Diana and Endymion. Jean Honoré Fragonard, c. 1753/1756. Oil on canvas.

Are we all agreed that Alfie Boe has been taken hostage?

The Best Relayed Plans

If the Pairs Challenge hadn’t satisfied your craving for distinctly ITV flavoured gameshow bits, don’t worry, we’ve got The Pairs Challenge again! Except they’ve opened up the relationship to Throupledom in The Relay Challenge

each team member would get 25 minutes to contribute to the two course meal of a main and dessert with no conferring between team members.

The Red Team was made up of Alun Wyn, Ginger and Katie, leaving the Blue Team as Dawn, Alfie and Jamie. Both teams had the same main ingredients of a whole chicken for the main course and a selection of Oranges, Nectarines and Plums for the dessert

and both teams would similarly put off making a dessert for as long as they possibly could with Dawn busying herself making a Chicken Pie while Alfie stood in the next room wearing an expression I’ve only seen on Shaggy from Scooby Doo when he sees a ghost and slams the door in its face

and sadly he’d only open that door to find himself staring down the barrel of a gun held by Dawn’s tableau of minimal effort desserting

once he’d finished wallowing in despair and flashbacks to the last time he attempted a dessert…

he decided that now of all times was the time for Alfie Boe’s Cake Redemption Arc!

and it will be hard for anything to be funnier than the moment that Alfie just… stacks his unbaked cakes

the exasperation of Alfie Boe being a genuinely good cook but always on the knife edge of elimination if he has to navigate anything conceptually more difficult than a 5 ingredient Italian meal <3
But hey, if the destacked cakes don’t work out, he’s always got Alfie Boe’s Magic Gravy to fall back on

BREAKING NEWS: Alfie Boe’s Magic Gravy Has Died

and then poor Jamie Lomas comes in and is lambasted by John because Dawn and Alfie left their station looking like a bombsite

given that 90% of the team’s energy went into making the pie, I wasn’t surprised that it at least looked like a normal plate of food

the dessert however looks like someone got bored of making a trifle halfway through and decided this was close enough, it all comes out the same eventually

it does somehow still look more like a dessert than the Red Team’s that was just a nectarine and a slab of pastry

and you can’t forget the drizzle of maple syrup on the plate

God bless Katie McGlynn, she contributed nigh on NOTHING to this meal other than delicately plating up a tongful of peas in the designated pea hole of the butternut squash

I scream laughed for a good 5 minutes over this – the singular spear of asparagus really sets it off

but other than that, really all she did was slowly and surely ruin Ginger’s Onion Gravy by cooking it to the point of it needing to be scooped into the jug

and accidentally showering it in flaked almonds as the collective braincell in the room went the same way as Alfie once he’d finished the worst 25 minutes of his life

John was just amazed that the chicken was perfectly cooked

he kept badgering Ginger about how she’d communicate how long the chicken needed in the oven to Katie and like… How is she meant to do that? I imagine they weren’t allowed to leave a message written in peas and spinach leaves? It’s really not that hard to tell when a piece of chicken is cooked either. Katie ended up just poking it with a thermometre a few times

which is honestly a more precise and normal method than I had anticipated from the woman who was using an electric mixer like this

Katie McGlynn is my new favourite cryptid.

Giving Me The Critic

In order to finally decide who would make it to Finals Week, they’d flown in a trio of critics as an intimidation tactic

I do feel that having Grace Dent, fellow professional restaurant critic, as a main judge on the show does somewhat dilute the apparent auspiciousness of the Critics Chamber

or are they going to start giving Grace a new job title like that series where Gregg Wallace stopped being “Greengrocer” and became “Professional Diner”? And then you know, he just became Maligned Pervert Selling Woks On TikTok – put that in a chyron and smoke it!

Kicking off the round was Dawn attempting to make Chicken and Waffles into a delicate and dainty dish after being traumatised by American portions when she first moved to the States

I do fear the final result veered to far into the other direction because I refuse to consider this parallelotopic row of waffle squares “a waffle”

a waffle is defined by its x and y axis. This is… NOTHING. The critics were much more forgiving of the nonsense and I’m sure it tasted nice but the ratio of everything feels extremely unbalanced to me. Not quite as unbalanced as Katie McGlynn plate of onion bits and the most galumphing slab of completely unseasoned fillet steak you’ve ever seen

everything about this involves the most bizarre choice she could possibly make – the biggest perhaps being her insistence of plating up the shambolically cremated shallots, causing Grace a significant amount of psychic damage in doing so

but I personally I adore the decision to gently drape what she was calling “fairground onions” beneath a limp disc of celeriac

I have to be incredibly grateful for Katie’s brief dip into total insanity because she did end up saving Ginger whose plate of The Gromble pork and rhubarb was almost as unparsable as her outfit

it’s like an iguana got cast as the role of Tinkerbell in the annual Buxton pantomime.
The combination of Roasted Rhubarb, Pork and Beetroot was incredibly divisive amongst the guest critics. John and Grace were much more forgiving of it and the fact her fondant potatoes were a touch raw right in the middle.

Alun Wyn also ended up with a fairly divisive dish. Or at least his Bone Marrow Croquettes were not that well received with the diners but loved by John and Grace who seemed to get the only croquette that still had bone marrow inside of it and therefore looked like a medical textbook diagram

but the rest of his dish – particularly his ox cheek and truffle mash were extremely well received by everyone across the board

the ox cheek was a particular triumph considering he was using the ever temperamental pressure cooker. Which Jamie was also using for his Beef Short Rib Massaman Curry which tasted delicious but was ultimately slightly let down by his rice being a sliceable mass and the fact he’d served in a dog bowl

it’s still not as bad as Dawn’s plate that looked like it came from the Ed Gein women flesh crockery collection

WHY IS IT SO VEINY!??????

Nobody had opted for a dessert so we end with Alfie Boe’s perfectly ordinary spring vegetable and scallop risotto that everyone had to work really hard to not make sound like he was playing it a little bit too safe compared to everyone else

it’s fine – he’d cooked the rice perfectly and the scallops were well handled. There’s just something about Alfie’s food and style that I find boring and cold. Which means he’ll probably win.

A Critic’s Chamber Dish Ranking:
1. The Cheek of It!
2. Jamie LoMassaman Curry
3. Alfie Boe’s Completely Fine Risotto
4. I Cannot In Good Consciousness Reward That Segment of Waffle
5. Ginger’s Dish Honestly Sounded Awful
6. Katie McGlynn’s Carnival of Disappointing Onions

Ginger was playing a dangerous game with that combination of flavours and in many other universes she is, kind of deservedly, eliminated for it. However, she gets by due to the skin of… a very thin and soggy sheet of celeriac

I’m kind of obsessed with you Katie.