The MasterChef studio has been put in lockdown.

So close, that is a shape!

This Fruit Looks Familiar

For the final Quarterfinal Invention Test, the contestants were having to devise a dish that put fruit front and centre

and the only person feeling any joy at getting to play Mr. Beast’s Fruit Ninja

everyone else was complaining about how they don’t cook with fruit or haven’t touched a piece of fruit in nigh on 30 years like they were Scurvy Hamish on the Mayflower

But even Kirsty didn’t get a great result with her Apple and Pear Sponge

this was such a dud challenge – I almost expected them to say they were resetting and taking it from the top. All of those ingredient choices and… you grab the apples for a crumble????

Anna was tempted to vapourise Andy on the spot

it’s the quarterfinal babes, the Irish Alliance is OFF! And I’m sure Andy learned from this and comes back armed with more than 6 slices of beetroot, a chunk of Goat’s Cheese and a fistful of pine nuts in the next round

God bless him for trying to upsell the Celebrity MasterChef Mass Catering Challenge Staple by saying he was offering you both chunks of apple and pureed apple – the luxury! At least Jade was doing weird things with her apple!

as well as… that, she had also marinated a Pork Chop in apple and Ginger as well as created an Apple Brandy Sauce and an Apple and Clementine Puree

the puree is by far the most inventive and risky piece of cookery in this entire challenge, so I’m glad that it paid off for Jade with both Anna and Grace really liking it! The apple flavour had been lost on the chop and the sauce wasn’t great but she did something, ANYTHING, interesting so it’s a win.

Frankie and Sean-Who-We-Must-Be-Constantly-Reminded-Is-A-Plumber-So-That-We-Don’t-Think-Too-Much-About-The-MasterChef-Class-Divide, had doubled up on the pineapple which begs the question WAS HALF OF THIS FRUIT WAX?????

Frankie had grabbed it in the hopes of reworking the Pina Colada Blondies she made for a wedding into Pina Colada Profiteroles – ultimately forgetting that making choux pastry from memory while under duress is not a fun task to do under the weight of being perceived

Grace was just rubbernecking the fact they hadn’t puffed up quite enough and they were rather dwarfed by the Pineapple Fritter that would put the Rosetta Stone to shame

by this point Anna was just about slamming her face against the table and I think the final straw for her poor temporal artery was Sean of The Plumber Fame just throwing a few chunks of pineapple into his Sweet and Sour and calling it a job done like a cowboy builder making a patio

he puts more passion into fixing a leaking U-bend than he did for this challenge – how dare you make him even gaze upon fruit.

Lastly we have Jack whose fruit of choice was mango and he would be doing precisely one thing to it as he hastily blowtorched it

the things people do on this show to not cook a dessert. But I do also think this highlighted a bit of an issue with where MasterChef is – you better come into this competition knowing how to macerate the living daylights out of a fruit salad

I long for the days where we heard the word “macerated” for the first time and all tittered because it sounded like some man from Chelmsford was wanking off a strawberry.

A Fruity Invention Test Ranking:
1. Jade’s Heavy Lifting Puree
2. Kirsty Certainly Did Something
3. Jack’s Bronze Medal By The Magnitude Of Everyone Else’s Failures
4. Someone Left The Choux Buns Out In The Rain
5. Andy Begins To Crumble
6. Sean’s Ungrouted Sweet and Sour

[Everyone Disliked That]

In order to decide on the last three going through to Knockout Week, Leyla Kazim was here, which is always a treat

and her challenge for the contestants was to cook a dish using an ingredient that they heavily disliked as a child. I personally probably would’ve gone a similar route to Kirsty and done a gourmet hotdog – my childhood phobia foods were Vienna Sausages and Frankfurters because once I was eating a hotdog while watching Mary Poppins and was violently ill. I never ate a hotdog or watched Mary Poppins again. Then at boarding school there was an infamous breakfast served exactly once and was just diced Vienna Sausages in a miscellaneous greasy gruel that smelled like socks and unfortunately we had to eat in the dining room at that school so I couldn’t go and bury it in the playground like I did with the soup at my previous school. There’s a rich seam of soup and weirdly orange mince deposits in the soil of Lendy Park where there is now… an MLM apparently

writing this I did have the sudden realisation that that strangely orange mince was probably meant to be Bobotie which is likely why it didn’t taste like Cottage Pie. So I have had Bobotie twice in my life – one of them went into the long jump pit that didn’t get used in the winter and the other… well, I hesitate to truly call it a Bobotie because instead of an Apricot Chutney the person, whose identity I shall protect, used a thick layer of Bramble Jelly. I remember my lizard brain instincts kicking into overdrive and having to physically restrain myself from burying it under the Monstera. All of this is to say, Frankie made a Bobotie that I think we can actually call a Bobotie instead of the Theseus’s Bobotie situations I have been subjected to

they all really loved it and the balance she managed to get between the sweet and savoury components. Jack unfortunately struggled in that area, his Trauma Food being blackberries after a similar vomit-association story – I don’t know what classic movie he was watching at the time

for his Blackberry dish he was cooking Pigeon Breast and serving it with a horribly visceral looking sauce

the pigeon and the sauce both worked really well together – as you would expect. However, his additional components of the Game Chips and Stilton Crumbed Leeks weren’t doing him any favours

the game chips were a bit too salty and the stilton just wasn’t working with the acidity of the blackberry sauce. It’s a shame because there’s an almost very good plate of food there and he maybe just over thought it. Jade was much the same, making a Duck and Plum dish which honestly should be a slam dunk on MasterChef but she biffed it pretty hard with this

there was a lot going on and she spread herself far too thin so nothing was cooked to a particularly good standard, least of all the duck which was barely cooked to any standard

she Mukul’d and she Mukul’d HARD.

But while Jade spent the 90 minutes running around like a blue arsed fly trying to puff up tofu and serve plums 4 different ways, Andy’s grand scheme to blow everyone out of the water after being told his crumble was too safe

was to spend 90 minutes sort of just poking 18 slices of beetroot in a pot of mulled wine and hope he looked busy enough

this is such an insane nothingness of food it genuinely makes me feel rage? There is less food on that plate than Donald Duck’s transparent bean sandwich

and I do have to wonder how much time they had to plan a dish between The Fruitening and this challenge – because either Andy really thought this orrery of beetroot apathy was gastronomic excellence and is perchance (^{You can’t just say “perchance”}) even more delusional than Vesuvian Kinkster Ferdinando

or he came in with this Gallifreyan death sentence tucked in his pocket and just had to hope that Anna would make it quick and painless

it’s so over when the judges are having to really hone in on praising the toasting of the pine nuts to compliment any sort of cookery

LEYLA KAZIM WITH THE STEEL CHAIR!

And for no reason, here’s a mound of meat with a knife run through it

this was such a clever dish. Having taken inspiration from being force fed a bloody burger in France like a Foie Gras goose in, well… France, Kirsty had cooked beef short rib in a bloody mary mixture

it’s a really fun play on the narrative of the challenge for her as well as just being something interesting and unique. Sean also had a really good showing with his Mushroom and Black Truffle Ravioli inspired by his adolescent mushroom awakening

it was incredibly well made Pasta and the tuile was perfect for patronising him with!

I need to do a proper anthropological study into finding the exact point in time wherein we decided that tuiles are leaf shaped. It has to be on Great British Menu, right? And are tuile moulds like cookie cutters? Can you find ones shaped like dinosaurs? When you will you make a stegosaurus parmesan tuile? I think that might have really helped, Andy.

Trauma Dish Ranking:
1. The Role of Kirsty’s Bloody Mary Burger Will Be Played By Mia Starr
2. Sean’s Teenage Dirtbag Ravioli
3. Tyra Banks Screaming “Bobotie Tooch!”
4. One Day You’re Pigeon and the Next Day You’re Pige-out
5. Plum(b) out of Duck
6. Andy’s 90 Minute Smoke Break

I won’t belabour the point, Andy was going home and looked beside himself

and I do genuinely feel very sorry for him – he’d really locked himself into an unwinnable situation as soon as he rocked up to the kitchen. But it could’ve been worse Andy, it could’ve been 1 egg yolk.

As for the other two going home, Jade had a real shocker of a round with her Duck and Plums without any technical intricacy within it to really pull her out of that nosedive

and I thought the eliminations *might* stop there, they were so lenient last week with Jamie and his raw frangipane that I thought Jack could’ve scraped through on promise alone. Alas, he goes home before I run out thigns to say and have to resort to calling him The Elton John We Have At Home

the M&S accessories for the sensible woman over 50 were a serve.