She’s a size queen.

You get paid extra for making sausages on camera.

All’s Pair in Love and War

for some reason the Pairs Challenge is now part of the quarterfinal, apparently it’s too much to ask for the quarterfinal to just be half an hour. They better do NONSENSE in the semi-finals to warrant this or I will be writing more letters.
As always with the Pair Challenge, it’s a game of listening to instructions and hoping you can decipher Ginger Johnson’s Dinner Macarena

Katie McGlynn however fully understands “left arm mayonnaise” but the moment you mention even the concept of the metric system it’s a blind panic

it’s unfortunate that they didn’t have Uma’s Blocks of Uncured Tuna as a reference point for 1cm cubes yet so Katie was sort of just trapped cutting one potato into increasingly smaller pieces in the hopes she’s eventually hit 1cm but never quite fill her bowl

Katie’s Danaidean potato tragedy aside, the two of them achieved a pair of pretty good chicken kievs

the butter had oozed out and for some reason Katie’s was oozing out of the top like a bad case of rising damp on Homes Under The Hammer that she ought to have had a surveyor in to check for beforehand

despite the plummeting resale value, the chicken was moist and well-cooked with the crumb coating still being crispy.

Over with the other two, Uma was in charge of guiding Antony through Bangers and Mash as well as putting an end to his attempt at a comedy career

you will call her head chef and she will not be tolerating jokes in her kitchen, sir

the thrill of being in power almost immediately wore off once she realised she had to read the recipe aloud with an ever-growing air of suspicion that nothing on these pages meant anything

every time she looks to camera like she’s trapped in an episode of The Office an angel gets its wings.

They did have to make their own sausages from scratch, a process that took so long Uma had to eat the page with the recipe for minted peas on it and try to convince John Torode into believing such a thing never existed

Gaslight. Gatekeep. Girlboss.
I did try to find out more about Uma – the only source of information is the Love Island Wiki which says things like this as though it’s a perfectly normal sentence

all my knowledge of Love Island comes from this show where they periodically wash ashore and can’t cook a potato. I think it’s better that way.

Much like Ginger and Katie, the final plate of sausages, mashed potato and miraculously appearing peas were both kind of fine

Antony did struggle with the gravy – his onions weren’t cut small enough so they hadn’t caramelised as well as Uma’s had, but he had the better sausages with Uma’s drying out slightly

A Two Course Race

FINALLY, the real quarterfinal! And this is where I realised something curious about the new clock – they don’t use it in this round because of the staggered start. But it’s also the first time any of the rounds are longer than an hour with the Dinner Party Challenge from the previous episode having been reduced from 75 minutes to an hour… I don’t think the new clock can be programmed to do more than a 60 minute countdown, which is why the reward for the Mystery Cube Round is an extra 10 minutes. I love The Clock.

The guest judges for this quarterfinal were Danny Jones, Angelica Bell and Lisa Faulkner

I hope Lisa Faulkner keeps showing up in future series – there’s nothing I love more than an episode of reality TV with a needlessly awkward elephant in the room. At least she got to relive her greatest hit of that time she accidentally ate a raw scallop and had her whole life flash before her eyes

as Uma was serving a Tuna Tartare but had seemingly misunderstood the term “diced” to mean “chunks the size of dice”

and as she smashed completely unseasoned avocado into a paste you can’t even legally call Guacamole, John had to point out that nothing about this dish is actually cooked

one day you’re talking about how you like to cook complex and interesting food

and the next you’re the IDGAF Queen plating up a pile of smashed avocado and chunks of tuna that everyone has to just pray are sushi grade

nothing is funnier to me than Grace looking utterly incredulous as Uma walks away with her sharing platter sized tuna tartares – You signed up for this babe!

this could well be one of the most cursed plates of food we’ve seen in a long time. And given that she’d spent a minimal amount of time cubing tuna, her deconstructed kebab wasn’t showing a great deal more effort – you can see the exact moment she realises that she spent 75 minutes cooking three (3) things and the rest is entirely raw

and despite a flatbread making up roughly 60% of a kebab, you weren’t getting one

this is like Keir Starmer telling Pete Wicks that his favourite movie is The Traitors

so close!! that is a tv show 💕

It’s a shame too because this could’ve been a really good plate of food if Uma had dared to put in a fraction more effort

the lamb was cooked perfectly and everything worked well together but lacked the flatbread to make it a complete meal. It also wasn’t helping her case that Ginger had also done a full roast lamb main course complete with roast potatoes and mint sauce

as well as making a starter of Crab Ravioli in a lemon butter sauce

which very nearly became Floor Ravioli as the swinging doors tried to claim their first every victim

it never ceases to amaze me that, at least in my memory, nobody has ever dropped their plates of food trying to navigate the double doors and the West Wing corridor maze

is this new? Have they changed locations? Because there’s also no Shame Chimney, there’s just this mid-century modern armchair that simply does not have the gravitas or range

Did Gregg Wallace get the chimney and original clock in the divorce? Is John going to take the Freezer Nook? Truly the Kramer vs Kramer of our time – Katie McGlynn’s not going to take this well

at least she gets two Christmases.

Katie’s plan to get mum and dad to love each other again began with a a truly nonsense bruschetta brushed with enough garlic to leave Angelica Bell at least a little bit concerned that she’s a vampire

but to Katie’s credit, despite layering the bruschetta with as many italian syllables as she possibly could

her bread was still crispy – are we essentially praising toast? Yes but AT LEAST SHE COOKED SOMETHING, UMA.

Her main course was a seafood linguine inspired by her girls trip to Venice with Lisa George

where is they’re European travelogue in some form of novelty transport?

it was a good linguine! She’d made her own pasta and was very generous with the seafood: you really couldn’t ask for more! Maybe some bread on the side?

Antony was also going for a seafood main course with his Prawn Coconut Curry served with a side of “his own spin on pilau rice”

but as far as I could tell, it was just regular pilau rice? Everything they kept describing as being in it: cinnamon, star anise and cloves, is just pilau rice, that’s *literally* just a recipe for pilau rice. Antony Costa, you did not invent Pilau Rice. I feel like I’m having to tell my uni flatmate that no, he hadn’t invented something new, the Croque Monsieur had in fact existed for the last 120 years. The sardines on soreen bread? That was sadly his own invention.
It was a very well cooked dish from Antony – perfectly spiced curry, well cooked prawns and The Very Normal Pilau Rice was excellent.

Antony’s dessert, the only one of the round, was a little more divisive. Mostly because he’d called it a souffle and really in the end it was more akin to one of those mug cakes

but despite the consensus of what this was a mug of: hot mousse, chocolate pudding, a souffle but you have to pronounce it “Soo-fil”, everyone generally liked the taste of the chocolatey anomaly

I love a dessert that you eat more out of habit than anything else.

A Two Course Menu Dish Ranking:
1. Ginger’s Nearly Carpeted Ravioli
2. Ginger’s Lamb (With Effort)
3. Katie and Lisa’s Italian Adventure
4. Antony Costa Gentrifies Pilau Rice
5. Katie’ Starter’s Slice of Toast
6. Uma’s Lamb (sans Effort)
7. Antony Costa’s Mug Cake
8. Uma 40d6 Worth of Poisoning Damage

The moment she decided not to cook anything was the moment you knew it was inevitably Uma Jammeh being sent home ENTIRELY FAIRLY

I had hoped she might stay around for a little longer, if as much for the food as to elaborate upon what the role of an official L’Oreal Chief Gloss Officer actually entails.

And so, our IDGAF Queen has fallen