It's knockout week on MasterChef.
It's pretty intense, the heat.
Hot, hot, hot.
And the remaining cooks...
Oh, gosh.
..have felt the heat of their first professional kitchen.
You could mow the lawn with this!
It just hurts.
Cooking in front of that grill was one of the hardest things
I think I've ever done.
Now they're back...
Ahh!
..to fight for their place...
Oh. Oh, God.
..in the semifinals.Ah!
I have impostor syndrome
and I worry that my luck's going to run out,
but to think about going home
is not a good thought.
It's been an absolute ride of emotions.
Calling myself a MasterChef
semifinalist would be incredible.
It's an absolute dream.
I can't believe it.
I still can't believe it.
We've got great cooks, ambitious cooks,
absolutely desperate to stay in this competition.
I'll tell you what, no-one is going to want to go home now.
There you are, our final nine.
What a wonderful room full of culinary talent.
You were supposed to be ten,
but Ecrin's unable to carry on in the competition.
You are now cooking for a place in the semifinals.
John and I can say with all confidence,
this year's winner is in the room right now.
Your brief is to cook for us canapes.
Sweet or savoury,
it should be one single mouthful of absolute deliciousness.
At the end of this,
one of you is going home.
One hour, 45 minutes.
Nine portions of your canape and they must be identical.
Let's cook.
A great canape is actually a whole plate of food reduced to miniature.
One of the biggest issues with canapes
is keeping them small.
If they need a knife and fork, they are not canapes.
21-year-old Abi from Leeds has made it this far
by successfully combining modern European techniques
with Asian-inspired dishes.
The standard's obviously high now.
We're in the final nine.
Hopefully, one of them messes up or something today,
so then it just makes you a bit less risk of going home.
What's your canape?
It is a steak tartare with confit quail's egg yolk,
on a nigella seed cracker and horseradish mayonnaise.
It's one of my favourite dishes.
It is really, really nice. Well, if I get it right.
A steak tartare is an uncooked piece of meat. It's raw.
You take chopped up fillet steak and you mix it with mustard,
Tabasco, capers and shallots.
The egg yolk across the top makes the whole sauce go nice and creamy.
This is a really fiddly job.
However, if that egg yolk busts open in your hand,
that's the last thing you need.
Circus performer Chris has a creative and theatrical style
which has proved a hit with the judges.
You know, I woke up this morning and I was like,
"It's going to be slightly easier today," but it's not.
I've got a lot to do in the kitchen,
so hopefully just get down and get it on the plate.
Chris, I'm guessing this lets you exercise your creativity.
Yeah, it does. It really does.
For me, this is a celebration of the ocean.
I'm going to make for you butter-poached lobster... Ooh.
..served in a black waffle cone,
a scallop mousse, caviar pearls, and some crispy shrimps.
Absolutely fabulous.
Are you a bit under pressure today? Yes.
Have you given yourself too much to do?
A little bit. Do you want me to go away?
Yes, please.
Chris has decided to make a plate which looks like sand,
and it's made from ground-up breakfast cereal.
Mm...
And in that sand, he's going to embed cones...
Let's go.
..dusted with the saltiness of nori around the outside.
Ooh! He's making a sriracha mayonnaise.
Dead arm. Ugh!
Then he's butter-poaching lobster with XO sauce
made from dried scallops and chilli.
Fabulous.
It's really, really clever.
I hope it tastes as good as it looks.
I don't know if I left enough time.
BLENDER WHIRS
Vegetarian GP Dinta has stood out by fusing the flavours
of her Indian heritage with modern European techniques.
I'm a bag of emotions right now.
Of course I'm nervous,
but equally, I'm also just happy that I get to cook again.
My canape is an Indian version of the British classic breakfast.
Oh, my word. Go on. I'm intrigued.
The base is going to be a potato rosti.
You're going to have a vegan sausage,
some grilled tomatoes, some garlic mushrooms,
some masala beans,
and a lime avocado and a mini fried egg.
Will that all fit into a little bite-sized piece?
Yeah.
Dinta's going to make a dish
which is inspired by both her culture
and also now where she lives.
It will have the component parts of a breakfast,
but it'll have the flavours of India.
She's going to make mini eggs.
She's going to take the white of the egg and the yolk of the egg
in two separate syringes
and turn them into little tiny mini eggs in a pan.
This sounds like an interesting invention.
How long do we have left?
30 minutes have gone.
I need to get a move on.
TOM:It sounds like we've got a lot of time, but it seems to fly by.
Car sales manager Tom has championed Scottish ingredients
across crowd-pleasing classic dishes.
I'm doing a beef Wellington canape.
Duxelles mushroom with haggis through it.
I'm doing that with a filo tartlet.
Was it important for you to introduce
a flavour of Scotland into this?
It was important for me.
Any time we do it at home,
I put haggis in it and it's a family favourite,
so just bringing that to MasterChef.
Instead of puff pastry, we have got ourselves filo pastry,
but layers of filo pastry with lots of butter.
You just have to be, like, super quick,
because it can dry out.
That crispy filo is my main concern,
because as soon as you bite into that filo,
filo falls apart.
Come on.
In the bottom of that, he's put some ham
to make sure that it's nice and protected.
That ham will add saltiness.
HE WHISTLES Oh, look at that.
We've got a bit of haggis. We have.
Tom's given himself a huge amount of work to do here.
HE SIGHS
Apart from vol-au-vents at Christmas-time,
that's the most I've ever done as canapes.
So hopefully pop it in your mouth,
close your eyes and you know you're eating a beef Wellington.
MARY:Can I use this for five minutes?
Mm, yeah, yeah. I'm not using it yet. Carry on.
Retired company secretary Mary
continues to impress with bold flavours
in the traditional food she cooks for her family.
Two, four, six, eight, ten, 12.
Right.
Mary, you're doing something sweet. I am.
I'm doing little poires belle Helene.
It's going to be a little
tiny pastry case.
I'm going to have a little bit of pear puree on top of that,
some chocolate sauce, piped with Chantilly cream.
And then on top of that, I'm making some little caviar balls
from the liqueur.
Little spheres? Yes.
There's also going to be a tiny little pipette
of an extra bit of booze on the side, as well.
What is the epitome of beautiful canapes?
A flavour bomb in one bite.
Do you know what? You could do this job, Mary.
Pear belle Helene is a really lovely dessert.
That pear puree, lovely and smooth.
The shortcrust pastry, crumbly as you like.
And that cream has to be really full of vanilla and sweet.
And then she's taking a pear liqueur
and she's going to do spherification.
The difficulty with doing spherification
is sometimes it loses its flavour.
MARY SIGHS
My caviar balls are not setting.
I've got to start them again,
so the pressure's on a little bit with me here.
I'm going to have to see if I can get it to set.
And if not, goodnight Vienna.
Good luck, sweetheart. You too. We'll smash it.
Yeah, we're going to smash it.
A bit of a tricky one, this one.
I've never made a canape before,
so completely out of my comfort zone,
so hopefully it works out.
Dr George from Dorset has wowed with his technical ability,
proving he's an accomplished all-round cook.
I keep pinching myself that I'm still here.
There's been some incredible cooks in that kitchen since day one.
Now everyone is producing beautiful plates of food which taste amazing,
so I've really got to up my game.
My canape is a seaweed cracker,
a miso prawn, apple gel, and dill mayonnaise.
Wow. Why have you gone for this?
I got married very recently and we had canapes at the wedding.
It was all locally foraged food from Dorset
and I wanted to sort of take that on a journey to Asia.
So it's Dorset local meets Japan?
Yeah, it's home and away. That's what it is.
JOHN:Making the crackers is all-important.
They've got to be lovely and crisp.
Not too thick, not too hard.
A bit too thick for my liking.
And be able to hold the prawn and the mixture.
Cool. Right.
Prawns need to be cooked so they've got
a nice little bite to them.
Apple gel?
Great.
Apple and prawns together?
It's an odd combination.
Smash in there.
One hour has gone,
so you've got 45 minutes left, please.
A lot of eggs today.
Farmer Louise has proved to be a contender since day one,
by taking simple ingredients and making them shine.
Being one cook away from a semifinal
feels like my brain might explode.
I might throw up, I might fall over...
Uh!
..but I might cook really well and get a place in the semifinal,
which would be extraordinary.
What are your canapes, please?
It's a take on a canele de Bordeaux,
which is usually a little sweet treat.
You can get them with your coffee in posh restaurants. Yeah.
I am going to make them as a savoury version.
And inside them you've got what?
Chicken liver parfait,
raisin and caper gel,
and some pickled walnuts.
Have you made these before? Yes!
My parents used to live in France
and I used to work in Bordeaux as well.
Did you? So I would take any opportunity
to stuff my face with them.
Louise is making a canele,
and they look like a sort of fluted outside edge pudding
and they're sort of slightly brown and they're squidgy inside.
She's going to fill that with chicken liver pate.
She's making a caper and raisin gel.
That's nice. Almost like a relish to go with the whole thing.
Happy-ish.
But if the caneles don't rise up, we don't have a dish.
Oh, yes. Push, push, push.
Veterinary surgeon Brin has blown the judges away
by fusing punchy and unusual flavour combinations
on his ambitious plates.
OK, think, Brin. Think, think, think, think, think.
My canape is based on my all-time favourite dish,
which is crispy duck pancakes.
We're going to have the tart case,
then there's going to be a thin cucumber gel.
On top of that, you're going to have the braised duck leg,
some pan-fried duck cubes.
You're making a plum sauce? Absolutely.
And then little spheres of ginger balls.
Do vets make canapes, Brin,
or is that too broad a question?
Not something we really learnt at university, to be honest.
When I eat crispy duck pancakes, it's normally quite messy,
they're flopping around everywhere and that doesn't really work
very well with canapes.
So I've got to get it neat, which is going to be the hardest bit.
He's cooked duck legs in a pressure cooker.
Then he's going to shred them and then he's going to pan-fry them
so they go nice and crispy.
Phew! We've got little ginger balls that burst in your mouth
and should give you lots of flavour.
And then we've got this plum sauce.
That plum sauce needs to be quite sharp.
I just hope there's enough flavour in that duck and it's not
overpowered by the ginger.
Mind your back.
Just 20 minutes, everybody, please.
Personal trainer Cliodhna has demonstrated excellent technical
ability while showcasing experimental flavours.
Oh!
The onions make me cry.
So today, I'm making for you a smoked haddock and salmon fishcake.
It's covered in a panko breadcrumb and deep-fried. Pickled cucumber
ribbon with tartare sauce
and then I've done a caviar on top.
Where did the inspiration come from?
My auntie lives in St Ives, so we go fishing off her boat
and I'll just make the fishcakes with whatever we catch that day.
So what she's doing is taking a fishcake, which we all usually
have as a main meal,
and she's turning it into a miniature. Whoo!
Hers are made from salmon,
which she's poached, and then smoked haddock.
La, la, la, la!
She's bound the whole thing with a little bit of potatoes.
We've got a tartare sauce.
It should be rich and thick.
I'm being ever so careful not to add the oil too fast
because it'll split.
SHE GROANS
My main thing is going to be probably like the size
and aspect of it.
I'm thinking in my head that I should probably err
on the side of caution and go a little bit smaller
than what I've done at home.
OK, guys, you've got just ten minutes. Ten minutes left.
They're definitely not identical.
Gently.
HE MOANS
Decoration has never been the strong point.
Yes! Oh, it's set.
I think they look nice.
HE EXHALES
Argh!
They're a little bit bigger than I had initially wanted.
Just four minutes.
Oh, my God.
Quick, quick, quick. Get them on a plate.
Ah!
They're not looking as good as I want them to be.
Oh, Lordy. Oh!
Final 30 seconds!
Finishing touches.
I'm shaking so much.
That's it. Stop! Your time's up.
Stop, please.
Cheers. Cheers, mate.
Louise, please do come up.
Louise has made caneles - French pastries filled with chicken
liver pate, pickled walnut puree and raisin and caper gel,
topped with caramelised walnuts.
I really like them. They all look the same.
The pate's not strong.
It's not really rich and livery in any way.
Those pickled walnuts
have gone through there, which have made it sharp and sour.
You've got the sweetness of the raisins, saltiness of the capers.
It's clever. It's interesting.
Yeah, I like it.
For me, it's like eating a really good pate.
And then that lovely savoury sponge - that is absolutely delicious.
You could quite easily just demolish about six kilo of that.
The judges' comments were awesome!
Thank you.
Oh! It was a bit of a risk, this one
and I'm so thrilled that they understood where I was going
and that it worked.
Oh, my gosh.
Tom's canape is a take on a beef Wellington - seared fillet steak
with chicken liver pate, duxelles mushrooms with haggis, horseradish
cream and Parma ham in a filo pastry basket.
They may be the meatiest canape I think I've ever had.
Those little crispy baskets of filo are lovely.
Really, really lovely chicken livers, beautifully smooth.
And underneath you've got saltiness as well, because you've put a bit
of Parma ham, which I think is inspired.
I like the way they all look. The uniformity's brilliant.
Lots of pepper coming from the haggis, the mushrooms
nice and smoky.
I like the horseradish going through the whole thing.
I like it.
I feel happy.
It's the most positive feedback I've had so far.
Cheers.
So, fingers crossed. I hope I've done enough.
Abi is serving steak tartare with horseradish mayonnaise
and a confit quail's egg yolk on a nigella seed cracker.
Definitely a single mouthful.
The cracker's fantastic.
They're slightly salty, which I really like.
The nigella seeds running through them, which has almost got a faint
flavour of onion about them. That's great.
As that egg yolk erupts on my tongue,
it's mixing with that meat and it's giving
it a really rich coating.
And there's plenty of sharpness in there - capers, horseradish,
Tabasco.
But I do have an issue with the colour.
The acidity is starting to cook the meat.
There's a design issue there because they're always going to start
to go grey.
Definitely not feeling happy with my pres...
They looked honestly awful, but they did say it tasted nice,
so at least that's something.
Chris' celebration of the sea features black waffle cones dusted
in nori powder, filled with XO-butter-poached lobster,
scallop mousse and sriracha mayonnaise
on a crushed cereal and shrimp beach.
You get the sweet saltiness of that really buttery lobster,
and then the gentle seafood flavour of the mousse, you go into saltiness
that's on the nori. Really quite lovely.
There's that spice in the background coming from sriracha.
This compressed charcoal waffle, I think, is inspired.
I love the fact that the actual dish it's sitting on
is edible as well.
I think it's ace.
Thanks.
I'm feeling good after that.
It was great feedback, so, yeah, I should be really proud of that dish.
Dinta's Indian spiced full English canape is made up of a spicy vegan
sausage, masala beans, garlic mushrooms, avocado and a fried egg,
served on a potato waffle with spiced orange juice.
I like the lightness, the fluffiness and the crispiness
of the potato waffle.
Inside there, I've got the unmistakable sweetness
of beans, slippery avocado.
I like the seasoning on the sausages.
I'm enjoying eating them.
I don't think they're smart enough.
They just don't look that sharp to me. OK.
There's a huge amount of work in here -
making your own vegan sausage,
deconstructing an egg -
but the potato itself is bland.
When you say Indian flavours, I get a tiny bit. Mm-hm.
I'd like that to be more pronounced.
That was tough.
I think it needed a bit more finesse,
which I probably agree with.
George's canape is miso king prawns with shellfish mayonnaise
and apple gel on a seaweed cracker.
I love the soft slipperiness of that prawn with the
saltiness in the miso.
I can't taste the apple.
You get a little bit of that prawn head flavour in the mayonnaise
and that's very, very good.
Great textures.
There's almost a crunch to the prawn and it's cooked beautifully,
and there's obviously a real crunch and snap to that cracker.
I'm not sure it can be eaten in one bite, but if these came past me
on a tray, I'd go back and have another one.
Thank you.
Feeling quite happy with the comments overall.
Good job, George.
That Gregg would want to eat
a second of those canapes,
I'm really happy with.
Mary's take on the French dessert,
poires belle Helene,
is a pastry tartlet
filled with pear puree,
chocolate mousse and Chantilly cream,
topped with pear liqueur pearls
and served with a pipette of pear liqueur.
Mary, you struggled.
You can see that by the presentation.
I think they should be a lot smarter than this. Mm-hm.
Cor!
GREGG SPLUTTERS
The pastry work is fantastic.
It's nice and crumbly and soft.
I quite like the flavour of the chocolate,
but for me, the proportions are out.
The beauty of pear Helene is that it tastes of the pear
and I'm tasting chocolate and cream.
I love putting that pear liqueur across the top.
It gives it a real grown-up feel.
You do get the explosion of more liqueur
through those pearls, as well.
I admire the work.
From a pear belle Helene fan,
I'm really happy.
I feel a bit of mixed emotions at the moment.
It didn't go how I wanted it to go.
I don't honestly know whether I've done enough.
Brin has cooked tartlets
filled with pan-fried duck breast
and braised duck leg, in a plum sauce,
with a cucumber gel and ginger spheres.
That's yummy.
Soft duck, sweet, deep plum sauce.
I love those ginger spheres.
You bite them, it's like a
release of ginger beer onto your palate.
It's the flavours of a duck pancake,
as you said it would be.
The pastry, what you've done has been very, very clever.
You've used almost like a cracker dough,
so they do have that texture of a biscuit.
Good idea.
A crowd pleaser.
Who doesn't like the flavour of Chinese duck?
Thank you.
I feel OK.
I think all the work I put in today has paid off.
We'll just have to wait and see whether I get a space
in the semifinals.
Last up is Cliodhna, who's serving smoked haddock and salmon fishcakes
with tartare sauce, pickled cucumber ribbons and caviar.
You'll be pleased to know they're absolutely delicious.
They are crispy on the outside,
beautiful, soft and flaky in the middle.
Smokiness of the fish.
A little bit of saltiness from caviar.
And, of course, you've got the sharpness of that tartare.
We've got nine canapes.
They all look the same.
The difficulty with a fishcake
is trying to show off skill
because you look at it and think, "Oh, it's quite simple,"
but actually they taste really, really good.
I'm feeling really good.
The canapes were very well received.
And I've done everything that I can at this point,
so it's just a waiting game now.
I think that was a really tough challenge.
As amateur cooks, I think they did a great job.
John, we had professional canapes turning up here.
I mean, the quality is just wonderful!
But this is the last challenge of knockout week.
We've only got eight places in the semifinals.
Who stays? Who goes?
Chris was on a different level today.
He had a beach - edible beach.
He had ice cream cones.
It was beautiful work!
Louise, today, taking that canele -
classic sweet, but turning it savoury,
filling it with pate.
If anybody looked at that dish, they wouldn't know what was inside.
But when you ate it, you knew it was just delicious.
Brin promised us all the flavours of a duck pancake from a Chinese.
And, John, that's exactly what he gave us.
Is there a place for him in the next round?
I think there should be.
I need to put my hand up for Tom.
Great filo pastry.
Steak cooked beautifully. Amazing pate.
I'd be very, very happy with a whole plate of those.
Cliodhna had quite a simple-looking canape,
but actually, it might have been
the best-tasting canape in the room.
The sort of thing that, I tell you what,
I'd go back for more if I was at some sort
of place where they were serving those as a canape.
What about George?
We had miso, we had a cracker.
We had a really good mayonnaise.
I mean, they were proper, posh, smart-looking canapes.
Put him through. He deserves it.
Now, that leaves us with three people to talk about.
I enjoyed eating Abi's steak tartare, but it was grey.
I know it was grey, so am I.
The presentation from Mary wasn't right, but I liked it.
Her pastry work was very, very good, but for me,
it didn't have the lovely
honey sweetness of pear.
Horrendous. Mm. Horrendous.
It just went a bit, bleurgh.
I'm really unsure about Dinta's canapes.
I didn't think they were smart enough or sharp enough.
Neither did it taste like an English breakfast either,
so I'm not sure what it was.
It didn't have that lovely Indian flavour I expected from something
which was going to be reimagined as an Indian-flavoured breakfast.
Getting to this stage, it's inspired me,
it's inspired my creativity,
and I just want to keep going and I just want to keep doing
that because it makes me happy.
It would mean a ton to get through to the semifinals,
big bragging rights,
but, yeah, I don't know if that's going to happen.
Don't really feel that confident.
You know, there were errors on the plate.
You're only ever as good as what you do on the day.
# Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
# This one is gonna hurt... #
What an incredible group of cooks you truly are.
An amazing end to knockout week.
The contestant leaving us is...
..Dinta.
Well done, you've had a great competition. Thank you.
Sorry to see you go.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you, both.
Well done, darling.
I'm disappointed that I'm going home.
But at the same time, just really happy that I got this far.
It's been a tough but enjoyable experience.
I've kind of surpassed my own expectations with some
of the things I've done.
So, yeah, I'm going to go home with a smile.
All of you, you are in the semifinals.
Congratulations!
I honestly thought I was...
..bye-bye.
I can't believe I'm a MasterChef semifinalist.
I really can't.
Semifinals. It's...
Oh, absolutely ecstatic.
I didn't think for a second I'd be able to get this far,
and now I'm just intrigued to see how far I can push it.
It's a proud moment.
I'm looking forward to telling my family, my wife.
Oh!
Next time...
..it's the semifinals...
MACHINE BEEPS What... Why are you bleeping?!
..and the contestants face challenges that will make MasterChef history.
Upstairs there is bow ties, there's ballgowns,
and there are Michelin stars.
Good luck.
I think we need to kick it up a little bit.
Let's hope it tastes as good as it looks.