Celebrity MasterChef is ostensibly a test of whether famous people can cook. Two heats into this year’s series, it has proved almost as useful at establishing what they cook when nobody is watching.
For Gladiators star Emily Steel, that began with the Thai cooking she knows from home. Her first signature dish – fillet steak marinated in soy and oyster sauce, with sticky rice, papaya salad and nam jim – contained enough heat to briefly deprive judge Grace Dent of feeling in her mouth. The flavours survived the assault. Steel went on to produce a chocolate brownie with salted caramel, black sesame praline and miso ice cream that Giorgio Locatelli called “faultless”, before securing a place in the semi-finals.
