Masterchef Goes Large

Eggs Benedict.

Eggs Benedict -vs- Pain Perdu.

Sheridan ftw!

Emily must win

recap of yesterdays programme>>recap of each contestant's performance so far>>"cooking "DOESN'T get TOUGHER then THIS"/"if they win this it will CHANGE their LIVES">> overlong introduction to each new cook>> tiny bit of cooking then judging>> recap of the tiny bit of cooking we have just seen even though we just watched it>> professional kitchen for 5 minutes>> recap of professional kitchen we just watched combines with another recap of round one /"experimental cook emily impressed in the first round but she floundered in the professional kitchen">> 5 minutes of cooking then judging then fake devils advocate thing between john and greg to decide the winner>> preview of tomorrow's show. they would recap the preview but the show has to end some time.

SO addicted to the programme. Where the fuck did they dig up identivoice shouty guys? They must be the most charmless presenters on TV, which kind of adds to the show's compellingness.

Experimental Emily.
Single-dad Jonny.
Banker Sheridan.
Nothing to say about stupid-haired other guy.

Bald shouty guy used to be Millwall hooligan.

What was the format of the show in the Grossman years - I can only think of that Reeves and Mortimer sketch?

That's the best way to remember it. Print the legend.

arr.

I think every reality show now does this interminable recap nonsense. Dog Borstal and the Panic Room are hour-long shows!

they all do recaps but this show takes it to a whole new level.

i thought it was a bit ridiculous to go through six weeks of heats to eliminate 2 qrt finalists in a one show chicken cook-off.

emily ftw. i wish they'd go back to the early evening slot cos i keep missing it now.

I only see bits of it. Have they asked Sheridan why she's got a bloke's name?

i wish they'd go back to the early evening slot cos i keep missing it now.

Me too. Last series it was on half an hour after I usually got back from work, which was absolutely perfect as it's great wind down from the day telly.

Farewell to Sheridan last night. Her nerves let her down, and she was starting to look a bit out of her depth.

Emily must win.

yes. even clare rayner's son, family guy and the obnoxious woman recognised her genius. the best bit was when john torrode got all serious about the chip "people KNOW what a chip is" and then greg wallace didn't really know what to say. turned out he was right though.

I was gutted for Johnny last night, he's the only one I actually like. God that food critic woman had an arsey face.

what a miserable looking bitch, i kept thinking. actually she wasn't as bad as i had anticipated.

james is going to win but i'd like emily to.

Sheridan's the only one whose personality I found annoying, so I'm glad she's gone.

I keep expecting James to say "which was nice".

It bugs me a bit how everyone's like 'It's my dream to work in a pro kitchen'. Well do then! If you've got a modicum of cooking talent, as even the shittest contestants do, how hard can it be to get a low-end job in one?

they don't know they're being filmed

every section recorded in a professional kitchen cements my belief that working in one would be an absolute nightmare. people yearn to do this day after day?

it's the final.
emily just had jt virtually in tears with the genius of her scallops and beetroot vermicelli. she MUST win.

"Women fall in love with men who make pudding like that, Jonny"

that was an entirely prxedictable cop-out. load of rubbish.

MPW hair man won.

Emily's blatantly going to do really well for herself anyway.

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

wittingly or unwittingly, the producers of gbm have produced an invaluable survey of the tyrants, egomaniacs and petty squabblers who run british kitchens in the 21st century, and for that they must be commended

That one neck tatooed fellow who produced a dish called CONTEMPT FOR ORTHODOXY which was like a fish spine sticking out of 3D printed head did make me laugh.

Haha yes - demonstrating his contempt for orthodoxy by spraying oysters silver and shaping them to look like studs on an oh-so-unorthodox leather jacket. The restaurant he works at in Leeds sounds... not to my taste.

Ben from the other week's restaurant is just round the corner from me and is actually very nice so I couldn't help rooting for him, even though he was a slight moron.

Yeah as documented on the London restaurants thread we ate at his restaurant this weekend and it was really good.

Ali Campbell explain what Grime was to Matthew Fort

oh god i'm gonna have to watch this now aren't i

― a photographer, satanist and ukip voter (bizarro gazzara), Monday, April 8, 2019 12:37 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Be glad you missed Mani 'dish is aight' slurping up some soup.

Ps. I watch this religiously. The 'concept' plates are frequently bonkers.

Wtf has this guy got against fish curry?

Great to see the kooks up for a place in the pantheon of 50 years of british music.

What was the deal w/ that guy who - twice - didn't actually deliver the brief in any way? Is he thick?

"I'm doing a dish called Northern Sole."
"What fish is in it?"
"Cod."

That guy?

oh god i'm gonna have to watch this now aren't i

xp haha yeah, that guy. Thought it was expert trolling at first but c'mon man. Despite him explicitly saying it was called 'Northern Sole' the editors of the show just put 'Northern Soul' underneath it, because it was just too wtf.

I like that this week's judge let's off a little more about how things are going during the cooking. The others all tried their very best to not let anything on. When they'd taste a sauce they'd be like *must... keep... blank... expression*

xp BG you need to see this pronto imo

We have developed the habit of watching the week's worth of these on a Friday or Saturday night. I can barely wait! (Mind if you lot start spoilering who goes through I will have to catch up in the thread later, not that that should stop you obv.).

We're a small but dedicated crew, I think we can manage no spoilers.

Despite him explicitly saying it was called 'Northern Sole' the editors of the show just put 'Northern Soul' underneath it, because it was just too wtf.

It was more wtf than that, he actually said "The dish is called Northern Soul, with a 'u', because it's cod". In other words "I'm not going for the obvious pun, instead I'm going for a dish which has no connection to the name or the brief whatsoever".

Mind = blown (I missed that "with a 'u'" remark!). That's some 5D concept cooking!

Yeah he said "with a u" to both Aitkens and his fellow competition, separately, so he clearly rationalised it in his head that way.

Maybe it was a meta-commentary on the futilty of trying to encapsulate a musical tradition through the medium of cookery - it wouldn't actually have had anything more to do with Northern Soul music if the name of the fish i had sounded the same as 'soul'.

That's possibly giving him a little too much credit seeing as he was a shouty self-satisfied chump.

B-but plates shaped like guitars! Skate tendon mohicans!

he was a shouty self-satisfied chump.

Otm. He's a nuisance. All the better his chow will be further served off tonight.

xp Oh god the mohicans <3

So you're a top chef who worked at Noma, participating for the second time. What do you do? Choose a main ingredient (pig fat) you've never worked with before, massively over-salt your dish (how did he not taste this?) and as a consequence are scared shitless of overseasoning again so you completely underseason your next dish. Car crash.

Aye, last night was a car crash all round.

In "how do you do, fellow kids" news, "small vinyls" go at "33 rounds per minute", you listen to a record player while fishing in a boat and devoted John Peel listeners owned all the Spice Girls singles on cassette.

OMG.

So it turns out these little morsels of ludicrousness are making me more psyched to watch the show, rather than acting as spoilers.

That's weird, we started watching an old series of M:TP last night. The one with savant psychopath James, who's either going to win at an absolute canter (no spoilers pls!) or get kicked out for hunting a fellow contestant

What's weird?

Masterchef (and, I think Mastercheftheprofessionals) has taken to using past winners and finalists as if they were food critics* in the early rounds - it turns out that I have a vague memory of about 5% of them and the rest I would swear I'd never seen before, even though I've watched every series of the thing going back to the dear dead days of Loyd himself. SO the chances of me spoiling anything are zero. Having said all that, GBM >>> any form of Masterchef.

*presumably the risk of being saddled with another Sitwell is just too great.

and devoted John Peel listeners owned all the Spice Girls singles on cassette.

This had us cracking up too :D

My favourite LOL was Richard Corrigan saying, "You're really pushing the boundaries by mentioning John Peel there"

The bottom of the puns barrel was officially scraped with "Fleetwood Mackerel".

Haha, I missed that. Stupid social life.

Someone who grew up in Buckie reckons they listened to loads of bhangra when they were at school. No wonder in such a hotbed of Asian culture.

The female chef justified her Club Tropicana inspired dessert because her sister was Wham daft when they were growing up. She's 32.

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.