I admire a man that has the awareness to add that “so far”

If I give you the ingredients, do you promise to make an Italian Meringue this time?

Prawn Stars

This week’s returning veteran is a personal favourite of mine, Nikita Pathakji and a favourite of Monica’s because she’d brought in Prawn Toast as her first Skills Test

and came accompanied with pan-fried prawns in a Thai Broth, or in the case of Georgia a sort of coconut broth swimming pool

you know what they say: gorgeous, gorgeous girls who have been rendered blind love soup?

It was not a spectacular showing for either Georgia or Keith, both of them having to very much adopt a vibes-based approach to the concept of prawn toast

the main technical ask of this challenge was of course to prepare the prawns and know that you were meant to remove the vein running down the back. Georgia neglected to do so and Keith… sort of just fumbled around the back of the prawn with the most unwieldy knife he could find and a toothpick having a terrible time

eventually just giving up on finding Schrodinger’s Intestinal Tract entirely, choosing to believe it simply must not exist

and came face first into the brick wall of having to work out the prawn toast enigma. My favourite part of this whole Skills Test was the moment that Keith made a prawn paste sandwich – just for the absolute despondency in Nikita’s reaction

HOWMST-SO-EVER, he may well be onto something?

it does look like the filling doesn’t cook well enough and is probably a claggy nightmare of textural indifference but for someone that was backwards engineering having glanced at the Chinese party platter in tesco one time, I think Keith did ok? It could’ve been a million times worse and I think the judges recognised that

he had pan-fried his prawns very well but his broth suffered because he’d dillutted it with an entire can of coconut cream that I think he thought was just coconut milk…

She was trying to help you, my oblivious king </3

Georgia’s broth had suffered because she hadn’t really passed it through the sieve well enough, leaving most of the actual flavour behind. And of course then proceeded to let her pan-fried prawns drown in the dishwater that had once upon a time cleaned a pan used to make a Thai curry

much like Keith there were still flashes of her knowing what she was doing and she did have the better toast of the two of them – having actually made toast instead of deep-frying a finger sandwich (SAID WITH COMPLETE RESPECT, KEITH)

but her biggest blunder was just choosing not to engage with the digestive system of the prawns, which I do understand but was kind of the central pillar holding up this Skills Test.

Alaska, Poor Yorick

The second Skills Test was a premature desserting as Nikita set the challenge of making a Peach Baked Alaska

I’m convinced that they saw Patrick coming and decided he needed a swift humbling with just the sight of the dessert ingredients sending the fear of God into this poor man

because they only had 20 minutes they had been given a pre-made sponge and were asked to make a “cheat’s ice cream” by blending frozen peaches and cream together. Both chefs, understandably in my opinion, ended up struggling with that part of the dish resulting in some very loose and melting ice cream, meaning Nikita had to just about run to the judging station

Kieran did the best of the two, mostly for actually making an Italian Meringue, even if he used bizarrely little of it

Patrick made the fatal flaw of getting his geographically specific meringues mixed up and started making a French Meringue

and Monica absolutely relished the opportunity to slyly point this out like Rachel using the most bizarre method of framing someone at a roundtable that The Traitors has ever seen

they assured him that he still had half his time left so they could give him some spare ingredients if he promised to make them an Italian Meringue this time

well, he started with the best of intentions and then he tried to get clever by melting his sugar with a splash of muscat instead of water turning it instead into a substance that can barely even be called caramel

forcing him to crawl back to the aborted French meringue and beg it to forgive him

I was surprised they ate any of it, I would not have been overly convinced by that lightest of blow torching – the judges however had a bigger issue with the ice cream that was leaking out the side

but it did taste more like peaches than Kieran’s that was more of a cream-first situation

I do think this was MEAN – there is a bit of a precedent in the Skills Test that most core ingredients (butter, flour, sugar) are pre-measured to the exact quantity needed and I think the cream in this situation should’ve been pre-measured? Because unless you browse the whimsical blogs of every yummy mummy who had one person tell them she should write a recipe book after a perfectly mid-recreation of a Mary Berry chocolate cake wherein the recipes find ways of linking their Chocolate Cookie Cake to THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING?????

you probably don’t off-handedly know how to make a 20 minute ice cream that will satisfy the unsophisticated palate of 3 year old Thomasiahus.

Signature Dishes

Every year there’s a very prevalent trend on MasterChef – the original being Scallops with Black Pudding and Peas, deconstructed desserts followed, then there was the emergence of confit egg yolks and this year we are to be crushed by an unrelenting tide of Halibut

and always paired with a morel mushroom of some description – I need to know which celebrity chef started this because it’s so specific to have popped up this much by mere coincidence? I think we’ve had at least 1 instance of Halibut and Morels every episode. This week’s proponent being Kieran

he’d chosen to cook the fish whole and leaving it to be carved later. Unfortunately, while he intended to “carve” it, what ended up happening was more of a bathroom scene in Saw situation

in the words of Marcus, it all felt a little bit “unloved” and it was just even more glaring when the other three dishes all looked quite pretty and put together – even if I do think Keith’s Pan-fried Cod with a trio of Jerusalem Artichoke elements and a completely unnecessary satelliting Cod Ceviche Tartlet was overly prissy

his cooking of the fish was unanimously praised but the dish didn’t quite come together as a whole with the Orange Butter Sauce throwing a spanner in the works for everyone

I think it was just a real case of not knowing how to kill your darlings and wanting to desperately showcase everything you know. It would have been a much stronger dish if he’d stripped it back just a little bit and paced himself competition-wise a bit better. I might also be a little bit biased for Keith – how can you not be, he Guy Goma’d himself into cheffing

absolutely top tier contestant, devastated he didn’t last longer.

The last of the main courses was from Patrick who got a thorough redemption with his Venison Loin and Constantly Out of Focus Beets and Berries

I don’t know why but they just refused to give them an HD shot, its like the bokeh was part of the recipe

the judges adored it and it did sound nice, I look forward to seeing Patrick in the Quarterfinal because at the moment he’s triggered my irrational grudge trap card and he’s not actually done anything other than be a little pretentious on a show that does encourage it. May the Invention Test humanise him.

Lastly we have Georgia who was activating her Emergency French Parachute and making a Tarte Tatin

however, there was a bit of a twist in that she was making it so French the whole plate might as well be screaming like a Miss World contestants as she was adding crispy camembert to the whole thing

The judges were all perturbed by the thought of cheese and tarte tatin but cheddar and apple pie is actually a thing… granted it does originate from New England, the same culinary nexus point as Maple Syrup on Snow

truly the winners of the culinary IDGAF wars. I realise that as a Brit I am very much throwing stones in a house made of Spotted Dick BUT LET US JUST HAVE THIS!

In the end The Cheesing of “26 was a bit divisive, Monica was not impressed by the addition of the camembert (for clarity, she loved the tarte tatin)

it’s a wonder Georgia had any to give them because Marcus was hovering around her workstation like a city pigeon with too much confidence

he ended up appreciating the cheese and tarte tatin combination a lot more than Monica

of all the Tarte Tatins served on this show, it is certainly one of the prettier offerings.

An Unofficial Signature Dish Ranking:
1. V for Vendetta Venison
2. Georgia’s Nouveau Anglais Tatin
3. Kieran’s Hack and Whacked Halibut
4. Keith’s Plate of Too Many Ideas

Unfortunately for me specifically, Keith was onto a bit of a loser with his dish and was left high and dry while Patrick skipped through to the quarterfinal on the back of a dish that redeemed some of his Baked Alaskan Sins. And going through with him was Georgia

she definitely did out-cooked Kieran in the Signature Round and did something more exciting – not that he knew everyone and their dog would be throwing halibut at the judges like the circus seals of the bourgeoisie.