The only time Anna Haugh felt joy all episode.

Day 2: MY BELOVED CLOCK!

Signatures on the Dotted Line

We start with the Signature Round and Michael was certainly trying to prepare us for things to come as he whispers his confession to Maria like a lapsing Catholic

unfortunately, she’s just a former professional cheerleader, there’s only so many sins she can absolve

and at this point we did think that by “not his strong point” Michael just meant that he plates up food like he’s trying to give a sick dog their best last day on earth

and not, you know… making everyone who sets their eyes upon his plate make sanity checks to stave off the encroaching Eldritch madness

but for now, Michael had one of the more normal plates of food. And certainly the most normal Risotto because Luca had decided to commit domestic culinary terrorism through the medium of Risotto

it’s like a child drew the demonic summoning circle that Michael uses to usher in his Black Pudding Ooze in about 30 minutes time.
Luca may have been out to prove that Italian Cuisine is not the be all and end all of culinary goodness and found out that *maybe* Ras el Hanout with Lemon and Mint Pesto Risotto is NOT the means to that end

but he was repping HARD for the Neopolitan Tailoring in his pinstripe apron complete with lapels

I know Grace Dent thinks her Joanna Lumley tribute act method of critique is camp, but I am sorry to her, the faux suiting apron is drag. I did also really like Amy’s apron

I just don’t entirely trust her with it because her haircut implies she might call it “ethnic”

Bay Stater Amy was one of the two contestants on dessert duty, committing herself to repairing American/Iranian relations with her Love Cake

my favourite part of the episode is the voice over from India Fischer in which she REALLY emphasises the RETIRED in RETIRED US Diplomat

Despite what the sensible country club neckerchief in her talking head clips might suggest, SHE’S NOT INVOLVED WITH ANY OF IT!
She had been slightly heavy handed in her cooking of the Persian Love Cake though and it had all turned very bitter

That’s a metaphor. This is not

it’s barely a simile! I have genuinely pondered this for the last 3 days – WHAT DO YOU MEAN, MADDIE!?

Has she confused salmon with dominoes? Why are the salmon toppling? They FAMOUSLY go up, it’s their whole thing! This is my favourite worst turn of phrase all year, which takes some beating because I’m currently reading Grace of Kings by Ken Liu and my guy is a phenomenally talented writer but his vice is a clunky simile:

Na-aroénna spun like a chrysanthemum of slaughter, and Goremaw rose and fell like the beating heart of death.

that was almost my thirteenth reason, I need Ken to know that.

So when Maddie isn’t cooking up figures of speech like she’s the Duolingo Owl teaching you how to ask a shark for its left sock in French, she’s making a lovely Prawn and Scallop Alfredo

Luca standing at the window like Guy Fieri as he watches Maddie get her MasterChef apron for something comparatively more traditionally Italian than his colour theory risotto

also having a good showing was Jim with his Iberico Pork and Romesco Sauce dish that I think looked a bit too messy

but the judges never mentioned that he’d applied the sauce to the plate with a 12-gauge shotgun, imaginably because Luca had served them a Risotto wearing a Hawaiian shirt and that was the more pressing aesthetic issue… FOR NOW. Instead they focused on Jim’s perfect cooking of the Iberico Pork.

Finally we have Maria who was doing the second dessert – Frankensteining together her sisters’ favourite desserts into nobody’s favourite desserts

not to look the gift custard in the mouth, but that’s also a bizarre custard-to-doughnut ratio

An Unofficial Signature Dish Ranking:
1. Our Regularly Scheduled Italian Programming
2. Jim’s Iberico Splat
3. Somehow, Michael
4. Maria’s D’OH!-nut
5. Amy’s Bitter Love Cake
6. Italian Avant Garde Arthouse Risotto

Technical Challenge

For the what we are apparently, two episodes in, already calling “The Classic Recipe Test” as though it’s been here the whole time

Luca, Michael, Amy and Maria had to cook a pan-fried chicken breast and serve it with green beans, mashed potato and a red wine sauce. For which they were of course armed with “a basic recipe” making the title of the CLASSIC RECIPE TEST a bit of a misnomer because this is just a shopping list at best

really it’s just more of a food-themed literacy test and Luca is failing

the alpha male epidemic is a very pressing issue, but maybe we also have to to tackle the APPARENTLY RAPIDLY GROWING crisis of men adding flour to dishes that have never in the history of food on this planet had flour added to them. I also NEED to know how much milk Luca had added to his mashed potato because even with the flour it was still definitely a liquid the likes of which hasn’t been for human consumption since the 11th century

despite the humiliating Gruel of 1066, Luca could at least take pride in his chicken, which may have in fact been the best cooked chicken in the room

and for better or worse, the judges could at least take a full mouthful of his Dickensian child labour slop, Anna could only risk the tiniest tyne tip of mash from Maria’s because it was leaking chicken albumin everywhere

it was a shocker of a round for Maria but they really did try to help her with Grace coming over and asking her if the chicken was cooked in the most that-chicken-is-definitely-not-cooked-babe voice anyone could possibly muster

and then on completely the other end of the spectrum, Amy and Michael both had very good showings. Amy produced a plate of food that Grace deemed to be faultless

and Michael’s at least tasted good… He is still operating like an alien trying to replicate human food after reading 2 books

and those two books are Fanny Cradock’s Coping With Christmas and HP Lovecraft’s Shadow Over Innsmouth.

It’s hard to say if the Classic Recipe Test is doing a better or worse job than the round on Celebrity MasterChef that involved them eating aonoymous cubes of egg

several people said they thought I was making The Cube Round up – IT WAS REAL, I was not doing a bit!

A Two Course Race

This week’s alumni of judges were Alexina Anatole, Eddie Scott (whose new hair I will have to learn to love) and Jane Devonshire

and I think Jane Devonshire might have some of the worst luck in MasterChef history – she has been patient zero for both The Enigma of Stefan and his purple potatoes

as well as the malevolent insanity of Jerome who dared to wonder what would happen if you pickled a black forest gateau (which he didn’t go home for, mind you)

and now she must fight perhaps the biggest battle of all – the one-two punch of a man who wants to talk to you about Lovecraft AND Frank Herbert

oh you better believe that I began rubbing my thighs when this literary nerd began quoting Lovecraft and equating it to the horrible things he could do to Black Pudding while Anna and Grace wondered if forcing Gregg and John to judge this would’ve been a more suitable punishment than banishing them to the shadow realm

THEN HE BEGAN PLATING IT and like a parent trying to decipher the loose squiggles of a toddler who hasn’t mastered their motor skills, Grace politely pondered if Michael was using the replasmated blood pudding to draw an octopus

and the answer is YES because Michael isn’t a coward who hides behind such devices as subtext

every year I fear that MasterChef has lost the ability to touch the chaotic divine, but I think Michael might be Khaos himself, come back to drag us all into the void from which we sprang. I look into that congealing anomalous black matter and I feel it calling my name, the desire to sink into it and forget myself coiling around my heart. It squeezes. It sucks. It inspires. I have gazed upon madness and become madness myself. Join me my brothers, my sisters, my siblings who are all and nothing therein. We must return to the sludge, allow it to slough our skin, break our bones and loosen our minds.

They all hated it, which might be a hate crime because I think this counts as a new minor faith. And if you’re thinking “Well this challenge is pointless, obviously the man who tried to froth a black pudding is going home” – I need you to know that this screenshot of Eddie looking like that raccoon that passed out in the liquor store bathroom was NOT taken after Michael’s Eldritch Scallops

It seemed that once Michael had invoked The Call of Cthulhu, everyone else went insane, Amy decided to cook her Salmon in a skillet pan of passion fruit puree

this is like Rachel Green’s Beef Trifle except it’s the pages of the Cheesecake Factory menu that got stuck together because what do you MEAN you’ve made Granadilla Salmon

she doesn’t even have the excuse of this being inspired by the second greatest example of Mythopoeic cosmicism

it was just a bad idea and somehow that is worse than drawing the face of cthulhu with all the finesse of someone writing slurs on the Pizza Hut toilet door in 2008

I just have to keep reminding myself that this did happen but every time I look at it I forget a piece of myself. I showed it to my friends and I saw their eyes briefly dim and spines shiver. I think they hear it too now, joining me as Herald to the sludge. Tell your friends; proclaim his depth, his love, his embrace. Sludge is all we need.

Things did get better for Michael in the eyes of the heathenous unejoyers of the black pudding “foam” with them all loving his (unfortunately not literary inspired) Venison Diane

was it too much to put an upsettingly thin wig on it and say it was Nicole Kidman in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, MICHAEL? I thought you had The Vision!

Considering everyone wanted to actually eat Michael’s main course, that was where Amy lost serious ground as her Peanut Butter Fondant with Strawberry Cream proved to be a little bit too American for the judging panel

it was just too cloyingly sweet. I’m not surprised it fell a bit flat, I know a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich is an institution in America, it’s just not *that* big a thing here in the UK? I know we have bizarre sugary nonsense – I’ve written this blog while sitting next to a man that just put 15 sugars in his latte and looking at a recipe for Sticky Toffee Pudding sometimes has the same feeling as, well, looking upon The Sludge

but it’s all very different Sugary Nonsense. It’s OUR Sugary Nonsense and it’s the one thing I feel patriotic about.

The only person who got a single plate of food that didn’t fill the entire dining room with trepidation and was decently cooked was Jim, who had a really good Monkfish Curry main course

he went straight after Michael and I imagine the stench of his inky abyss was still lingering

I think they should probably burn sage and employ an on-site priest for the remainder of the series. Just to be safe, I don’t think Michael truly knows what he unleashed.

Jim wasn’t without a shortcoming though – his pairing of Scallops, Mango and Tamarind at least being comparatively better than Michael’s scalloping of Timothee and Zendaya

but it was still a bit of an ordeal with how sweet it made the whole dish

Maddie was on the verge of a great main course, having cooked her duck breast pretty well considering her approach to the challenge was like that of the “This is fine” dog

the baking-tray-fried duck was actually the best part and was slightly let down by the pomme puree not being smooth and her duck leg bonbon being a little too soft

her lack of time management caught up to her come dessert. She hadn’t managed to get her shortbread biscuits in the oven in time, facing the “conundrum” of whether or not to serve the biscuits that were just about the same consistency as Luca’s mashed potato you could drink through a straw

she made the very correct decision not to plate them up

I kind of wish she had served them just because I think it might have been Jane’s final straw.

An Unofficial Two Course Dish Ranking:
1. There Is Only Sludge
2. There Is Only Sludge
3. There Is Only Sludge
4. There Is Only Sludge
5. There Is Only Sludge
6. There Is Only Sludge
7. There Is Only Sludge
8. There Is Only Sludge

Well Michael’s tactic of invoking the power of the Old Gods certainly worked because Amy sort of careens off a cliff of bizarre Americana that failed to land with anyone

is Peruvian Passion Fruit Salmon actually a thing, babe?