I will always applaud the rarely sighted emotional manipulation gambit.

Back to your regularly scheduled Doing Awful Things To Eggs programming.

Brain vs Prawn

We kicked off the first Quarterfinal with an invention test that was centred all around King Prawns

and YES, I will once again be complaining about what the Invention Test has become because I think a pantry so fully stocked that it looks like you crammed the entirety of Borough Market into a 20ft by 20ft room isn’t asking that much of the chefs

granted this didn’t stop Mario from going insane and trying to confit egg yolks in boiling water which is decidedly not confiting in any sense of the word

and he didn’t just do it once, he had to ask them to break the glass of the emergency egg case so he could continue his futile efforts to poach an egg yolk

he did eventually pivoted to oil but by this point he clearly didn’t have enough time to slow cook anything and so the egg yolk had developed a crunchy skin and if there’s one thing you don’t want your egg yolks described as, it’s probably “crusty”

this dish is clinically unwell – I do not get it and he’d done barely anything to the prawns! They were just lightly blanched and tempura’d

the only real redeeming feature in this plate of texturally anomalous eggs and raw vegetables was his prawn head oil but nobody really wants to have to drink a cup of prawn oil in order to get the joy of eating a prawn.

Mario wasn’t the only one to have a bit of a dud dish, Sel was going a little bit out there by combining his prawns with pale ale inspired by that time he spilled beer on his prawn toast

as for the prawns he was also doing them two ways, simply pan-frying one and serving the other as a ceviche atop it

it was mixed reviews, Monica was fine with the Pale Ale Sauce but wouldn’t want it any stronger than it currently was, which y’know… is probably why he made it that strong?

my favourite critiques on this show is when they just say things for the sake of saying things. Marcus was less keen on the dish, thinking the pale ale overpowered the prawny goodness and in private surmised that Sel hadn’t found his style yet

which I think is deeply unfair to say of a 35 year old chef who has, in just two dishes, shown himself to be a very ambitious Central American fusion chef? But if they want to give him a free storyline, I won’t resent that.

Luke and Ismail were decidedly more successful than the previous two, although Ismail did fall a little short of Luke’s outright success because he’d plated up his Prawn and Coconut Curry like he didn’t know he could use more than 15% of the plate

it all tasted amazing but it does look like you began plating up at an all you can eat buffet without thinking about the ergonomics of eating it beforehand. He does however continue his rampant success with rice

he doesn’t cook rice in the next challenge and Monica looks like she’s being forced to go cold turkey and will throw herself off the third floor balcony if someone doesn’t funnel feed her some carbs

his rice is healing something inside of Monica and I find that to be a wonderful thing. I hope he’s charging her £75 per bowl and hourly session.

Luke’s invention test resulted in a Prawn Tortellini dressed in Prawn Butter and served with a Prawn Bisque

and the fact he got such a good bisque made in the time is mostly a thorough indictment upon Mario and whatever he was doing to those poor egg yolks – I need a full police investigation.

An Invention Test Dish Ranking:
1. Luke Getting Turnt-ellini
2. Ismail’s Impossible Bruschetta
3. Pale Ale-ing in Comparison
4. Mario’s Conniptioned Egg and Prawns

Criticking Me Off

In order to decide who was going to be eliminated (or not…) the quarterfinalists had to cook a two course menu for Jimi Famurewa, Leyla Kazim and member of the ever dwindling TV-safe royal adjacents, Tom Parker Bowles

I need to know where Leyla’s statement swan dress came from – I haven’t needed to own an item of clothing more since Stephen’s cunty little jumpsuit on The Traitors

the swan dress is imaginably equally beyond my pay grade but what else am I meant to wear while I make my bird-themed podcast? (It’s happening, I’ve written the first two episodes!)

Given that his Asian diversion had not garnered him much success in the Invention Test, Mario was retreating back to the safety of Spanish bread-based dishes. His menu starting off with scare-quotes Serranito

Serranito being a Sevillian hot sandwich made up of, usually, pork, fried green peppers and sliced tomatoes. The MasterChefication of the humble andalusian sandwich was very much a desandwiching, forgoing bread in favour of shoestring fries

it’s not a dish that wildly excites me, there’s something a bit cold looking about it but I can admit that his skill in putting it all together was outstanding. Monica even admitted that the Iberico Pork couldn’t have been cooked any better

his menu continued to explore Tom Parker Bowles’s borderline offensive attempts at a Spanish accent, with Mario’s take on Torrija, A Spanish version of French Toast that’s much more custard-like than typical Pain Perdu

it’s simple but incredibly effective and I think the addition of the Bayleaf Ice Cream adds a distinct bit of flare and point of view that the dish needed.

Sel was the only one forgoing dessert, instead starting his dish with a take on the Mexican street food, Esquites. The similarity begins and ends with toasted sweetcorn, sadly Sel wasn’t going for the Flaming Hot Cheetos variant

instead his charred sweetcorn was served in a Chipotle Cream alongside chunks of Langoustine and a Scallop

this sounded absolutely lovely and took a very deft hand to balance everything so that the decadence of the Langoustine and Scallop could still shine despite the boldness of the Chipotle and Mezcal Cream which Sel certainly pulled off, much to everyone’s delight.

Sel’s starter was absolutely my kind of food and I’d order that in a heartbeat, his main course of Beef Fillet with a Veal Sauce, marginally less so. Granted, his take with the addition of the Pepian sauce, a spin on Guatemala’s national dish, was enough to pique my interest

his cooking of everything was extremely highly praised across the board, with particular attention being drawn to the veal sauce that did look incredible

what was that about Sel not having found his style, Marcus???

Luke and Ismail, in the safest positions coming in to the round had two extremely different approaches. Ismail is clearly a man of the people and will never knowingly under-serve anyone – it’s rare that anyone would get two lamb chops and a whole scotch egg to themself on MasterChef: The Professionals

now THAT’S a portion size! What a King. On top of all that, these lamb chops with a pulled aubergine crumb were the only dish that made me actually salivate, it’s SUCH a good plate of food and I swear to god if they beat him down into serving 2 forkful of Halibut and a segment of potato as a main course I will burn Birmingham down to the ground in its entirety

this was Luke insisting a starter portion was a main course and annoyingly cooking it all absolutely perfectly – which he kind of had to because his ingredients are worth at least a month’s rent.

There were some concerns over Ismail’s dessert, which was just a tropical fruit cheesecake, and yeah… it does seem like it stepped right out of the regular MasterChef series, there’s just nothing *particularly* wow about it

but there’s also nothing inherently wrong with it and I can’t say I wouldn’t lick the plate clean. And the same goes for Luke and his Salted Caramel Cremeux and Whisky Cream

it does seem slightly texturally imbalanced but I also can’t get over how perfect the quennell of cream is

I can see all of my hopes and dreams in that soft biblically accurate angelic sheen.

An Unofficial Critics’ Chamber Dish Ranking:
1. A Correct Portion of Lamb Chops
2. Sel’s Corn Stars
3. Mario’s Sandwichless Sandwich
4. Sel’s Stylish Beef
5. Luke’s Plate of Bankruptcy
6. Mario’s Pan Per-Dos
7. Luke’s 5 Star Quennell
8. Ismail’s Barely Constructed Cheesecake

Given that none of the chefs had done the judges the favour of being a complete flop and the invention test apparently not counting for anything (YOU ARE SO LUCKY, MARIO) the decision was to ultimately not eliminate anyone and take all of them through to Knockout Week

and as much as I want to say that this episode could’ve been an email, I do really like these four so I don’t begrudge the decision at all.