He’s cooking an egg for the very first time, ah-hmm!

Day 1: No sign of the clock.

Signature vs Signurture

Like any 22 year old that’s experienced an extremely public and messy break-up, MasterChef browsed plastic surgery procedures, took the “Am I Gay Quiz” with its fingers crossed and bought a completely new wardrobe to become a glossier model with new and improved orange paneling

more important than perspex cladding, is the changing of the hosts as John sits with his carbonara for one while pondering “Why did Lisa Faulkner take the Single White Female role?” and Gregg flogs woks on TikTok with an audio quality that suggests his microphone is in his toilet cistern, the show is now helmed by Grace Dent conducting everything like she’s the evil queen in Buxton Panto (mostly a compliment)

and Anna Haugh emoting like her eyes are about to escape their sockets and chase the deer in Richmond Park

they’re both doing a great job – I really like Anna and any slander about her will be met with a disdainful tut. I doubt I’ll ever be fully convinced by Grace Dent, I think we as a society should hold anyone who is friends with Emma Kennedy, the world’s wrongest woman, at arms’ length.

The format has seen some minor alterations which I was sceptical of but then Brendan happened and I’m almost fully convinced. But for now, we start with relative normality as the contestants all introduce themselves with the usual Signature Dishes as they vie for MasterChef-branded aprons. The two best chefs getting aprons at the end of this and the remaining 4 cooking again in the Bake Off Technical Challenge wearing a moustache. I am once again denied a proper Invention Test, I know it’s harder these day to trick someone into making a Beef Treacle Tart but with only a slight prod, Brendan would’ve done it – madness lurks beneath these eyes

I’m being mean, Brendan wasn’t actually that bad in the first round which he did owe to his wife for missing their 8th wedding anniversary to only be Just Kind Of Fine™

8 years may be The Pottery Anniversary but Brendan could make a compelling case for it instead being Mashed Potato Containing A Visible Quantity of Butter Anniversary

in this case Regina, the butter is in fact a carb!

As well as the potato-y butter, Grace was taken by his very hyperbolic chicken skin

I hope Brendan’s family know that he is never going to shut up about this but I for one look forward to the national tour of his chicken magic act

“Can Criss Angel do THIS?” he asks as he whips off a velvet cloth to reveal he degloved a chicken in the blink of an eye and now the skin is in your pocket! He will not pay for the dry cleaning, tickets are non-refundable.

Sabina unfortunately hadn’t ascended to quite such lofty epidermic heights with the skin on her Achar Sea Buss failing to crisp up

however, the addition of the crispy curry leaves and onions added the necessary texture that the skin had steadfastly refused to give. I also imagine it helped that the whole thing tasted beautiful despite her questionable spice bookkeeping

the best kind of curry is one that you can’t recreate because you don’t take note of anything you added to it or quantities. The leftovers in the freezer are all you have to hopefully backwards engineer it to life but before you know it your flatmate ate it, which is like if Pierre-François Bouchard had eaten the Rosetta Stone and suddenly your flat is in an Elgin Marbles situation. It’s exactly the same, shut up.

Rosdip was also bringing in some interesting spices in order to fully show off Nepalese cuisine, which doesn’t commonly feature on the show. I think the last time someone heavily focused on Nepalese food was Santosh in 2020 who fed Marcus Wareing a monkey aphrodisiac

the monkeys were not getting turnt today, with Rosdip’s chosen Nepalese ingredient being Jimbu

Wikipedia informs me it is from the onion family and has a taste landing somewhere between chives and shallots – decidedly unerotic. Rosdip was using it in his dhal which was served alongside a sticky-glazed pork belly and Aloo Dum

the colour of the dhal is a tad distressing but both Grace and Anna raved about the flavour and how well it went with the potato and pork belly. It was pretty clear that he would be getting the apron because not only had he cooked very well but had also shown off something new. Which was also going in Jhané’s favour with her Deep-fried Thai Green Chicken inspired by her family friend and undiscovered supermodel of the world, Sup (left)

this is incredible and I want all of it right now but I think Jhané’s best achievement this episode was her eye makeup

that pink inner corner and matching iridescence on the brow bone? Empires would fall for less. I fear I am already emotionally attached to her eyeliner… Sorry Jhané, I’ll prepare the plot in the Blog Favourite Graveyard.

I did feel a little sorry for Sam because around her everyone was going with big bold flavours and techniques, so her offering of fillet steak with triple-cooked chips did feel just a little bit… British Pub In Spain

your uncle in Magaluf is going wild for it but it’s not really measuring up to the MasterChef standard as we know it these days. This would’ve maybe done better 15 years ago during the period where the show did not care to acknowledge that Asia was more than 3 countries – you had India, China and Now That’s What I Call Not China.

Finally we have Matt who had to do MasterChef because he was too whimsical even for Bake Off

Matt may not have lasted long in this competition but I don’t think anyone has ever burned brighter. From the fact he never moved faster than a slow heronly amble despite everyone on this show always insisting upon a hasty sprint between their workbench and the fridge to his admission of only being 25 when his world was opened up to the concept of eggs, I think he’s perfect

oh I know that “I’m cooking an egg for the very first time” went multi-platinum in his household. We’ll get to his egg cookery in a bit, but for this round he was the only one making dessert: a Dark Chocolate Delice with Miso Caramel, Black Sesame Crum and Tahini Vanilla Cream

it was a really good and very accomplished dish with just a few slight technical errors like splitting the cream and being a little heavy handed with the miso in the caramel.

An Unofficial Signature Dish Ranking:
1. Rosdip’s Troop of Unhorny Monkeys
2. Pitching Jhané and Sup’s Travelogue Programme
3. Sabina’s Spice Laundering
4. This Is The Skin of a Winner, Bella
5. Matt’s Delicious Lack of Urgency
6. Sam’s Expat Steak and Chips

Irish Up My Royale

Here is where we leave the light of God and wander into the darkness of new territory as Unprofessional MasterChef invokes the power of The Skills Test with the four remaining contestants all having to make the same dish: a Potato Cake with a Poached Egg and Hollandaise. There was also Smoked Salmon but I think that was mostly there to guarantee that everyone could put *something* on the plate in the event that all else goes tits up

they aren’t completely in the dark, they do get a simplified recipe which omits timings and quantities – except for the Hollandaise which gives explicit quantities of eggs and butter as well as NOTICEABLY excluding flour

Brendan still managed to screw it up royally (royale-ly?)

but while Brendan sank deeper and deeper into his self-made gloop and Anna did her best not to scream at him for making wallpaper paste despite having 60% of a recipe (the eyes give everything away, always)

Matt, the king of failing… I was going to say “upwards” but it’s more of a lateral move with him, managed to alchemise a substance that at least resembled a Hollandaise in passing

however, once you taste it, you realise that it’s an act of chemical warfare that may well violate most of the Geneva Conventions

Sam and Sabina were both through to the next round pretty easily on account of their Hollandaises not being responsible for second degree burns or having the consistency of Flubber, getting their aprons – Sabina reacting like a Catholic was just handed a scrap of the Shroud of Turin

I think the show was banking on a lot more poached egg fiascos with this Challenge, especially with Matt still in the interning for exposure stage of his egg career

Matt’s culinary knowledge is a very nonlinear spectrum. If only he’d made it to the Make A Cake For This Dog portion of the competition.

A Two Course Race

Sadly the rejigging of the format has not moved the Two Course Menu Challenge back to its usual quarterfinal slot where it belongs. I personally think it makes the heats seem way too cluttered having it this early. However the bigger problem is that with last year’s finalists: Claire Who I Apparently Convinced Myself Won, Harry Who Actually Won and Sophie, were the judging panel

Sophie is Vegan and I personally think that they should MAYBE have told the contestants that this would be the case so that they could potentially plan for the event – either making a vegan dish or at least incorporating a component that Sophie could actually eat and judge instead of making her nibble at a roti, a slick of sauce and a rogue blueberry as her blood sugar levels plummeted with her posture in the chair

I think the show really let both her and the contestants down in this regard and then they only repeatedly drew attention to it by showing her placing her knife and fork on a mostly untouched plate

she liked the carrot salad! She ended up getting the most food from Sabina – the above dish being a Makhani Chicken with the aforementioned bowl of shaved carrots (very 2005 era vegan menu offerings)

but I think Sophie could’ve kissed Sabina when she walked in with a bowl of four(4) lentil and onion fritters that she could actually eat

she was probably so hungry she wolfed down the banana leaf too

everyone should’ve donated their fritters to the Vegan Sophie Food Fund lest she turn that judging chamber into a Jhané Family Prawn Night

Claire and Harry doing dramatic sympathy spiels in the style of the Donkey Sanctuary’s calls-to-action that only air between the mid-afternoon quiz shows on ITV that your grandparents watch. I hope you all know that there’s a donkey in Ipswich named Geraldine who is getting more inheritance than you. Sophie really liked the fritters

unfortunately for her, so did everyone else.

Rosdip was also forgoing desserts, the first of his two courses being a Chicken and Cabbage Momo

and if you’re sceptical about the singular dumpling, it is actually a fairly sizable little guy

it was excellently made too with a really well seasoned filling. Sophie was disappointed in her first course of A Quarter Portion of Glorified Soup

Rosdip had gone first and the uphill struggle to the packed lunch in her locker was beginning to dolly zoom out in front of her like the scene in Jaws

especially because he was following that up with a rollicking great big lump of Cod

why are you even putting a piece of fish in front of Sophie? It just seems so rude! Just give her the befoliaged smashed yam! I’m 90% sure there’s probably butter in it but if we didn’t see it go in, we don’t have to believe in it, Flora Food Group said so.

Jhané was following Rosdip and starting her menu off making a Sri Lankan Prawn Curry with a roti and not in fact the fattest blunt you’ve ever seen

Sophie really wanted it to be that fattest ever blunt. It was a really good curry though with the judges being particularly impressed that she’d managed to get the essential charring on the prawns without overcooking them.

I didn’t know how the judging of Jhané’s pudding would go – MasterChef never responds overly well to Just A Cake and really her lemon loaf with cheesecake icing and some blueberry compote is extremely Just A Cake™

but everyone seemed willing enough to not question it too much – Sophie would like to lick the compote bowl, please

Sam can keep her inedible nuts

once again I am feeling sorry for Sam because aside from her pistachio praline not being ground down enough, her food seemed to be really well received! But for some reason, it came across like Grace and Anna were laughing at her whenever she was plating up

I don’t know what was happening but it felt a little bit like there was some sort of storyline happening that ultimately didn’t make the cut? Because everyone who could eat her Lemon Posset and the Sea Bass really praised her food

there were some slight errors like the fish skin being wobbly (Brendan set a very high standard for dermal cookery this week) and her vegetables with the sea bass being a bit greasy.

A Two Course Menu Dish Ranking:
1. Sophie’s Only Full Plate of Food
2. “I Thought The Carrot Shavings Were Lovely.”
3. Jhané Starts The Prawn Wars (Sophie is Switzerland)
4. Wham! Bam! Thank You For Just Some Yam
5. Just A Cake™ Is Not A Dessert
6. Do You See A Dumpling or A Thimble of Soup?
7. A Mouthful of Not Great Nuts
8. We’ve Sprung a Greasy Leek, Cap’n

Nobody did terribly in this round and I think they did slightly over critique Sam in order to fully justify her elimination. I do think she had the weakest dishes, not so much for her technical ability but they felt very predictable and safe whereas Rosdip, Jhané and Sabina all have more distinct points of view. So Sam goes home and Sabina continues to treat every stage of this competition like a religious experience

she is too precious, they can never eliminate her.