POLLY SMASH!

There is no halibut left in Britain.

Steak Me Away

For the first signature of the episode, Nikita was tasking the chefs with cooking a Bavette Steak and serving it with a dressed Papaya Noodle Salad with a garnish of Crispy Noodles

the chefs taking on this particularly test were Polly and Ben, who are surprisingly not the protagonists of a Ladybird book series from the 1950s, although Polly does look a little bit like she might have bullied you with money in 1950

both of them did fairly well in the challenge – Ben was unnerved by the papaya and doing everything in his power not to make eye contact with it

neither of them truly excelled with the salad – although both of them got some bonus points for braving the use of the terrifying fermented shrimp cube in their dressings

but neither of them took much care with it, concentrating much more on the bavette steak. Polly did have a bit of a brain-fart and before she knew it realised that she was wrestling the entire flank of a cow in the frying pan

it did mean she couldn’t get it cooked quite as well as she wanted

but at least she didn’t leave behind the murder scene that Ben did because he chose to rest his steak in the pan

although it does help that Polly made everyone eat all of the evidence.
Ben did prove to have a bit of a habit of just… leaving things to fend for themself – the steak in the pan and his crispy noodles (twice)

he would’ve been better off not serving them but given the Skills Test specifically asked for them, I can see why he still put them on the plate

unlike Polly he had remembered to cut the steak against the grain, which helps negate some of the chewiness a bavette steak can have.

You’re Having a Falafel

Nikita’s final Skills Test was a plate of Falafels and Flatbread served with a tomato salad and Muhammara – a Syrian dip made from peppers and walnuts

they did explain what Muhammara was to both Charlie and Tom, the latter of which I am sure has competed on the show at least three times so far this year

Tom started his culinary career as a baker and they mentioned this A LOT, the reason being that he was about to stumble into unleavened hubris

they could’ve just handed him the leftovers of Charlie’s industrial amount of flatbread dough he’d made to save Tom some time

the theme of Tom’s Skills Test was that he was more of a chatter than a cooker, with Monica having to remind him that this was a cooking competition quite regularly

but it was undeniable that Tom knew what he was doing, there was some points of contention in his seasoning and lack of care as he just started putting fistfuls of falafel mix together

I personally didn’t have an issue with the rough approach to size and shape but Nikita wanted fancy ~quennelled~ falafels

one of my favourite Lebanese restaurants in Sheffield makes them heart-shaped which is fun.
Charlie’s falafels were slightly neater, however he’d panicked over how course his mixture was and began adding more moisture to it completely unnecessarily

but everyone was still kind of perfectly happy with his final plate of food

it is however plated up awfully – we need to have an emergency team meeting with chefs to stop platting up mezzes like a pizza.

Walking The Children In (Sig)nature

The overwhelming halibut-led occupation of the MasterChef kitchen continues at a rapidly accelerating rate with both Polly and Ben using the fish for their signature dishes as they compete to prove which of them loves fish more

IF YOU CAN’T SHARE, I’LL TAKE IT AWAY FROM BOTH OF YOU.
In this particular halibut thumb war, Ben was definitely the victor with a more pared back combination of Mussels, Boiled Potatoes and a Champagne Sauce to go with his his Baked Halibut

the only part I could really do without is the herbaceous pubes, I think they’re just obscuring the dish and with the chive oil, probably aren’t overly necessary. It was all beautifully cooked, whereas Polly’s had suffered slightly because she’d made a dish that felt a bit like someone had forced 3 jigsaws to be one jigsaw

the dish is VERY pretty but it does get to become a bit of a cocophany around the time she proclaimed the scallop mousse in the tempura courgette flower was being joined by pancetta and that she’d used soy sauce in the leek sauce AND was adding a pistachio chimichurri. It was all very good but it’s a dish you can tell was made by a young chef. However, I do much prefer her maximalism to whatever Charlie was doing with his Venison and Kidney Pie

if I ordered a Venison Pie on a menu and you gave me this charity gala h’orderve, there would be HELL to pay. It’s just kind of… nothing? It has no point of view – it doesn’t feel hearty enough to feel like it’s celebrating game (thank you for my singular kidney) and it’s not dainty enough to feel fine dining. Even more confusing might have been Tom’s dessert which is… a Pistachio Sponge Cake with Raspberry Cheesecake piped into its doughnut hole and buried beneath a rubble of white chocolate crumb like a shallow grave

do I think if someone made this on Bake Off as an actual cake it would be nice? Yeah, and I think Jasmine did make it like 5 times (I’m still bitter) but as a dessert on MasterChef I just… can’t understand what Tom thought this was? It’s like a collection of just… things the bakery handed you when you went for a wedding cake tasting. Monica was very kind about it, Matt and Marcus however hated it as much as I did

Matt said the cheesecake had the texture of blancmange and I deeply enjoy “blancmange” just being an inherent insult.

An Unofficial Signature Dish Ranking:
1. Ben’s Minimal Halibut
2. Close, Halibut no Cigar
3. Charlie’s Veni-some
4. Tom’s Shallow Cheesecake Grave

In the end it was the Halibut Twins that prevailed and moved on to the quarterfinal

WE ARE BANNING HALIBUT NEXT YEAR. It’s off limits.