Spatchcock me like one of your French hens.

I can also be bribed with desserts.

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In another great addition to the show, in order to decide the final three we’re throwing it back to where it all started as the celebrities found themselves having to create revamped versions of their Signature Dishes. Or if you’re Shakira you can kind of just recreate the dish you did during the Experienced Chef Doing Community Service Round

Shakira herself mentioned that Seema was kind of the turning point for her in the competition and I can’t say for certain how similar or different the two Butter Chicken Curries were but *to me* I’d be a bit disappointed if someone cooked the exact same dish twice. However, it was a very well cooked curry and she had added a few things here and there with the Garlic Naans, Pickled Onion Salad and Mango and Lime Raita that I could happily go the rest of my life without seeing another loving close-up of

have you ever seen a bowl of forgotten jelly and ice cream after a five year old’s birthday? Somethings just don’t need a macro focus!

I was the most interested to see how Lauren would approach this challenge, potentially because I think she’s the only person who has a truly memorable signature dish in her podium of medalling sushi

gun to my head I don’t think I could’ve told you what anyone else had done, except of course Joe Pasquale because there’s an 80% chance it was a pie. “Oh but Shakira can’t cook Butter Chicken twice but you’ll clap like a seal for Joe Pasquale’s Parade of Pies!?”

Lauren’s reinvention was simply to hop one category over on the Yo Sushi menu and make a Katsu Curry using Monkfish and serving it with ginger infused sushi rice

and it was a perfect plate of food, the decision to add the nori to the panko batter was a really clever touch to elevate the dish that little bit further. She and Emily had definitely come in firing on all cylinders, the latter reinventing her Jerk Chicken Tacos as a a dry-rub pork tenderloin with a trio of corn components and compressed Tajin mango

it didn’t quite reach the lofty highs of Lauren’s Monkfish on account of some of the corn pieces needing revising – mostly her Esquites not delivering on flavour and her corn tuile looking a little bit more like the off cuts of a fruit roll-up than a tuile?

they hadn’t really gone to plan, her first few attempts mostly just involving her spreading a rapidly burning paste around a frying pan

but the main thing was that her pork was cooked, which is more than can be said for Sue slapping down a rack of resuscitatable lamb onto her plate

there are parts of this dish that are really good – the judges raved about the Muhammara Sauce and they liked her Pilaf Cigar – if it ain’t broke, shove it in filo pastry. It just doesn’t strike me as a particularly well conceived dish? It’s missing something to tie it together, at the moment it just doesn’t feel like a real plate of food so much as a selection of bits from the Sainsbury’s 3 for £8 deal that is the only reason I was able to survive Heatwave Summer. I am more Giant Couscous than woman at this point.

An Revamped Signature Dish Ranking:
1. Monkfish Ka2su Curry
2. Curry 2: Butter Chicken Boogaloo
3. Tacos: The Red One Remix
4. Close, but no Pilaf Cigar

Sue serving up lamb as undercooked as hers was at least made for an easier decision than I had anticipated this actual semi-final being and she certainly managed to preserve the Lauren vs Emily: Battle of the Titans (Also Shakira Is Here!) Final that they’ve been really hinting towards all week

and following this the three finalists all went to cook a service at The Ritz for the Table of Famous Chefs, one of who was James Martin of all people

for some reason I didn’t think he and the BBC were on talking terms .
Anway, I’m afraid I’m skipping over this challenge for the sake of saving me some time – I apologise specifically to Giorgio’s distinctly Mafioso suit and Grace Dent’s glam for not getting the attention they deserve

they look like they’re just realising their money laundering pizzeria business is crashing down around them

A Three Course Race

The Final hasn’t changed at all in its format, except for the brief and unexpected period of 20 seconds in which it became a BBC3 Love Island exposé

nothing was funnier to me this particular episode than Shakira talking about how Love Island was purely a business operation for social clout and then basically said “Oh yeah, here’s my boyfriend of 2 years who I met there!”

and her starter was inspired by the fact he’s very easy to impress

however, you cannot unfortunately smuggle in a bag of Itsu microwave dumplings into the MasterChef kitchen so Shakira was having to make her own Pork Gyozas – which would have been fine on their own but she was apparently VERY committed to making her plate look like a pond and playing the role of the lilypad was Just One Big Red Onion

it is unclear if Harry The Business Expense was as pleased by eating a raw red onion as he was the £3.00 bag of dumplings

the rest of Shakira’s menu was a definite step up from The Bloomin’ Raw Onion, her main course being a duck breast subjected to an ever increasing amount of weights like it was trying to break Emily Campbell’s record

and all that anatine weight training may have paid off because this is pretty easily Shakira’s best dish of the series

it’s a sublime plate of food, the judges were falling head over heels for how well cooked that duck was, as was her cherry jus.

Finishing off Shakira’s menu was a Jam Roly Poly made entirely out of northern outrage at the apparent fact that There’s No Such Thing As A London Roly Poly

I am almost entirely certain this would not be a problem if Shakira wasn’t socialising almost exclusively with people from ITV2 reality TV shows, but if my gran can claim to have introduced the continent of Africa to Lord of the Rings (it’s a looooong story) Shakira can claim to have colonised the dessert landscape of Chelsea with Roly Polies through the medium of Balenciaga fashion

I really liked the sound of the Rhubarb and Fig Jam and the fact it looked like it had the sort of stodge that would help even the biggest grizzly bear sleep through an entire Canadian winter? As all roly polys should.

Lauren and Emily were both going for scallop dishes as their starters – Emily’s being a take on Fish Escovitch that the judges ultimately thought was maybe a touch too simple if a really nice balance of flavours and textures

although I didn’t think it was any more or less simple than Lauren’s Pan-fried Scallops with a Coconut Dhal

I think both dishes sound great and the only way to settle this menu is if Lauren and Emily cook them for me. It’s for science.

Their menus diverted quite bit following this, Emily going for a full Caribbean theme while Lauren concentrated on very British classics. Although both of them were doing beef – Lauren undertaking a Wellington with Giorgio yelling from the sidelines like her mother on sports day

while Emily ladled up Beef Short Ribs that honestly had me going feral

I feel like I need a cigarette after watching that gif, MY GOD is this not the perfect plate of food

beyond being a celebration of Caribbean cuisine, Emily was also doing a lot of throwbacks to previous dishes as a showcase to how far she’s come. This being a Brown Stew that she’d filled her dumplings with during the earlier celebration theme dish. This is my perfect plate of food and I did think that Emily had made a really great last grab for the trophy but it is hard to compete with the innate awe of a Beef Wellington

and to be fair to Lauren, we’ve seen a fair few people attempt Wellingtons on the show and become absolute croppers to them, so it was impressive to see how well hers had come out, and also just how much else she had managed to do in the time – Emily maybe just needed one or two extra accompaniments to really keep in the running but I still think I’d be more excited to eat her short rib than Lauren’s Wellington.

As for the desserts, Emily had gone for a Coconut Panna Cotta which much like her Short Ribs was also perfectly cooked

but again maybe just a little eclipsed by Lauren’s Sticky Toffee Pandering

but my God, what a way to bribe someone

and it’s not just a Sticky Toffee Pudding, it’s a Celebrity Travelogue Sticky Toffee Pudding

move over Carr and Holden, Italy belongs to Locatelli and Steadman Inc.

A Final Menu Dish Ranking:
1. How Now Brown Stew Cow?
2. Lauren’s Sports Day Wellington
3. Shakira’s Heavy Lifting Duck
4. Sticky Toffee Bribery
5. Congratulations To Emily Campbell For Not Mentioning Pina Coladas Once
6. Never a Dhal Moment
7. Scallops Escov-ish
8. London’s Only Roly Poly
9. On Gyoza Pond

Given the overwhelmingly raw oniony elephant in the room, it was pretty clear that Shakira was in a solidly third place, although I guess Emily is her MasterChef Harry

I have thoroughly enjoyed Shakira this series, I know some people have found her grating but I always thought she did everything with a bit of a wink and was fully self-aware. To me she’s the very definition of girlie pop.
As for Emily and Lauren, I would genuinely have been thrilled with a joint win following their final menus, I think in any other series Emily probably would’ve won

but Lauren has barely had a fumble all series and there was some really quite impressive technical cookery in her last few dishes so I will never begrudge her this win

she’s been an absolute delight from beginning to end on top of just a genuinely very talented and skilled cook.