That Sim on a different floor while you were in the elevator prior to the patch notes on November 3, 2010.

I am patiently waiting for the dessert called I Have No Mouth, and I Must Ice Cream.

The Signature of Things

We’re back with a new group of contestants and if you thought we were out of the turn of the century horror woods, here comes Yuvi with an accidental steel chair

the difference being that while Michael was painting the visage of Cthulhu with his whole chest, Yuvi hadn’t actively set out to plate up Bram Stoker’s Count Quackula, it sort of just happened

and maybe I think this just because Yuvi is an AI Consultant (you’re on THIN ICE)

but the one accidentally misplaced slice of sauté duck heart gives the dish a very AI generated feel, like a finger with an extra couple of joints. The bigger problem than his aesthetic arrhythmia was that that the duck breast was so raw it could cast aspersions upon whether it had ever in fact been dead

he’d set out to showcase zero waste cooking and accidentally wasted £8 worth of duck.
Yuvi wasn’t the only one plating up most of an animal as Tony threw like one and a quarter pigs onto a plate

and if you told me to draw a sketch of the man who would be doing this, I do believe I would’ve been able to give you a perfect E-FIT of Tony, the dairy factory worker

truly the Tonyest Tony that ever Tony’d, only confirmed by the spectacular plate of beige food he brought up

I for one welcome the arrival of our beige messiah

Merry Porkmas to all and to all a good night!

Joining Tony in a successful cook was Matt – the man who seems to have been a maths teacher since he was 7 years old

he apparently taught year 7 which gave me war flashbacks to being dropped in my first high school maths lesson halfway through the year and being met by Algebra for the first time with ZERO explanation. I didn’t know you could mix letters and number so, as only a child who started reading Dan Brown novels earlier than they should’ve would, decided that the letters had to be code and logically it would be a=1, b=2, c=3… I remember the teacher looking at my VERY OBVIOUSLY WRONG answers and, in the kindest voice this woman who looked and sounded like a pigeon could muster asked “Are you ok?” as though she suspected I might have a concussion. And I suspect in that moment Mrs. Hemmingway did contemplate throwing in the towel and deciding her calling was to make a Dashi-poached Sea Bream with a Tomato and Brown Crab Sauce

this sounded phenomenal and certainly a more successful go at fusion food than Alexia managed by throwing Beer-battered Aubergine and Satay Sauce at a plate of Whipped Feta

each of these separate components are amazing and work well with one of the others, unfortunately the complete overlap on the Venn Diagram is “You’ve Made a Terrible Decision At The Buffet” as they all clash together and get overpowered by the entire wedge of feta smeared across the plate.

Leia had the dish that intrigued me the most, or at least she did until Rebecca offered me a turmeric-flavoured egg in this trying time

Leia was going for a Pastélon or Plantain Lasagne, a classic from Puerto Rico which is a cuisine we don’t get a lot of representation of in the UK

and I do fear this may be Anna Haugh’s Crispy Rendang Moment

having had a look at a few pastélon recipes, I get the impression it’s not meant to have quite the same ratios as a traditional Italian Lasagne because, inevitably, a plantain is always going to be thicker than a lasagne sheet. Please be kind Puerto Rico, I saw what happened to the person who referred to the sugarcane in Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance as just “grass”. I get why Anna might want more of the Manchego Bechamel because this was her opportunity to try a Manchego cheese sauce that wasn’t inexplicably purple

I hope when the semi-finalists all met that Jhané, Sabina and Jim told everyone about The Legend of Michael. I would be unable to talk about anything else because I would need to convince myself that Jay Rayner eating lilac coloured Mornay Sauce did actually happen and wasn’t a gas leak.

Which finally brings us to Rebecca and her Paneer and Egg Curry that Anna was treating as a mysterious unknown

however, I don’t think egg in a curry that is that unusual? In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s just A Thing™ in India. However, before I defend Rebecca’s terrible attempt at egg puns too much

the eggs are usually actually part of the curry and not sort of just… nestled atop it like a presiding Weeble

ultimately the egg didn’t bring anything to the table other than the healing vibes of a hardboiled egg and the judges also felt the curry was too mild, which is a critique I am less agreeable with. I just don’t get the weird mindset that every curry has to be chilli hot – sometimes you just wanted your boiled egg and korma.

A Signature Dish Ranking:
1. The Hogfather, The Son and the Holy Roast
2. BODMAS – Bream ‘Onfit Dashi, Make A Sauce
3. The Competition’s First Not Purple Manchego Bechamel
4. Can I Interest You With a Turmeric-flavoured Egg during this trying time?
5. Terrible Experience! At the Buffet
6. Count Quackula

The dishing out of the aprons was a bit of a no-brainer, even if Leia had cooked a perfect Plantain Lasagne, I don’t think they would’ve put her through on account of a lasagne being an unrefinable wedge of food. So getting the aprons were Matt and Tony

who I am starting to convince myself are secretly father and son

this was taken just before Matt was forced to quit the maths profession by the 67 meme.

Fish Finger Sarnies

This heat’s ~Classic~ Recipe Test was for everyone to bluff their way through making fish fingers for an open sandwich

one of my all time favourite Skills Tests over on the professional series was the Chicken Sandwich that the professional chefs overthought and invariably made paninis with all the joy and skill of Pingu making a Valentine’s Card

it turns out there’s nothing funnier than watching men who clearly spent weeks revising pastry skills and fish butchery being blindsided by the fancier Meal Deal options.

With the Fish Finger Sandwich being a British institution, they did of course make a big deal of there allegedly being no such thing as a Puerto Rican Fish Finger. But like… if they have Plantain Lasagne, I’m sure there’s a battered fish equivalent SOMEWHERE and I’d bet my life they access to mayonnaise. They made out Leia was completely helpless in this situation Because Foreign™ and I found it a bit off-putting? Especially because they could’ve based their concerns off of her bread slicing technique that looks like a bear mauling someone

I have only screamed at a jumpscare louder when I watched The Descent. In the end, Anna and Grace decided that Leia probably had the best pseudo-sandwich of the bunch – the somehow do not mention her bread that is angled like an accessibility ramp, I am unable to think about anything else

I think at least a little bit of the judges’ surprise is that at some point Leia’s fish fingers were actively on fire

at least some of hers were salvageable, Alexia hadn’t been so lucky with hers being quite overcooked

and she’d gone through quite the saga with the creation of the mayonnaise for her Tartar Sauce as her first batch split

and in the end it showed that she was pushed for time with a lack of seasoning and refinement in her slaw.

Rebecca and Yuvi had opposite approaches to the fingers – Yuvi went more traditional in shape and size

while Rebecca decided that this was going to a Fish Knuckle Sandwich

and unfortunately for Yuvi, Anna Haugh is a fish finger size queen

what they lack in size, they do more than make up for in comedic timing though

can’t wait for them to get their first Live at the Apollo gig.

An Unofficial Fish Finger Sandwich Ranking:
1. There IS Such Thing As a Puerto Rican Fish Finger
2. Rebecca’s Fish Knuckle Sandwich
3. Yuvi’s Broken Fingers
4. Sorry Guys, Gotta Split

Undeniably Rebecca and Leia had the better showings and were the ones getting their aprons

I was mostly invested in Leia at this point so I was happy to see her go through. Or at least I was before the next round hit and her brain went to mush.

Two Course Race

In order to help select the first batch of this week’s Quarterfinalists, they’d brought in two members of the 2023 final: runner-up Omar Foster and champion Chariya Khattiyot

and the third member of the panel is Steven Wallis

sorry, I get my slimeballs mixed up sometimes, STEVEN WALLIS

there’s just something about him that reminds me of the cat that steals tom’s melon-headed girlfriend

yet another unrealistic body standard for women.

First up and immediately having a terrible time was Leia who had to be given 10 extra minutes because when it came time to serve her main course, her cod hadn’t even heard of the concept of the oven and her sauce wasn’t on the go

and yeah, people run out of time but I NEED to know what she’d spent the last hour doing because her starter was a 2 ingredient salad that was very generously being called a Ceviche

it’s very hard to get enthused about smashed avocado and mango in a vaguely tangy dressing, but everyone liked the Arepas – a Puerto Rican bread she’d made with coconut. And at least this as a starter, Matt was trying to pass off a steak tartare as a main course

he was serving it with shoestring fries and a peppercorn sauce but at that point, just cook the damn steak, babe?

everyone loved it and I think if Matt wanted to he could scam Steven out of all the money he’s saving on the silly cravats he no longer insists upon

Matt selling a starter as a main course did mean he was on dessert duty with his Brown Butter Financier and Marmalade Fool that I cannot be mad at, that sounds incredible

I did enjoy the dining room really loving the contrast between the crunchy outer layer and the gooey inside

only to cut to Anna saying it was overcooked and all wrong

personally, I’m just always happy to see a Financier Cake because it reminds of the episode of Top Chef: Just Desserts in which Seth Caro, the greatest cookery competition contestant of all time, had to cater a high school bake sale and called a high school choir tasteless heathens for wanting the Whoopie Pie more than his almond and bitter orange financiers. THE RED HOTS WERE FOR MOMMY!

Leia was the only contestant forgoing dessert in place for her, as previously mentioned, 10 minute late main course. The extra 10 minutes potentially being something of an undoing as everybody’s cod was very overcooked

but I think Leia was just surprised that everything she’d promised had successfully made it onto the very vascular plate, granted it’s 3 things which further begs the question: DIVA WHAT WERE YOU DOING FOR THE FIRST HOUR?????

she’d obviously had an awful time and I think was ready to self-eliminate

a decision that, if it were to benefit anyone, would only have benefitted Tony who had two pretty subpar dishes with his main course having some very overcooked duck and a sauce that was a bit too thin

and his dessert was a “Deconstructed Lemon Meringue Pie” of which the only thing stopping it from being a full disappointment is that it was everything Steven Wallis most feared in the world which gets bonus points in my scoring system

and Rebecca was also doing a lemony dessert, hers being a Syllabub that had arrived from 1982

the actual syllabub was very well received but the Hazelnut and Rosemary shortbread was deemed a bit too soft for everyone’s likings. Probably because she’d chosen to cook it in the most absurd fashion she could conceive

Diva? Are you ok? Surely by at least the third one you’d probably realised you were piping out biscuity turds with more than enough batter left to… NOT do that.

As for Rebecca’s main course, she’d also gone for cod which she’d covered with an almond crust that she promptly set alight

this is why you put the thyme garnishes on AFTER you get the blowtorch out

at least we know its spirit is cleansed, god knows it needs it because the combination of cod and nectarines sounds… like something Michael dreamed up after watching Call Me By Your Name

you see, the white fish represents The Twink, Chalamet.
The dining room at large was converted to the combination of fish and nectarines, I shall continue to hold it at an arm’s length. And I have a very pronounced ape index.

A Two Course Menu Dish Ranking:
1. Rebecca’s Spiritually Cleansed Cod
2. Rebecca’s Lemonception
3. Matt’s Financier Crisis
4. Matt, Just Do The Steak
5. Tony’s Lemon Me-wrong Pie
6. From One Ducking Extreme To The Other
7. Leia’s Prolonged Misery
8. It Was Somehow Less Than A Salad

With Leia having seemingly spent the best part of 85 minutes slicing a mango and cooking *maybe* 4 elements, they really had no other choice but to eliminate her

I do think it’s a shame, she clearly had interesting food up her sleeves and was bringing a unique point of view to the competition but she severely misjudged this round.
Thus, our first quarterfinalists of the week are Tony, Rebecca and Matt

I don’t know why Tony looks like this is a death sentence.