Scientists have pondered for decades.

How do you shake your vinaigrette?

Sign On The Dotted Line

I regret to inform you that How Badly Can Celebrities From Light Entertainment Screw Up Rice [working title] has been cancelled. It has however been replaced with Max Fosh’s No Fly List Pommes Puree Production

he’s already banned from China

it might not be France he has to watch out for though because he was in that kitchen with Una Healy, Patron Saint of Potatoes

I don’t quite know what Max had done to his mashed potato because I have never in my life seen a pot of mash look quite so much like one of those fluffy cats that you stroke and find out are just made of skin, bone and the ether of contempt

but while the Pommes Puree may have made Max Fosh the most wanted man in Paris, his Chicken and Tarragon Pie was actually very good!

after the TommyInnit Saga of last week, I was a little bit scared of the second YouTuber hitting the MasterChef kitchen (I’m sure Giorgio was too.) But I think Max did a really great job of hitting the right notes of being a bit silly and making actual passable food without an air of scorn because he’d rather be streaming Five Fortnites at Papa Freddy’s Pizzeria Playtime to your 11 year old cousins

he had the knowing winks that Tom lacked and I think that ultimately comes with how much longer Max has been in the YouTube game.
But for what Max couldn’t deliver in potatoes, Una Healy, who was never seen without at least three of them in her arms at any one given moment throughout this entire challenge

was more than going to make up for with her fillet steak very much playing supporting cast to the potato cake that could feed a family of four

Giorgio giving that critique and Una just looking at him like she doesn’t see the problem in this situation

Potato Cake size debates aside, the dish was cooked very well – she achieved a perfect medium-rare on the steak and managed to keep all of her fingers despite her nerve-racking chopping technique. Which is more than you can really say for Sue Cleaver who within minutes had lived up to the name

maybe not everyone needs a professional grade santoku bocho, Sue Cleaver Junior

maybe her safety priorities were a little lopsided

it is unclear if the goggles were for the onions or whatever was happening upwind

those nervous tarragon farts really sting the eyes!

Sue’s dish was, to me at least, by far the most interesting sounding – that Chickpea and Date Pilaf alone had me intrigued but her lamb koftas and rocket and orange salad were nice extra touches

there was the slight issue of the Koftas having dried out because she’d made them a little bit too small but just because the rice wasn’t a congealed tumorous mass, they thought she showed a lot of promise going forward! Melvin Odoom hadn’t had quite the same level of success with his rice, choosing to make Jollof and Chicken

it was far from the worst thing to happen to rice even in the last week, the problem was mostly that he’d over Caucasianed it, leaving it a little too mild and understated. Which is a real shame because he was so excited to cook his mum’s jollof recipe.

Finally, we have Lauren Steadman of Paralympic and Surviving AJ Pritchard fame

as a nod to having won a gold medal at the Tokyo Paralympics, she was choosing to make sushi and had even brought her gold medal along, keeping it safe in the Olympic Medal Drawer which I assume is just above Emily Campbell’s Egg Drawer

do we think that gold medal is the most valuable thing to have ever been in the MasterChef kitchen or does that honour still go to Nancy Dell’olio’s 6 inch Versace throat steppers?

every time I, a Suspiciously Tall Woman™, have to look in the oven I cannot help but think about her lowering herself like a giraffe having a drink just to get her roasted apricots out of the oven

Truly an iconic fashion moment.

The worry with sushi is that ultimately there’s not enough there to critique and I was worried when two pieces of the trio were Sashimi and Nigiri – two of the less interesting sushi varieties. But she was also making a Maki Roll and rolling sushi is significantly harder than it is or Lauren made it look

sushi is just very far removed from what MasterChef usually judges and grades on – it almost deserves a Niche Bake Off Spin-off of its own. There’s been a few cases of sushi in the past that have felt like someone just not wanting to worry about cooking too much but I didn’t get that impression from Lauren at all

there was a sincerity to it that I think really came across. It also helps her case that she’d taken the time to prepare the fish beautifully. And I think her finesse is at least a little bit responsible for Max Fosh running back to his station and increasing the value of his pie by £5

it’s not quite a gold medal, but it’ll do!

A Signature Dish Ranking:
1. Lauren Steadman’s Podium Sushi
2. Potato with a Side of Beef
3. Sue’s Itsy Bitsy Little Koftas
4. The Limited Edition Max Fosh Collectable Pie
5. Unfortunately Caucasian Jollof

Coming Down With The Fluid

For this week’s Taste test the celebs would have to be identifying various liquids – and I truly don’ think there’s anything more ominous than “Mystery Fluids” as a concept

the thought of being ambushed by a shot glass of tomato juice is truly on a level of nightmarishness with being ambushed by the sound of Melvin Odoom gargling Nesquik right into my ears

Interestingly, the blindfolds are present again for this challenge and so I’m curious as to who from episode 1 refused to be made to eat mayonnaise blind in episode 1

meet me in the MasterChf Drawing Room in three days time, when I will give my Poirot-style verdict. (I’m going to blame Jason Mohammad because I think he deserves it.) Speaking of previous weeks, Emily Steel no longer has the single worst performance in a Taste Test as she is now joined by both Max Fosh being bested by Champagne – he thought it was Prosecco and my hot take is that they could’ve just shrugged and said “yeah sure!”
Una Healy mixing up Orange Juice and Grapefruit Juice is slightly more absurd to me, someone who thinks all wine (sparkling and not) taste like gasoline – FIGHT ME FRANCE, I’LL WIN

but it might have been to their benefit because once they got beyond the round of things like Sue having to drink a thimble of water

it did begin to feel a little bit like production had run out of ideas for liquids and might have to resort to Tea-laced with Arsenic or hunting for the nipples of a sardine like Freud for the gonads of an eel (I do not have the time to explain the Freudian eel lore)

it was in fact Matcha and as a proud super soldier in the war against high street café Matcha Lattes, I am glad to finally see someone speaking truth to power. Ultimately it wasn’t the vial of unfathomable fish milk that ended the Sudden Death Round between Lauren and Sue because Lauren hadn’t managed to identify a Mango Lassi correctly having just gestured faintly towards the Innocent Smoothies section of the Meal Deal fridge

the Face-off was decided by Lauren managing to correctly identify Pineapple Juice while Sue proves to have some strange dental habits

9 out of 10 dentists wouldn’t recommend and the one that does is operating out of an upturned box behind the Co-op and accepts payment in Cheese Strings. So Lauren wins, but at what cost? She looked like a thoroughly broken woman by the end of it

was the premium masterclass table worth it? WAS IT?

In Need of a Mackerel

This week’s Masterclass was a bit of a change of pace, by which I mostly mean it didn’t involve pasta. Instead they were making Giorgio’s Herb-crusted Mackerel with a tomato and onion salsa and a dressed side-salad. Unless you’re Lauren Steadman in which case it was a herb-crusted Mackerel with a Tomato and Onion Salsa and a strip-searched side salad

rave reviews for Giorgio’s salad dressing, I see

the salad dressing side-bar was mostly there to alleviate everyone’s frustration as Giorgio left them in the pin-boning dust, so as a treat they got to shake their bottles around in a multiple of fashions. My personal favourite being Melvin sort of just shaking himself around the bottle

and the camera operator giving the editors a little treat with the decision to do a mid-shot of Max

it had all started very well for Max as Giorgio complimented him on his boning abilities

and then for some reason known only to himself decided to send that perfectly boned piece of fish straight through the flames of Gehenna

and yet somehow his smouldering arson attack of a fish wasn’t the dish that was declared “a catastrophe” – that particular dishonour was reserved for Melvin’s No Good, Very Bad Day In The Kitchen as with every new instruction Giorgio gave them he looked more and more like Rose Tyler watching the heat death of planet earth

in his defence, he was seemingly the only one who managed to keep their onions translucent as everyone browned them! Unfortunately, he overestimated how appreciative Giorgio and Grace would be to receive an entire saucepan of onions

they were mostly disappointed that he hadn’t put enough capers into the salsa, he’d drawn the line at three token capers

you might have got more if Giorgio hadn’t bullied him for his saucy little salt sprinkling

Melvin Odoom, I love you SO MUCH and I’m sorry that the new trend of making you all stand next to mirrors to do your little post-critique chats does you so dirty

my kingdom for an apple crate for my Short King!

On the more positive end of the spectrum, despite the brief interlude of the Floor Tomatoes

Sue had actually done incredibly well with Giorgio going as far as to say her salad was better than his

Una also hadn’t done too badly – her herb crust had caught a little bit in the pan but because she hadn’t dragged it through the flames of hell to slap it down in front of Giorgio, it at least wasn’t overcooked

but there was no real stiff competition for Sue who took the MasterChef Pin with ease