There are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see.

Every time you thought this episode was about to conclude, another chef popped into existence.

Invention Test

So this episode is a sadistic hellscape with the opening challenge being for ALL THIRTEEN of the chefs to cook at once with zero no guidance on what to cook. They just opened that larder and let them all go ham on what turned out to be an astonishing supply of small game birds that Anthony was getting particularly turnt over

he was not the only one to be reaching for the quail, but he was the only one to be cooking it like a normal person because Patrick was somewhere in all this playing Frankenstein with his quail that had its bones replaced with minced duck

and the final result looks alarmingly like he was serving up the bloated corpse of an African Bullfrog

every so often you get the impression that some of these chefs would be better off expressing themselves through the medium of mid-2000s torture porn cinema – Patrick’s quailful of reprocessed raw duck meat would’ve swept the Fangoria awards

this feels like a metaphor for something. I’m genuinely in awe of how absolutely vile it was and the rancidness of more gelatinous duck flesh oozing out every time they cut into another piece of the quail. Body horror at its finest.

Anthony had a much better time with his quail because as it turns out, if you don’t waste your time replacing all 120 of its bones with the meat of a duck, you actually have the time to cook it properly!

he got added bonus points from the judges for using every part of the quail. Unlike Patrick who, and I really cannot stress this enough, replaced his quail’s bones with duck paté like a cruel God dabbling in cartilaginous fish for the first time. Why can’t you be normal and just shove it in a profiterole?

And whatever duck that Patrick hadn’t shoved into the orifices of the world’s most unfortunate quail, was served up by Sel

I think is was the most normal of the poultry dishes made this episode on the virtue of it not just being the carcass of whatever twinky bird they’d roasted slapped on the plate. I don’t personally have a problem with eating off the bone but I feel like I’d be too aware that Mario’s pigeon was a pigeon

it’s the most pigeony pigeon dish that’s ever pigeoned. And I say that in a world in which this bombastic display exists

I demand a Fanny Cradock challenge. I want to see chefs that aspire for Michelin starred recognition trying to elevate Fanny’s monument to erectile prowess

truly a once in a generation mind.

Despite the extremely well-stocked larder and its multiverse of possibilities, there was A LOT of doubling up amongst the chefs – obvious we had Anthony and his evil attic-dwelling twin that sews pigeons and rats together

meanwhile Polly and Luke were duelling it over Sea Bass but the funniest was Gareth trying to not be like the other girls and whipping out a Plum Frangipane

only to hear from across the room that Georgia was doing the same after dedicating an entire night to memorising the recipe

except whatever pneumonic she was using to remember that recipe had THOROUGHLY betrayed her as she looked on at her tarts slowly exploding like a stampede of elephants had come their way

as it turns out, egg is a pretty essential part of a recipe that calls for 3 of them

however, we do have to support both Women’s Rights and Women’s Wrongs because Georgia might be onto something with Frangipane Cookies

safe to say Gareth was firmly in the good books for a Frangipane Tart that didn’t look like it had welcomed the sweet release of death

and the last of our three desserts in this round came from Caroline who had made a very boring sounding Chocolate and Salted Caramel Mousse Tart that didn’t really taste much of salted caramel

and was quite frankly completely eclipsed by what might be the most breath-takingly beautiful quenelle of ice-cream I’ve ever seen?

we VERY rarely see a scoop of ice cream make it to the judges looking like a scoop of ice cream, just look at Georgia’s Rhubarb Ripple that looked like it had put a gun in its mouth

truly nobody was in the trenches more than Georgia this round. Except maybe Patrick’s quail. Or Gemma and her extremely prevalent generational trauma

she’d set about to make a Duality of Aubergine inspired by dishes that her mother and mother-in-law both cook. Unfortunately her mother’s tomato fondue aubergine was undercooked

the bigger sin though was the presentation – that bread roll that looks like it has the density of osmium really adds to the verisimilitude of a conference buffet

if you told me to identify which of these plates was made by someone that owns a food truck, I think I’d be able to guess based entirely on Gemma’s need to throw a bread roll in there. BUT THANK GOD SOMEONE SERVED CARBS.

The rest of the dishes were all seafood offerings – the most successful being Barbecue-Mark’s Prawn and Dulse Agnolotti as he continues to refuse to be pigeonholed into the Big Meat Man hole I’m trying to cram him inside

at this point he keeps saying “I want to prove I can do other things” without ever having done the thing we supposedly all think he can do

ven vill you cook ribs?

Dhananjai’s prawn dish was less well received than Not-Like-The-Other-Barbecue-Boys-Mark’s, with the judges thinking his Rasam sauce overpowered everything else in the bowl

and in the curry-off going on in the room, Dhananjai was thoroughly outdone by Ismail and his Bangladeshi prawn head sauce that was the main accompaniment to his sea trout

the only real problem was that despite everything tasting phenomenal, it wasn’t a dish of great substance. Although I would say that about most of the dishes to be honest – Polly’s is literally just a square of sea bass and 3 mussels with a barely conceived coconut and turmeric sauce

it’s kind of just a nothing plate of food? It’s a sad trombone slide in place of the va-va-voom she’s promised

and she, much like Dhananjai, was just outclassed by her unofficial direct competitor Luke, who’d made a sea bass and dashi consomme to go with his fish and gnocchi

I do have to say though, I love gnocchi, but this is a very strange deployment of gnocchi. But this challenge was just mostly everyone panicking and hoping to show they could do some sort of process they hadn’t already showcased yet. Which does explain Patrick shoving one bird into another like Freddy Fazbear loading up another animatronic. (is that what happens? I don’t know, I’ve never watched it, I’m just trying to game the algorithm.)

An Invention Test Dish Ranking:
1. VEN VILL YOU SMOKE MEAT?
2. Anthony’s Unhumiliated Quail
3. Sea Bass? More Like A+ Bass
4. Ismail’s A Potato Short of Perfection
5. Gareth’s Intact Plum Frangipane
6. Sel’s Duck Move
7. A Very Pigeon-shaped Pigeon
8. Remember Caroline’s Tart, It’s Important Later
9. Dhananjai’s Rasam Note
10. Polly’s C- Bass
11. Gemma’s Ancestral Aubergine Debasement
12. Georgia’s Frangi-PAIN
13. Patrick’s FrankenQuail

In the end, the chefs that were having to cook for survival were Polly, Gemma, Georgia, Patrick and Dhananjai. Which I do think was mostly fair but getting rid of three of them in one fell swoop seems rather savage…

The Leftovers

In order to see which lucky two would continue on in the competition, they faced another Free Reign Invention Test, having to cook with whatever was left in the larder. The only catch being that if they cooked a savoury dish in the previous round, they now had to cook a dessert and vice versa. This did mean that Georgia was the only one doing savoury food and with the kitchen having been bled dry of its Tiny Bird Supply, she’d instead pivoted to her safe space of pasta, putting together a plate of Feta and Ricotta Tortelli and Roasted Mediterranean Vegetables and a Parmesan Cream

it was by far and away the most well received dish with nobody having any complaints. I did have a concern with the texture of the parmesan cream but immediately forgave all that because of Gemma’s Bu-cakey

diva, I hate this so much. It’s a shame too because if she’d nixed off the vegan spaff and pointlessly bland tonka mousse to make something more with the orange gel to go with the ginger cake, she wouldn’t be going home to that stern talking to

my favourite part is the “crumb” around the plate that I’m not convinced isn’t the floor sweepings

and considering Gemma flung her ginger cake around like she was trying to fight off a Viking raid in the 8th century, she was significantly more composed than Patrick who was having the worst time of his life

he’s one of the many chefs that comes in with pastry as an Achilles’ Heel and considering he was doing the whole thing with the composure of a jellyfish in a riptide, the fact he even got his Chocolate and Salted Caramel Mousse Tart with Raspberries on a plate is mildly impressive

but wait a minute…

I really can’t quite believe the audacity and that nobody mentioned anything because that’s WILD behaviour, my guy. At least when Polly punted the third Frangipane (second, Georgia had made a hellmouth in a tart case) our way, she had the decency to change the flavour profile to Rhubarb and Pistachio

but maybe they just didn’t want to kick Patrick while he was very much down because they barely even raised an eyebrow at “Olive Oil Ice Cream served as a sauce”

KICK THE MAN! HE CAN GO LOWER!

And now we have my absolute favourite dish in the room because Dhananjai? What is this?

that very anus-y reindeer is a Chai Tea Panna Cotta – which honestly sounds great but maybe just needs to… not look like Rudolph’s Rudolphussy.

An Unofficial Leftovers Dish Ranking:
1. Georgia’s Pasta Recall memory
2. The Pass Around Party Frangipane Recipe
3. I Apologise for “Rudolphussy”
4. That Froot Looks Familiar!
5. Gemma’s 100 Years of Repentance

Gemma and Patrick were obviously being ditched and I shan’t argue with it, as much as I loved Gemma and loved writing about Patrick

and I was REALLY hoping that they might cut it at that and agree that the other three had all done enough to progress. But alas, Dhananjai was also tossed out

HE DID NOTHING WRONG!