my new MasterChef Drinking Game is “drink every time Kristen wants to drink”

The Blog Undertaker will be along shortly.

The Fate of Opheem

As is always the case, most of this semi-final proper is taken up by a Professional Kitchen Away Day. Although they have changed the order of events so that all four of them now get to do it instead of having the final elimination of the series happen halfway through the episode. I do think it’s the nicer way of doing it, you might as well let everyone that made it to Finals Week buff up their CV as much as possible

When did you all get matching parkas like JLS during R&B Week????

This year, they were going to Opheem, Aktar Islam’s 2 Michelin Star restaurant for a chef’s table service

Great British Menu’s greatest contribution to the culinary world is helping the BBC sift out the chefs that under no circumstances should you send a group of novices to work under. Aktar more than passes the vibe check, and most of the guests had a GBM credit to their name, I’d love to see a trip to Sally Abe’s kitchen again

or has she sworn off it after James Buckley dithered around her kitchen like a Gallagher brother with amnesia

I go back and watch James Buckley’s two episodes of Celebrity MasterChef extremely often, the fact he only ever put three things on a plate makes me cry laugh every time and then Lisa Snowdon’s absolute outrage that he would call 3 chocolate truffles “a dessert” is the second best thing Lisa Snowdon has done for television

the first obviously being SNOWDANCE: The Love Story of a Man and His Christmas Turkey

Is this bullying? And is it obvious I’m stalling? Because despite the trip to Opheem being 40 minutes, there’s actually not a *great* deal of content. Aktar’s food is incredibly interesting and is one of the first times I’ve ever gone to a restaurant’s website with genuine intrigue and hope, unfortunately the 10 course taster menu is £195 per person and I am but a struggling writer and tortured artist. When can I start blagging my way in as a food critic? I have a blog, it is sometimes about food and I am a critical bitch.

I personally have no problem with fine dining price points. It is all a bit ridiculous but you’re paying for more than the food – you’re paying for the theatre of the service, the venue and of course the fact the chef has to pay for a citalopram prescription because they’re remaking white chocolate tuiles for the second time that afternoon

shout out to whichever fae creature Kristen once offended so much that she was cursed to be trapped in an endless cycle of having to remake components of her dishes

and I can only imagine that that same faerie is the producer that put Kristen on dessert duty again after she spent the last and only pastry experience running away from Adam Bateman like he was the Cretan Minotaur

her dessert this time was an Apple Samosa, the hardest part of which was the tuiles that have a creation process like Lady Gaga making The Fame

but despite the remaking of the tuiles, she got there in the end with the Apple-filled Samosa, Burnt Butter Ice Cream, White Chocolate Tuiles and Sorrel Granita all present and accounted for

while Kristen was the one finishing the meal off, Antos had started it with an Octet of Sand Carrot

I’m kind of obsessed with the maple leaf shaped carrot leaves that have nothing to do with anything, it was just the only novelty hole punch Aktar could find in the Paperchase closing down sale

and with anything that’s being treated 8 different ways, there’s a heavy workload to go with it which was worrying Anna a little bit

I think what we’ve ascertained about Antos is that nothing activates his flight responses, not even the unique terror of an angry Irish woman backing him into a corner

he’s a freeze response diva to the core, like one of those fainting goats

this time it didn’t come to having his knees locking and falling to the ground to feign injury in hopes that the fine dining wolves wouldn’t devour him whole because except for the one momentary thoughtless move of throwing tuiles into a damp dish

he coped really well and treated that sand carrot like the queen she was

so while Antos massaged the knots out of a carrot’s back, Jhané was dealing with the rise of our new robot overlords

and if you want your own Blender: For Men! it’s on sale for £1500!

and that’s why your bowl of carrot costs £19.50 – Aktar has Klarna payments to make or they’ll repossess his blender with bluetooth capabilities.

Jhané’s fish course was a piece of Monkfish, cooked to a perfect pearlescence shift

Pat McGrath, when are you dropping the Monkfish Flesh duochrome glitter? Speaking of fish in the beauty space, I need to brag about my rainbow trout inspired nails

sometimes I’m allowed to make it all about me, the main character.

I did enjoy Jhané saying that she was going to struggle with the plating because hand-eye coordination isn’t her strong point

diva, we’ve seen the eyeliner, always at a perfect 14:47, don’t pretend you can’t operate a mussel and singular spinach leaf into perfect positioning with a pair of tweezers

unsurprisingly, the whole thing ends with another job offer for God’s Favourite™

there’s no way she can’t win at this point… right? Because like, Kristen is yet to get through making a dessert without looking like there’s a bear chasing her

Antos… well

and Matt is wonderful but very much there as the Filler Queen of the line up – lovely food, beautiful food but I know 2 things about him: he likes Japanese food and he’s getting married. Which is very much a production decision and no fault of his own, he’s just not been showcased on the show in a way that has you rooting for him to win but you can absolutely respect and see why he’s made it this far. His success with the venison dish in this round was a testament to that

I would have been pretty blown away even if this dish had just been the bumblebee momo

Bumblebee Momo is my favourite 1970s Japanese anime – this is Hutch the Honeybee reference, where are my hutch-heads at?

sometimes I wonder why I am the way I am and then I read the wikipedia entry for a cartoon I used to regularly watch as a child and suddenly it all makes sense

There are 91 episodes of this.

My favourite part of this challenge however was the obligatory shot of everyone having to go and sit down in the same chair after they’d served their dishes and everyone had their own unique style

man waiting outside the H&M changing rooms to say “It looks great!” like a robot

Mastermind semi-finalist who is about to take 15 questions on their specialist subject: the life and times of Bavarian Theologian Johannes Crellius

your dad 7 minutes into a movie

“Mum! Mum! Mum! Look what I can do! Mum! You’re not looking! Mum!”

I Spent Too Long Trying To Make “Twisted Classics” Sound Like “Twisted Flax” As An Only Connect Reference And Now I Have A Headache

In order to decide who the true finalists of the series are, they had 1 hour and 45 minutes to cook a classic dish with their own personal twist on it and we had the entire range of MasterChef brand culinary twists: Deconstruction, Fusion, Proving America Wrong and JUST BOOZE

Antos was making the only dessert, having chosen the Pineapple Upside Down Cake as his classic

Pineapple Upside-down Cake was the first thing I ever made in Home Economics and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone regret something more than our teacher did after allowing 30 children access to golden syrup at the same time. MRS. DEAN, WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN? Antos didn’t face the problem of having to comb syrup out of hair, but he did have a slight issue with his Pineapple Leather not working

I don’t know how much it would’ve *actually* added to the dish or how much the texture would’ve belonged, the dish still works without it

I think if it’s missing anything, it’s a layer of something between the rum-soaked sponge and the pineapple, like a set custard to just make it look a little bit more generous? But the judges were very positive and supportive of the dish. The only substantial critique was that there could’ve been more ginger in the ice cream and more rum in the cake

but I think “more rum” is just Grace Dent’s general complaint about life.

Jhané had started this competition with a bit of Thai fusion – her Thai Green Fried Chicken might still be her best plate of food, just on a personal “I want to eat that” level

and with the judges having been so enthusiastic about it, it’s no wonder she was going for Thai fusion again. This time springboarding off of the Rabbit Agnolotti she’d had on a holiday to Tuscany, which she was serving in Khao Soi

it was a REALLY good plate of food with both Anna and Grace raving about it – the touch of pressing the Kaffir Lime Leaves in the pasta was a particularly clever touch

Matt was also taking inspiration for a continental classic, Coq au Vin and doing the age old MasterChef trick of deconstructing a stew but very much not wanting to say he was deconstructing a stew

and my guy, you’ve rendered a stew as a summoning circle, what else are we meant to be saying?

as someone who is vehemently against food presentation when nothing is touching, I hate this presentation so much. It really surprised me from Matt, his food is usually beautifully presented, and I can only imagine that maybe he was trying to recreate the family photo where everyone is gathered around a box of chickens?

this is the sort of image that pops up in a Netflix documentary where they reveal that the family they’ve lulled you into a false sense of security about is actually a death cult and I’m sorry but I can only deal with 1 elder god summoning per series and Michael has that market cornered

despite my coolness on Matt’s dish, Anna was all over it and thought it was at least a very elegant altar for the old Gods of Rural France

and they loved the showcase of his technical skills – he’d really gone all out and there were a lot of interesting things going on. As was the case with Kristen who is still yet to be disproven as being 3 sous chefs in a trench coat

her classic was the Lobster Rolls of New England and her twist was refusing to stoop to their level

it was another deconstruction while also using some of the techniques she’d learned along the way, like substituting the concept of a sandwich for a Johnny Cake filled with lobster knuckle (I didn’t even know lobsters HAD knuckles) , similar to the ones she and Jhané made in Antigua. Or at least the ones Jhané made because Kristen was busy drowning in fungee at the time

honestly, she could’ve stopped there and I’d have put her straight through to the final but as well as that she was marinating lobster tail in fermented chilli sauce to give it a Buffalo Chicken influence and then deep-frying the claw

again, I don’t entirely understand the presentation…. the sideplate paddle feels like culinary hanky code: if the paddle of lobster claw is on the left you’re a spanker and if it’s on the right you’re the spankee. Don’t ask what the position of the knuckle-stuffed bun means! I made myself laugh too much with this and the café barista asked me what I was laughing at, I panicked and just showed him my favourite Vanguard playing card

THAT’S NOT BETTER, ARIADNE.

A Classic Dish With A Twist Ranking:
1. The Kinkiest Plate of Lobster You’ve Ever Seen, APPARENTLY
2. Jhané’s Rabbit Agnolo-Thai
3. Matt’s Ring of Elder Chicken
4. Antos’s More Ups Than Downs Pineapple Cake

Nobody had made a massive misstep in this challenge and for a very fleeting moment I did wonder if they were just going to do a 4 person final but by the skin of his pineapple leather, Antos narrowly misses out on a place in the Finale

I was gutted, he’s been one of the best MasterChef personalities I can remember and more than backed it up with some real heavy hitting dishes – nobody else can say they made Thai Green Ice Cream or “I went to the Caribbean and all I got was backed into the corner by Anna Haugh” and that’s what really matters!