and Lars is his favourite.

Today, a lesson in foods rhyming with “Jake”.

Cloching the Place Up

As ever, we start with a new batch of celebrities revealing a bunch of ingredients that feel like they were selected by a particularly sadistic Ready Ready Cook contestant. This week being Halloumi, White Pudding, Mushrooms, Hake and Figs. Despite their best attempt to facilitate at least 1 dessert this round with the figs, nothing in this world was going to come between Tamer Hassan and the rack of lamb that he IMMEDIATELY made a beeline for

I have no doubt in my mind that you can make lamb and figs work as a dish, especially if you go down the Turkish-Cypriot route that Tamer was… vaguely gesturing towards more than actually aiming for

it’s difficult to make figs not look like facehugger egg pods when you’re trying your hardest. Tamer, as is evidenced by his complete ignoring of spices and continuation of the celebrity anti-sauce agenda was generously operating at 5% capacity

the bits of lamb fat sitting there like the lures of a carnivorous plant to trap flies are DEEPLY unsettling.

Even Jake’s dish seemed to have more effort put into it and it was… a salad if the only way you define a salad is putting a pile of things together

he was pretty chuffed to have decloched the halloumi, which isn’t surprising given he’s the personification of Cheeky Nando’s. I’ll bet my weight in gold the Halloumi Sticks are his starter of choice (AND HE’S RIGHT FOR THAT) which is why he was trying to make a chilli jam, again if the only way you define a jam is… submerging chunks of raw chilli in soy sauce

I speak about the Duck a l’orange scene from My Family A LOT. Basically Susan wants to make Duck a l’orange except she doesn’t have oranges so she uses pears and she doesn’t have duck so she used beef mince. It is the one funny scene from My Family and my search for it proves I… may be making it up. But I have never seen a better recreation of it than this Theseus’s Ship moment

he’s the definition of “wrong method, right answer”

because Emma Thynn of Longleat and relentlessly feeding Aljaz cold salmon during Strictly training hours fame (I REMEMBER) came face to face with white fish and incorrectly identified it as cod. However, Jake was at the back muttering “hake” because it’s the only fish he knows (almost certainly because it rhymes with his name)

he’s the mirrorverse of Luca “fishmonger” Bish.

As for how Emma got on with her hake, John and Gregg both loved the dish, I thought it looked a bit of a un-self-restrained mish mash of… things that kind of just look like someone had made autumn leaf confetti

but all of it was well cooked and at least seasoned and spiced incredibly well.
Emma’s an interesting case. I always expect to be kind of irritated by her but I think she’s a genuinely really charming and surprisingly down to earth kind of person. Don’t get me wrong, she still gets eaten come the revolution, but we’ll make sure to do it alongside a roasted mediterranean vegetable puree and a lunchbox of cold salmon

her training room salmon was one of my all time favourite running jokes on Monkseal’s blog. Series 17 was Chris’s best work and a level of writing I feel I can only aspire to.

Christine McGuinness was particularly pleased that she hadn’t pulled the fish because it’s one of her biggest sensory triggers when it comes to food, although I’m not entirely sure she was much happier with her white pudding sausages

and given how much she spoke about how she struggles with textures and noise in the kitchen because of her autism, I think she did incredibly well with her breakfast, especially making scrambled eggs which I think are textural marmite for most people

I wouldn’t be mad at this in the average cafe? And I’m not sure what else you could make with the white pudding?

Lastly we have Jamie MacDonald, who was being assisted by his sighted guide Max who had no care in the world for the cameras and would constantly eclipse Jamie <3

he was mostly there just to take things out of the oven and vaguely describe filo pastry to Jamie

which Jamie was using to make mushroom and bacon parcels that John and Gregg were more than happy with

he probably didn’t need to make the croutons, or he could have mixed them through the salad – which is actually a real salad, please take note, Jake Quickenden.

An Under the Cloche Dish Ranking:
1. Christine’s Perfectly Adequate Beige Breakfast
2. Emma’s Autumn Wedding Hake
3. Jamie
4. Theseus’s Summer Salad
5. Tamer’s Lamb and Alien Egg Sacs

And Everything’s Cool as Long as I’m Getting Dinner

Having endured the stress of Anonymous Sausages in the previous round, Christine was staying firmly in her happy place of British Beige Dinner™ with a child-friendly dinner party starting with Chicky Nuggies ‘n’ Chips

we were of course calling them “Goujons” because everyone in the room was A COWARD, and for what it was the dish was good – great chips, crispy nuggets. The only thing letting her down was the dipping sauce, which again, she’s a stronger soul than me because this sauce fills me with such a deep, dark fear inside my soul

that’s a shade of noncommittal pink I can only describe as being Boarding School Vienna Sausage Casserole Pink. Or according to Dulux it’s “Berry Whip”

nightmare colour. You can almost guarantee someone on Interior Design Master will paint every wall of an entire inner city office in it at some point.

As for Christine’s dessert, she was making a boozeless tiramisu because she wanted to keep it child-friendly and the smell of coffee was already enough of a hurdle for her without having marsala wine trying to turn her brain inside out

John was very disappointed with the lack of alcohol and I would just like to momentarily don my fedora and neckbeard merkin to needlessly defend Christine on “Umm, Actually…” historical accuracy grounds that technically the addition of booze is the bastardised version of Tiramisu

The Tiramisu is a lie.

None of that really hides the fact that Christine’s entire menu was the equivalent of waving a white flag or tipexxing your name onto a tube of lipstick

she came, she cooked, she realised the next round was a professional kitchen where she’d have very little control over the environment and she went home. And I respect that act of culinary seppuku. It’s important to know your limits and I think she extended herself enough in this one episode to feel she achieved something important for herself.

Even with Christine essentially self-eliminating through the medium of Delia Smith’s Scandalous Freezer Section Lifehacks, there was genuine umming and ahing over her and Tamer. While Christine’s Tiramisu had the dignified elegance of BenDeLaCreme’s cunty lipstick reveal, Tamer’s dessert had the head scratching perplexity of Kimora Armor chasing Gia Metric around the stage like an evil bird

nobody knew what to call this, least of all Gregg who just started firing out redundant adjectives like a your level 1 sorcerer firing Magic Missiles at anything that moves

The oat biscuits were biscuity AND oaty, you say?
And we’re definitely not calling it a cheesecake – it’s just glitterbombed mascarpone, forest fruits and biscuit mixed together. Not helping this taxonomic exclusion from the Butteridae Biscuitbasea genera was the fact Jake had made a real cheesecake

although he does get points knocked off for fumbling this exceptionally easy slum dunk of a buttery biscuit base soundbite

YOU HAD ONE JOB!?

Tamer’s Ravioli main course was at least more technically demanding than serving what was essentially a Muller Fruit Corner and Hobnobs

for having made his own pasta with a rolling pin because he was too scared of the pasta machine, it was really good! I still think his pasta was definitely undercooked

and he probably should’ve been eliminated which I guess technically makes him the Trixie Mattel in this convoluted Drag Race metaphor I’ve trapped myself in.

Jake also had a surprisingly good main course with a perfectly cooked fillet steak, Dolphin Noise Potatoes and a Blue Cheese Sauce

and as John and Gregg said, his menu was probably the most crowd pleasing – a fairly polite way of saying “you are this year’s default setting man”.
So far Jake has proven to know what hake is and cooked steak and cheesecake. Does he only know how to cook food that rhymes with his name? Time will tell.

On the other end of the relatability spectrum was Emma who was making a shellfish medley with a veloute

I can’t say it’s a dish that excites me or that I would jump at the thought of eating but John and Gregg at least appreciated that she’d cooked everything really well and put some effort into her “pretty bits”

and her dessert would be equally aesthetic in a very “my private chef who earns more per month than you will in a year taught me how to do this” kind of way

clearly she’s had MANY a lesson since her time on Strictly

again, thank you Monkseal for preserving needless core memories, for some reason the absolute flatness of that cake has stuck in my memory for the last 5 years.
Strictly desperately trying to retain its fun, family friendly image in light of recent scandal definitely means we’re getting more of these “we’re doing a paso doble, so lets have fun making a paella together!” style VTs, doesn’t it? Anything to show less training room footage involving Nancy literally crucifying men

bring on The 20th Anniversary Mess Series where the vibes are off!

Jamie was challenging himself by opting for a main course involving pan-frying sea bass. He did burn the sea bass’s skin slightly but the actual meat of the fish was perfect

the only real issue for the judges was the combination of fish and cabbage. I think a spinach and cream sauce would’ve been a better choice but he had enough going on with frying fish and making fondant potatoes, which had also worked perfectly!

Jamie was ending his menu with a good old fashion crumble served in the traditionally authentic way of just slamming it into a bowl instead of making it in individual ramekins

and in the grand schemes of crumbles and custards we’ve seen so far on the show, his has probably been the best so far!

A Dinner Party Dish Ranking:
1. Emma’s 5 Year Chocolate Cake Redemption Arc
2. Jake’s Steaks!
3. Jake’s Taxonomically Correct Cheesecake
4. Emma’s Absolutely Unrelatable Seafood Medley
5. The Chicken Nuggets We Don’t Have At Home
6. Jamie’s Crumbling Crumble
7. Jamie vs The Mouthfeel of Cabbage
8. Press X to Doubt Tamer’s Ravioli
9. Christine’s Tiramisu Surrender
10. Tamer, Have You Ever Watched The Show?

I’ still of the opinion Tamer technically should have gone home and I’m still of the belief Christine probably asked to

I’m glad she did the show, both for herself and because it was refreshing to have someone talking about the everyday sensory issues that some people with autism really struggle with that neurotypical people fully take from granted.

And so, Heat 3 Continues!