You can pinpoint the precise moment she realised she’d made a terrible choice.

This one’s for the feeders.

God, Give Me A Signature

God the regular series of MasterChef is refreshing after the chefs on the Professionals series compete in an unofficial competition as to who can serve the least fillet steak on a plate before Marcus Wareing loses his rag like a game of starving Buckaroo. Then in a single round of MasterChef, three plates that look like your gran thinks you lost weight since going to University hit the judges like Marsha P Johnson throwing bricks

oh, you KNOW the crew ate well on this day. Grace did of course ponder if any of them would be able to serve an elegant plate of food

and like.. no, obviously not? Lenford is giving you a cinderblock of Mac & Cheese as an accoutrement to his lamb stew AND YOU’RE GOING TO BE THRILLED ABOUT IT, SO HELP ME GOD DENT

obviously, they did tell him to chill on the portion sizes, they have a tight filming schedule and cannot afford the 6 months of hibernation needed to fully digest this plate of food. And then, Mr. President, a second brick-shaped piece of food hit the MasterChef judging table

this was Simi’s Iranian Lamb Shank with Tahchin, a rice cake flavoured with rosewater, cinnamon, saffron and I think she had stuffed it with Barberries. It sounds delicious, it looks amazing. However, she was slightly undone by the greatest killer in the MasterChef Kitchen: The Pressure Cooker Named Hubris

she wasn’t the only one that got betrayed by the pressure cooker, although I do think Grace was potentially just looking for reasons to not have too eat too much of the overwintering brown bear sized portions that were being conveyor belted at them

I can see why Anna might have selected Kristen’s taramasalata as her romanceable option in this scenario

it sounded like an incredible dish and that cod’s roe taramasalata looks absolutely incredible

BUT, and this is probably going to sound incredibly annoying of me, something about this feels too accomplished and insincere as a “Signature Dish”. Everyone else is talking about the food that gives them the meat sweats and Kristen went and bought cod’s roe from her premium fishmonger. Which is better than your dad buying a sports car, I guess

the only other person coming close to swaying Anna’s heart was Adam, who was pandering to the Irish with his Veda bread

_{(I just BRIEFLY need to talk about this B-roll shot of Anna walking around the kitchen supposedly reacting to something someone is cooking and the workbenches behind her all clearly not having anyone working at them)}

I was unfamiliar with Veda Bread before this, and even more unfamiliar with the Veda Bread Connoisseurs that Wikipedia has warned me of

I wonder how they feel about their precious Veda Bread being turned into a Treacle Tart

Adam got his apron for it but we’ll wait to see if he wakes up with a treacly horse head in the bed.

Lastly we have Anisha who I felt a little bad for because I think in just about every other week she probably would’ve managed to get through with her Lamb Manti Dumplings, especially with the Aleppo Pepper Brown Butter which sounded gorgeous

but I don’t think she was too rocked by not immediately getting her apron because she still had all 10 of her fingers present and accounted for

I am very jealous of how shiny her hair is.

A Signature Dish Ranking:
1. The Veda Bread Connoisseur Society’s List of Demands
2. Anisha’s 10-finger Dumplings
3. I’m Sure The Cold Fish Was Lovely
4. Lenford’s Brick in the Macaroni Wall
5. Simi Tahchins The Divine
6. Betrayal! By The Pressure Cooker

While I personally did prefer the sound of everyone else’s dishes to Kristen’s cold fish and herbaceous ice, I can’t deny that it wasn’t pretty far out in front based on execution so I’m not surprised that she was getting the apron alongside Adam

and I was going to be so mad if Anisha didn’t get an apron in the next challenge because I do think she really deserves it even if it does mean inevitably saying goodbye to two contestants who portion food like they’ve not eaten in days. AND GOD BLESS THEM FOR THAT.

A Sticky Situation

After three savoury recipe tests we were bound to run into a dessert eventually, the inaugural sweet option being that 3.5 star gastro-pub favourite: a tiny sticky toffee pudding with a slightly disappointing lack of toffee sauce. And for some reason Poached Pears and Vanilla Cream have been brought to the party like the little sister in Hereditary

well, we know what’s happening to the little pear hat Anisha gave her Sticky Toffee Pudding

in the end it was the poached pears that ended up being the largest points of difference, nobody stooped to quite the lows of Maggie McBake-Off’s Sticky Toffee Infamy that I never fail to think of whenever anyone mentions Sticky Toffee Puddings

the only person to mess up that side of things was Naomi who succumbed to madness by repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result

eventually she maxed out her sugar credit and they wouldn’t let her make a third batch so she resorted to just pouring her pear’s poaching liquid into the jug. My favourite part of which is Anna asking Noami what on earth is in the jug with a level of disgust usually reserved for a dead body

to be fair, it did look like she filled the jug with ditch water and spite

the issue this created was that it was too sweet, as opposed to the toffee sauce that defies the laws of physics when it comes to volume and sugar content, like some sort of sucrose TARDIS.

The best go at it all was probably from Lenford, which was mostly a surprise because his puddings looked like not-particularly-dormant volcanoes the entire time

he didn’t even have to resort to the Saint Lucian Hail Mary

Don’t tell him what he can and can’t do with the rum, Grace!

Anisha and Simi were much of a muchness when it came to comparisons, their puddings and toffee sauces were perfect but Simi had oversweetened and underwhipped her Vanilla Cream. While Anisha found out that you can’t really Venn Diagram your way through poaching a pear

her logic is very “if my grandmother had wheels, she would be a bike!” and applying the rules of dumplings to a poached pear mostly just resulted in a mushy pear

but a delicious mushy pear!

A Recipe Test Dish Ranking:
1. Lenford’s Rumless Toffee Pudding
2. The Nonexistent Pear and Dumpling Overlap
3. Close but not Simi-gar
4. Naomi’s Sugary Debt

Lenford was well on his way to an apron without a single issue in his dessert while Naomi was the obvious first cut

Anisha and Simi were a little harder to separate with the judges ultimately deciding that balancing the sugar levels in this challenge was the most crucial component meaning that we were saying goodbye to Simi

which is deeply unfortunate because I’m sure she had some more incredible dishes up her sleeves that I’d love to have seen. So Lenford and Anisha are joining Adam and Kristen in competing for their Quarterfinal spots

A Two Course Race

A strong line-up of previous winners were joining in as guest judges this week including my personal MasterChef fave, Ping Coombes

as well as Tom Rhodes and Tom Rhodes’s Cunty Little Blouse

and Kenny Tutt, who did NOT die

I literally don’t know how or where my mother came across that rumour and if it even counts as a rumour if she’s the only one that believes it? But Kenny is here and is alive, potentially only just, especially after Adam served everyone enough whiskey to give an elephant a drinking problem

he was slightly saved by the fact his pastry work was nigh on flawless and up there as some of the best the show as seen

and his Pear Frangipane Tart sounded delicious – I would absolutely order this off a restaurant menu. He just got a bit eager with the whiskey in the syllabub.
Adam had gotten a little sloppy in this challenge, there were a few technical mistakes with his main course too with his cod being unevenly cooked – some of the diners got some quite underdone, but still edible, fish and the Black Pudding Bonbons were very dry

but he was at least able to counteract the bonbon being as dry as Michael’s black pudding was wet with a mashed potato that was 70% cream and butter

Adam might have been in serious trouble if Lenford hadn’t had as big a misplay as he did. The critique of needing refinement had obviously got to him and after serving a brick of macaroni cheese earlier, this challenge’s Main Course had been downgraded to but a single raviolo each which you were going to struggle to eat because he’d plated it up like Aesop’s Machiavellian fox

babe? That’s barely tasting menu portion!? Although it did turn out that one single piece of pasta may have been a mercy because the pasta was very obviously still incredibly raw – you could see Grace having to brace herself for it as he plated them up

there is truly nothing worse than still raw pasta – something about it makes me gag. And it’s such a shame because the Ackee and Saltfish filling with the Creole Sauce that barely functioned BECAUSE FOR SOME REASON IT’S ON A PLATE were both delicious with a really unique concept. It could’ve been a slam dunk but it needs more thought put into it. Especially if your starter is just the Soup of the Day

he had tried to fancy it up with a Lime and Coriander Foam, the very mention of which had the slick, slimy tentacle of Michael’s Sludge coiling around Anna’s and Grace’s hearts and whispering sweet oblivion in their ears

the foam ultimately didn’t end up coming to fruition so Lenford resorted to Plan B

NO! The other Plan B: a single leaf of Coriander and a Drizzle of Lime

and the dining room kind of loved it? He probably should’ve done some sort of crouton instead of the accompanying pieces of pumpkin. But, to quote Adam Driver in the Girls Series 8, Episode 6:

but it is hard to be fully enthused about soup.

Kristen and Anisha were both doing prawn curries – Kristen keeping going with her love of Thai Food and serving them in a Red Curry sauce

and the prawns were beautifully cooked but her sauce needed maybe a little bit more attention to seasoning. Anisha, knocked the whole thing out the park, so much so that Ping is in the hotel room bhunussie at the ready

I had a 20 minute lie down after writing that to contemplate what I’d done. My therapist says I have to stop phoning her and own my mistakes.

Anisha had followed The Bhunaing of “26 with an Orange Cake and Masala Chai Ice Cream that was clinging on to its state of being about as well as I’m clinging onto a readership after writing “bhunussie”

but ultimately nobody really minded that it was the consistency of a barely functioning McDonald’s Ice Cream Machine’s output because ultimately it tasted delicious and still accompanied the Orange Cake really well. And I think it’s ok because she’s Anisha

I just think she’s neat.

Kristen was sticking firmly to Thai Food with her Beef Tartare starter which is probably the only thing I can be less enthused about than soup

I will however concede that this did sound lovely, what with the Szechuan peppercorns and shiso leaf wraps. I don’t know if I ever really want to make eye contact with a tray of fish sauce curing egg yolks ever again though

but I can concede that they added a necessary sauce to bind the dish and mellow out some of the stronger spices she had going on. I’m still struggling with Kristen purely because she seems so untouchably polished

and that might be my own insecurity talking but I need to see a little bit of struggle. And the show needs that too because you don’t win without a narrative.

A Two Course Menu Dish Ranking:
1. Bhuna Me Like One Your French Girls
2. Kristen’s S-Thai-k Tartare
3. Adam’sh Wishkey Shyllabub
4. I Suppose An Under-seasoned Curry Is A Struggle
5. Anisha Orange Cake and Ch-ice-cream
6. Adam’s Blood Dust Bonbon
7. Soup of the Day, It’s Vivien Pinay!
8. Lenford Main

It was a very easy decision, as much as I hate to say it, to cut Lenford at this point

I think it’s a real shame because he clearly has great ideas and a real point of view as a cook but needed a little more guidance. Which I wish was what MasterChef would try to get back to, I’d love to have seen where Lenford could’ve ended up.

This does of course mean that Anisha, Adam and Kristen are all going to the second quarterfinal

stop culling the people with terrible portion control!