Masterchef Goes Large

Aye, that's what we said - Emily didn't *need* to win, I reckon she will have her own show/restaurant/cookbooks before too long on the back of that. Curly-haired dude wanted it too badly, and it was odd that he won despite displaying all the trying-too-hard overcomplicating-it that made them kick Craig Revel Horwood out of the celebrity one. I guess they thought he needed it more having jacked in his stupidly paid last job to fulfil his dream of being a chef and doing it by going on the telly rather than getting an actual job.

Jonny might as well not have been there, tbh.

the new loyd grossman sauce ads, with all those people doing impressions of him, i'm finding inexplicably hilarious.

nah

the new loyd grossman sauce ads, with all those people doing impressions of him, i'm finding inexplicably hilarious.

Hah, so does my girlfriend. I think they're OK.

Celebrity Masterchef in twenty minutes.

COOKING DOESN'T GET TOUGHER THAN THIS!

JOHN TORODE IS BACK THEN?

I saw John Torode doing a demonstration at a food fair in Devizes. He was flanked by a massive photograph of himself, confirming my opinion of him being a tool.

A friend of mine who's a chef has met him a few times and can confirm that he is indeed a tool.

And the other one's a jumped up greengrocer.

I've got a lot more time for Greg than John.

I actually watched last night's on the iplayer after getting back from the pub. That's how shamelessly addicted I am.

It's an hour long tonight too. Fuck, between this and trying to finish the Wire before half the world accidentally tells me what happens I have no time for anything else.

The new food recognition round in the quarter finals is bullshit.

And the 'passion test' is even bullshittier.

The new food recognition round in the quarter finals is bullshit.

this was always in it but yeah it's wrong. just have the show being four of them cook a 3 course meal. it doesn't make any sense to get rid of one after that ingredients test, it kind of negates that whole day. worse comes later when one of the semi finalists gets knocked out in a similar half baked episode essentially writing off a whole week of the competition.

having said that, this years is much better for the simple reason that they reduced the recapping & voice overs by at least 2/3rds.

Yeah i thought I noticed there was more cooking action this time 'round. We can't stop watching.

The professional kitchen round never seems to count for much. Also, whoever Torode likes best always wins.

Has the food recognition really been there all along? I can't remember it at all, goes to show what boring telly it makes for.

I wish they'd bring back the man who cooked the pork chop in the first episode.

haha that guy was great

Also, lest we forget:

something about watching people eat and then make comments is hilarious

i only saw this briefly last night but what was the deal w/ the woman doing chorizo, soy sauce & peaches??? oh man

That Reeves & Mortimer Masterchef sketch is possibly my favourite ever of their sketches, "how innovative!"

absolutely dis-licious.

I once had a nightmare about Vic Reeves as Grossman.

Hahahaha, budget professional kitchen test today, it was in Wagamama in Camden!

last night's was priceless - everyone was shit but shittest of all was the guy who made halved boiled new potatoes (still hard) with a tin of chickpeas and chopped bacon on top... all in a thin blood-red tomato sauce.

Yeah, that was astounding. He was a cider salesman with a comedy west country accent.

(xpost) that sounds dreadful, like one of my old student era experiments.

"I wouldn't send it back but I'd probably ask for the service charge to be removed" - you idiot! What part of SERVICE charge don't you understand?

Or... that's what I've always thought. Is the cooking part of the 'service'?

Not that I wanna turn this into another tipping thread.

Torode displaying his empathy for the working man there.

Why does Torode ALWAYS get his way on split decisions?

because the other guy is a grocer?

the big guy should have won tonight.

the big guy with the shaved head and beard was amazing, his smoked scallops dish was off the hook

really think they should get rid of the restaurant section and replace it with the 'following classic recipes' section from professional masterchef w/michel roux

jed with the truthbomb re:wallace as grocer... ow

lots of times if it's a toss-up, the cute girl will win too

torode is obv a perv

love the format, episodes are the same every time, including candidates' motivations, comments when rejected ("i'm more determined than ever etc."), the decision making & arguments of torode and wallace, expressions ("best blahblahblah i've had in a very very long time"). and they tend to go for promising over solid in the first rounds, which i don't mind at all.

i agree that the passion- and ingredient rounds have to go though.

and i like cozen's suggestion wrt following classic recipes a lot! also right about the amazingness of bald/beardy guy's two course meal.

oh, i didn't liek that guy. i thought sticky toffee pud woman should have won.

that episode really shd have been the final, they were all really good

last night's heat was amazingly good too. the contrast to the previous night was ridic. the woman who won monday's was probably a worse cook that me.

god yeah the monday one was awful!

we shd have a masterchef: final party : D

didn't see the monday episode but the guy with the potatoes+chickpeas+corn dish was classick.

in which british military training camp will the finalists be dropped this year?

czn yes!

potatoes chickpeas and bacon guy was apparantly "the worst contested we have ever had on masterchef" but i thought i could have eaten that dish if i really had to. the big woman the previous week who made the risotto and then decided to blend it into a soup? that looked literally inedible.

potatoes chickpeas and bacon guy was apparantly "the worst contested we have ever had on masterchef" but i thought i could have eaten that dish if i really had to.

I would've made that dish. Everything I ever cook is like a nightmarish invention round, where I haven't quite decided what I'm doing and adding more spices just so it tastes of something (I blame this on having to cook for a vegetarian having lived off meat'n'veg or meat-in-sauce for most of my life). The voiceover would call me an 'experimental chef' and they would worry that I'd put too many flavours in. But I've never considered blending risotto.

Whilst watching monday's episode of high hilarity (the guy who chopped his thumb off must be glad that other guy came along and did that other thing) I said to my girlfriend "they should send these to somewhere like Wagamama 'cos they're all useless". And then they did, and apparently it was really hard (I didn't see it last night).

Another of my disastrous cooking experiments involved tuna and sweetcorn, and a whole load of other stuff I kept adding to try and get it to taste nice, all cooked together in a wok that was filled almost to the brim. And it was a big wok as well, allegedly stolen from a Chinese restaurant. The end result was disgusting, looking like anaemic rhino diarrhoea. No-one would eat it.

wasn't the guy who look liked he murdered his food - "the worst contested we have ever had on masterchef" - a vegetarian who cooked bacon? that could explain a lot.

I think the only thing that was really hard about the Wagamama shift was the workload. Dishes looked very simple and were preprepared to a large extent imo.

risotto into soup (or rather, mush) woman was major lolz

xpost why then would he use the bacon in the first place?

My dish is called 'Sunny Afternoon'... yeah, yeah, The Stereophonics

That caused groans in our house too. Also the Bowie quote she used is the same as the o e someone used last week. WTF? Is there a briefing document?

OMG they are playing the Stereophonics version of Sunny Afternoon! It is gross.

Calling a dish “Top of the Cods” does not make it relevant to the music industry.

nor do endless stories about how you grew up.

they cut away really fast but i think you can *just* see the judge die inside when the guy says stereophonics.

Top of the Crops
Top of the Cods

...

The Stereophonics version almost had me clicking away ffs. Only dish that looked the part to me was the Bowie one, but apparently it tasted like shite, and the guy using cleaner tasting lemon in his dish got a higher grade.

What a fucking mysoginist judge that was, last weeks. His disgust for her dripped off the screen. He'd've bitten the woman's head off if he wasn't being filmed. Sure, maybe her dishes weren't all that but neither were anyone else's. He scored her significantly lower than others who got the same, or worse, critique. Rigged.

"What's the connection to music?" the judge (and other competitors) say repeatedly over a dish which is called hip hop in a weak (but completely reasonable and understandable) pun over it being rabbit.

The ones which pass without comment are "Brixton academy through the years" which is a cube of hoggett and veal sweetbreads (because that's a posh kebab, obviously) and "oh you pretty things" which is a 'celebration of songs that mention breakfast'. Because it's a bowl of mushrooms served with mushroom ketchup and an empty mug with some song names written on it.

This has turned into the worst theme in years.

Otm to all of that. Would’ve gone with Procal Herring myself tbf

Absolute cunt's parade all week, chefs and judges alike.

I had two new puns they should have gone with.

The final dish should have been called Choccy's Got A Temper. And the frozen one earlier should have had a peaty whisky added to it and been called La Islay Granita.

lol at kemp throwing a hissy fit at the pigeon claw on his plate.

La Islay Granita

*doffs hat*

It's not been great. Peter Hook almost eating every desert was a highlight, which is saying something. I did like seeing Andrew Ridgely tbh, hadn't seen him since his last TOTP performance probably. This show force feeds you so much filler and repeatings of the same old dreariness ("the uk music scene continues to take the world by storm" etc) I'm glad it's over tomorrow actually.

what's the deal with professional chefs and sleeve tattoos?

They're often a bunch of weirdos on the Professionals.

I don't know if you've been out in public in the uk recently but sleeve tattoos are virtually compulsory in most places.

imo they kicked out philippe because they were afraid he's better than them. absolutely ridiculous. don't wanna watch the rest of the season

don't have twitter but i hope everyone is giving them hell

Brin 4 the win

Yeah. We liked Cliodhna but I'm notorious for putting the kiss of death on anyone by calling them for the win just before they comically arse it up.

Still broken-hearted Ajay went out, he seemed so good.

Grace and Anna are obviously a breath of fresh air, but if Jhané doesn't win, it's still the same bad old Masterchef.

I liked Matt until I realised he reminds me of that dorky pic of young Elon Musk.