Lord of the Hob Rings: Return of the King!

The balcony remains the greatest investment this show has ever made.

T’Artichoke

This week’s Skills Test was being set by Monica, who was asking this heat’s contestants to go about the quite tricky job of creating an Artichoke Tarte Tatin with an Olive Mousse and Rocket Garnish of their choice to give them the illusion of freewill (you could basically make a pesto or a salad)

the trickiness is both in trying to establish dominance over the artichoke, a battle that Gregory was decidedly losing

as well as balancing the sweetness of the caramel in what is meant to be a savoury tarte tatin – something that only Morteza really managed, potentially at the cost of trading half a tart to the devil

you have to leave half a tarte tatin by the fireplace for when William Sitwell comes down the chimney to drop presents off during the night.

There were a couple of contestants flying just about completely blind in this challenge. Namely Philly and Clara who had very different methods of coping with this alien territory, Clara was going for the wily spy approach of gradually eking information out of the more pliable of the two judges

Marcus has been compromised, take the shot Monica

and while Clara engaged in skills test espionage, Philly’s solution to an unfamiliar Skills Test was to just not do the Skills Test

There is not a rocket garnish to speak of and while this may look like a Tarte Tatin

it’s more of a tarte tatin abstraction with the artichokes having been pre-cooked and then cooking under the puff pastry on a sheet of baking parchment instead of in one of those cute little pans I desperately want but have no reason to own

and because she hadn’t thought to threaten Marcus Wareing with waterboarding if he didn’t give her the recipe, she didn’t know that a caramel was required as she sort of just sprinkled sugar onto her shallot and artichoke mixture

but what I appreciate about Philly, other than the full chest commitment to mad science-ing her way through the entire challenge, was that she never let that phase her. At no point in the challenge did she come across as nervous and I’m sure some of that is to do with the new format of this challenge. Although I still think Monica Galetti looking down from her eyrie is somehow more nerve inducing than when she’s at eye level with you

do you think only she uses the balcony because Marcus is afraid of heights?

But while everyone comes in pondering if Marcus or Monica is more terrifying

Ibz fears nobody

MY BOY™! When the contestants for this series were first announced, I received no less than 10 messages informing me with great excitement that Ibz was returning after making quite the impression during his unfairly short time on the regular series some 4 years ago

I don’t think I’ve been this invested in a contestant since… well, Michael The Lovecraftian Horror who through a blood pact with the Eldritch made it to a Quarterfinal, ultimately meaning he made it further into the competition than Ibz on his first go

but while Ibz returning is more akin to an Aragorn moment, if Michael ever cropped up again it’s certainly more of a Palpatine situation

it does unfortunately mean I will be watching this entire week in a constant state of anxiety because of my entirely parasocial investment in Ibz. Thankfully I’m good for this episode because he did really well, possibly even having the best tarte tatin on account of having a whole tarte tatin

it was a little overly sweet but the olive mascarpone mousse balanced it out nicely if you had the two together – which is just… how you’re meant to eat the dish, surely?

Despite having nearly made a caramel-free tarte tatin and watching Marcus and Monica try it with a level of anxiety that suggests she was unsure if it was fully edible

Clara’s final dish was actually quite positively received – much like Ibz it was a little sweet but balanced out nicely with her rocket and herb salad

Ben and artichoke submissive Gregory had struggled a little more, the latter of which hadn’t managed to get his pastry to crisp up and his mousse was more of a cream

but the positives were that there was an undeniable chunk of artichoke in the middle of it all, whereas Ben’s required a scouting mission to find any of his artichoke

which meant that there wasn’t enough earthiness to balance out the sheer amount of pure sugar in his tarte tatin making it almost more of a dessert

he did seem to know that the tart was maybe not going to be a shining moment which I think is why there’s pickled shallots and a parmesan tuile to showcase a few extra techniques.

An Unofficial Artichoke Tarte Tatin Skills Test Ranking:
1. Ibz’s Artichoke Tarte Tatin If You Eat It Like A Normal Person
2. The Tart’s Half Full
3. Clara’s Mata H-artichoke Tarte Tatin
4. Gregory’s Artichoke Me Daddy Tarte Tatin
5. Ben’s Crouching Rocket, Hidden Artichoke
6. Philly’s Other Skills Test

You’re a Sig-natural!

Having survived the unknown quantity of the Skills test, the chefs were now on more familiar ground as they were able to cook their signature dishes. Or if you’re Morteza, you’re cooking a dish you have never made before????

which, to be fair to him, is somehow less of a baffling decision than Gregory deciding his path to redemption lay in the sort of novelty hybridized taxidermy that stopped the Georgians believing the platypus was a real animal

the ghost of the aptly named ichthyologist, Theodore Gill, is going to fight you on that one, Gregory

and stitching a pork fillet to a monkfish like he was the evil twin trapped in the attic was not where Gregory’s misadventures in culinary gene splicing ended

Because you see, this was a turducken situation, as he mummified that newly Columbus’d porkfish with a roll of flattened poussin

and never in my life have I seen Marcus Wareing walk up to someone’s workbench and be quite this perturbed by the undignified end a piece of seafood was meeting

Gregory is a stronger person than I because that ellipses would’ve turned me inside out on the spot and yet he remained firm in his stance that this Ponkficken situation was a guaranteed winner in the face of the world’s most pregnant pause and Monica slamming him with this steel chair into the midst of his three meat pile-up

if his virtual experiences are as much about how to build an infallible sense of self as they about novelty culinary taxidermy the likes of which leaves the judges standing in the corner like they’re the parents in a horror movie that have just seen their toddler draw a picture of their terrifying imaginary friend

then sign me up, baby!

I’ve done an online course in taxidermy already, I’m just there for the confidence building. As well as creating a new amphibious apex predator, Gregory was making linguine with – oh no, it’s happening again

granted, I think Gregory did a better job than Michael with his use of the squid ink, or at least his managed to look less the branding marks of a coastal town cult

and to his credit, there are elements and parts of that work together – if you manage to untether the nduja’d monkfish from its chickeny wrapper, it’s an infinitely more successful (and sane) dish. It just all currently hangs together rather awkwardly and I think in the year of our Lord 2026, we HAVE to just accept that not once in its life has squid ink ever improved a pasta.

And in a case of Junji Ito horror, there was a bit of a spiralling contagion going as Philly served up her Bruciole separately to her ragu, but mercifully not sandwiched betwixt vortexing seafood and poultry

all the component parts for a stunning piece of Italian cookery are there, she just succumbed to the doubt that a hearty bowl of stew can be an elevated plate of food and in deconstructing it robs the beef of remaining succulent and juicy and the ragu of developing that real depth of flavour making it all a little second rate.

Ibz was also going for a beef dish, serving his fillet alongside a Cho-cho Slaw and a Pepper Pot as he continues to celebrate the Guyanese food that made him such a stand out on his first series

and it went down an absolute storm with the judges. It was also nice to see the Jamaican influences coming in, like this slightly threatening sounding spice mix

it’s exactly what a dish in the Signature Round should be. Which I think is where Morteza fell just a bit short as he went about with his very ambitious Khoresh Bademjan which he was serving with a rack of lamb and saffron rice. There was also meant to be a sauce and a tomato salad but he ran out of time at the end

and his dish kind of needed them because without that sense of freshness a salad brings and the richness of a sauce, it does look a bit like prison food

but it’s clearly not the dish he had envisioned. He was saved a lot by how good it all tasted and his cooking of the lamb rack was done exceptionally well, which is no small feat in the MasterChef kitchen. It’s clearly a plate of food he likes, but you can feel his own unfamiliarity with it which you shouldn’t in a round about showcasing your signature culinary style.

Ben had also gone for a lamb dish, opting for Hogget as the centrepiece for his quite minimalist celebration of Iona

you can tell he’s a fine dining chef and while this very clean and pristine presentation is very much Marcus’s bag, it does leave me a little bit cold. But I did like the sound of the Smoked Carrots and Hogget. It certainly all offered a better insight into Ben’s abilities than the Skills Test did

which was also the case for Clara who was doing a mushroom dish as an excuse to show off her tattoos as she makes it very clear she’s the coolest person in the room

can’t wait until we get to the dish inspired by the plant pot with tits or duck with a hat!
Her dish was her own take on Congee which she was serving topped with Pickled Mustard Seeds and Puffed Sorghum as well as a pair of skewers of Soy-glazed Mushrooms

congee has never really been my thing but this sounds incredible and I’d order it for the mushroom skewers alone – I’ve never seen mushrooms look so good and the judges raved about the whole thing, making Clara quite emotional

I just love it when people are this proud of their food.

An Unofficial Signature Dish Ranking:
1. Congee-ulations, Clara!
2. I Feel an Ibz Win In My Well Seasoned Bones
3. Ben’s Redemption Hogget
4. Philly’s Uzumaki Beef
5. Morteza’s Mother’s Signature Dish
6. Gregory’s Ponkficken Situation

Chef of the Day was a toss up between Clara and Ibz. It could’ve gone to either of them and I’d have been happy but I think his success in the Skills Test had just inched Ibz ahead of Clara, and it does make for a nice narrative point to have him return to such acclaim

the elimination was also something of a two horse race with the judges torn between Morteza and Gregory, ultimately deeming it to coming down to which of them they’d prefer to see cook again

and somehow this decision isn’t to see which new and intriguingly undignified positions he could put small birds into as Gregory departs after turduckening too close to the sun

nothing but my deepest respect, you wonderfully unhinged man!