Squoosh! Looks who is back for Masterchef Professionals!

[TheSpectreOfMorningtonCrescent]

It's only Marcus Wareing. Starts next week. Are we ready?

Last night's contestant were pretty good aside from bland meat man and bland tofu woman. Her pancake round seriously stressed me out!

It's just a crepe for gawd's sake.

Even I can make a thin pancake.(Thankyou Miss Lamb!) What on earth was she doing throwing so many away?

Coincidentally I just watched the show today and I was planning on making pancakes tonight anyway. I've made them before and never had an issue, but that episode has stressed me out.

No surprise that a lump of tofu lost to a lump of beef,surely there should be a cost limit on the dishes,otherwise its not fair.
But then having a ratio of one lady to four men in each new round
(masterchef bukaki ? ) is unfair to the average male chef who might have got better in the semi finals,but i did like joeys dishes as they aren't messed about with - that phallic turnip looked stupid,but i'm sure she'll get dumped once we get to the more ostentatious meals with bleedin gold leaf.

That vegetarian lady made me (unnecessarily!) angry. I very rarely eat meat so was glad that they had a vegetarian on. Nothing beats well-cooked, fresh British veg, cooked to enhance their natural flavours. But oh no, lets use a meat substitute instead. Nothing about it looked professional or refined.

I don't think the price of ingredients matters to be honest. I was pleased to see a vegetarian cook in the show, I just don't think she was a particularly inventive one.

^'But then having a ratio of one lady to four men in each new round
(masterchef bukaki ? ) is unfair to the average male chef who might have got better in the semi finals'^

Are you saying it's unfair on the male contestants for them to include female chefs?

They're competing as individuals, I certainly haven't seen the women getting preferential treatment.

I agree SheHasAWildHeart, a great vegetarian chef wouldn't base a signature dish around boring old tofu. Seemed an odd choice.

Vegetarian Chefs never do well on cooking programmes - which IMO are always very heavy on the almost raw meat.

Will the poncey rounds be honeycomb in gold leaf with burnt onions (last night's go to ingredient)?

Are burnt onions a thing now? Who knew I was way ahead of the curve all these years!

DH's cousin & family are vegetarian. Last time we were round theirs his wife made gorgeous veggie enchiladas - made her own tortillas / flatbreads & stuff. It was gorgeous. No need for it always to be tofu.

Those poor langustines :(

These 'chefs' are dire!

Chefs who cannot make mayonnaise? What has the world come to? More to the point, do their restaurants just dollop out the Hellman's?

Even my burgers are more fancy than that.

Not impressed with tonight's chefs. Chefs who can't make Mayo shouldn't have even made it on the show.

The skills test seemed easier this time than boning a trotter , i guess they are running out of ideas.Next week peel an apple ?
Can restaurants can serve fresh mayo without losing a hygiene rating brownie point ? it may explain the chefs hesitation.
i have never found one that can,they always say its not allowed by law .

Oh and squooch
i was ruminating that the bbc were dolloping in one girl per round
( which would give them a slight statistical advantage ) i'm quite happy for them to compete alongside the boys,but no ladies this time so perhaps there are no more left ?

I thought the hoggart chap got short changed - two plates of nice food and he's out - i bet if he made a puree of the veg and reduced meat portion size if would be called fine dining.

what I don't understand - and probably because I am the sort of cook who only cooks just enough - the nice looking lad (Tom?) who ran out of time and did not include the faggots (?) in his dish went to the bother of roasting a 'whole duck' and only used a single breast in his signature dish. Why did he not cook just a breast of duck?
in most of the shots you see them making awesome amounts of food to serve up a smear, foam or 'dot' of the flavour on a plate. I do understand they are used to catering for multitudes of customers.
Maybe the excess food is handed out to the needy production staff afterwards (or Gregg) - but it would be cold by then

Gregg'd eat all the left over food

I have to say, I can see why they didn't put the hoggart guy through, but blimey, that was the one plate of food I desperately wanted to eat...

Ah I really wanted him to go through too. It looked so utterly scoffable.

And I'm afraid I disagreed with Marcus with regards to making burgers. I think adding an egg to the mixture makes them too tough.

mollie123 I wonder that too. You'll see them wrangling with a cauldron of samphire essence or whatevs only for it to end up as a teeny weeny smear.

I bet the camera crew dive straight in. Hopefully they elbow Gregg out of the way.

What is the actual point of Greg? (on this programme and in wider spheres)

He's supposed to be 'the voice of the punter'. Though I'd replace the p with a c, if I'm honest.......

Gregg is there to scoff the food and add some comedy value to an otherwise good show.