Whoever specifically is responsible for the crash zooms on John Torode, know I believe you should have a BAFTA by now.

Rochenda, babe. WHAT HAPPENED?

It’s a Two Course Race 3: Mockingjay

In order to decide the winner, the finalists were having to cook a two course menu. Which is the third time they’ve done this challenge and with the specification of a mandatory main and dessert, it’s literally just the Dinner Party Challenge from their first episodes all over again. Except of course, this time you wouldn’t be able to get away with making the eleventeenth crumble of the series. No, they wanted fancy food like monkfish, langoustines and blood oranges

I can only presume it was this call for something “refined” and with an overhead cost of about £15 per portion is what led Rochenda to derail her express train to MasterChef Championhood like the train in Nightsleeper into Euston Station

I still haven’t watched it, I assume the train is being played by Sheridan Smith?

Having spent the entire series embracing a sort of global eclecticism, Rochenda was bringing it all home to Classic British Cooking. Her main course being the sort of roast lamb dish I’d have expected from a 50 year old retired gameshow host in the first week of the series or Craig

it’s just so… boring? Sure, the lamb was perfectly cooked but it just feels like a dud dish for her to end one of the best runs we’ve ever seen on the show. I do like the twisty spring onion though, it reminds me of a Flump.

Her dessert was slightly more interesting, it would be hard for it to be more boring. She was making an Orange Polenta Cake with Pistachio Ice Cream – the whole thing having been inspired by her friend’s son, Sydney who also goes by “Peanut” – a nickname I hope was common knowledge before his mum’s friend made it so on national television

he’s an aspiring chef so I look forward to his excellent run on MasterChef: The Professionals 2049 which will be judged by Cyborg Monica Galetti and Marcus Wareing’s head in a jar. Gregg will have been replaced by a 12 foot hologram of this judgmental walrus

technology will take all of our jobs.

Unfortunately for Rochenda, because she hadn’t had a single misstep throughout the competition, the poltergeist that haunts the MasterChef ice cream machine decided that she was overdue a humbling

which you knew was going to happen because anytime anyone mentioned Rochenda’s ice cream, John pulled this face (the editing on MasterChef is anything but subtle)

not that I wouldn’t still snaffle her enriched pistachio soup. Despite the textural error, it did still taste great and both John and Gregg really loved her polenta cake

I would order this in a restaurant without hesitation – I’m a sucker for anything pistachio and orange.

The big theme of Craig’s menu was the fact he wanted to show he can be restrained (as well as tell the difference between sugar and salt)

I refuse to call it “SaltGate” – your lapse in saline judgement doesn’t get the Bake Off Diana treatment

YOU’LL NEVER BE HER.

Craig’s main course was a showcase of three ingredients: Monkfish, Mussels and Leeks which did look and sound rather amazing (I shall begrudgingly admit)

I am curious to know how much monkfish he went home with in his pockets considering he served John and Gregg a relatively small chunk considering the amount he started out with

I think the biggest incentive to competing on MasterChef is how much luxury ingredients you can clandestinely smuggle out before anyone notices.

Craig’s dessert was a Blood Orange (Bl-orange) Panna Cotta topped with a tuile dipped in salted chocolate

it does look very striking and by all accounts tasted really great, however he’d committed the cardinal panna cotta sin of oversetting it. So with Rochenda’s dessert being the unset mummy bear and Craig’s being the gelatinously chewy papa bear; it was up to Vito to be the texturally perfect baby bear

hey, I guess rum-drunk baby bear works too.

Vito’s dessert was a duality of Babas – one being soaked in so much rum that Craig was eyeing it up for insurance fraud

and the other being topped with Zabaglione and Cherries

I can’t quite work out what the bowl in the back is, they never specified but… it might just be a bowl of rum? John and Gregg both loved the dessert, although after 1 mouthful I’m not sure anyone is able to be a reliable judge.

The Babas also made a strong end to Vito’s menu, which had started with Scialatielli allo Scoglio – a dish that really tested the limits of John’s, Gregg’s and India Fisher’s Italian pronunciation

the italian pronunciations may have been all over the place and sounded more like Gregg was talking with a mouthful of tiny snakes but Vito’s cooking was perfection! There were zero complaints about any part of his menu.

A Final Menu Dish Ranking:
1. Pasta, Pussycat, Kill Kill
2. A Begrudging Respect For That Monkfish
3. Vito Putting the Rum in The R.U.M.P.S
4. It’s Fucking Red.
5. I’m Blaming That 12 Year Old For This
6. Rochenda, Babe… WHAT HAPPENED?

Well, I spent all of semi-final week talking about how Rochenda was probably the inevitable winner and if anyone were to be her foil it would probably be My Inexplicable Nemesis Craig™ and then she went and undoubtedly cooked the two weakest dishes of the final????? GIRLYPOP, WHAT HAPPENED? I don’t know why I hadn’t really factored Vito in? He always felt a little bit like he teetered on the verge of chaos, so I expected an Italian brainfart at any moment. However, he proved to be an extremely reliable and consistent competitor and was the undeniable winner of the final challenge

I’m only sad that they obviously made him scrub the recipe crib notes off his arms for his trophy lifting glamour shots

still a better tattoo than Neil Jones’s.

And so, we’ve made it to the end! You can have 5000 MasterChef Points if you can remember who each image represents BECAUSE GOD IF I CAN REMEMBER, IT’S BEEN 84 YEARS. (also Imgur kept deleting the elimination wall because their AI censor detects the top right image as a dick.)