Me trying to put the microwave clock forward.

Completionist run!

The Last Supper

The final is always interesting because we get to see if everyone paced themselves correctly in the competition and for the most part, I do think all three of them managed to bring their best dishes into the final. I was most pleasantly surprised by Luke whose plating style and dish composition I haven’t always seen eye to eye with but I think his final Duck main course showed a real fine dining point of view without raising the question of “Is this fine dining, or is it just small?”

the vague theme of his menu was the Ye Olde MasterChef Favourite of putting a ✨spin✨ on a classic – the main course being pancakeless duck pancakes. His starter was probably the best iteration of this, having taken an English Breakfast and decided to serve it as a Raviolo filled with Black Pudding and an Egg Yolk with a Sausage Sandwich and a homemade brown sauce on the side (which he did credit Mark Donald, Professional Loch-stander, as the inspiration of)

and yes, the caviar budget and questions raised by the unused larder produce are definitely high on the list of bourgeoisie crimes leading this franchise to the guillotine, but the most out of touch this show has ever been was when Marcus Wareing began explaining the concept of a sandwich to us

diva, they’re going to eat you. But I’ll make sure they confit you first, I know it’s how you’d want to go out.
The classic dessert that Luke had chosen to yassify was a Tiramisu, which he was turning into a sort of entremet of layered Mascarpone Panna Cotta and Coffee Chocolate Cremeux which required a laborious process of layering and freezing meaning he was running to and from the freezer almost as much as Mark scurrying back and forth from the barbecue area into the ominously gloomy MasterChef Backrooms

and it was worth it because the Tiramisu was a really fine work of pastry skill that I think Luke had up to then, not really delivered fully on

I truly thought there was no way he wasn’t winning this series because all of his dishes were so specifically Marcus’s Shit™ and you begin to realise why Marcus keeps making heart-eyes at Luke from across the room – he is a Michel Roux scholar

your Roux Scholarship is great and all, but is it a greyscale Jamie Oliver Fire Cracker Certificate?

with this and title of Mr. Open-fire bestowed upon him by Norbert Niederkofler, Mark is well on his way to Barbecue EGOT.
The HOWL I let out when Mark said he did a stint in London at “a restaurant” (unnamed) only for it to be Jamie Oliver going completely unnamed could’ve woken the dogs all the way down in Abergavenny

Jamie Oliver watching at home, a single tear running down his cheek, as he says “But… you were my little fire cracker?”
And as Mark and Luke play Top Trumps with their accolades of cheffery, here’s a musical interlude from Gareth on his harmonica

this is the holy grail of VT inserts – I’ve been writing this nonsense little blog for 6 years now and never has anyone made such a mythical hobby pull and I just hope that he gets the band back together

the desperate google search I made

howling in grief like Gbemisola Ikumelo listening to Diane Morgan playing with a fart noise soundboard because Slater Baty and the Nightmare Boys is lost media

and because the trend of serving your food accompanied by an ipod shuffle playing seaside noises has passed (Blumenthal still has 15 months of community service to do for that) none of Gareth’s dishes came with a Sater Baty and the Nightmare Boys EP. But all of his dishes were dedicated to members of his family – at which point you really began to realise it was *so* over for Mark and Luke. The only thing more powerful on this show than fractionally dissected duck, is a main course that makes you a bit weepy

his main course was inspired by the foraging trips his dad used to take him on after which they’d get chicken and chips at the pub. The dish consisted of a pan-fried King Oyster Mushroom served with what was described as a “reverse ballotine”

which sounds like something out of the pages of the Cosmo’s sex guide

the judges adored this dish with a struggle to find fault and Marcus being fully prepared to put the framed photo of Luke facedown while he went to town on those chips

I hope this inspires everyone next year to shove a bowl of chips onto every plate. I also hope someone makes Marcus that gourmet burger he’s been hankering for for 7 weeks now. I genuinely wonder what would happen if someone burger’d in the final because invariably, come the final you do have to be doing ~fine dining~ which in the case of someone like Mark ends up feeling a little bit like they’re cooking for the judges, more than themself. You see the insane barbecue platter he makes in his VT insert

and it’s very much “I want to go to there” and is still very much Professional cookery but he can’t be The Big Meat Man™ in the final so we end up with a Pörk Choppe and Hispi Cabbage and Crayfish Roll

and don’t get me wrong, this is absolutely the main course I’d most likely order – the sweet tea brined pork chop cooked to perfection over the barbecue sounds amazing and that hispi cabbage crayfish ballotine is to me as Gareth dancing like a Chinese Mitten Crab during mating season is to his fiancée

shout out to the partners of all three finalists, they all seem like the most supportive and amazing women who I’m sure have been essential to the process for them all

getting to eat the nicest food you’ve ever seen is the least they deserve.

Mark’s menu was what he claimed would be his final meal with his starter being a take on Fruits de Mer – and if you are going to be sentenced to death, you might as well make it everyone in the room’s problem with a platter of Oysters, Mussels and Scallops

the oyster paired with horseradish was the highlight for both Marcus and Matt with Monica liking the Scallop and Champagne Gel, not that that came as a surprise

but I was very intrigued by the sake-poached mussels with Kimizu, the latter of which I am unfamiliar with and is an egg yolk and vinegar sauce from Japan.

Finishing off Mark’s Last Supper was his dessert inspired by Coffee and a Doughnut. Unfortunately, even with the three hours for the challenge, he was pushed for time come the end

and as much as I did admire the valiant effort to deep-fry a doughnut in only 10 seconds, they did have to be left going slowly golden brown in the fryer

meaning this was more of a Coffee and No Nuts

even if Mark had sold his soul to the devil for a doughnut to serve in that moment

it was by no means a perfect dish, purely because the coffee espuma seemed to have the texture of loft insulation

however! It was delicious loft insulation

but with the other two not messing up anywhere, the dessert did rather seal Mark in as coming in pretty solidly as third.

Back to Gareth, and his starter was based on his mother’s go-to starter: a Prawn Cocktail

I can’t say it really excited me but I am yet to be excited by a prawn cocktail. If I could choose to go back in time to stop one historical event from happening, it would be to stop whoever it was that dumped the contents of their fridge’s chiller drawer into a martini glass and called it an hors d’oeuvre

the judges however loved it because Marcus has never met a sauce made from the carapaces of langoustines that he hasn’t immediately fallen in love with

and finishing off his menu was a cocktail proper, with something of a take on a Brandy Alexander as a poached pear dessert which felt a little bit like he was redeeming the Whisky misfire when he almost knocked Monica out

and he managed to balance the brandy ratio to his Chocolate and Dulce de Leche Cremeux very successfully

I was also glad that he added the cremeux duo because I didn’t want to have to tap the Poached Pears Are A Glorified Salad sign – he was on thin ice after that prawn cocktail starter.

A Final Menu Dish Ranking:
1. Let Them Eat English Breakfast Pasta
2. The Second Piece of Chicken To Make Me Cry
3. Let Them… Not Eat Pancakes
4. Luke’s 5 Tier-amisu
5. A Delicate Chop
6. Death by Shellfish
7. A Cremeux is NOT A Salad
8. My Anti-Prawn-Cocktail Bias is Showing
9. Coffee and NoNuts

All in all, I think it was a very good final and a relief nobody got betrayed by the tagteam of a langoustine intestine and a scrap of clingfilm – I have never stopped thinking about Liam, it’s been 5 years and his shell-shocked expression only ever seen on World War 1 survivors still haunts me! So congratulations, none of you became a beautiful piece of renaissance art

because of the mishap with the dessert, Mark was mostly out of the question for the win – however, I will maintain that I am most interested in the restaurant or establishment that he opens, it was rare for him to cook something that didn’t make my mouth water a little bit

leaving it to Luke or Gareth – either of which could’ve taken it and I’d have said it was the right decision. I do think Luke had the more technically complex and menu, however I think Gareth had the more compelling and personal menu which is an important part of competing in a specifically TV-based cookery competition. In the end, Gareth is the Professional MasterChef 2026 Champion and it’s extremely well deserved

and now everyone has an accolade!

The thing with MasterChef is that come the final, I’m never that overly invested in a specific person winning because it’s one of the few shows where you know that it’s a career springboard for everyone involved, especially at this point in the competition. I look forward to the Skills Challenges you all set in the future – Mark, you owe Marcus doughnuts and a burger.

And thank you to everyone that’s been reading the recaps despite falling behind with them more than a couple of times! I know a few of the contestants have read them and I appreciate not being sent a cease and desist request!