gregg was flinging out racial stereotypes I thought we’d left in Come Dine With Me circa 2012

Gregg took Bake Off’s Mexico Week as a challenge.

As for H’s main course, he was juggling poussins and failing to fully get a grasp of how the induction hobs worked

but when life gives you burnt chickens, you cover them in a coriander garnish and hope nobody asks any questions (also, another creme fraiche dipping sauce????)

and it worked! They loved his chicken and it was nice to see some poultry prepared in a way that didn’t involve Charlotte Crosby snapping bones off like she was trying to extract government secrets from a tiny bird. Cher Ami would never have stood a chance against her.

Speaking of Charlotte, we haven’t discussed her main course of Bastardised Paella as she proceeded to swim where Jamie Oliver had but doggy paddled

Spain would very much appreciate being excused from this narrative. But while Gregg was willing to argue the semantics of a strudel with Edith Bowman, nobody was fighting for the honour of the paella as Charlotte produced the standard Bri’ish PaeYEAHYAH

I’m not going to knock it, I too am a practitioner of the dish, and I shall even defend the burnt base of Charlotte’s paella

THAT’S THE CROZZLE! IT’S THE BEST PART, JOHN! It is a most honourable gift bestowed unto patron from chef. My family go to war over The Crozzle because our hob is an uneven rust bucket so only one side of the pan ever crozzles. It’s my personal Hunger Games. I am the President Snow of Vaguely Spanish Cuisine.

Charlotte’s Paella wouldn’t be the only dish to come with a few unwanted crozzly bits as Edith Bowman yeeted her Tiramisu onto an unwashed baking tray liberally slathered in goose fat and briefly saw her entire life flash before her eyes to the tune of Nero’s fiddle

it’s very *RECORD SCRATCH* [FREEZE FRAME] “You might be wondering how I wound up in this situation.” – her predicament being that she was trying to remove the excess cocoa powder she’d dusted on it, which really begs the question of HOW MUCH COCOA POWDER HAD SHE PUT ON THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE?

it may not look like a very pretty dessert, but it is a very good miniature model of Uluru. Safe to say, she didn’t try the same trick with the second one, so she ended up serving the What Your Ordered vs What You Got meme to John and Gregg

in a rare instance it was John getting the attic-bound, fish head eating twin of the two. Both he and Gregg were more than happy to continue dining out at the dessert themed 2for1 cocktails happy hour Edith and H had created. I hope nobody drove home.

Edith had started her menu off with a nod to the hotel she grew up in, the dish being Haddock in Mornay Sauce with vinegar and honey carrots, fondant potatoes and some spinach

her haddock was a little overcooked, which had Edith looking a bit like she feared her ancestors would haunt her for it

but John was a big fan of her fondant potatoes, so at least he was going to get to faintly taste them again in a few minutes

mmm, cocoa powder and goose fat.

Lastly we have Snoochie who was following up the previous challenge’s creamy coconut curry with… another creamy coconut curry

was it good? Sure! Although John has in the last few months decided that peppers don’t travel east

ok, now try telling that to every supermarket’s mixed vegetable stir-fry packets and while you’re at it, be a dear and ask them to stop putting the whole cabbage stalk in there.

Snoochie’s dessert was a potentially very crowd pleasing Peach Crumble

unfortunately both John and Gregg complained about how dry it was which is understandable given there is no visual evidence of them using the Creme Anglaise she served it with. A fair hesitancy given her first custard self-combusted

and I’m not sure I would trust a custard that Snoochie Shy whipped up in about 3 minutes given her title of Breadsticks MacGyver.

A Dinner Party Dish Ranking:
1. H’s Absolutely Nonsense Margarita Cheesecake, Fight Me.
2. Craig Doyle’s Chocolate Fondant But Mostly The Whiskey Cream
3. Craig Doyle’s Risotto. Clap if you care. No? Ok.
4. Charlotte’s Gooey Entirety
5. Kahlua and The Faint Taste of Goose Fat
6. A Poussin’s Trial By Hob Fire
7. An Apology Letter To The Spanish Embassy
8. Edith Bowman’s Scottish Haunting
9. Creamy Coconut Curry 2: Thai Red Boogaloo
10. Snoochie’s Crumble and Combustible Custard

Snoochie did very much feel like the expendable one in this line-up – Charlotte’s good for a few more laughs and the other three were all significantly more invested in the process. She very much felt like she was there because her agent agreed to it

Don’t worry Breadsticks MacGyver, you’re one step closer to a mediocre run on Strictly with a checked out Gorka.

And so, we’ve lost our first!