Nope. I am above this low hanging fruit of a joke.

The quail are spread-eagle.

Pair Heads

For this week’s Pairs Challenge – the teams were Emma and Tamer essentially reenacting the model train track scene from Wallace and Gromit’s The Wrong Trousers as despite Emma having the instructions, Tamer was trying to overtake her at every step

despite Tamer having the same haircut as Gromit travelling at 25mph, he’s definitely the Feathers McGraw. These are the same person and I will not explain my reasoning:

and then the other team was of course Jake, Jamie, Max and Max’s Digimon Protagonist Haircut

they did particularly well, especially given that while Emma could do chicken limb semaphore with Tamer to work out how many times they were meant to score their chicken thighs and legs

Jake didn’t have that luxury and was, in a real case of the blind leading the blinder, trying to coach Jamie through spatchcocking a quail. A process during which Jamie’s sensitive touch did teach me more about quail than I wish to know

I’m starting a D&D campaign next week and you better believe the cliched starting tavern is being called The Quail’s Arse Split.

Jake did really well with giving Jamie instructions and only committed this faux pas once

it did kind of help that Jake just sort of speedran the making of their Yassa sauce. He just read the ingredients list, shoved it in a pot and was done with it

narrator’s voice: He was not following the instructions

but their dishes did taste the same and looked pretty much identical

the only difference is Jake had cast his quail in a production of Chicago

Meanwhile, on the other team, come plating Tamer had completely assumed control and was running the plating up of their Caribbean Chicken and Dumplings like a military operation

it was a close enough result in the end

the only real differences were Emma’s chicken had slightly more chilli in it and her mango was cut into cubes while Tamer’s was in slices because he’s never seen Autumnwatch before

my condolences to the man who has never experienced the joy of a mango hedgehog.

Pro Pain Nightmares

After last week’s fauxtalian influencer deathtrap of a restaurant, this week Jamie and Jake were being sent to Lavo where they would cook under the tutelage of Stefano Lorenzini who will die for his tagliatelle

his fillets of salmon? Not so much, he’ll stand a safe 20 feet away as Jake Quickenden rips them to shreds and threatens to throw them across the kitchen

these two definitely got focused more on during the challenge because Emma and Tamer were both being extremely competent over at The Parakeet – a restaurant I really want to visit

so I guess the London-based Restaurant Propaganda Challenge pays off after all.

The biggest issue the two of them faced was getting to grips with the wood oven and grill they were using – Tamer because he was struggling with cooking times and even by the end of the challenge he was poking the world’s rawest looking pieces of trout and wondering if it was cooked or not

and Emma’s hair was so coiffed and hair sprayed in place that she probably couldn’t legally get within 5 feet of the oven without violating health and safety regulations

the rest of it she was happy to just wing her way through

that was my approach whenever I even so much as had to look at algebra.

Jamie got the most screentime and it was genuinely really interesting to watch him working in the restaurant and how he used the sound and texture of the pasta and sauces to tell when they were cooked and how to plate them

they had also given him the really tricky job of making quenelles out of caviar. He never quite got to grips with it and some diners definitely got more generous amounts of caviar than others

but by the end of it, Stefano was just hoping Jamie would manage to get it in the middle of the plate and operated him like an arcade claw machine

Max’s moustache would never.

Street Hearts

CALL OFF THE HOUNDS! We have a burger sighting! The Inaugural Celebrity Burger of the series being Jamie’s chicken burger and crisps

which he was asking John and Gregg to eat blindfolded to somewhat replicate the experience of eating without vision and/or a deleted scene from 50 Shades of Grey

and after donning a blindfold for about 15 seconds, Gregg Wallace did seem to think he was now Daredevil

his first target of vigilante justice will be Tamer Hassan

or, according to the subtitlers, Tamara Hassan

I would bet £20 on Layer Cake being in Gregg’s top 5 films of all time which mean Tamer had plot armour for at least this episode, thus preventing his refusal to make his own flatbreads from being too much of an issue

his lamb kebabs did look and sound really good and the elimination, while a little disappointing for recap purposes, was ultimately the right decision given Emma had made Summer Rolls which are just a salad lurking in the lower left of the Sandwich Alignment Chart

there’s only so far the praise for folding salad into rice paper can go.

Lastly we have Jake who was making two portions of Tempura Prawn Tacos and had somehow found himself with a very specific 29 prawns to prepare

guess where all the leftover budget went after Emma just shrugged and typed “two chicken thighs, some rice paper and 3 bags of Tesco stir fry veg” into her email order like she was MacGyver trying to escape a Vietnamese street market.

Jake’s tacos were easily the best dish of the round and he’d put a lot of effort into them having not made The Mistakes of Tacos Past and made everything from scratch

nobody ever brought up the shot of tequila on the side, which I’m sure Jamie’s blindfolds helped with the after effects of. Imagine having to look at this humanoid Daz advert with tequila-induced light sensitivity

Not even Guantanamo would do that to you.

A Street Food Dish Ranking:
1. Wanna Play 29 Prawn Pick Up?
2. Gregg Wallace’s Vigilante Origin Story Burger
3. Tamer’s Flatbread Detour
4. I Call Them Summer Rolls. Some are quarterfinalists, and some are not!

It was of course Emma being eliminated ahead of the quarterfinal. I was sad to see her go but not at all surprised to see her go huddling in a coat like a Victorian Urchin on the streets of London on Christmas eve while said coat probably costs more than your average annual rent

Never change Mrs. We Bought A Zoo.

And so, Quarterfinal 3 here we come!