The MasterChef to Jojo Siwa’s Boyfriend Pipeline.

What are you the self-declared monarchy of?

Poppy Season

This week’s professional chef guest spot was Poppy O’Toole, the head of state in our potato-based ancien régime

and as much as I’m against the average monarchy and believe the chippies of the UK to be a democratic union of their own, I do like Poppy! She was one of my top picks to take up a spot on the judging panel, she’s always a riot when she shows up on Saturday Kitchen. Alas she was on her best behaviour in this diplomatic meeting between herself the this garlicky despot

we’re going to have to start beheading again.

Given that Poppy has been undemocratically elected The Queen of Potatoes, all of the dishes that the celebs were having to recreate had a faffy potato element – no amount of eulogising is going to convince me that a perfect sphere is the optimal potato shape

I don’t know girl… melon balling a potato seems both tedious and kind of wasteful

this same dish could’ve been achieved with just cubing the potato

and then maybe you and Grace wouldn’t have been able to set up a little side hustle on taking bets as to which element Jamie would struggle to get done

once again, it is a challenge of incredibly uneven workloads – you cannot tell me that Jaki was doing the same amount of work as Jamie, no matter how many metric tonnes of parmesan she grated onto her baby corn

that’s the point at which the Pizza Express waiter cuts you off and hands you a pamphlet for cheese rehab.

Jaki’s Chipotle Hunter’s Chicken was met with as mixed reactions as pronunciations the word “Chipotle” was put through during this challenge. The chicken had dried out and both Grace and Poppy had some fairly firm potato fondants, John’s however was perfectly cooked

they had similar problems with Dawn’s plant-based Onion and Potato hash bhaji being a little bit floury in the middle

but the rest of the dish, consisting of various spring onion elements and a cashew-based “cheese” sauce very much lived up to the expectations of a recipe designed by a michelin-trained chef. Which brings me to my biggest issue with this challenge of how they critique these dishes and make it sound overly like they’re dishes the celebs have made. Most notably John getting a bit overly eager about the Cabbage and Stilton accompaniment Jamie made

I feel like I’m going crazy – that’s just a pretty standard combination that’s been around for decades???? You’ve eaten it on this very show before, my guy! But also, really all you’re achieving is gassing Poppy up and making this feel like an even weirder advert for a recipe book you can panic buy for someone this Christmas.

Michelle had the only fish dish of the round, having to pan-sear a fillet of Cod and serve it with shoestring fries cooked in beef fat

the fries were apparently cut a little bit too but her fish as well as the brown shrimp beurre blanc were really excellently cooked. Overall, I think she probably did the best this round? Everyone had small errors with their dishes but of all of them, hers seemed the most technically involved. I mean, Chris Hughes was just deep-frying a pork chop and making mashed potato

but where there’s a will, Chris Hughes will find a way to do something horrible to milk using a saucepan

the shots of him having to fish out burnt scraps of milk skin from the bottom of his mash </3

in the end the potato may have been the texture of wallpaper paste but his porkchop was well cooked and he had a great salad

that’s when you know they’re struggling for critiques.

Dinner Party Madness

To decide this week’s quarterfinalists, the celebs were having to cook a main and dessert for a dinner party of family and friends. Or a herd of migrating Wildebeest if you’re Dawn

Who’s to say a dinner party can’t be a roving pack of carnivorous antelope?
Dawn was always going to struggle slightly with a challenge that specifically calls for refinement – she’s genetically wired to slam ladles of things onto a plate like a disillusioned dinnerlady

she was putting a lot of pressure on the shoulders of that puddle of green goddess sauce to make this dish look elegant

it does look incredibly appetising and honestly if a friend put that down in front of me, I’d hardly complain! Least of all because it had two chicken thighs

sir, I am not going to let you insist that 1 chicken thigh is an adequate portion. Truly a recession indicator.

Dawn’s catering of the Serengeti migration season was finished off with a Guernsey Gache Melee, which is a sort of apple cake (Gache Melee in Guernesiaise translates literally to “Cake Mix”)

I will only ever be supportive of someone who serves an entire cake as a single portion, I think that’s the optimal presentation of a cake. It’s certainly better than pitching up with a crumble in a dog bowl, JAMIE

nobody brought it up. They were a bit too distracted by the fact he’d apparently stolen Michelle Heaton’s Family Crumble Recipe as we ended up with our second accidental flapjack of the week

the Crumble Monarchy is dead and we must elect a leader soon.

Jamie’s main course of Self-dubbed Kickass Butter Chicken was a little more successful

unfortunately India Fisher refused to call it Kickass Butter Chicken. The chicken’s self-declared kickassery came from the fact it was much spicier than a butter chicken ought to be on account of Jamie just adding anything to it without care or consideration

I can’t blame him – I subscribe to the same method and by all accounts it tasted ok.

Chris had also gone for a chicken main course at his Burlesque Dogging Party

he was serving his chicken with a tomato and cream sauce as well as potatoes roasted in chorizo oil which were ultimately his saving grace

the chicken was dry and his asparagus stood no chance because he’d roasted it for 45 minutes alongside the potatoes

but he wasn’t the only one who’d overdone their food as Jaki’s Caribbean Coconut Salmon had been overcooked

but they really did like the pepper and scotch bonnet sauce. Her dessert however, is a complete nonsense that I’m not even entirely sure came from a recipe she’d brought in herself seeing as though she was mystified by everything she was making

I love her so much, I fully think she thought they’d give her pancake ready made pancake mix and insisted she couldn’t just pile up fresh fruit

it’s the saddest hotel breakfast you’ve ever seen.

Lastly we have Michelle who was starting her dinner party with Paprika-spiced Steak and Mash

despite her perfect cooking of the steak and mash, it shouldn’t surprise anyone, except maybe Michelle, that a teaspoon of the leftover steak juice does not actually constitute a sauce

as for her dessert, she’d set out to make a cheesecake however, she’d never made one before and it was pretty evident that it was made by someone who had once watched their kids eating it at a restaurant

it lacked any sort of richness with the base having a distinct lack of butter to bind the biscuit crumb together.

It was not much of a competition for elimination, I think Jaki Graham would’ve happily left after the previous episode rather than be put through the indignity of having to make one’s own pancake batter

she’ll always be my favourite.

On to the Quarterfinals