The reboot I crave.

Send nood(le)s.

Spring Forward, Autumn Back

The theme of this week’s Quarterfinal Invention Test was Spring and Autumn, with the contestants being given 10 minutes to rummage through the MasterChef Larder for the ingredients and inspiration to make a dish that either celebrated the freshness of spring or the autumnal desire to barricade yourself indoors and embrace witchcraft

there ended up being an even split between those that chose Autumn and those that chose Spring.
Thai food would be great for a spring dish but Kristen was being forced to go European because the larder didn’t contain a bottle of soy or fish sauce (the only Thai flavours)

the European kettling would ultimately benefit Kristen because they wouldn’t be able to lob a Michelle Visage style critique at her for cooking 4 consecutive Thai dishes

I do still think she had one of the weaker dishes of the challenge, as much for the balance of the dish being off as it was kind of just *really* boring

it also doesn’t really come across to me as being particularly spring-y which does explain her feeling the need to cook up quite the story to justify it

but she had cooked the fish with as much love and care as she’d displayed gently cradling it out of the larder like someone being rescued from a fire

which is more than can be said for Rebecca and the harrowing ordeal she put her pasta through, having to forgo the machine after jamming it with her far too sticky pasta dough

resorting to hand-cut artisanal spaghetti that would be better used as a draft excluder

and you’d be hard-pressed to find a worse bowl of pasta even if you just filled a cereal bowl with elastic bands, which Rebecca was very self-aware of

my favourite part of the dish is the side plate of hurriedly cut heritage tomatoes that she’d definitely conjured up upon seeing her spaghetti swelling up to the girth of the average grass snake as it cooked

the near venomous faint praise is what really pushed the Pasta Disaster of “26 over the edge

Rebecca, you are so lucky that Michael painted a tortilla purple and gelatinised black pudding, because this could’ve been the worst dish of the series so easily!

The final Spring dish, and only dessert of the episode, was from Adam who was focusing on Strawberries and essentially demessing the Eton Mess

both Anna and Grace really loved it – the only real critique they offered was that he could maybe have pushed the Black Pepper components a little further. He’d also recovered remarkably well from his first attempt at Italian Meringue going wrong and that ability to gather yourself after a misstep is as much part of the judging criteria as the final dish in an Invention Test.

Over in the Autumnal side of the room, game was the name of the… well, game for Tony as he’d failed to see the deer crossing signs heading into the larder

apparently he cooks a lot of venison because his dad is a hunter, a factoid that had Anna and Grace looking mildly terrified

I imagine they too had the mental image of Tony completely plastic wrapping his garage and going full Dexter on a deer carcass. And he put his money where his mouth is with a pretty perfectly cooked Venison Loin

the only issue with the dish was the bitterness of the slightly too caramelised (read: burnt) Celeriac Fondant but I think it was probably balanced pretty well with the Madeira and Cherry Sauce that Anna thought was particularly good, declaring her fealty to the his claim to the Gravy Crown with the reverent seriousness of Galadriel warning Frodo of the burden of the One Ring

wait until you see what happens who you serve her a subpar jus

being declared sauce royalty, is a pretty good indicator of a strong chance as a finalist, so I think Tony is someone to definitely keep an eye on.

Matt’s autumnal dish I found to be a bit confused, I think the lamb was definitely put in there as a go-to for a Spring dish and the resulting dish is too ordinary to fully get across a sense of seasonality

I think the roasted butternut squash was doing a lot of heavy vibe lifting, certainly in the near absence of any sauce which nobody made nearly a big enough deal about

but the cabbage stuffed with morel mushrooms and walnuts did sound really lovely and I almost wish the dish was more centred around that than the lamb.

Lastly we have Anisha who was doing a Chicken and Red Pepper curry inspired by it being he treat she made everyone at university

God I wish I had an Anisha at university, all we got was a girl who went mildly insane because she was convinced we were all stealing her spoons despite there being a mysterious pile of unclaimed spoons sitting on the windowsill FOR WEEKS because maybe she had just forgotten what her spoons looked like.
The talk of university food did have Anna pondering if this would be elevated enough for MasterChef because Anna too obviously had a university flatmate that could be found in the kitchen at 5am eating sardines on soreen loaf or chiselling pieces of frozen blue cheese onto plain spaghetti (Rebecca, there are worse things to do to spaghetti, I assure you)

but like, Anisha had just talked about making roasted garlic butter for her dal, which doesn’t exactly conjure up images of your flatmate sprinkling half a teaspoon of paprika into chopped tomatoes and calling it a curry

and it rounded like a really lovely plate of food that you’d certainly look forward to eating on a cold day

and the judges did like it and acknowledge it for that but she had fallen into the trap of, to quote the judges “cooking too firmly in her comfort zone.” I think a better critique would’ve been to say she could’ve added 1 extra element to sort of up the ante a bit technique-wise, which I’m sure is what they kind of meant but it did come across a little bit dismissive.

A Spring and Autumn Invention Test Dish Ranking:
1. Tony’s Blindsided Venison
2. Adam’s Tidy Mess
3. Anisha Currying Favour
4. Matt’s Seasonally Errant Lamb
5. Kristen’s April 25^th Trout
6. Rebecca’s Unsolicited Noods

Oh Broth-er, This Guy Soups!

This week’s visiting critic was the sentient wet blanket, Sitwell

and his request was for a Soup or Broth which included a star vegetable or protein. Or Seven if you’re Anisha and start gilding the laksa lily with Pan-seared Sea Bass, Shrimp Balls, Tofu Puffs and Noodles

as the judges all said, she would’ve had a more focused and better executed dish if she’d took out at least two of the elements, which should probably have been the Shrimp Balls and most definitely The Big Horrid Clump at the bottom of your handbag that was masquerading as noodles

truly a terrible day in the MasterChef kitchen for noodles.

With the Invention Test having driven most of the contestants to very European dishes, the concept of soup had opened up the boarders with almost everyone going East Asian. The only person who didn’t get invited to the Race Across The Soup World was Adam, who was doing a prawn and scallop Bisque

it was mostly very good, particularly the bread on the side which everyone treated as the most inspired vision since Ezekiel tripped absolute balls in the Bible

granted, it was very good bread and the flavouring with treacle and stout made it sounds even more interesting

but his prawns were still slightly undercooked even with Anna providing him with all the clues to save himself

clearly the veda bread bribery in the Signature Round had paid off and now Anna is no longer indebted to him. YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN NOW, BUDDY!

The dish that interested me the most this round was Matt’s Duck Consomme that was being served with a Duck Breast and Yaki Onigiri, a Japanese fried rice cake, or Jelly Doughnut if you’re in the Pokemon universe

God bless you, terrible localisations of the early 2000s!
Matt was lucky that he even ended up with the broth part of the challenge as his first attempt at the consomme hadn’t clarified correctly, reducing him to the shadiest subtitle I’ve ever seen

despite apparently being a gibbering mess, he did manage to make a second consomme that clarified beautifully which I think is a pretty spectacular recovery given the amount of time needed to make a consomme and them only having 90 minutes

it was just a really great dish and I’m glad the judges were as enthused about it as I was.
Rebecca had also gone for a Japanese dish, inspired by her recent trip to Japan she was going all in on Mushrooms

the problem with this being that ultimately in a dish that can’t really be eaten in its individual components, is it worth having six varieties of mushrooms? The answer ultimately being a firm no as the dish sort of ended up tasting of generic mushroom ambivalence

and then there was the issue that she got to the end of the cooking time and realised that she most definitely hadn’t made a three person portion of soup

which may have ended up being to her benefit because it did look and apparently taste like she scooped it out of the courtyard’s water feature

you could tell she had spent most of the challenge running around with her arms in the air without being presented with the evidence of such

Rebecca, you will always be famous to me.

I was glad to see Toby going in a different direction than I expected him to, what with declaring war on his local Thai restaurant over Tom Yum soups

and he would learn the hard way that the people who know and love you, even in war, will lie

his Tom Yum may not have packed the punch and depth that everyone was anticipating but it looked pretty and everything aside from the soup was very technically accomplished

which brings us finally to Kristen, back on safe ground with her fondness of South Asian flavours, this time doing a Rassam with Grilled Sea Bass

this is right up my street and just behind Matt’s Duck Consomme in catching my attention menu-wise! I love Tamarind, I cannot cook with it to save my life, it’s really tricky to balance so anyone who manages it has my immediate respect.

A Soup or Broth Ranking:
1. Matt’s Jelly Doughnuts Onigiri and Duck Consomme
2. Kristen Rassaming From The Dead
3. Adam, The Bread Visionary
4. Toby’s Tom Umm… It’s Fine
5. The Big Horrid Clump 2: Laksa Boogaloo
6. Not Mushroom Left For The Ditch Water

At the beginning of the final round we were promised that three of the contestants would be going home. The obvious two being Rebecca and Anisha

Anisha, I sincerely apologise for ever even hinting you were my favourite. I never learn. As for Rebecca… I cherish you for serving William Sitwell the dregs of a high street puddle.

That left a debate between Adam and Toby who were pretty evenly footed with very good dishes in the Invention Test and a pair of Soups that were not without technical fault. In the end they did decide that both of them were going through, giving us 4 more additions to Knockout Week

I do agree that neither of them had done anything to really warrant an elimination. Gun-to-my-head, it probably should’ve been Tony because his error was the core component of the challenge but there’s no way they’re sending Tony home until he openly bawls his eyes out over a piece of rump steak

this show loves a Man Who Learns To Feel Things storyline.