She’s a yurt away from starting a cult.

What’s wrong babe? You’ve hardly touched your [Food-based Social Media Content]?

If you missed it, I made a little pre-series post about how I plan to cover this series – basically amount to focusing entirely on the contestants as well as donating 50% of all donations made to my Ko-fi with “MasterChef” in the donation message to VictimSupport.org.uk. In that post I’d also hoped that the BBC may have somewhat re-edited the series to limit the visibility of the judges but despite having had at least 6 months to get rid of every gurning reaction shot at the very least, they’re still there in all their unsettling glory and shame. Which is Not Good™ to say the least and a complete lack of care or accountability to say a little bit more.

Bas-ick to Br-ill-iant

For their first challenge the contestants were having to earn their MasterChef aprons with a dish that elevated a kitchen staple into something special. While most of these ingredients felt very relatable: risotto rice, chicken thighs, the oranges that slowly go mouldy in the fruit bowl because they seemed like a good idea but then you had to prepare one for breakfast and it was such a faff so now you reuse to make eye contact with them. Penelope came in swinging wild with Hogget Shank

but I couldn’t really expect anything less from someone who looks like every character from The Good Life all at once

as they only had 80 minutes, she was having to use a pressure cooker and bordering on doing the BBC a real favour

why not do a little insurance fraud as a treat?

Her dish was an odd one – she’d planned to serve it with Semolina Gnocchi but at some point that became “gnocchi slices”

which to me sounds like something went wrong with the gnocchi and it wouldn’t hold its shape, hence why she also serve the dish like a diorama of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs – her gnocchi playing the role of the ill-fated ankylosaurs

it’s not a very elegant dish, but I think that’s kind of what you sign up for when you order hogget. That being said, her hogget was perfectly cooked and falling off the bone but the Butter Sauce she’d served it with made it all a bit too greasy and was too heavily laced with aniseed.

There were two chicken dishes in the room – the first from Shaun who was extremely taken by a Hainanese Chicken he’d seen on Instagram last night and was winging his way through it without knowing what it was meant to taste like

I like Shaun, but I do fear there is a strong chance that he gets tricked into making Tomato and Gochujang Pasta Sauce Cookies by whichever AI assistant takes over his phone but for now, he’s cooking dishes that actually do exist and look like food

Hainanese Chicken is one of these dishes that never looks particularly appetising but tastes amazing and Shaun nailed it this time.

While Shaun went for Chicken Breasts, Gon was cooking Chicken Kaprao using Chicken Thighs and serving it with a soy and seaweed cured egg yolk

it was by far and away the most accomplished dish of the round, a factor I believe he owes entirely to the pearls he stole from his mother

Thou Must Noteth Maketh a Pearl Necklace Joketh.

The store cupboard tour of East Asia would end with Gemma who had chosen to use mackerel to make Nasi Lemak for no better reason than the pun – a game I do unfortunately have to respect

her hopes for the culinary future is to go into “Food-based social media content” a phrase so non-specific both because it’s the BBC and because you can’t take the risk of specifying a social media platform because there’s like a 60% chance of any of them replacing the @ symbol with a swastika at any given moment. Anyway, I hope you’ve all done your online age verification to view Gemma’s Nasi Le-mackerel – can’t risk the kid’s seeing this

it’s a dish that feels very trapped within a specific point along the MasterChef timeline – a simpler time, a happier time, a time before [REDACTED]. I fully believe that 5 years ago, this probably would’ve sailed through to the next round because it would’ve seemed much more interesting and elevated than the takes on classic French cuisine it would’ve been surrounded by. But in the current MasterChef climate, it just falls a little bit short.

The last of the main courses was from Thea, who was making a Gorgonzola Risotto and shot herself in the foot by adding an unnecessary dollop of double cream to

it just wasn’t a very balanced dish – far too salty due to the combination of Gorgonzola and Parmesan while also being incredibly heavy due to the panicked cream. It also looks oddly like a pudding and I think I find that the most unsettling thing about it.
And if you are one of the people reading the recaps and not watching the show (valid), I want you to take your best stab at how you think the word “Parmesan” was being pronounced.

Speaking of puddings, the last dish of the round was a dessert from Beth who I unwaveringly support because she has the truly absurd dream of opening a high concept musical theatre themed restaurant

Gemma is sending in a CV that’s just “Phan-Tom Yum of the Opera” written as many times as 12 point Calibri will let her fit on a single page

some people’s midlife crisis is opening the Grease-y Spoon Cafe, and some people’s is starting an £11.99 per month forum and chatroom for middle aged men. I’M SORRY, I CAN’T GET OVER IT, IT IS INSANE.
Beth’s bid for a restaurant that lives and dies based entirely on its proximity to the West End and how far you can stretch a Chicken pun about Chicago, came in the form of a Chocolate and Orange Ganache Tartlet

it was a very good pudding but there was the problem that the orange was playing chorus to the chocolate with a four and a half octave range, can sing in 5 different language including Pig Latin while doing the splits.

A Basic to Brilliant Dish Ranking:
1. Boom! Bam! Kaprao!
2. High-nanese Chicken
3. Gemma’s One Woman Netflix Stand-up Special
4. Beth’s Second Fiddle Orange
5. Penelope’s Sliceable Gnocchi
6. Thea’s Panicked Creaming

It was very decisively the two Chicken Boys who were getting their aprons and moving straight onto the next round

with the other 4 all going on to battle it out for the remaining two spots through the medium of a 45 minute Mystery Box Challenge.

What’s In The Box?

For this challenge Penelope, Thea, Gemma and Beth were all given three mystery ingredients – in this case it was Trout, Beetroot and Chocolate

of which they could use as few or many as they wanted as well as using anything from the MasterChef Larder. I personally feel like this was a bad batch of ingredients because I don’t think there’s a particularly good way of combining any of them. So it was unsurprising to me that all of them only used the Trout resulting in 4 dishes that were overly similar and could only really be separated by the quality of their trout preparation. In that regard, Beth was by far and away the strongest having perfectly filletted hers and serving a surprisingly well cooked Pommes Anna in the time limit

Gemma was going for that fish preparation hack of just bunging the whole thing in the oven and hoping for the best on the other side while she busied herself making a white wine sauce to stave off the apparent siren song of doing weird things with couscous

it’s mostly fine – it does look a bit like you made this through the fugue state of a particularly busy thursday, but that’s also just what an invention test is so I can’t be mad at her for just flopping everything unceremoniously onto the plate. I think Gemma was done a little dirty in this challenge because Penelope’s Couscous-stuffed Trout Segments in a Coconut Broth is just not real food

if Gemma’s dish was a busy thursday, this is a Tuesday evening cry for help. I don’t get how it can be called “Trout and Coconut Porridge” and still get through. Am I secretly delighted because she only continues to cook food that sounds like it was made up while reading Mrs. Beeton’s Encyclopedia of Blancmanges with a fever? Yes. I can be two things at once.

Lastly we have sweet baby angel Thea who was just trying to survive this round with as much of her mental health intact as possible – her first idea being to just cook the trout and serve it with a salsa

however she was promptly bullied into having to think about an accompaniment so she went on what was 30% a hunt for couscous and 70% a strategic cry by the carbohydrates (a relatable queen)

and she might as well have just written “Please, I want to go home” in couscous grains

there was no way they could really take her through – I fully believe she’s a great cook but I think this was probably a steep learning curve for her and maybe not the best environment for her at the moment.

A Mystery Box Dish Ranking:
1. Beth’s Bona Fide Food
2. Gemma’s Thursday Night Crash
3. Thea’s White Flag Couscous
4. Penelope’s Couscous Nonsense

I personally would have taken Beth and Gemma through. Beth was a no-brainer

and joining her was Penelope who can at least finally rid herself of what might be the most insane apron I’ve ever seen

either way I think this episode was always going to end with Gon, Shaun and Beth going through. But I am sad to not find out what other puns Gemma had locked and loaded

I hope Thea had the stiffest drink.

A Two Course Race

The last round of the episode to decide which 3 from this heat go to the Quarterfinal is the two course menu round, this time judged by last year’s finalists: runners-up Chris and Louise as well as current reigning champion, Brin

I don’t quite know why they continue to shove this round in at this point because it makes these first two episodes far too bloated. I would also think they could’ve cut the judges’ critiques for this round and focus solely on the opinions of the guest diners BUT ALAS.

None of the contestants were doing a pudding for their menus. However, Penelope was combining sweet and savoury elements like Frankenstein trying to make his monster but having to make do with half the parts and whatever he could scrounge from the reduced section of a Tesco Express, leaving the guest diners to describe her unhinged starter as “Deeply Unusual” with the sort of trepidation usually reserved for a parent that’s just been served Lego Minifigures on Toast for breakfast by a toddler

I think it’s something of a miracle that Brin survived the Beef Trifle Death Spiral that tasting it put him through

fool him once, shame on you, fool him twice shame on him. He certainly wasn’t going to put the Slightly Raw Lamb Cannon Bakewell Tart in his mouth

this is the sort of food you only encounter in dreams that leave you deeply unsettled for days. It’s the culinary Backrooms.

It was to Shaun’s benefit that he was the one following Penelope because there was no way they weren’t going to devour his Chicken Karaage to make the taste of the Hot Lime Vinaigrette, Watermelon and Wasabi Ice Cream and Celeriac Frangipane go away

and he was following that up with an equally good Dan Dan Noodle and Fried Pork Mince dish that sounded really interesting

I’ve never encountered the scissoring noodles before

maybe I shouldn’t have been so sceptical of Penelope’s slices of gnocchi – but don’t tell her that because she’ll start serving it with a Skirting Board Dust Veloute.

Beth was going for an entirely seafood menu, starting off with Gurnard that she was serving with a Fennel and Apple Salad so everyone could pretend to go “Apple and fish? How ODD!” – a conversation that has happened at least once every series for the last 5 years

the Fish and Apple coin had been flipped and landed on tails, so this time everyone had to hate it. Better luck next time, Beth. At least her main course of A Nondescript Indonesian Prawn Curry with Burnt Leek Rice went down a lot better with everyone, with her rice being a revelation for Louise in particular

the two (2) prawns are a recession indicator if we’ve ever seen one.

Gon had also opted for a Prawn main course, deciding to make a Tom Kha Risotto which sounds like a clue on Destination X that you think is indicating you’re in Rome because it’s a risotto, but you’re actually in Berlin because the initials TKR actually stand for Total Knee Replacement and the first knee replacement surgery was performed in Berlin

I do love that the first reviews of the show called it The Traitors On a Bus, but if anything it’s just The Masked Singer For National Monuments. It is a terrible show that I unfortunately cannot stop watching it because it is a complete disaster but Judith is great

the episode where she’s trapped in the Cable Car gondola trying to solve the world’s most basic cryptic crossword clues but the three men won’t listen to her because they’re busy staring out the first window they’ve been allowed to look outside of in 5 days convinced there’s a hidden number written into the snow on The Alps so all she can do is pull this this face the entire time is somehow perfect television

is it possible to make her a Saint?

ANWAY, Gon’s Tom Kha Risotto was almost as big a let down as the moment Dawn got eliminated from Destination X, walked off the bus and clearly it was too misty to actually see The Matterhorn so instead she had to be lead to a tiny little sign reading “MATTERHORN”

forget everything I said, it’s a perfect show. Gon’s risotto was still a bit bland and paled in comparison to his excellent Larb inspired Beef Tartare starter

the crispy noodles are the only thing stopping me from calling it a cop out and even then, it’s on thin ice.

A Tour Course Menu Dish Ranking:
1. Shaun’s Snippy Noodles
2. Shaun’s Sanity Saving Karaage
3. Beth’s Prawn Recession
4. Gon’s Larberly Tartare
5. Gon’s Total Knee Replacement Main Course
6. Fish and Apple (Tone Indicator: Bad)
7. Just Everything Penelope Did

It was no surprise that the contestant going home was Penelope

may her sins never be forgiven.

If you want to support the blog, you can make a donation over at my Ko-fi page and if you leave “MasterChef” in the donation message, 50% of it will be donated to the VictimSupport.org.uk! The donations will be counted up donated 1 week after the finale ends.