The instructor involved sounds like one of those nit picking idiots we all encounter from time to time. What really matters is how the manoeuvre is flown and how controlled flight is restored without exceeding limitations.
Whether the flight director is ignored or switched off is really secondary and at best a discussion item. If it happened for real I suspect it would be at the bottom of the list of priorities.
Couldn’t agree more. Time-critical event training is all about reinforcement of technique for dealing effectively with something that would likely lead to a crash in short order if uncorrected. Stall, hard GPWS, windshear, airspeed unreliable, etc. The last thing you should be thinking of while flying these manoeuvres is artificial altitude constraints. It’s an emergency: the sky is yours.
Yes, when back in a normal flight regime you can start paying more attention to clearances, altitudes and the like but that’s sugar frosting compared with handling the escape correctly.