The Firing Range Challenge is a bit dark.

Free hug with your recap.

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Our final heat and it all starts with God’s favourite, Alun Wyn Jones and his salmon bounty

Ashley Cain only thought this because he was staring down the barrel of a romanesco gun and very much relying on one of the three supervisory home economists just off screen pantomiming him through a recipe for a romanesco steak recipe

I’m sure Ashley Cain realised that… Although, I shall not put any blame on the shoulders of Karim Boumnijel for Ashley cooking a pork fillet to the point of becoming cobblerable boot leather

but other than being able to potentially make a cracking pair of pork galoshes, the judges were pretty pleased with his winter’s bounty christmas wreath

and he wasn’t the only one taking a very simple meat and two veg approach as Jodie Ounsley, more famously known as the Gladiator Fury, had just pan-roasted her chicken thighs and thrown a pile of vegetables at it

it is simply edible and nothing else which is honestly more than can be said for Alfie Boe who seemingly boiled his fresh handmade pasta for about 15 minutes

which don’t get me wrong, I fully applaud him for making the pasta but it was very noticeable that the judges never actually talked about the pasta in his critique, simply focusing on the effectiveness of the tomato and caper sauce he’d dressed the pasta and his mystery prawns in

it’s rare that someone who unveils a clocheful of prawns doesn’t get a whole segment of the show dedicated to them doing something horrific to them. I’m sure Alfie is here for the long haul, unless they ditch him on the grounds that he’d be a hard booking for a quarterfinal judging panel. Or you know, if he continues to only put a maximum of 4 things on any one given plate and staging a dirty protest if you make him cook a cake…

Alun Wyn had also gone for a simple seafood dish, roasting his salmon and serving it with noodles in a generically non-specific asian dressing that is mostly just soy sauce

hey, if it works, it works!

Lastly we have a dessert from Noreen Khan who had drawn oranges as her mystery ingredient and with orange juice being explicitly forbade because it falls out of the parameters of cooking

she instead set about making an orange cake, initially intending to make John and Grace their own individual sponges up until she dropped one on the floor

although I am willing to bet she would’ve pulled a Junior Bake Off and simply brushed off the traces of lint and served it regardless had John not stood there blaring like a foghorn to make sure she knew she better not serve them Floor Cake

it’s his loss anyway, he could’ve had a whole personal cake

it tasted alright too!

An Unofficial Under The Cloche Dish Ranking:
1. Noreen Khan’s Ja-floor Cake
2. Alfie’s Unmentionable Pasta
3. Miscellaneous Asian Salmon Strikes Again!
4. Jodie’s Meat and Two Panicked Veg
5. Ashley’s Boot Crackling

I Don’t Give A Truck

After the Cube Challenge in which Jodie had the worst time of her life

and Alfie Boe failed to even identify a cubed lime with his blindfold off

it was Alun Wyn Jones that triumphed in a sudden death face off against Ashley where he had to eat a piece of chocolate brownie while Ashley contended with Turkish Delight. Both of which can be bought pre-cubed, giving the production team more time to mould a prune into the perfect block

the MasterChef production team is not well.

With an extra 10 minutes, Alun Wyn mostly spent his time trying to fold the world’s least foldable flatbreads for his koftas

it was quite a good dish, it could’ve done with a more generous filling but the biggest problem wasn’t really his fault so much as it was John’s continued insistence of pronouncing the word “Kofta” as though it’s a slur. I have never in my life heard anyone else put such an emphasis on the “oofta”. It’s not even an accent, it’s just wrong! Much like Jodie Ounsley shoving an entire food market crepe van into a yorkshire pudding

can I… just have the hug?

For some reason Jodie wasn’t overly criticised for spending an entire hour mostly just cooking a yorkshire pudding and melting some chocolate – which is barely more than Alfie Boe did as he spent the entire hour just deep-frying enough potatoes to put Jodie’s 5 Coal Carrying Championship titles to shame

the hug that came with the yorkshire pudding is beginning to increasingly sound like a threat.

Alfie did at least use his accidental extra time to clean up after himself

not that there was a great deal to clean up given all he’d done was peel some potatoes and grate several people’s worth of pecorino cheese. But I can’t argue with his logic, cheesy potatoes are one of the few sparks of joy left in this miserable land

Noreen had also gone for a potato dish with her Aloo Tikkis that she was serving alongside curried chickpeas and a mint chutney

it was a tasty dish but with her addition of the carrots and beetroot into the potato cutlet mixture, they were just that little bit too moist and squidgy.

Lastly we have Ashley who was making Ackee and Saltfish with a pair of dumplings that Grace Dent described as looking like a sunset while looking at something that looks like someone shoved their leftovers in a gyroid

pattern recognition is the biggest obstacle on this show. But by all accounts Ashley’s dish tasted significantly better than it looked and his dumplings had come out perfectly.

A Food Truck Dish Ranking:
1. Ashley Cain’s Tupperware Gyroid
2. Alun Wyn Jones’s Unfoldable Flatbreads
3. Noreen Khan Because She Did More Cooking
4. Alfie Boe’s 20 Minute Dinner
5. I Do Not Believe in Yorkshire Pudding²