It’s only taken 19 series for someone to actively summon the devil.

Will trade Steps songs for Paella.

All’s Pair in Love and War

Having learnt nothing from the Terry Christian Situation last year, we continue onwards with the pair’s challenge. A challenge that routinely brings out the worst in the contestants that are just there in the hopes of being the comic relief of the series. Which wouldn’t be bad if Charlotte Crosby was slightly better at acting and not very obviously being inept on purpose

all the more power to Edith Bowman who knew she had been stitched up like a piece of subpar Victorian taxidermy the moment the concept of the challenge was explained to her and she was looking at the back of Charlotte Crosby and a sheet of Lemon Meringue Pie instructions

and the entire challenge for them would be Charlotte shouting “UH OH, SPAGHETTIO!” followed by Edith sounding like a mother on the brink of shining the Supernanny symbol into the sky

and Charlotte owning up to having done something very silly almost assuredly on purpose because Edith had explicitly told her not to and that’s ✨funny✨

If she seperated all the eggs at the beginning of the challenge HOW WAS THERE EGG YOLK IN HER MERINGUE

I liked Charlotte in the last episode, I felt like she’d put some genuine effort in. This episode? The personification of a headache that makes you feel like you could crack your head like an egg, and judging by the look on Edith’s face during their walk of lemon meringue shame, her brain has been reduced to an omelette

Edith, no jury would convict you.

On the other side of the kitchen, the big narrative for H and Craig was that Craig was getting frustrated because H, the less experienced cook of the two, had the instructions

however, I didn’t get a sense of any frustration between the two because I imagine Craig kept looking across the kitchen and seeing Edith chugging limoncello between sobs while Charlotte had a rave with her egg beater

yeah, he and H were getting on fine and ended up with two plates of pretty good cannoli for people who had never made them before, I mean at least they were both equally leaky

whereas Edith and Charlotte had two very different Lemon Meringue Pies that you’d have known who made which one without having even watched the challenge

I want this challenge to go away, it achieves nothing. It doesn’t even give us a good celebrity feud.

Pros and Cons

Speaking of challenges I wish would go away… We’re off to the Professional Kitchen Round with Charlotte being inflicted upon Ayo Adeyemi, the owner of Akara, a West African-inspired restaurant

I would like to nominate him for some sort of humanitarian Nobel Peace Prize because not once did he lose his rag as Charlotte tried to life hack her way into some on-the-job snacks by overcooking her tiger prawns

and very quickly seemed to realise that her whole schtick wasn’t going to fly when someone’s actually worried about the price per premium quality tiger prawn you just wasted so she very quickly went from thinking she’d found her happy place

to standing despondently by the deep fryer wondering if Ayo has ever contemplated having a table magician in his restaurant

and for my next trick, I’ll make all your good will disappear!

While Charlotte slowly checked out of putting any amount of effort into making her akara – the signature dish of the restaurant – Edith was doing a pretty fantastic job with her Suya Beef which came served with a sort of mushroom cloud of various cabbage

I spent a long time trying to make this work as an Oppenheimer pun but I really can’t – I’ve read every brassican listicle and NOTHING works.

The only thing Edith ever struggled with was she got a slight dusting of the suya spice crumb on portions of the plate that should’ve been kept clean

but not once did she get in trouble for overcooking the steak and seemed to keep incredibly calm despite her first order being for 6 of the darned things.

H and Craig were over at the modern Spanish restaurant Bibo, which I feel like has been featured on the show before because I recognise the name and I’m sure I made a rambling RIP Bebo joke about it. However, a search tells me I haven’t and this is just Mandela effect tapas. Supervising H and Craig was Mariela Ritchie

who would find her job was 70% teaching H and Craig how to cook tapas and 30% keeping H out of the tequila cabinet

these two got on just fine, which is probably why we got so much Charlotte Crosby doig Charlotte Crosby things – there was just no drama anywhere else. I’ve literally not got a single note about Craig, he got on perfectly well making two tapas dishes: ham croquettes and a sort of frittata

and H was similarly perfectly fine making his squid ink and grilled octopus paellas

you can’t even blame him for the absurdly small amount of aioli it’s served with, that was entirely Mariela’s doing. And for helping H get over his fear of cooking real rice, she’s getting some private Steps routine lessons

which is probably a better pay off than H giving her his Tequila Cheesecake recipe.

Trucking Hell

In order to find out who our first group of quarter-finalists were, the celebs had to do the good old Food Truck Challenge which now comes with its own shrine and could technically be considered a minor religion

and for what feels like the first time ever, not a single one of them was making a burger! I promise I won’t bring out the sandwich alignment chart even though it’s very tempting given H’s stuffed flatbreads and Edith making tacos in fajita-sized wraps that she didn’t have enough chicken to make look generous because someone had clearly bought her the wrong things

in order to fabricate an ounce of jeopardy into this challenge because it was very obvious Charlotte was going home, John and Gregg had to pretend to be annoyed at Edith for not making her own taco shells

which is particularly funny given there is not a single scrap of video footage of Charlotte making her own suspiciously uniform gnocchi

the crux of her dish being a pondering of “What if Loaded Fried… but Gnocchi?” as she covered the gnocchi in lardons and cheddar cheese which is a perfectly fine combination of mid-week-all-I’ve-got-in-the-fridge-ingredients

as for the honey and chilli dip – a complete hangover brainfart. The sort of thing that only sounds like a good addition to your chips when you’re cooking through a fog of £1 friday night shots and your flatmates can’t stop you.

H and Craig were both being a lot more ambitious with their dishes. The latter once again stressing that he’s definitely never successfully cooked this dish before

My guy. Stop lying. You’ve been cooking hasselback potatoes every night for the last 3 weeks and your family IS TIRED. You can’t whip out the LOL-I’m-Just-Stumbling-Through Uno Reverse Card EVERY CHALLENGE and then churn out a perfectly cooked dish as if by some divine miracle

you obviously like cooking and you’re a really good cook. That’s fine? Just own it.

As for H, he was going for the Welsh Pride angle with a duo of stuffed flatbreads. One filled with spicy Welsh beef and the other Welsh illegally identifying feta and spinach. A dish that had been dubbed “Daddy’s Flatbread’s of Heaven” by his kids and came with a sign I’m going to put my neck on the line and bet H made himself

if he nailed a 15 day old Tesco garlic and coriander naan bread to it, he could quite easily win the Turner Prize.

As for his uncrucified flatbreads, Gregg and John were both very impressed by how well he’d made them

and they did sound like the most interesting dish of the bunch – everyone else’s had shades of 3rd day post-Christmas fatigue as your family tries to find increasingly more elaborate ways to use up the leftover turkey that at this point is only the horribly slimy brown meat.

A Food Truck Dish Ranking:
1. H’s Turner Prize Flatbreads
2. OMG? Can You Believe These Hasselback Potatoes Worked? That’s So Funny and Random!
3. Edith’s Jumbotron Tacos
4. Charlotte’s Definitely Homemade Gnocchi *wink*

I was hoping that Charlotte could have the Vicky Pattison Trajectory through the competition, but during this episode she really did my head in and I was a little bit relieved to see the back of her

and yet, I’ll also kind of miss you, Blair Waldorf drawn from memory

and so, we move on to the first quarter final