Paint me like one of your French MasterChef Quarterfinalists.

I would like to read the email exchanges between Danielle Harold and the production supervisor, please.

A Two Course Race

This week they’d managed to herd cats and get last year’s finalists in as the guest judges – this of course being Wynne Evans who we are about to have to suffer through roughly 7 weeks of on Strictly until he gets trapdoored by hubris and Demon Barber cosplay during Halloween Week

he gets to belt 1 operatic note during his inevitable Week 1 Carmen themed tango and then he’s banned from ever doing it again.

The other two of course being Amy Walsh who has finally been dignified with not being introduced as “out of work actress, Amy Walsh”

and Luca Bish who was conducting the whole thing as less of a judging experience and more like a wake for his wisdom tooth

and if he didn’t play his cards carefully, he’d lose his other wisdom tooth to a pugil stick

I don’t care how badly they have to rig it, if Harry doesn’t make it to the round where everyone has to perform a little skit before serving their meal, I’m going to be SO MAD. I just want to see John and Gregg having to play Powerball in order to eat 5 fillet steaks and a bucket of raw egg yolks or whatever the Gladiators consider lunch.

Speaking of that, I have been very pleasantly surprised by how much actual normal food Harry has cooked – it’s a problem we run into a lot on Celebrity MasterChef. I’ll never forget the horrendous Dark Years of Lettuce Wraps the TOWIE cast members subjected us to.
Harry started his menu off with a main course of Sticky Chicken, Rice and continued Chloe Burrows’s legacy of making sure John and Gregg eat their greens

it also came with a side of backhanded flattery

fuck Wynne Evans’s drag, right?

It was a very crowd pleasing dish and in all honesty probably the best dish of the night – it wasn’t the most technically demanding or creative dish but everyone was very enthusiastic about it

which is exactly what you want from a vibes-based menu

and continuing the vibes was his Plantain Cake dessert which came served with candied mango, a jug of maple syrup and ice cream – the latter of which was clearly his priority given he ran across the room with it like he was saving them from a burning building

he is physically incapable of not moving in a way that looks like he’s trying to prevent someone from running between his legs in The Gauntlet.

His dessert was a little more divisive

and by that I do mean it was far too sweet for Wynne and Luca was furiously texting his dentist about having his other wisdom tooth removed. And things would only get worse for them because Danielle’s dessert was literally just a ring of slightly warmed up pineapple, coconut ice cream and caramel sauce

which according to Luca was actually a very clever eco-political statement

and to Gregg it was a 2012 Come Dine With Me micro-agression

some things can be left on the cutting room floor like Rochenda leaving little bits of sweetcorn everywhere she goes

other than Danielle’s dessert secretly just being a Pina Colada served by Aesop’s passive aggressive fox

she hadn’t managed to properly cook the pineapple which was the nail in her coffin following the fact she’d overcooked the chicken in her Thai Green curry

but again, I appreciate the effort she’d put in with her menu, or at least her main course. Granted, this was mostly done at gunpoint because the snarky production supervisor she’d been emailing was refusing to buy her pre-made coconut ice cream or a Thai green paste from a jar

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I HAVE TO COOK THINGS?

Lastly we have Rochenda who was walking a knife edge of me dismissing her entirely with the glorified salad that is a Scallop Ceviche

but she had at least jazzed it up slightly with her plantain chips for some texture and a semblance of effort

and she had a nice anecdote of it at least being inspired by her partner being based in South America while he worked on a movie so it didn’t come across entirely as being done because it wasn’t overly demanding.

My biggest gripe with Rochenda’s menu was that I wish she’d made a little more effort to theme it around the South American jumping off point for her starter. Instead her main course was chicken with sweetcorn puree and mushrooms, which as Gregg pointed out was a little uninspired given how adept and knowledgeable Rochenda has proven to be over the previous 2 episodes

it was a really good looking dish and extremely well cooked – as you would expect from chicken that’s been cooked like a Frankenstein science experiment

I just do think there are a number of ways she could have made a similar dish with a little more creativity and cohesiveness between it and her starter.

A Two Course Menu Dish Ranking:
1. Harry’s Sticky Vibes
2. Rochenda’s Frankenchicken
3. Harry vs Luca Bish’s Teeth
4. You Can Slightly Win People Over With Ceviche
5. Danielle’s Forced Thai Green Labour
6. Danielle’s Extinction Rebellion Pina Colada

Danielle definitely bottomed out this challenge – I think she’d premeditated her exit because NOTHING about that dessert says “I am trying my hardest to stay in this competition”

I’ll miss you, The Daenerys Targaryen We Have At Home.

And so, we move on to Heat 3!