It took me far too long to work out he was talking about blushing.

[FIRE ALARM BLARES]

Signature Theory

The final heat of the competition really snuck up on me, it seems like just yesterday that Michael sketched the face of Cthulhu onto a plate like the cold opener of a horror movie

and yet apparently that was already three weeks and 36 contestants ago. How time flies when you’re having the embodiment of the abyss gnaw away at your psyche. And I am sad that we’ve ended the stage of the competition where people are truly throwing bonkers spaghetti at the wall to catch the judges’ attention. But my mood was immediately lifted when Frankie and Jack strolled up to the building together looking like a brother/sister duo called “Beanz on Toast” who scrape through the audition stages of The X-Factor on novelty alone

Jack’s just here hoping that he gets to go to Grace Dent’s house and sing an acapella poolside version of Angel of my Dreams

and he was well on his way with his signature dish of Mussels Escabeche with German Potatoes

the other half of Beanz on Toast, Frankie, wasn’t quite so successful with her Sushi Platter featuring a Salmon Maki Roll, Tempura Prawn Nigiri and a Togarashi Spiced Crab Gunkan

her handling of the togarashi spice mix was very good, as was the cooking of her tempura prawn and salmon. The only thing that slightly let her down was the fact that her sushi rice was too loose

which is deeply unfortunate because she, unlike Charlies Hides, makes sushi on the regular

I think about the Crucifixion of Charlie Hides (The Hides of March?) on the season 9 reunion more often than I think about some of my family members – especially RuPaul clobbering her with this steel chair of a receipt

I like that Frankie was flying the flag for Sushi, we don’t get a lot of it on the show. In fact, I think the last time we got a sushi platter it was some sort of dreadful Tandoori Sushi Masala situation and that was like 10 years ago. I also need TV producers to know that I would watch Sushi Chef Bake Off – mostly because I am in desperate need of new sushi-based media, there’s only so many times I can watch Jiro Dreams of Sushi to feel joy.

While Frankie went quite traditional with her sushi offerings, Stuart was doing his best to take a Jamaican Brown Stew in a more modern fine dining direction

and unfortunately I think he may have abstracted the whole thing a little bit too far because this is kind of just a plate of sloppy nothing

it’s very Wiltshire Farm Foods-core – Ronnie Corbett (the original British Psychopomp before Paddington stole his job) would be flogging this as “a taste of summer” and that was in like 2011

however, as much as it looks like someone tried to gussy up food that came in a tray, his sauce making was highly praised by both Anna and Grace so really with Stuart it’s just a case of maybe needing a bit more direction. Which I think you could say about just about all the contestants. Except Cthulhu Michael who needs about 90% less direction

is the bringing up the Eldritch Scallops getting old? Because I do just need to constantly remind myself that that was a thing that happened before it phases into a dream-like memory like the faces of all the people you said you’d always remember at school. And now I’ve made myself sad. THANKS MICHAEL.

To cheer us up, here’s Jade, whomst we must protect at all costs from the professional chef round where a man with authority issues will shout at her

God bless a diva who shows up in a great coat and a fresh tv ready dye job.
Having grown up in Singapore she was cooking one of her mother’s recipes – braised pork belly bao buns

it looks AMAZING and apparently tasted it too. And with the moment carrying a lot of emotional weight for Jade, everyone did get a bit weepy

and I know a lot of people roll they’re eyes and snark when a reality TV competition gets ~totes emosh~ but I love it when people have an emotional reaction to food. I had a LONG period where I was just scared of food – it only made me feel fear and apprehension so I take great joy and healing in savouring the moment that food makes people happy or connects them to a time, person or place like nothing else can. Sometimes that person is your mother and sometimes it’s an incomprehensible cosmic horror. Thus, I was very sad that John wasn’t cooking the stuffed lamb heart he wooed his wife with and sounds a bit like the components for a love binding spell you buy off an Etsy witch with middling-to-good reviews – what could possible be more of a signature dish than something that bagged you a catch like Yvonne, John!?

apparently it’s a Pork and Sage Tart with Caramelised Apples and Heritage Beetroot

this is very “It was an Invention Test and I panicked” coded. It kind of feels like something you create when you reach the point of Christmas dinner leftovers and can’t bare to look another turkey and stuffing sandwich in the eyes. Anna was very good in her critique of John, pointing out that all the flavours do go together, it’s just the quantities are wrong. As is presenting them like your toddler’s 15th finger painting of a rainbow that you have to stick on the fridge

but while John was aspiring for refinement (allegedly) Satya seemed to have plated hers up with the sturdy splat of a dinner lady counting down the days to retirement

which I’m not sure is entirely the best method of winning people over

the biggest problem with Satya’s dish is that she’d given herself maybe a few too many components and spread herself a little too thin in managing all of them. The Paneer and Cauliflower especially suffered having been promised as “chargrilled” and ultimately subjected to a Viking funeral

may Valhalla welcome you.

A Signature Dish Ranking:
1. Take A Bao, Jade
2. The X-cabeche Factor
3. Frankie’s Rice Had A Cracked Rib
4. Stuart Level 5 Brown Stew
5. John’s Pot of Fool’s Gold
6. Satya? More Like Splat-ya *boom boom*

The first two aprons were easily going to Jack and Jade

if Frankie’s rice were just a little bit clingier I think they would’ve swapped her and Jack on account of Jack refusing to pronounce Escabeche correctly no matter how many times Anna repeated it back to him.

Yes or Gnocchi?

It is a slight concern that after just 8 of these challenges we’ve already run into the question of how balanced the spread of them is – the Nicoise Salad was a WILD choice. This lot had the joy of making gnocchi – most of them for the first time

as well as the gnocchi and Tuscan Sauce, they were also making Pangratatto so mostly everyone spent the challenge worrying about the Italian reaction

but I think they’ll be fine because I shall mount the Vesuvian Defence in order to protect them

I’m still trying to work out the method of abstracting Mount Vesuvius to a singular panéed egg yolk in a nebulous dairy sauce but I think I need more than a 2:1 in glorified media studies for that.

Everyone ended up with perfectly passable gnocchi – I’d be really curious to see what the method page of the outline looked like because we only ever see the ingredients section

and maybe the judges were slightly more forgiving of the gnocchi because most of the critiques were focused more on the balance of the sauce and preparation of the pangrattato. Frankie seemed to have the best outcome with her All Day Breakfast Menu Gnocchi

while Stuart’s was less of an anytime, anywhere situation but would’ve taken this round easily if it was being judged within the remit of how useful it would be in the event of a vampire take over

and John would come in clutch if you were foraging for Gin and Tonic ingredients as he threw two chunks of lemon rind onto the plate as well as a tangle of chives he’d done nothing to in the hopes that that was good presentation

not quite, but we love the spirit!

Satya also got called up on the balance of her sauce by Anna, with it being just a touch too salty

Grace was less of a sodium conscious Goldilocks and took more issues with the fact everything in it was a bit too sodden

god forbid a woman’s sauce be wet.

A Tuscan Gnocchi Ranking:
1. Frankie’s All Day Breakfast Gnocchi
2. John’s Show Stealing Garnishes
3. What’s Big, Wet and Salty? Satya’s Gnocchi, Apparently.
4. Stuart’s Gnosferatu Deterrent

The result of this one felt very much like vibe’s based judging – Frankie was fairly through. As for the fourth choice, I don’t quite know how much I agree with John getting through over either Satya or Stuart to be honest – it feels very… Chad Michael Winning All Stars 1 Tweet

but good for him – I’m just sad for Stuart and Satya

I’ll be your friend, Satya!

A Two Course Race

Our final group of returning contestants were made up of the progenitor of Just A Bloke Who Can Cook, Digger Dean

as well as Brin Pirathapan, the man who made John and Gregg participate in puppy play (NOT PICTURED) for the sake of theatre

and Shelina Permalloo who has never known a bad shade of lipstick

and for their time they would be treated to 8 mostly normal and well executed plates of food! The only real outlier as a complete conceptual mystery (to me at least) was Jack being possessed with the urge to serve the second most baffling scallop dish of the series but still falling quite short of plummeting into the all consuming madness of the tentacled abyss (Michael, you can send me a cease and desist letter xoxo) – instead it was just a mound of miso mashed potato and more black pudding than you could shake a stick at

it just doesn’t strike me as a particularly balanced dish – there’s no sense of freshness in it at all! It needs something, ANYTHING, green. I think that may have been what the Cider Beurre Blanc was meant to provide but you would have to first get over the fact it looks like you’re sampling swamp water for Bilharzia

I do actually think Jack’s menu would’ve worked better reversed because his start portion of a Langoustine Hodi with samphire and crispy rice noodles would’ve been greatly appreciated as a main portion

as Shelina observed, the dishes felt like they were cooked by two different people

Dr. Jack and Mr. Hodi, if you will

it’s been a big year for horror genre fiction on the show – which I appreciate because everyone over on Great British Menu was too much of a COWARD to make an alarmingly literal carpaccio inspired by Eden Lake and instead we got this schlong and balls ~for the lolz~

what an exhausting series that was and we never talked about it ever again.

Jack wasn’t the only one to have a tale of two halves as John continued to John with his starter and made the world’s most serviceable Seafood Gratin and whatever was in the vegetable chiller at the time

huge fan of literally every soundbite about the cooking of this dish being that it was going to be super hard to get all the fish perfectly cooked because they all cook at different times, only for everyone to then sort of shrug and say “Yeah, it’s all cooked really well.” His main course was a bit more of a head scratcher, both in the covering of potatoes and peas in Ouzo and in that these were the two sirloin steaks he’d been given

and these are the three measley slivers everyone got given

it was beautifully cooked steak and I hope Yvonne enjoys the entire sirloin that John smuggled back home under his fedora

spoiler alert: John is going home – a fact I think was set in stone and nothing could cut that thread of fate. Not even Frankie being the first person to manage to set off the studio’s fire alarm off

her audacity to then still serve the thoroughly cremated asparagus that looked like Mr. Bean serving twigs covered in marmite as Twiglets <3

and she probably could’ve just nixed asparagus inferno because without it she still had a pretty much complete dish

it obviously has a presentation issue – but you try plating up a steak dinner while going through an active housefire. Her steak was still perfectly cooked and the carrot top chimichurri added a nice contrast to the sweetness of the biblically accurate sweet potato fries

her other dish was something of an experiment as she backwards engineered some tapas

and she was making it abundantly clear that she could not be trusted with fire

so she had to do the whole thing handcuffed to her oven like Legally Distinct Bake Off

and the resulting dish, A Sherry, Fig and Manchego Tart, exists in a sort menu liminality wherein you don’t really know if it’s a dessert or a starter

she was serving it as a dessert and it very much divided the judges – the guest judges weren’t too keen on it and seemed to view it as more of a starter. Whereas Anna and Grace couldn’t have really loved it much more and saw it as a very brave and avant garde take on the cheeseboard

Jade’s Lemongrass and Coconut Panna Cotta was a more unanimous success

Anna thought it could’ve done with a little more of the lemongrass flavour but even without it the combination of the coconut and the mango puree it was served with was still a very pleasant dish. And it was a very nice follow up to the Grilled King Prawn Laksa that she’d started her menu with

the whole thing was cooked perfectly and as far as pleasing everyone, this was probably the best dish of the round.

A Two Course Menu Dish Ranking:
1. I Don’t Have A Funny Name For Jade’s Laksa
2. Jack’s Hodi Weather
3. The Lemongrass Is Greener On The Other Side
4. Frankie’s Liminal Cheeseboard
5. A Shrug of a Gratin
6. Frankie Fire Drill Steak
7. Swing and a Miso Mash
8. The Curious Case of the Missing Sirloin

As was written on the wall of some cursed tomb somewhere 3 millennia ago, John was eliminated here and will now go and solve teatime mysteries on Channel 5 for the over 80s

I’m just relieved that Beanz on Toast haven’t had to split up yet

DROP THE EP!