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!

Those steaks look good though but not with a fecking fondant and if you can't control a cucumber you should hang you head

It's the fecking plates that get me. Here's my dish - roughly the size of mouse shit for someone with the appetite of a gnat on this poncey piece of Cornish slate that weighs roughly as much as a slightly portly master chef...

Or some ridiculous huge white bowl with three pieces of pasta in it.

Bisque is short for thin watery soup.

Oh dear, it's a rich creamy soup. Feck me, for years I thought it was a clear one. Hangs head in shame and departs from the room.

Rhubarb sauce on fish, scallops an random meat with fruit, god she'll tell us she foraged it next

Ahh nod to routes and black pudding

Red pepper sauce and tapenade, there's going to be shit smears I can feel it

Scallops and duck aff

Greg won't be happy he's not getting a pudding

Velouté is the thin watery one, isn't it?

And consommé!

Ah I love Barry, he's practically done my exact menu, only with added foam! I hope he wins .

Loving this thread, very funny!

What really gets my goat, apart from just about everything already mentioned, is when they are cooking for the critics, nobody helps them carry the dishes through. I mean, they cook them, then have to take them through (2 trips usually) and have to reverse through the door using their arses just to open tbe swing doirs. What would happen if they dropped a dish? (Apart from making 'good' telly). I never seen that happen yet mind you.

It's the same situation in that Great British Menu too

Would it kill them to fit automatic doors, or employ someone to hold open the door or help carry stuff through.

And breathe. I don't get out much...

Someone has offered up a chorizo foam.

Sausage. Foam.

Oh yay, we get to see more of shit-smear Barry in the next round. I'm predicting mackerel 3 ways and a chocolate fondant for him in the quarter finals.

sleepy that's soooo true about the doors, hehehehe

Sausage foam, yum, sounds really hearty and filling, doesn't it Devon?

I don't remember who it was, but in one of the recent episodes someone, with lots of plates to be carried through to the critics, actually said "I was rather hoping that you guys could help me carry it". John and Greg did some "how dare he" faces. And did they lend the poor chap a hand? Like bollocks they did

dont forget the ballotine

Greg always does that funny thing with the spoon were he literally looks like he is scraping everything off it with his gob. He does it really slowly too, me and dp always take the piss out of him for it.
Man he love da cake!!

Ah yes the ballotine. Got to have a chicken ballotine served with confit chicken wing and crispy chicken skin, or perhaps a chicken liver on the side, accompanied by some nervous potatoes and a few shit smears at some point in the competition.

But we did have the Reverse Roast Potatoes served up tonight i.e. fondant potatoes.

Plus another one who can't do mashed potatoes! What is wrong with them? That's so basic.

The professional kitchen experience is so bogus. Unless they make them work 11 days straight beforehand from 9am through to 11pm with no break, sight of daylight or fresh air, shout at them constantly and feed them a diet of Marlboros, coffee and red bull.

Have you also noticed that in later rounds when the contestants are really up against it time worse, they just chop a finger top off or gash open their hand. John steps in to stop them cooking, cue cries of "noooooo, I want to carry on!!" sob sob - like hell you did - you screwed up that fish flavoured ice cream that hasn't set and were 20 mins late for the judges so thought sod it, i'll take my chances with one less finger tip. Sneaky.

watches too much MC

'but it needs more oooomph' :) Love buttery biscuit base and thanks to the first video I lost my crown as 'most miserable woman to ever grace an office' at lunchtime today.

When they spread the butter on the apple I was lost, cackling away :)

ganache - the Hindu elephant God?
Ballotine - what they used in the French Revolution to chop people's heads off?
Jus - orange squash?
Fondant- some sort of fountain??

not to mention dishes that are more suitable for hospitl settings or for wearing on your head at a wedding...