Me coming to my parents’ bedroom at 3am to tell them I threw up.

It turns out there’s only so many things you can do with a duck and chillies.

We’ll see how long giving the series an increasingly niche sequel title lasts because WordPress is telling me it’s killing the SEO.

Holy Mole-y, Batman! It’s Another Skills Test!

Before the merging of the Skills Test into a Skills Battle Royale with an entire heat’s worth of contestants, this episode would’ve just been a carbon copy of the first episode of the week with one half of a heat. So now we need a new and exciting challenge, enter The Skills Test But This Time It’s More Confusing, which is helmed by guest chef Santiago Lastra

who I think we can all agree we’re all slightly more than a little bit in love with – DON’T DENY IT MATTY, we all saw that smile!

but you might have to fight Bashful over here for him

In order to win Santiego’s heart the chefs had to recreate his dish which was, much like my Wind in the Willows OTP, Duck and Mole (“There’s no Duck in Wind in the Willows!” – Yeah, I know! He’s my OC, do not steal!)

there was slightly more to the challenge in that they also wanted to see the contestants make the dish “their own” but somehow still staying true to Santiago’s original. Nobody really knew how to go about the challenge because the parameters are kind of unhelpfully vague and yet also very restricting so what we kind of end up with is just 5 plates of Duck Breast and Mole and maybe this time the there’s Rhubarb in the Mole if someone is feeling particularly crazy

it didn’t help matters that whenever someone went a little off course they’d cut to Santiago explaining how they should be doing the dish instead

this Challenge didn’t seem to know what it wanted it to be and I think it hindered most of the chefs. Which is a shame because Santiago Lastra is an incredible chef and I would have liked to see his point of view and passion for Mexican food showcased in a more interesting and well formulated challenge.

Most of the contestants coped by just recreating Santiago’s dish and adding a new element, the most success being Dan’s relatively simple addition of the Seabeet Pesto

it adds a freshness that perfectly contrasts the chilli crust of the duck and heavily spiced mole they were expected to make. And it gave Dan something to eat to calm his palate as he backed into a corner and forced to venture beyond Baby’s First Curry

as was kind of expected, he could have pushed the chilli notes in his Mole a little further to create something a bit more interesting but at least his Mole didn’t look like it had the texture of a Gosh falafel

the textures of Jemma’s dish may have been all wrong but she can at least say she had the best tasting Mole of the bunch

but sadly her duck had gone unloved and try as she might to hide her tortilla sins at the bottom of the stack, Santiago was going to find them

Ruchi had a pretty similar outcome, she’d spent a lot of time concentrating on her version of the mole which she was making using methods from her own Indian background and seemed to put off having to deal with the duck for as long as she could

and ultimately ended up with a plate of food that just didn’t look great

you can tell from this plating that she just did not enjoy this challenge which is fair because, as you could probably tell, I wasn’t a fan either. It’s really just not very fun watching 5 people cooking the exact same dish as one another for 30 minutes. AGAIN.

Matty had struggled the most with “making the dish his own” and sort of just hoped that an idea would strike at some point

the idea that came along the way was to add the Mole to a red wine glaze and judging by Santiago’s reaction, he wished Matty had made it a little less his own

Top 10 Anime Betrayals

as well as having an issue with how much red wine Matty had used for said glaze, Santiago was also disappointed in the lack of a chilli crust on his duck

WERE THEY MEANT TO BE RECREATING YOUR DISH OR NOT? You could really tell how much everyone else had not quite picked up whatever 500 piece jigsaw the judges were putting down with this challenge because as soon as Dan placed his plate on the table in front of the judges the royalty free twangs of an inspirational harp start kicking in.

Lastly we have Kieran who was essentially covering his duck in a packet of KP Honey Roasted Peanuts

which was the most inventive anyone got with the duck beca- no, I won’t complain again, I promise. Kieran’s bar snack duck went down really well with the judges, he also had a bit of trouble getting that real depth into his mole but for the most part it was a perfectly fine dish

There was also quite a bit riding on this challenge as the reward for having the best Santiago Lastra Tribute Act was immunity from having to competing in the Signature Dessert Round that followed. It was no real surprise that the immunity went to Dan in the end

and thus we go into the next round poking everyone else to check they’re still alive. GET OFF THEIR NECKS, DAN!

Your Just Desserts

In order to make it to the Quarterfinal, the remaining chefs only had their Signature Dessert to save them. Or in the case of Jemma you were honestly just hoping a very small and conveniently accurately meteorite would take out at least one of the others. Her signature dessert was a play on Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches which is a concept we’ve seen a few times across the MasterChef landscape and I am yet to see it land successfully with the judges

my working theory is that it’s really just not an institution in the UK so carries no nostalgic or retro appeal – we have this problem all the time on Bake Off too when Paul Hollywood plays naïve to the concept of it. The thing is, everything was great individually and the flavours all worked together but texturally it just sort of muddles together as the Peanut Butter Cremeux and Strawberry Sorbet only work to soften the choux to a soggy unpleasantness

her real saving grace was that the judges particularly liked her sorbet which I think is the most pure shade of red I have ever seen

it’s incredible – Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen would’ve sold his first born child to paint someone’s bedroom that colour in 1998.

Doubly unfortunate for Jemma was that her dessert kind of looked like someone had tried to draw Ruchi’s Jalebi dessert from memory

this was such a good dessert and I’m glad that it was so successful because it clearly meant the absolute world to Ruchi

and if there’s one thing better than fried food covered in sugar, it’s fried food covered in sugar that makes you cry tears of joy

the single tear perfectly hanging tear on her cheek? The MasterChef Cinematic Era is here and quite frankly, Ruchi is my main character.

Matty and Kieran also both had excellent showings with a pair of mousse-based desserts. Matty going for a classic combination of Cherries and Chocolate

as much as I do love the high glam asymmetrical evil stepmother collar, there is something about the slight transparency and the the cocoa nib texture that make it look a bit like a particularly successful sheet of flypaper

so now that I’ve thoroughly ruined this for everyone, it was a very good dessert! So good that by the time Marcus and Monica had been at it, it looked like it had voted for the leopards eating mousses party

and that I think is always the sign of a great dessert.

Kieran’s was a more abstract mousse – he was doing a play on Rhubarb and Custard with the custard being a Pastel de Nata that he was baking and then blending which does feel a little bit Wiltshire Farm Foods but we’ll hear him out

it really is just a stunning little thing, I can’t get over quite how fine and delicate that honeycomb tuile is

it’s like a beautiful piece of Royal Ascot millinery and the best part is that it the flavours lived up to the truly exquisite presentation.

An Unofficial Dessert Course Ranking:
1. Let Her Jalebi
2. Kieran’s Rhubarb and Custard Fascinator
3. Matty’s Evil Stepmousse
4. The Cultural Blackhole of the Peanut Butter and Jam Sandwich

With the biggest complaint any of the other three got for their desserts being that Matty could’ve used more kirsch and that Monica is an insatiable custard guzzler that can never be satisfied

it was Jemma who was falling just short of the Quarterfinal

I think maybe the studio competition environment just wasn’t for her, she seemed to have that slight slip in the very first Skills Test and never fully recover.