I feel like 1 person called Antony Costa “Spag Bol Boy” 1 time and he’s been spiralling ever since.

This recap is a cube of radish.

And thus marks the first of the “Marked Safe From Gregg” series of MasterChef with the glorified boiled egg of a man being replaced by Grace Dent and a spiffy new digital wall clock with LCD display

already Grace is doing a better job than Gregg ever could – I will still hold her at arms’ length because she’s written some dodgy articles and is friends with Emma Kennedy, which is a damnation of anyone’s personal tastes.
This is also very much a reduced series of Celebrity MasterChef with only 15 celebs on the cast instead of the usual 20

they had to pay for the brand new sliding larder door somehow

the MasterChef format has become so stale this genuinely feels like I’m watching arthouse theatre and I haven’t even got to the brand new Mystery Cube Round yet… I have MANY thoughts about that.

Star Wars: The Cloche Wars

But of course, we start as we always do with the celebrities selecting a “random” ingredient from under a cloche. I just have to assume they at least told Gaz, who is vegan, not to choose the haggis and fish cloches. Although it might’ve been more humane to make the vegan in the room fillet the fish than subjecting it to the macabre science experiment that Antony Costa treated it to

but despite filleting a fish like an alien trying to work out how to use forceps, Antony’s biggest risk was making direct eye contact with a plate of chips

at least the hour long phone call to the premium Noom support helpline about his carbohydrate relapse may have been worth it because the chips were by far the best thing on his plate

granted that’s not saying *a lot* because the fish was as overcooked as it was haggard and 30% of the plate is just raw tomatoes

THOSE CHERRY TOMATOES, ARE A GARNISH!

at least we can just put them back in the larder for the next batch of celebrities, they’ve gotta save money! There’s still 8 monthly installments of £78.99 to pay for the sliding door. They’ll have to buy the motor next year, this year it’s powered entirely by Antony Costa running on a hamster wheel, self flagellating for snorting mashed potato.

The garnish of tomatoes was only marginally less effort than the bowl of self-described “deconstructed hummus” that Gaz Choudhry ended up turning his Very Randomly Selected Chickpeas™ into

he had an hour and they showed him putting the chickpeas in a pan with some onion and peas like 15 minutes into the challenge

I cooked many a Chickpea What’s-It at university, I know for a fact that didn’t take an hour. The judges were a bit disappointed because it could’ve been a perfectly serviceable Chickpea Curry, if only he’d had some tomatoes…

but with Antony Costa laying claim to a dragon’s hoard of cherry tomatoes, Gaz had to resort to attempting to make a raita out of aquafaba that ultimately didn’t really materialise. However, the bigger talking point is John Torode’s pronunciation of “Aquafaba” – it’s not even an accent thing! He fully says “Aquaticfaba” the entire time and NOBODY corrects him, Grace Dent just stands there letting him say it wrong. But I too would be relieved someone else was embarrassing themself if I’d lost an earring while in the middle of a conversation with a drag queen

my social anxiety would kill me on the spot.

Ginger did end up with the most successful dish of the round, as much because Chicken Satay with a Rice Noodle Salad is a real plate of food as because it was well cooked

the ingredient she’d found under the cloche was a disconcerting jar of decanted chunky peanut butter

this feels illegal.

The last of our main courses is from the obligatory Love Islander of the series, Uma Jammeh who was slightly stumped by Haggis

but, and I don’t say this lightly on this show, I was genuinely impressed by her having the forethought to actually sample what she was cooking instead of blindly stumbling her way through

however, I do think she’d come into this round with one plan and nothing was going to stop her confiting the shit out of anything that came into her orbit – haggis or not

the confit garlic worked very well! The confit egg yolk that she’d learned how to do on the commute to Birmingham while scrolling through instagram significantly less so

not quite runny *enough*? IT’S NOT RUNNY AT ALL! I honestly didn’t know an egg could become the same texture as junior school chalk! Sure, it’s impressive that she managed to score four (4) whole cherry tomatoes off of Antony Costa

but her alchemical egg kind of eclipses it all. As does her skipping away from it far more gleeful than anyone who just invented a Turbo Boiled Egg has any right to be

but I support both women’s rights and women’s wrongs.

Lastly we have Katie McGlynn who had found herself facing down a pile of apples and which promptly became the 500,006th apple crumble we’ve seen on this show

she had jazzed it up a bit with some sultanas and brandy – someone obviously told her she wasn’t allowed to use the blackberries that she’d mashed into the floor like the jive she did on Strictly

I spent the whole episode wondering where I knew Katie McGlynn from and had the sudden realisation that she was the conduit to Gorka launching his fursona

she is both completely forgettable as a contestant and yet monumentally important to Strictly Lore. Truly women contain multitudes.

An Unofficial Under The Cloche Dish Ranking:
1. Ginger Johnson’s Dedragged Satay Chicken
2. Katie McGlynn Promises The Sultanas Didn’t Touch the Floor
3. Antony Costa’s Experiments in Fish and Garnishes
4. Uma Jammeh’s Confit Showcase
5. Gaz Choudhry’s Bowl of DIY Hummus

The Rubric Cubes

So here we have our first true format change with the introduction of The Palate Test with the celebs having to identify a series of basic ingredients without seeing them. Which I think is interesting in *concept* and I’m sure someone had a lot of fun carving the perfect Cube of Anonymous Strawberry

but ultimately the challenge is not nearly as televisually friendly as Taskmaster doing the same thing but with a ramekin of wet teeth

BUT, I do like a challenge that earns the winner an advantage in the next round – I think that’s a very good step in the right direction. I’m just not sure having to rawdog a mouthful of ginger (‘scuse me?) is worth a measly extra 10 minutes

there are prisoners of war who suffered less protecting national secrets than Gaz Choudhry did to get 10 extra minutes to boil sushi rice in

as Antony Costa lost the unthrilling game of mystery meat sudden death

I’ve been muttering “Sorry to say, that was a cube of ham” to myself ALL DAY so maybe this challenge is more impactful than I’m giving it credit for. That screenshot also really demonstrates how much Gaz was suffering

it’s like if the Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar was a sadomasochist.

For Truck’s Sake, Here We Go Again

Closing out this episode, which it turns out is a non-elimination episode FOR NO GOOD REASON, is the standard Food Truck Challenge in which the celebs are encouraged to show up with a full on fun concept for their novelty food truck

or you’re Katie McGlynn and only have the imaginative scope of one of those captcha tests that ask you to tick every square with a car in it

the worrying thing is, I think she thinks this is a pun on Coronation Street in the same way that Game of Wool seems to think they’re making a pun on Game of Thrones

but I can’t argue with her logic – there’s a truck and she made a chicken gyros with halloumi fries

with maybe an ounce more effort she could’ve extrapolated to Coronation (Street) Chicken but I think trying to successfully fold two gyros was enough mental gymnastics for her

it was… adequate at best. None of it was quite cooked enough or the right texture but it was tasty and she was in good company because Antony got much the same critiques for his Pork Souvlaki and flatbreads

it was a big night for slapping meat on bread with Ginger Johnson serving up Buffalo Chicken and Waffles with a Blue Cheese Slaw

this filled me with such an ungodly craving for nonsense fried chicken and, rather conveniently, I am writing this while sitting in a cafe directly across from a nonsense fried chicken shop

sometimes life is just ok, innit?

The standout of the round for me though was Uma who was doing Nigerian food and mostly just trying not to bring shame upon her family, particularly her dad whose name is BRONCO? And old man Bronco can be very proud of her because this Suya Beef and Moi Moi (a savoury steamed bean pudding) went down incredibly well

the celebs from Love Island are hardly ever this interesting – I’m genuinely impressed and excited for her!

Lastly we have Gaz who was going for a fish and chips inspired Donburi bowl and of everyone, he NEEDED those extra 10 minutes because the batter of his tofu was sloughing off like zombie flesh

and even with the bonus time, he didn’t manage to fully correct it, with the tofu only really tasting of oil instead of the nori he’d run through the batter

“but it still tastes like street food” insisted Grace Dent, not elaborating on the fact the street food it tastes like is the last few scraps that the chicken shop throws to the cats at 3am.

An Unofficial Dinner Party Dish Ranking:
1. Pour Moi _(moi)?
2. Ginger Johnson Waffling On
3. Katie McGlynn At Least Did Halloumi Fries?
4. Antony Costa’s Souvlaki Blues
5. Gaz Choudhry’s Rice Foul