That checks out.

Does anyone have access to the Joe Pasquale Costa Rican Prison Experiment footage?

I apologise that this is late! I was horribly sick with a fever and am still getting over the fatigue of it but I will be finishing the recaps for this series. However due to Bake Off and Strictly kicking off, I think I’ll probably end up condensing the next episode and The Final into 1 recap.

Gone To The Dogs

Kicking off Finals Week was one last Mass Catering Challenge as the celebs were awoken in the wee hours of the morning and driven around the ring roads of Birmingham to disorient them, or put them to sleep

their destination was the NEC, or more specifically Crufts – a fact the celebs had worked out to varying degrees of excitement

to be fair to Shakira, I don’t think she’s ever actually witnessed the hours between 2 and 6am – that’s a “5 more minutes!” and snoozing the alarm 20 times before actually getting up diva if I’ve ever seen one!

Sadly the celebs were not batch cooking gourmet dog food for the winners of every category, although I can almost certainly guarantee this absolute ICON eats better than me most days of the week

instead the guests were owners of winning dogs, kennel club members, TV dog experts, my new favourite slightly deranged person: Patsy who has the wild eyes of a chihuahua that just heard the post

and the most special guest of all: Mother Retriever

and because they wanted this whole dinner to be as dog themed as possible the BBC had scrolled through their rolodex of professional chefs and the best they could do was Tom Shepherd

and because we only have 5 contestants, it was only a two course menu, although the Shepherd’s Shepherd’s Pie was basically just the unofficial starter but Tom needed the Lamb Main Course to be dog themed and the best he could do was print off fifty 720p stickers of a German Shepherd

but hey! It’s another Pie under Joe Pasquale’s Pie Belt

along with Joe “Undemocratically Elected Ruler of Pies” Pasquale, the mains team was made up of Emily and Shakira, who were concentrating on the roasted saddle of lamb while Joe did what Joe does best: making squeaky noises

they may have been having to stretch themselves with the theming of the main course but if Great British Menu has taught us anything, it’s that chef’s love a nonsense moulded dessert and Tom is no exception with his chocolate dog treat moulded mousse

which did lead to the very unfortunate and mildly upsetting phrasing of “dog bone mousse” being used all too frequently

Sue and Lauren had a much more unsteady time in the kitchen, possibly because I don’t think Shakira has ever met a group of people she couldn’t operate like a champion team of sledge dogs

and don’t get me wrong, Sue and Lauren worked great together. The set back only occurred because Lauren didn’t have faith in the recipe designed by a Michelin Star chef

and my God, if there’s one thing I have to support in this world it’s a woman with audacity

it will shock absolutely nobody that the recipe was not in fact wrong

I just need to say that the editors have been absolutely phenomenal this series – Lauren Steadman Goes Rogue and Nitin Salts The Earth are up there in my TV moments of the year just for the comic timing of the edit. I hope you all got bonuses for it.
Despite Lauren’s improv crumble, they did really well with the dessert and managed to overcome the biggest obstacle of actually getting the Dog Bone Mousse set in time for service.

Holiday Season

Unfortunately the installation of the Dramatic MasterChef Balcony ate up the novelty hat budget so the Theatrical Dish Round has woken up in a hotel bathtub full of ice with its organs having been stolen – RIP, you were the best of us

however, there is no way that Joe Pasquale didn’t join the cast of this show entirely because he could classify 5 new lurid shirts and some fancy dress as tax write offs

the thing that rockets it off into the stratosphere of nightmare fuel is the fact he had to cut a mouth and eye holes and all of it is lopsided and deranged

it just gets better in the wide shot where everyone else is, as you can expect, NOT dressed like the version of Coco you bought from the Taiwanese flea market before it was even available on DVD

his dish was inspired by the time he missed out on going to Mexico during Dio de los Muertos because the boarder police thought he was a Costa Rican drug lord after having filmed a reality TV show in a prison

to be fair, the amount of suspicious white powder all over the place is also pretty damning

he was the only one making a dessert, having decided to make a Chocolate and Chili Cake in the shape of a skull

and you know what? Given that they repeatedly cut to Joe decorating his cake like a spider on LSD

the final cake did actually look reasonably good in a sort of “probably not getting eliminated from this particular episode of Bake Off” kind of way

But then they cut into it revealing the absolutely baffling ratio of cake to buttercream and jam

Joseph Pasquelenstein, explain yourself. If this had been the Nonsense Slapstick Round, Joe may have stood more of a chance because my God, I have not laughed harder than him shambling over like the Hell’s own Mrs. Overall

his biggest hope for survival was in Shakira bizarrely stacking a lump of fish and tartar sauce on top of her chips in a tribute to her nuking of Blackpool

somebody isn’t getting that Strictly Come Dancing invite.
Despite the fish and tartar sauce making her chips soggy, everything was very well cooked, it just wasn’t that exciting? There’s very little you can do in the way of Fish and Chips for a higher tax bracket that can excite me, whereas everyone else was doing quite exciting things? Especially Sue with her Thai Platter

it was by no means a perfect dish, with various components being a little unbalanced in their flavour profiles but I was very interested in the steamed fish curry that Grace had described as the meeting point of a Fishcake and Porridge

trying to imagine that made my brain want to howl at the moon

we’re coming to the end of the competition and once again, I cannot heap enough praise on how good Giorgio has been as a judge – he and Grace are such a good team that really manage to balance the necessary theatricality of being hosts with actual genuine critiques and I think the contestants have benefitted a lot from that!

Lastly we have the two athletes going in very different directions . Emily had gone for pan-fried sea bass in a Moqueca Sauce inspired by the freedom of escaping this miserable little island

and my god if this isn’t a dish I’d dig a Great Escape style tunnel out for

it was very impressively cooked too, with the judges thinking the Palm Heart salad on the side was particularly revelatory. It’s absolutely one of Emily’s stand out dishes of the series and couldn’t have come at a better time for her.

As for Lauren, she was heading back to South Africa – I hadn’t realised she’d lived there when she was younger

and given there’s like maybe 3 distinctly South African dishes one could make, she was making a Bobotie which THRILLS me because I get to talk about the one single time I had Bobotie! A family friend had made it but apparently did not have access to the mango chutney you’re meant to layer into it and decided the logical replacement for that was BRAMBLE BLOODY JELLY. I have truly never put a worse substance in my mouth and I’ve eaten Soreen Loaf with Sardines (we’re crossing the anecdotal streams here). It still lingers on my tongue like a phantom. May Roseanne never know peace.
Lauren had not played fast and loose with the preserves and served an actual bobotie

it was really good too! In my head it’s a really hard dish to balance the flavours of but, as mentioned above, I have been to Bobotie Hell and lived to tell the tale so might not be the person to trust on Bobotie opinions – however, in Lauren’s word she… “Bobotied it”

you know what? I am not the person that should throw stones in a glass house of terrible word play. You keep on Bobotieing it, Lauren.

A Holiday Memory Dish Ranking:

1. The Inherent Joy of Not Being Here
2. Look Ma, I Bobotied It!
3. Better Platter Than Never
4. Shakira’s Soggy Blackpool
5. Joe Pasquale Do My Facial Feminisation Surgery

This did feel like a very prescribed Joe Pasquale leaving point and I won’t even pretend he wasn’t the weakest in this particularly challenge but MY GOD, what a way to bow out – I’m just sad they didn’t make him do it in the morph suit

I cannot express how much of a joy he has been on this show – an agent of chaos at every turn but also just so sincerely engaged with the process. Truly the best kind of contestant. But alas, The Sheriff of Taste must walk off into the sunset. Yee haw.