She came. She served face. She left.

I’m sure this challenge seemed a lot more fun 10 months ago.

USA vs Them

This week’s quarterfinalists were being given their brief by Jimi Famurewa, who wanted them to create a dish inspired by modern American cuisine, and he unfortunately had lofty expectations

unfortunately, through circumstance alone, I think this particular challenge was a bit of a dud because Modern American Cuisine ended up being a 3 taco pileup and that Cheesecake Factory that got looted during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests

nothing but respect for MY diva.

Everyone who wasn’t making a dessert was making a Taco. Probably the most American of these tacos was Michael’s, purely on account of it being called a Super Taco which just feels quintessentially American in the same way that Chris Pratt being the lead in an alarming amount of high profile franchise movies does

and the Super half of his Taco Duo was very successful, unfortunately the Fish Taco which didn’t get a superhero name (probably the first sign he shouldn’t have bothered with it) was less successful on account of a lack of seasoning and eating it was the culinary equivalent of a toddler thinking hiding under a rug is going to win them a game of Hide and Seek

but Michael wasn’t the only Taco with seasoning issues because despite the judges being keen to see what Plant-based Sophie (her full government name) was going to do because vegetables aren’t the first thing you associate with America. I do think the largest pitfall of this challenge was an over reliance on stereotypes like one of the guessing games on Destination X- [ARIADNE, YOU CANNOT HAVE ANOTHER DESTINATION X TANGENT, THIS IS AN INTERVENTION] However, Sophie wasn’t about to risk being criticised for Americana Vegetables despite the Americans doing a million and one weird and wonderful things with a pumpkin. So she was cooking the short ribs that starred in the opening theme of The Flintstones

the obvious pitfall here being that she wouldn’t be able to taste test anything which is a bold strategy Cotton. Let’s see if it works out for her

oh.
And it was a bit telling that the extra components which she was able to test and taste herself like the whipped avocado, crispy corn and pickled red onions were praised a lot more

they do also look a bit generic. Like this is extreme Old El Paso taco meal kit for £3.80 coded. She could’ve at least thrown a star spangled banner napkin at it and hummed a dulcet toned Yankee Doodle as she served it like a sort of TexMex Lana del Rey

these were Victoria’s Duck Tacos which did sound delicious. HOWMST SO EVER, I personally just wonder if making an acute angled duck pancake and calling it a taco is as good an engagement with the brief of American food as it could’ve been. I have no doubt it’s delicious, I’d annihilate that plate of food in a heartbeat, but I do think the fries and the napkin are hypno-toading everyone into thinking this actually meets the brief

but I do also appreciate that Victoria was engaging with ingredients and flavours that weren’t necessarily her “schtick” from the first rounds she was in and made it work.

And now unto the puddings where the only real success story was Naomi going the rather expected root of a Key Lime Pie (it was the first thing I thought of doing) with a coffee ice cream served in an espresso cup that I think was unnecessary and takes what is a really clean and smart looking dessert to an unnecessary Bake Off kitschiness

but truly the lesson of this particular round was Keep It Simple, Stupid because producing a really good, classical looking dish is worth a lot of points when your competition is making a neolithic burial mound of cream cheese

“How does this amorphous mound of cheesecake differ from a deconstructed cheesecake?” I hear you pondering. IT DOESN’T. A Cheesecake Mound is not a thing, I will not be convinced it is a thing and is indistinguishable from a Deconstructed Cheesecake but Elisha of course couldn’t say “deconstructed cheesecake” because he’d written an entire essay about them in the previous episode

and he promptly joins the mass grave of people buried beneath pipped vanilla cream cheese and brownie bits scattered like someone’s ashes

I will never learn to not call someone my favourite – I was in the trenches this episode between Elisha and Hot Michael™ being fed into the woodchipper. Hell, I’d even learned to love Hannah on account of her sighing and rolling her eyes into oblivion every time she was given a brief as though she was here entirely against her own will

there’s a TikTok of a woman that says she bought a bottle of wine to cook with because that’s what adults do. But halfway through she realises she’s absolutely hammered and doesn’t want to cook anymore and instead just wants to go to a bar. I feel like that’s Hannah to the core. Mother behaviour.

Speaking of Hannah, at no point in her measuring out of like 3 kilograms of sugar for her Salted Caramel and Pretzel Tart did she stop to ask herself “Is this too much?”

I could see the “this is too sweet” critique coming from a mile off and while I do think this is the Russian Sleep Experiment rendered in sugar and pretzels, it is also the dish I would personally be most likely to recreate at home. But yeah, Hannah knew her goose was cooked the moment that Gregg ate it and his pupils fully dilated and allowed him to see his future coming at him like a truck

I truly believe we could power the eastern seaboard off the energy that the consumption of one these tarts creates.

An American Inspired Dish Ranking:
1. The Key Lime Pie to Success
2. Yankee Doodle Ducky
3. SuperTaco – in Cinemas this Thanksgivings!
4. Sophie’s Arm-length Short Ribs
5. Hannah’s 17 Boost Bars in Tart Form
6. Elisha’s Mass Cheesecake Graveyard

Given the amount of praise that Victoria and Naomi were given they were through no problem, and very deservedly so. I may think Victoria’s was a sceptical approach to the brief but it was only half as made up as making a molehill out of a cheesecake

and then automatically being ditched were Elisha for said cheesecake molehill and Hannah for the soggy bottomed glucose-induced coma Gregg fell into for 4 days after this

leaving a choice between two equally unseasoned tacos – oh, you think the fact that Michael served up one Taco that was described as perfect, would make a difference? APPARENTLY NOT, as we say farewell to him too

excuse while I go and stand on my mourning wharf like the wife of a whaler who hasn’t returned from sea for 2 weeks. AND YOU SOPHIE, ARE THE WHALE THAT KILLED HIM

I do get the logic of saving Sophie, I like her perspective on food and think this was probably a good lesson to stick to things you can actually taste, or at least be willing to take the Radha approach of putting on your meat-eating masquerade mask and eating the rib like an episode of Gossip Girl with masked liaison shenanigans that are ENTIRELY AVOIDABLE. But they could’ve just taken both of them through… If only just for me personally.