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Training Day

We kick off Semi-final Week with a mass catering challenge as the contestants find themselves catering a dinner celebrating the 200th anniversary of the concept of the railway system. Which of course is happening at the National Railway Museum in York – which is where I had afternoon tea as part of my graduation celebration

the dinner had 100 attendees, which is where we run into the first problem. As you can imagine, it’s kind of hard to find 100 railway enthusiasts with a palate that extends beyond turkey dinosaurs and Monster Ultra Rosa (I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE) so the guest list is padded out with The Central Government Delivery Director, the founder and CEO of Intuitive Talent Solutions and a Hobbit

they show precisely 1 railway historian and 1 museum volunteer who I think should’ve been more of the focus? But maybe they were all too complimentary of the menu, whereas Nina Lockwood, formal pashmina enjoyer, knows a subpar cauliflower puree when she tastes one

I’m not sure anyone has ever described the flavour profile of cauliflower as having “oomph” but go off, diva – you can take it up with Anna, who was in charge of having designed the menu for the evening

and each course would be delivered by a different team of contestants with the winning team being safe from elimination in the next round. Jhané, Tony and Sabina were on starter duties. Antos, Kristen and Daniel were doing the mains, leaving Frankie and Matt doing the dessert.

The starter was Anna throwing her hat into the Fine Dining Fish and Chips ring, and you know it’s fancy because you don’t get any potato and it’s but a singular goujon

I will give it to her, the kataifi coating does sound really lovely and is a reasonably interesting twist on battered fish.
Of course because it is 100 person dinner, the preparation, cooking and plating process is a miserable endurance test that would have even those men that run around with the little backpacks falling to their knees. An Ironman tournament has nothing on drowning in 100 ladles of pea veloute like one of Dionysus’s weirder punishments

Sabina was having the roughest time of all, having split the mayonnaise for her tartar sauce not just once but twice

my diva was in the trenches and by the end of the whole thing looked like she was ready to throw herself under the LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard

and while Sabina chewed through the Railway Museum’s entire egg budget, Tony was the one doing Girl Maths™ with four cod and 100 people to feed

and as laborious as the pin-boning process was, it was trying to fry 100 glorified fish fingers a la minute that was threatening the timing of everything

but to be fair to Tony, I’m not sure 1 person frying 100 simultaneous pieces of fish and like 4 frying baskets is *exactly* enough people or frying baskets for the job

it’s almost as irritating as the challenges where they make them run across an entire estate with a la creuset of venison sauce…

my favourite part of this sauce’s journey is Daniel trying to gaslight Anna into thinking it isn’t burning as Anna has to fight her way through a cloud of burnt sauce like The Great Smog of London all over again just to talk to Daniel

burning? Don’t be insane Anna, you’re just tired and not thinking straight because Sabina has turned another 2 litres of egg yolks into unusable pig slurry!
The main course was a bit of a nightmare of Anna’s own making as she proudly tells us it consists of 6 incredibly intricate components… Although she might need to go to Specsavers because there’s literally only 5 things on that plate

so it’s more like 4 intricate components and green beans are there too!
The most laborious part of the dish was the creation of the Potato Terrine which saw Kristen and Antos tag teaming a near infinite amount of potatoes for what felt like a millenia

Antos would eventually go on to make Nina Lockwood’s Least Favourite Cauliflower Puree so I imagine it was Kristen in charge of the Just Green Beans™ because Daniel was the one testing Anna’s patience through the medium of Venison and Sauce

but they didn’t get any complaints for the venison, so stop being crazy Anna, maybe you just need a lie down? I’ll bring up some cold water and paracetamol in a minute. So while Anna Yellow Wallpaper’d out about some raw venison, Frankie and Matt could not have had a smoother ride with making their Custard Tarts with Poached Rhubarb and an Orange Syllabub

to be fair, it did seem like there was a lot less for them to do at the last minute with their workload being much more evenly spread over the course of the challenge. But pastry work is not easy and I don’t want to diminish the achievement and great teamwork the two of them displayed as they were the clear winners of this challenge.

We’ll Work It Out On The Train Tracks

I really liked this challenge, which is another Invention Test. The contestants that still faced elimination had to create a dish using of one of the star ingredients from the catering challenge – Cod, Venison and Rhubarb

however they weren’t allowed to use the one that their team had used. Which is a *slightly* odd stipulation given that Kristen and Antos didn’t seem to even touch the venison and Sabina was too busy going through eggs like a rhombic egg-eater with a case of the munchies that only 200 peoples’ worth if eggs can satisfy (RIP the budget, lads)

but I *get* the stipulation and like that it was a slightly more focused Invention Test than just sort of shrugging vaguely in the direction of the general concept of pancakes. They’re also all quite challenging and specific ingredients that I wouldn’t like to cook without any experience – so Tony was safe as houses because I think he could cook venison with his hands tied behind his back

the venison was beautifully cooked but it wasn’t without some faults. He’d given it a Szechuan Pepper crust and glazed his carrots with Sriracha and neither of those flavours were particularly present – which honestly sounds like a godsend with the carrots? The addition of the sriracha for this particular dish sounds unhinged. My bigger issue though was with the consistency and colour of the Rhubarb and Chicken Sauce

Anna however does not mention the similarities to ditchwater because apparently it tasted great but it had nothing on the look of Jhané’s Jerk Sauce that she was serving with her own smoked venison

it was a REALLY good dish from Jhané, so much so that Anna could not keep her Irish spirit contained any longer

Grace had sprung a very different leak

the last of the three Venison dishes was from Sabina, who I was probably the most worried about – I just didn’t know quite how a Venison Biryani would work and The Eggcident of The Railway Museum had rocked my faith. However, I should learn to have more resolve because she killed this even if the venison was *slightly* underdone

Daniel shouting from the back “it’s perfectly cooked, Anna! Have you taken your meds?”

While the Starter team showed a united front by all going for the venison, the main coursers were a divided front. It turns out that those that terrine together stick together as Antos and Kristen both went on to use the cod, leaving Daniel as The Rhubarb Outlier and the only dessert, a Rhubarb and Vanilla Panna Cotta

it was a wee bit of a disaster of a dish and I can’t really imagine what Daniel thought would happen to caramel on a rapid set panna cotta

the panna cotta was at least set but the rhubarb it was meant to be flavoured with wasn’t coming through and the judges never got to comment about the Tarragon in the shortbread crumb because the caramel has sealed their mouths shut.

Both the cod dishes from Kristen and Antos were very good. Kristen’s was probably the stronger of the two, if not the best dish of this particular round which I was pleased about because I feel like she didn’t struggle all that much in the previous challenge (they barely showed her at all) and it would have been a crying shame to see her crash out here

she’d gone with Japanese flavours, mostly in the form of the Sake Butter Sauce with the Cod also being served with artichoke crisps and pickled grapes. I am still yet to be sold on the concept of pickled grapes with fish but Anna and Grace are both suckers for it every time.

Antos, in a never before seen manouver, was throwing his own hat into the reinvented Fish and Chips ring

I’m going to start implementing a charging policy over this, put £1 in the Fish and Chips Swear Jar. Antos’s reinvention was to tandoori it and serve it with a spiced hashbrown as well as “green bean pakoras”

Grace was disappointed with the green bean pakoras because they were soft in the middle, I would’ve been disappointed with the green bean pakoras because that’s literally just two battered green beans? Antos, I love you, but this is enemy behaviour. As for the fish, much like Kristen he had cooked it absolutely perfectly but it was lacking in some of the spices so maybe he should’ve done more than just give it some “Garam masala?”

between himself and Sabina, they’d left the spice rack mostly bare so chances are there was Garam Masala in there somewhere

An Unofficial Invention Test Ranking:
1. Cod for Sake’n Sauce
2. Jhane’s Exorcising Jerk Venison
3. No Such Thing As An Eggy Biryani
4. Tony’s Autopilot Venison
5. You Will Pay For Your Pakora Crimes, Antos
6. Daniel’s Dental Insurance Breaking Panna Cotta

The cuts are getting more difficult and with my three favourites all cooking for survival I was ready for heartbreak. However, it was undeniable that Daniel had the weakest dish and it wasn’t even particularly close.
I hadn’t really spoken about it on the blog initially because I felt tonally awkward but during Knockout Week, Daniel talked about his Bronchiectasis diagnosis, a very serious lifelong progressive lung disease that he himself talked about being life limiting and I think it does explain a lot about his ~culinary ethos~. He went all out and was never boring or playing it safe and I think that’s what makes a great MasterChef contestant. There will always be a place in the MasterChef Hall of Fame for someone that brings in a bag of testicles or painstakingly hollows out blocks of paneer for the sake of a few cockles – I’d love to have seen his final menu

Actor / Writer / Vintage Car Builder / Husband of Bollywood Dancer / Crazy Diamond.