Giorgio Locatelli is a perfect TV character.

The Team Challenge claims another person’s last nerve.

Claire, It’s French!

For this week’s Restaurant Roleplay, the two teams would be running their own single service French Restaurants and the general feeling in the air was the anticipation of who would be paired with Melvin Odoom after the last time they faced any sort of a real time crunch, he looked like he’d just read the end of Of Mice and Men for the first time while trying to dress a salad

in the end the teams were Lauren and Max over in the red aprons with Sue-sie Sous and the Bain Maries as the green team

both teams instantly defaulted into being matriarchal societies of varying degrees of power. Once Sue realised that Melvin potentially doesn’t know what a tablespoon is after using what I can only imagine must have been a ladle to measure his Dijon mustard for their Steak Tartare

she started having to find the most menial tasks she could to keep him out of trouble – he’s the best little whisker in all of the Midlands!

throughout the challenge you can play a wonderful game of “What’s Melvin Doing Now!?” and more than a few times it’s just standing in the corner observing Sue and not daring to ask if he can help because her blood pressure is through the roof and she might revoke his TV privileges

but his main contribution was the part of machiavellian maître d’ because Sue is too scared to look Giorgio in the eyes

it was not in fact the better of the two Tartares, as you can imagine would be the case with there being a debatable tablespoon of mustard in there

but beyond it being a mid-18th century cure for a blocked sinus, the preparation of the meat by Lauren was a little more deft, giving hers and Max’s tartare a much better texture.

Their French main course was Duck a l’Orange which is one of those dishes that just doesn’t make sense in my head. Every time I try to imagine the flavour profile of it my brain starts making 90s modem noises and backing into the corner like Melvin Odoom when he puts the green beans on the wrong part of the plate and mummy shouts at him

the main course did swing more in Sue and Sue’s Little Helper’s favour on account of their duck being better cooked as well as Sue managing to rescue the sauce that she’d initially over reduced to but a thimble

Max hadn’t quite cooked his duck enough, it was still edible but I think they were just disappointed he hadn’t picked up on the cue to cook it a little more as Giorgio poked it like he was the first fisherman to ever pull a blobfish up from the depths

You could have saved the duck, Max Fosh. He gave you all the clues!
Max had mostly been put on Duck Duty on account of Lauren not wanting to let him anywhere near a potato after the last time

the only input she needed from him was during their Knob Chatter Sidebar

Sue unfortunately had not gone with a MasterChef-sized knob

although I think she might have thought different after giving Melvin explicit instructions that the one thing he had to do with their crème anglaise was NOT. CURDLE. IT.

only for her to turn her back for like 5 seconds and Melvin immediately curdling it <3

It was at this moment that he knew, he fucked up

and in an attempt to remedy this pot of vanilla scrambled eggs, had tried to run it through a sieve without Giorgio seeing as he hovered like a red kite above the motorway leaving Melvin to get caught in the crossfires of the cooking of the last Christmas dinner before his parents messily divorce in January

but as it turns out, the only thing worse than the scrambled anglaise you can see

is the one you can’t

as Lauren and Max hadn’t rectified their custard because Giorgio hadn’t hunted them down like Il Terminatore

and their custard was indeed a little too lumpy. However, their meringues were absolutely perfect. Which brings us nicely to the Lauren Steadman of it all, initially she had passed meringue duties over to Max on the account of quenelling ALLEGEDLY being a job for two hands

only for Max to have a terrible time with it and her immediately taking control of quenelling duties, one hand and all

I’ve not talked too much about Lauren’s disability because I was worried it’d come across as patronising or othering but I do genuinely think she’s showcased some of the most impressive cookery technique in the kitchen – I’m still not really over her skinning the salmon in her first episode with two flicks of a knife like she was Zorro incarnate.

Both teams didn’t actually do too badly with their Floating Islands, especially given the past horrors that the show has treated us to in both Celebrity and regular variants – Enya hand-sculpting meringue has haunted me for the last two years and was probably a sign that one handed quenelling was the future

and I have never really recovered from Kae Kurd pouring liquid meringue into his custard and lifting out the body of some sort of primordial being that should never have seen the light of day

if nothing else, this blog is just a museum to the many, MANY awful things done to eggs.

We Brought A Zuu

I had written this entire section with misguidedly confident references to Big Zuu having hosted the nebulous entity known briefly as Young MasterChef only to decide I should probably fact check that moments before publishing and finding out that wasn’t Big Zuu, it was Big Has – I get my Bigs mixed up

Big Zuu hosted the OTHER nebulous piece of BBC Three cookery television: Hungry For It where a bunch of 20-somethings competed to launch a new Nando’s Sauce and more than once turned up to a restaurant shift hungover, promptly vomited and were sent back to bed

the BBC has sadly taken it off Iplayer and buried the body under a patio but I distinctly remember Stacey Dooley having to help a contestant pick salad up off the floor while she internally plotted to take down Maya Jama and resume her role as the host of Glow Up. It was iconically chaotic television and I miss it dearly.

Melvin was particularly happy to see Zuu as it was his turn to have a friend show up in the kitchen

the friendship however may be on a temporary hiatus after the fact he served up a just about completely raw Lamb Kofta

they had tried their best to bully him into cooking it before he had only like 3 minutes for it to merely kiss the griddle pan but for some reason known only to the human enigma of Melvin Odoom, he was determined to play a game of chicken with Big Zuu and that raw lamb mince

and he hadn’t thought to serve is dish with an apology letter as a side dish

and he might have to return that signed copy of Big Zuu’s Big Eats

AND IT’S GRACE DENT WITH A STEEL CHAIR!

who amongst us doesn’t treat their constantly amassing supply of cook books merely as picture books? One day I might make something from them instead of defaulting to one of the 5 twenty minute recipes I have bookmarked on GoodFood. AND THEY’RE NEVER TWENTY MINUTES AND I NEVER LEARN. James Martin owes me at least 4 months of my life back for the amount of time I’ve spent making his korma.

The apology note and £5 note had been slid across the table by Max for having done the second worst thing to happen to a chicken last week

he was in charge of the Iranian Chicken with Barberry Rice, an aubergine dip called Kashk Bademjan and a Flatbread

it does look like airline food but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I think he thought it would be after his approach to spicing was a bit Mad Scientist

it’s the stunned silence from Giorgio and Big Zuu for me <3

the biggest disappointment was probably that his Barberry Rice was quite literally a Single Barberry Rice as it was the only one he could successfully rescue from his best attempt at starting a chip pan fire

but there were still some salvageable elements and Zuu was impressed by the kashk bademjan.

The last of the main courses was from Lauren who was in charge of a Tofu Laksa and an invention of Big Zuu’s own – a sort of ungodly Pot Noodle Arancini that in less polite company I think Giorgio might have considered an act of culinary terrorism

he has dubbed them Zuudle Balls and with Lauren referring to a Laksa as “Laska” throughout – “Laska and Zuudles” does sound like the next big CBeebies hit

YOU’RE GOING DOWN, BLUEY.

Lauren doesn’t cook with spices very much and the Laksa was proving a little too intense for her so Melvin was moonlighting as a Laksa Sommelier for her

so maybe he deserves a little bit of credit for the rave reviews that Lauren’s Laksa and Big Zuu’s Slag’s Arancini got

it did look GOOD and I’m very tempted to buy the Big Zuu’s Big Picture Book Of Food I’ll Never Actually Cook.

Sue brings us nicely to the dessert course with a Big Drip Peanut Butter Cake

the sound you can hear is the microwave heating up my tepid take that cake is not dessert and also should not be part of the MasterChef curriculum – save it for Bake Off: Celebrities Doing Nonsense For Charity. However, it’s a phenomenal looking cake covered in heaps of Non-Union, Legally Distinct Peanut Butter Cups and Honeycomb Bars

unfortunately, you will be getting the Harried Mother of 3 Who Had To Make This At 8pm After Work version

I do think Sue was a little set up with this recipe, I don’t think there was any chance of her getting that cake cooled in the time, blast chiller or not because my God that cake mix could revolutionise the insulation world

her final cake was a little overcooked and dry but they did enjoy her Peanut Butter Ice Cream which unfortunately couldn’t *really* be judged because she hadn’t plated it up and had to bring the whole carton over

to some of us, that is plating it up.

A Big Zuu Dish Ranking:
1. Laska and Zuudles, coming this Autumn!
2. Max Fosh’s Apology Chicken
3. The Big Drip Was The Friends We Made Along The Way
4. Melvin’s Brush With Undeath Koftas

After this challenge, only Lauren was *really* safe although I think the judges had also decided there was no way Sue was going home because she’d basically carried the team challenge and her Big Zuu recipe seemed more of an uphill struggle than some of the others. I also knew Melvin would be going because the series preview at the beginning shows this shot

and you can clearly tell that Lauren next to Joe Pasquale and Max is down below but before I get too carried away in my one woman mission to end spoiler-heavy previews, we have to say goodbye to Melvin Odoom as his run ends here

I don’t know if I have ever been more enthused by a MasterChef contestant for their vibes alone. I truly believe he is one of the best TV personalities going and deserves more work. And a reality TV show that lets him last longer than three episodes. Let him host the next niche Bake Off spin-off.