80% of this episode is everyone using someone else as a human shield.

Help, I’ve been left unsupervised in the blast chiller.

At Your Be’Heston

The next stage of Semi-final Week is another work placement, which is basically the MasterChef equivalent of an anime beach episode. Ordinarily they would go to the chef’s restaurant, however the celebrated chef is Heston Blumenthal and I imagine they couldn’t complete a health and safety evaluation in time for a workplace that just has barrels of N-zorbit Tapioca Maltodextrose and Prague Powder lying around

I have conflicting feelings about this episode. On one hand, I think Heston Blumenthal is a once in a generation visionary and his influence on the culinary scene is like when the Italian Renaissance Artists worked out perspective in the 14th century so you could finally have a portrait painted that didn’t make you look like a thumb. And as such, the contestants would clearly learn a lot from this experience – important lessons like how much Polyatomic Umamiate is too much Polyatomic Umamiate and how to make a pipe bomb out of a chicken livers

(after this, everyone had to approach the sous vide machine with a buddy system)

but there was also a part of this that just felt a little bit exploitative and sad. They did mention Heston’s mental health crisis and bipolar diagnosis and that he had an assistant in the kitchen, Ashley Hatton

I just think a little more time may have made this a more triumphant return for Heston – this would’ve been filmed less than a year after his sectioning and as someone who has been in a similar situation, I just think that’s too soon.

The contestants would be tackling just 3 of Heston’s dishes in teams of two. The teams being Claire & Sam, Harry & Hazel and Big Cook, Little Cook

sadly the infamous Little Chef Snail Porridge was not being pulled out of the back pages of Heston’s Catalogue of Fuckery instead we have Jelly of Quail, ~The Sounds of the Sea~ and Henry being humiliated through the medium of eggs

anxious Big Bird was in the trenches this episode </3

Up first were Claire and Sam tackling a recipe with 50 steps, none of which were actually explicit details of how to operate the sous vide machine

but even with Claire’s accidental act of domestic terrorism, they managed to get everything that needed setting done in really good time

which would ultimately be their biggest mistake as while the quail consomme jelly was left unsupervised in the BLAST CHILLER?????? it had crystallised into a truly cursed substance

and so the 50 step process became a 51 step process as step 43.2 became “Clutch the frozen jelly to the warmth of your bosom”

but even though the jelly had slightly solidified, the final dish was still very well executed and the over-freezing wasn’t a deal breaker

I do just want to know if someone has to stand there pumping the terrarium the entire time you’re eating it

Next up were Harry and Hazel with the most recognisable of the three dishes, Heston’s Sounds of the Sea which is 18 different kinds of seafood served with SpongeBob’s Magic Conch Shell

the whole conceit of the dish is that you listen to seaside noises while you eat what is essentially the progenitor of every Fine Dining Fish and Chips that’s ever been made on this show and Great British Menu. Sadly Hazel and Harry weren’t having to make the seaside noises themselves, those came prerecorded on the Ipod nanos shoved inside that conch. Instead the biggest challenge was for Harry to try not to “Umm, actually…” Heston’s methods of fishmongering

it was a dish really made for Harry to do well with and the two of them seemed to have the easiest time of it all with a very successful outcome. I still think they should’ve had to record their best irate seagull impressions.

Speaking of irate seagulls, lastly we have Henry and Sophie creating Heston’s Scrambled Egg and Bacon Ice Cream. The hardest part of which is the fact the Egg and Bacon Ice Cream has to be made at the table. Ordinarily, at The Fat Duck this is done by a man wearing a suit being all fancy

but Sophie and Henry had to perform this like it was an episode of Brainiac: Science Abuse with gloves that were clearly more Henry’s size than Sophie’s

I’ve had ice cream made with dry ice before at an ice cream shop in York, it really isn’t pleasant and is one of the worst lingering gimmicks that Heston has inflicted upon us. But the judges seemed to love the dish – Henry however, was just watching the whole thing was unbridled scepticism

I’m with you, my guy.

Magic The Cookening

In order to decide on the unlucky contestant getting eliminated the contestants had to cook a dish that incorporated a bit of theatre and whimsy. The easiest way to do this, and one a few of the contestants went for, is making one thing look like something else. And while this is mostly done as a savoury dish that looks sweet or forcing chicken into a pumpkin-shaped hole, Hazel was going a lot more anatomical

her whole dish was was themed around breastfeeding and maybe it’s because I do not like babies and have no desire to be anywhere near a baby or have a baby but I just thought this whole dish was trying far too hard

it’s so literal in the worst way and quite honestly having to see John Torode suckling from a baby bottle is diabolical

I’m choosing to immortalise that picture on the internet forever because I think it’ll keep him away from a longer time than the racism allegations ever could. I hope it haunts him.
I think there’s a way to do this dessert, still capturing the theme but being a little more clever about it. This felt like a clumsy first draft to me.

On a lighter note, Sophie turned watermelon to a pile of horrible viscera

that has got to be one of the most visually upsetting plates of food we’ve seen on the show in a while. It’s so… fleshy? Which is honestly quite impressive given it’s entirely plant-based – the egg yolk is made of carrot puree and the caviar is sphericalised seaweed. Henry’s illusory meat was sadly less successful with the skin of potato chicken leg degloving itself

and the plating of his dish in general being completely uninspired

which is a real shame because his chicken disguised as a pumpkin was alarmingly convincing

and if he’d designed a dish that presented this more in the style of a garden or vegetable patch, I think the judges would’ve eaten that up like Hazel’s boob mousse.

The last of the savoury dishes was Claire’s Knickerbocker Fuckery that was actually Smoked Salmon Pate and a Scallop Mousse

the thing that really sells the illusion is the distinctly artificial shade of red that she managed to get into her chili tomato sauce

the problem was the quantity of everything – humans are not made to eat paté as a main course, that is not God’s plan and this really should’ve been more of a starter portion.

Sam and Harry were both going for very classic desserts that both relied on a big reveal for their theatricality. Sam very much won this on account of the significantly higher risk of arson

while Harry’s Eton Mess came served in a sugar globe

now, they called Henry’s dish “conventional” but this is *just* an Eton Mess with some moderately impressive sugar work but nothing beyond what I’ve seen on the average gastro pub’s new year menu.

Beyond the flambeeing of the candyfloss, Sam’s dish didn’t have much theatricality to it – it was just a very good dessert with an excellently executed mirror glaze and was just about breasting as boobily as Hazel’s mammarial mousse

but I kind of appreciate that it’s *just* a cake because it was inspired by his time spent caring for a woman who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I can think of A LOT of ways this could’ve been made insensitively literal. He had his story and reason for doing the dessert, but didn’t let that cloud the actual food or presentation.

A Theatrical Dish Ranking:
1. Sophie’s Pile of Plant-based Viscera
2. Sam’s Black Forest Fire
3. Hazel Breasting Boobily
4. Claire’s Ungodly Amount of Paté
5. Henry’s Squashed Chances
6. Celebrate New Year in Style at the Prince of Wales!

It was clearly a choice between sending Harry or Henry home – by law I don’t think you can have a Harry and a Henry in the final of anything, we were going to have to kick one out eventually. To me, Harry completely flopped the last challenge but Henry’s dish wasn’t great by any means and I can’t really say it as the wrong decision to send him home because at least Harry’s dessert looked pretty?

It’s still the wrong decision *for me* and I have taken it incredibly personally. But, fly free you man that’s actually 3 mallards in a trench coat.