To think that if you want to go on Masterchef you must cook the following dishes:

[muminthecity]

Starter:- Pan fried scallops with some sort of slop puree, preferably cauliflower. For extra points add a lump of black pudding.

Main:- Pan fried duck with some sort of fruit, orange, plum or redcurrants always go down well. Serve with either fondant/crushed potatoes and a red wine jus.

Pudding:- Chocolate fondant. Doesn't matter what you serve with it, if it works you will be hailed a genius regardless, if it doesn't, you will be sent home anyway.

If you want to be the wacky, 'inventive' one, add a bit of fruit to the scallops (apple maybe?), change the fruit you serve with the duck to a less conventional one (nectarine, perhaps?) and add some chilli to your chocolate fondant.

I love Masterchef but I'm so bloody sick of seeing the same dishes rehashed all the time!

When I enter Masterchef, I am going to get through the first few rounds by cooking scallops and shit smears, then when it gets to the round where I have to do a 3 course meal for the critics I am going to make a prawn cocktail followed by spag bol, finished off with a fairy cake, or maybe a victoria sponge if I'm feeling generous.

I like Greg and all but he needs to learn how to use cutlery properly; the way he nearly elbows people in the face every time his digs into those deserts with the biggest spoon available is a bit gruff.

muminthecity - you need to sell your ideas in review form to a paper. Brilliant :)

Moominsarehippos - Extra brownie points if you have 'foraged' for the weird curly leaves yourself.

This is all so, so true.

One other missing detail: any meat that a normal, sane person would want to eat cooked has to be served raw pink. Yuk.

Oh and forget getting a plateful of decent food. You've got to have doll-sized portions instead.

Lomaamina - If you cook a big hearty plateful they will tell you it is unrefined and request doll-sized portions instead. However, if you present a doll-sized portion they will tell you that it isn't hearty enough and that they would prefer a great big bowlful drenched in sauce instead. You can't win!

DO NOT GET ME STArTED ON THE WORD 'FORAGED'

It's just picking stuff

Lol this has cheered me up...love it!

at shat on a plate and shit smears!

My own personal favourite it the baby sick...or more commonly described as foam of pear and cauliflower (or something equally mismatched)

Actually laughing out loud at this. YY to shit smears, scallop and slop, feckin fondants... Also hate the idiots who can barely boil an egg but want to make liquid nitrogen fart biscuits or whatever...

Hate John Torode's food, I never want to eat it.

Also hate it when any dish from someone's 'heart', often to do with their mum's cooking from other cuisines is automatically amazing (often it's Caribbean or Italian food), but if someone from (in my case) Scotland did that, a plate of mince and tatties would be unacceptable. (Insert regional dish as appropriate!)

Recette Creme Anglaise with Flavours of Samphire
Served on a Pillow of Salsify Foam

Pick random recipe. Make it

1. Deconstructed or
2. With a twist

Sorted.

And...... every bloody episode Jon says its too sweet cut to Greg It can never be too sweet for me with that pervy face gurning.

Samphire - I tried it for the first time last week - it looked like grass and it tasted like grass...

Disappointing!

Ah yes, how could we forget the foam! I'm starving hungry, haven't eaten all day, you know what I could really do with? A nice big spoonful of foam. How satisfying

at liquid nitrogen fart biscuits. Served by the 'wacky, inventive' one who forages for his own stinging nettle leaves to sprinkle over said fart biscuits.

Foraging = weeding.

I am weeping at the tiny dog wiping its bum :o

How is it that they can choose to make anything in the final test and yet 2 out of 3 of them make the same fecking thing?!

Don't forget lamb
That's over cooked! But it's
Really perfect to us mere mortals!

I hate the foam. I remember commenting to the chef. Years ago at a tasting that it looked like cukoo spit. He wasn't impressed.

Anyone cooking indian/asian food ('from the heart', 'my mums cooking', etc) usually does ok. Shove on a few pomegranite seeds (waste of time they are) or the local equivalent of HP sauce and you're laughing. Shame my mum was a war child, so ate all varieties of revolting food/offal with delight. I don't think potted calves foot jelly would go down all that well (bleurch).

You can cook anything you like, so long as it's "your take on" it.

Totally agree with all of this. Has anyone seen on Youtube - hilarious!

Just wait till they get to the boning/filleting challenges, isn't that what we have butchers/fishmongers for?

And for tiny dog bums, I think as a responsible owner you should be carrying a poo bag.

Hahahahahaha. Brilliant thread. Shit smears and baby sick

I'll admit to just marking my place here. I hate tiny dots of sauce with a meal - If I have gravy I want my food swimming in it.

Or anything cooked '3 ways'. Make a decision, already!

Does anyome else yell at the telly 'stop pissing about and shove it on the plate!' When the restaurant chefs are giving a mm by mm blueprint of how the food should go on the plate? Do they ever wake up in the morning and think 'fuck it, with all the famine and wars in the world, does it really matter?'.