Oti Mabuse’s Masterchef Journey

All in one gulp, because I was on holiday whilst she was on.

The Sausage Round : Yes, why not start, with five amateur chefs (and believe me, this week, they were, no secret three years at catering college and/or lengthy stint on Hell’s Kitchen here), by asking them to make their own sausages from scratch. It’s almost as though they’re setting them up to fail isn’t it? Happily Oti, who came in proudly talking about giving herself food poisoning the last time she cooked, was happy to oblige, and when asked to produce a sausage, mash, and gravy, quite merrily plated up this

which looked a bit like a toilet full of puke. Yes that red stuff is supposed to be gravy. Me either. Sadly for Oti, she was outdone in the “bizarre spectacle” stakes by Joey Essex stuffing a sausageskin with about 95% solid fat, meaning that upon hitting the pan his sausage inflated to twice its size, gained sentience, and set out to invade Norway.

The Professional Kitchen Round : aka the piss break round. Oti, accompanying Neil Ruddock and Paralympic long-distance runner Andy Grant, was asked to produce a lamb main with courgette puree, one of those dishes done up to look a bit like an avant garde board-game, all cones and towers at oblique angles to one another. Chiefly, Oti was slow, and also Oti was loud. I’m not sure about “Disco Inferno” as a song to sing whilst cooking though, to be honest. Specifically the “Burn baby burn” bit as well.

Elimination Round A : Asked to come up with a dish of her own choosing, with no parameters beyond a BBC budget, Oti decided to invent “Cha Cha Chicken Curry”. Now curries are normally a good vessel via which contestants with cultural roots in countries other than the UK express the centuries old culinary traditions passed down through their family for generations, rich in flavours and redolent of mornings spent at their nana’s stoves. Not Oti though, who served up an entire plate of mush that tasted like “the filling from a samosa”. Now generally, I think trial and error and culinary evolution has found the right amount of samosa filling to eat at any one time, and it’s exactly the amount that you’d find inside an actual samosa, but even this excess was overshadowed by the accompaniment

uncooked rice covered in phlegm, and a hollowed-out tomato into which Oti had squirted half a bottle of ketchup. Still, she stayed in as, for his elimination round, our Paralympian served up gravy that resembled nothing so much as chocolate brown flubber, and got the boot.

Pairs Challenge : So it safely established that (sorry) Oti didn’t really know what she was doing, cooking wise, the remaining celebs were divided up for the next round – the PAIRS CHALLENGE. In this round, each pairing of two celebrities had to simultaneously prepare their attempt at a dish selected by the judges, but with one each side of a massive culinary dividing wall, over which they had to shout instructions to one another. And so, in need of guidance and direction from one of the more experienced contestants, Oti got paired with

the rapidly melting 78 year old fashion designer who was absolutely not going to damage her voice shouting under any circumstances, particularly not these ones. Basically Zandra walked around her side of the wall muttering under her breath about wine until John Torode had to insert himself as an intermediary, basically obviating the point of the entire round. Still…the sandwiches they made looked alright? (Yes, both teams were making sandwiches, this was the level of this round).

Mass Catering Challenge : Oti and Zandra’s anti-chemistry continued a-pace in the Mass Catering challenge, here set in a zoo. We didn’t really get to see much of the animals though, so who cares? Oti didn’t really know what to do (again) so Zandra and the Catering Manager guided them all together collectively towards the most boring menu in the world that promptly got smashed to pieces competitively by Neil Ruddock serving up meatballs that were literally the size of a baby’s head. Never try to be even remotely sophisticated in the Mass Catering Challenge. It does not work.

Elimination Round B : Coming up to the two hour mark of Oti wandering around not really knowing what to do, we came to the checking out point – where the celebrities had to produce two dishes for previous finalists. In this case, rather juicily, this panel included future It Takes Two host Rylan, so let’s just say I hope him being partially responsible for her elimination has consequences on BBC 2 and I hope they all involve her screaming abuse at him. For her last hoorah, Oti served up inconsistently cooked lamb-chops served on a bed of shredded carrot and baked beans (?) and a cheesecake that was literally just cream cheese, raspberries, and shop-bought jam. Still, Zandra decided to do melon soup, so I guess you could still debate whether she or Oti finished fourth for the week? Maybe? Even with that rice.