I apologise now for how much of this recap is dedicated to that one chicken.

I hope you’re also wearing your pyjamas.

Larder Than You Think

When everyone first started piling into the kitchen at the beginning of the episode, I was genuinely convinced that this decider for who would make it into Semi-final Week was going to be to create a dish you’d serve at a high school sleepover that in retrospective is responsible for a lot of your adult trauma, because these are pyjamas, right?

That man is cooking this dish and then curling up with a mug of cocoa and a good book.
And then everyone else was just wearing t-shirts

which I thought was fair and I just shrugged at Henry wearing a polo shirt

I’d believe he sleeps in casual Friday attire all the time. That’s just Henry, he’s built different.

The theme was not to in fact make something out of the vodka you stole from your parents and supermarket brand crisps that you decanted into a bowl beforehand out of shame (peer pressure is a bitch). Instead it was an Invention Test! YAY! With a fully stocked larder

BOO! That’s not an invention test – you could literally make ANYTHING with that stuff, an Invention Test should have limitations and a narrower field of success beyond a lack of preparation. Because without those limitation, you get Olivia making her second batch of ravioli in two episodes

not to start the *checks notes* 11th(?) international incident this week (it’s monday) but maybe we put Italy in jail for a little bit? Just as an experiment? Or maybe just Bologna? We don’t have to go Cold Italian Turkey – Olivia just surrenders her pasta parcels and in return we don’t let Gabriel cook risottos anymore

unfortunately his Prawn and Chorizo Risotto was both slightly too dry for the judges (it would’ve made fantastic arancini) but the rice was also underdone and slightly chalky.

Trevor had the opposite problem, having taken every care in the world to prevent his teeny tiny Lemon Sole fillets from cooking the moment the top of the stove even so much as looked at them

and then still overcooked them

which was a shame because with so much of his time dedicated to making direct eye contact with the fish fillets there wasn’t much on his plate beyond the overdone fish, spinach, a cream sauce and the carrots which were arranged in the kanji for “Height” for some reason

He may have lost this challenge, but he won the Duolingo war.

With Gabriel and Olivia having split the prawns and the lemon sole going to Trevor, there was only the salmon left on ice

and the Masked Fish Marauder wasn’t quick enough, with Hazel snatching that for herself and serving up a very good if slightly too safe dish of Roasted Salmon, Mashed Potato and a Brown Butter Caper Sauce

it sounds lovely and she’d cooked it phenomenally but within the context of an Invention Test there’s nothing there that feels like it pushed her very hard. WHICH IS A SIGN YOUR INVENTION TEST WAS BADLY DESIGNED.

Fishless Harry instead found himself making a moussaka with lamb neck, which sounds like a sure fire disaster in the grand scheme of MasterChef but the judges were very pleased

I hate this plating with a passion, it looks like a couple’s tomb. I don’t find it to have any of the appeal that really good Greek food has. Harry has shown himself to be a very good cook though, so I am sure that it was all cooked beautifully – a little light on the spicing, so we’ve found his Achilles’ heel and can give him a plotline now!

truly a Default Setting Man – every competition needs one. Henry’s not default, he’s special *TO ME*.

Nobody did a dessert and most of the remaining contestants all did chicken dishes. I would like to know the logistics of this particular chicken because we only ever saw 1 chicken

was it a sort of pass around party bottom chicken situation? We saw Munopa butchering it, and she did a great job!

I’m just choosing to believe she was democratically elected as the butcher because Henry can’t look at a dead bird and Claire was threatening to MacGyver it and one of the ornamental spice racks that are doing A LOT to sell this crockery cupboard as a bountiful larder into a sextant for when you find yourself adrift on your sailboat made entirely of salmon

I want a full LEGO set of the MasterChef Kitchen – I need to know the exact layout of where all its antechambers are: like the dining room, the hallway-cum-larder, the shame chimney, The Abandoned and Haunted HR Office and the Industry Plant Laboratory in which they grew Munopa.

The First of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Chicken Carcass, is Henry who had created as much of a Katsu Curry as he could possibly remember without the BBC Good Food recipe in front of him

and he did a good job! It was about as much of a Katsu Curry as a dress made out of slightly rusted car parts on Project Runway is a dress. Granted, I do believe Henry’s Kats-ish Curry came with less of a risk of tetanus.

Munopa was using The Other Breast™ (there’s genuinely compelling evidence that they had to share this chicken) to maker her dish which didn’t really feel like a complete plate of food to me, I think it lacks the substance offered by a potato

was Hazel not sharing the potato? I can forgive Munopa if Hazel was stashing potatoes like a squirrel preparing for a long winter. Plus, she does get the bonus points for being the one that butchered the communal chicken. The legs of which were being used in some sort of gallinaceous Frankensteining

apparently it might help you find water if you’re ever stranded in the Canadian Cascades

despite the releggening of the chicken being ABSURD, it did actually sound like a really interesting dish with that Chicken, bacon and walnut stuffing mixture with the pickled onions and onion sabayon. It’s fun and slightly absurd food – do I think Claire absolutely had this up her sleeve ready to go knowing that an invention test would most likely have the ingredients to pull it off? Yes. Does that make me sound like I need to go to the Elevated MasterChef Picnic Area and Barbecue Courtyard to touch grass? Also, yes

THERE WAS ONLY ONE CHICKEN AND IT DID 9/11!

Sam missed out on the chicken party and was trying his best to make sure this chunk of pork belly was going to cook down properly in only an hour (Press X to Doubt)

unsurprisingly, the pork belly did have to gradually be cut smaller and smaller as the clock rapidly ticked down

thankfully by the end of it, his fractional pork was at least cooked enough to be edible

the Larb inspired dish with the pineapple and lemongrass salad on the side did sound really tasty. The Pork Belly was obviously there to trip someone up – it was the strawberry jam in the Cottage Pie ingredients. So I’m glad Sam managed to at least mostly avoid becoming an absolute cropper to it, but he was definitely on thin ice.

Lastly we have Sophie who did not have the time to fashion a vegan roast dinner out of brand displaced condiments and Asian Supermarket produce

however, she did have time to just roast a pumpkin and make greige bean mush

Sam was lucky to survive with his undercooked pork belly but Sophie was wandering around with a kiteshield from the MasterChef Plot Armoury to have survived for this compostable wallpaper paste.

An Invention Test Dish Ranking:
1. Claire’s Releggened Chicken
2. Henry’s Katsish Curry
3. Harry Found His Plot Device
4. The Butcher of the Public Access Chicken
5. A Second Bowl of Ravioli Has Hit The Kitchen
6. Hazel’s Perfectly Fine Salmon
7. Sam’s 100% Authenticated Pork Belly
8. Trevor’s Misbehaving Sole
9. Sophie’s Bowl o’Mush
10. Gabriel Suddenly Isn’t Half Italian

The four contestants clearly in the firing line were Gabriel, Sophie, Sam and Trevor – all of them had issues with their dish. I GENUINELY thought Sam and Gabriel were goners. That pork had elimination seared into its crackling before anyone stepped into the kitchen. However, Sam survived and we did lose Gabriel – so, we’re now relying exclusively on Olivia’s choice of lipstick to serve looks

I’ll miss his Brazilian food, it stood out amongst a lot of the stuff that’s started to feel very repetitive.

So now we’re down to Sophie and Trevor and with the latter’s storyline of Discovering His Finesse geared up and ready to go and Sophie kind of just… being there (complimentary) I thought he’d be fine AND THEN THEY TOOK SAUSAGE FINGERS TREVOR AWAY FROM ME

a fallen hero. I’ll miss you most of all, King.