We live in a society.

Hands up if you’ve ever been victimised by a lack of sauce.

Bitter Betties

This week’s Professional Chef Recipe Challenge That Still Doesn’t Actually Have An Official Name Challenge was a celebration of past MasterChef finalist and friend of the blog, Alexina Anatole

who herself was celebrating Bitterness as a flavour profile with all of said recipes incorporating some kind of bitterness, or pure spite if you’re Alfie Boe’s Cake Slurry

he was told he was going to be making a cake and decided that he would under no circumstances be doing such a thing and would instead be testing Alexina’s patience by mostly just sloshing various sticky liquids around the place

oh girl, it most certainly is NOT going to be just fine

it’s truly a miracle that anything ended up on his plate at the end. Granted not even remotely resembling the recipe he was given which was for a Pineapple Upside Down Cake – which, even with the added nonsense Alexina had incorporated into it, is still very much one of the first recipes you make in a middle school Home Ec class

but his was more of a Pineapple Abstraction

and he was only further put to shame by Alun Wyn who was contending with a Negroni Pavlova that came out pitch perfectly save for a slight issue with his caramel being too thin

but importantly the caramel was on the plate and not slowly creeping along the kitchen counter threatening to glue anything that came into contact with it down like a prehistoric mosquito in amber.

The others all had main courses, the most interesting of which, to me at least, was Alexina’s Pork and Cranberry Meatballs that Jodie was in charge of

she hadn’t pulled it perfectly by any means – the mustard sauce has the consistency of mashed potato first and foremost. But she’d also failed to cut any of the building blocks of her meatballs fine enough, which is why she was having to ask around for surgical staples at one point

the other two main courses were more successfully composed – Ashley had cooked his Bavette Steak dressed in a chipotle butter absolutely perfectly

and Noreen’s first go at making tacos went rather smoothly

she certainly did well enough to warrant absolutely no screentime amongst the chaos being wrought by Alfie Boe doing unlawful things with caramel and cake batter.

The Dinner Party of War

With the first elimination looming Alfie Boe was finally kicking himself into high gear, opening his two course dinner up with a Loin of Venison accompanied by a mixture of crushed Swedes and Carrots, a Port Sauce and Cavolo Nero done a whole two ways

he’d cooked it all beautifully but it’s really not the most exciting venison dish we’ve seen and his Orange Posset dessert wasn’t setting the world alight

most of the desserts in this round fell more on the “eh…” side of the spectrum so they were REALLY having to sell us on the difficult engineering of a posset

it’s as much a science experiment as pouring vinegar into bicarbonate of soda and calling it a volcano is. I’m just mostly put off about it being the same colour as his gravy

beige pudding feels like a recession indicator. But even then, it was still more of a dessert than Ashley Cain just baking cookies and serving it with a bottle of milk

“It’s theatre!” John and Grace proclaim as they eat their barely baked cookie and room temperature milk, casting perhaps the biggest indictment upon the British theatrical landscape. I suppose & Juliet was mostly fine in its well-meaningness and clumsy execution.

Much like Alfie, Ashley had a stronger main course with his fillet steak, carrots and chips

he’d also really tried to push himself out there by finally confronting his fear of sauces but ultimately may have given Grace her own sauce complex because his attempt was the consistency and colour of ditch water

it is really not that hard to make a sauce! And yet somehow Jodie had ended up with a bowl of distressingly dry Pasta

bless her, at least she’s well aware of just how white she is

but a bowl of vaguely harissa spiced chicken with some spinach that seemingly relies entirely on some oven roasted cherry tomatoes for a sauce is a new low for the culinary depths of British cuisine – the place all food goes to die.
Her Lemon Cheesecake was somehow even more bizarre. Or at least her method of serving it was because having made a large cheesecake

she then proceeded to try to cut individual circular cheesecakes out of it

she’s taken a lot of pugil sticks to the head, problem solving is not her forté. She did eventually relent on her initial plan and just sliced the cake, losing a significant amount of base in the process but somehow the lemon wedge on top as a garnish is the most mystifying part of this

it wasn’t helping her that Alun Wyn also made a Lemon Cheesecake for his dessert and it looked like it had been made by a sane person

he’d also gone the inch further of making a raspberry sauce and to further rub salt into the Jodie Ounsley comparison, his main course of Sea Bass was probably 45% Fennel Sauce

it was a very good dish – I think perhaps lacks something, some samphire wouldn’t have gone amiss but they do only have an hour for this challenge that used to be 75 minutes. I’m still convinced that the clock has a 60 minute maximum time limit. Or Grace Dent’s hourly rate is significantly more than Gregg’s, who was paid in windfallen apples and whatever was in the Tesco Express reduced section that afternoon.

Lastly we have Noreen who was starting her menu off with a Diwani Handi – a regal dish that literally translates to “Royal Pot” and is mostly just vegetables in a thick cashew and cream curry sauce

as you can tell from the glamour shot that barely put the curry in focus, the star of the show was Noreen’s rotis, which according to John were the best he’s had on this show

unfortunately she couldn’t keep that energy going into her Seviyan – a dessert consisting of Vermicelli noodles soaked in cream and spiced with cinnamon and cardamom

it was all just a bit too subtle for the judges, but other than that she’d got a perfect consistency.

A Dinner Party Dish ranking:
1. Alun Wyn’s Saucy Affair
2. Alfie’s Venison and Bi-textural Cavolo Nero
3. A Very Normal Lemon Cheesecake
4. Ashley’s Saucephobic Steak
5. Noreen’s 15th In Line To The Throne Curry
6. Alfie’s Beige Gloop
7. Noreen’s Lightly SPiced Beige Gloop
8. Give A Guest A Cookie
9. A Very Abnormal Lemon Cheesecake
10. The Saddest Pasta (so far)

I was really rooting for Jodie – I can’t help but support The Gladiators, they’re all incredibly good eggs, but with the other four at least having one (1) redeemable quality in their dishes, I wasn’t surprised she was a goner

she came, she barely seasoned anything, she left <3