All this week...
Ah!
Argh!
..these three celebrities have been battling it out...
Argh!
..to reach the quarterfinal.
Oh, Lord.
This is stress.
Wow.
Ah!
Now they're back to fight for a place in the semifinals.
The feeling of going back into that kitchen is indescribable,
other than, "Argh!"
I'm happy, I'm positive,
but anxious.
I will give my best, full of energy.
This is such a big deal to me.
I'm this close to possibly being in the semifinals,
so I am overjoyed.
I feel sick to my stomach but I'm going to do this.
This is the last quarterfinal of this year's competition.
The pressure is on.
Each of these celebs is used to performing,
but can they perform here in a quarterfinal?
Welcome to a Celebrity MasterChef quarterfinal
and congratulations for getting this far.
Keep it going.
We have invited special guests into the dining room
to taste your food and ultimately help me and John make a decision
on which of you go through to a semifinal.
You have semifinalist Mica Ven,
finalist Danny Jones
and MasterChef champion Lisa Faulkner.
Please impress that dining room like you've impressed us.
Be under no illusion that this is a tough round.
At the end of this, one of you will be leaving the competition.
Two courses in one hour and 15 minutes.
Let's cook.
Vito has got the same passion here in MasterChef as he has
on the dance floor of Strictly.
It's lovely.
LAUGHTER
He cooks the food of his mother, his grandmother and his aunts
and uncles from Italy.
We've seen some extraordinary dishes.
One of the best tiramisus I think I've ever seen in MasterChef, ever.
Vito, I see you've got plates which are white and blue.
Your outfit is completely white and blue.
Yes. What's this about white and blue?
Today is Amalfi... Amalfi Coast.
Because I come from the Amalfi Coast.
You used to eat and look at the sea.
There is lots of sun.
That's why, you know, lemon - the colour of the sun, yellow.
Everything has to be yellow, white and blue.
So are you dressed like somebody on the Amalfi Coast?
Yes.
I even have the lemon limoncello perfume on because I have
to get in the zone, you know? I need the vibe.
And so lemon is the main ingredient.
Vito is going to celebrate the Amalfi Coast and
his love of Amalfi lemons.
He's going to have lemon both in his main course and his dessert.
He's making the chicken scallopini,
a typical meat course from Italy.
He's got a sliced and bashed chicken until it's really flat.
That piece of chicken, he's going to put it in flour and salt and pepper,
and he said he's going to scorch it.
That should give you a slight bitterness.
Served with a white wine and butter sauce, fresh lemon across the top
and loads and loads of parsley.
That sounds delicious.
He's going to serve that with wild mushrooms.
Make sure they're properly prepared and cleaned.
No grit.
And that is it.
I mean, that is definitely a statement.
It's just got to be right.
This dish is very connected to all my childhood.
My mum used to prepare this scallopini with lemon
and we loved it.
So that's why for me it means, like, really a lot.
For dessert, we've got a lemon and mint cream
which is being layered with biscuits in the centre,
like a sort of trifle.
Vito has made his own mint sugar.
He's mixed that with the cream and also some lemon,
whipped the whole lot together.
Putting lemon juice in there is difficult because it could
curdle the cream.
Then he's going to layer it.
There's very little process going on here.
So, again, that has got to be absolutely delicious.
What I've learned about Dominic is he's really passionate.
He really cares.
His cooking's good and he's prepared to work hard.
He can actually pull it back a little bit.
And he did that wonderful celeriac rosti,
but it had a little bit of something extra on the side,
which wasn't necessary.
I love East Asian food, especially from Korea.
And what I wanted to do was take a dish that is relatively easy,
but I wanted to step it up by adding in the influence
of make-up and colour.
Two courses. What are you going to cook for us, Dominic?
We're doing pink prawn toast
but I'm mixing in some freeze-dried dragon fruit,
which will make it a really vibrant, almost electric pink.
That's sandwiched between two almost black slices of bread.
That's with the sweet chilli sauce.
Does the dried dragon fruit leave a fruit flavour in the prawn?
It does. It almost kind of adds a sweetness to it.
Main course?
Bang bang chicken,
adding in a Korean demi-glace,
with blue basmati rice.
To make the blue rice I'm using blue spirulina powder.
The broccoli is pan-seared with chilli, so it's just this vibrant
green next to this vibrant blue.
I think colour is just magical.
It brings so much joy.
So I want to bring joy to a plate.
Dominic's first course, he's making us prawn toast.
And I think this is really brave and also quite adventurous.
The dried dragon fruit is in there just to make the prawns really pink.
Fruit and prawn?
That's not a flavour I associate with prawn,
so I'm a little bit concerned.
He's got to cook it in such a way that the bread is cooked all the way
through but so is the prawn.
Let's just hope this works.
It's very hard to define bang bang chicken.
It can be crispy.
It can just be chicken in a sauce.
But the bang bang, it's often hot.
And then blue basmati rice.
I don't care about the colour as long as it's free-flowing.
The invention and the design of the dish seems to be
around colour, not about the flavours.
I think we might be missing the point.
I'll withhold judgment, but I'm a little nervous.
Oh, look at that colour!
Boy!
Mutya's food throughout this competition has always been
delicious, and I mean that with a capital D.
She does crowd-pleasing food.
That jacket potato was playing it slightly safe, but she can afford
to push herself a little bit more.
So, literally, I woke up this morning thinking about prawns.
I've literally just thought about food the whole week.
The pressure's on, but I'm excited.
Mutya, it's quarterfinal day in the MasterChef kitchen.
Are you slightly nervous?
I'm very nervous, but at the same time I've just...
I've just been having such a ball.
When you first started this competition, you said
you like having nerves because when you go to perform,
the nervous energy keeps you going.
Exactly that.
What dishes have you got up your sleeve for this quarterfinal?
Right, so for my starters I've got garlic prawns with mango salsa.
And then my main will be barbecue salmon with coconut rice and salad.
Why these two dishes?
What is it that you love about them?
I love fish.
If I was stuck on an island I could probably survive just on fish.
We have crowd-pleasers.
The prawns need to be nice and bouncy, but she's cooking them
in a good amount of butter and lots and lots of garlic
with some sweet mango. Wonderful.
Is there enough going on on that plate?
That's my concern.
Mutya is promising us a main course of salmon.
The salmon has to be cooked perfectly so it just falls apart
and stays nice and creamy and rich.
If it goes dry, we've got a problem.
That with the smoky, slightly sweet barbecue sauce,
this is good food.
As long as that rice isn't stodgy,
it's dry and it's light, brilliant.
Oh.
I've got something else to make.
It feels so nice to be back and to be a judge.
I've been on that side and I just know the anxiety
that they're feeling right now,
so I'm just praying that it's good.
This is definitely the hardest round of the competition.
I remember - it's the first time I experienced the shakes.
I've never been this tense in my life.
Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick.
So there's moments like that where you feel for them,
but as long as the flavour's there, I think, you know,
we're going to love it.
I won in 2010.
Yeah, it's been quite a long time.
But I still feel their pain
and I still love to see what people create.
Sometimes you have somebody has a shocker
and sometimes people absolutely nail it.
And that's... I always want them to nail it.
Cheers, ladies.
Oh, it's a pleasure to spend the afternoon with you.
And you. Cheers. It's so exciting.
I know.
Vito, you've got ten minutes on your first course.
OK. OK?
OK.
So, Vito's main is a scaloppine di Amalfi.
Chicken escalope.
It could be just flattened, or it could be breaded.
You don't want it too dry,
so you want to cook it quite quickly.
Right, Vito, you've got four minutes.
You need to get your main course on the plate.
Yeah? Let's go.
I think the sauce has got to be well-balanced.
It's got to have enough white wine to call it a white wine sauce.
And I'm excited by the lemon.
I think that'll freshen it up.
And wild mushrooms.
It sounds delicious.
That's good. Come on!
Ready.
Let's go.
Well done, my friend.
Hello. Hi there!
Hi. Hi.
Scaloppine al limone with wild mushrooms.
I hope you will enjoy,
and I made with so much love and passion for you.
Oh, thank you very much. Thank you. It smells delicious.
And I leave! Aw!
Thank you! LAUGHTER
Thank you!
I've tasted the chicken, and it's really lemony.
And I wasn't sure, but you see when I put that with the mushrooms,
it's nice, you know! LAUGHTER
I like it.
My chicken is cooked really beautifully,
and the sauce is really light.
Those mushrooms are cooked beautifully.
I think it's delicious.
Yeah, it's a great start to Vito's menu, I think.
Tastes great. And what more do you want?
That chicken is so moist and wonderful.
You don't need to cut it. It just pulls apart.
I'd pay money for that in a restaurant.
That, for me, is a perfect plate of food.
Just absolutely bursting full of flavour.
It's got my tongue dancing.
That is superb.
Woo!
Come on, come on, come on.
You've got 15 minutes, right?
So you... Are you all right? Are you happy?
Yes!
Vito's dessert is a crema di limone.
Lemon cream's got to be perfect texture.
I love the mint.
I think that goes brilliantly with lemon.
He's got to balance that out.
And that sharpness of that lemon. And the sharpness, yeah.
I've never had limoncello before, so I'm hoping that
that's something that wows me.
Ready!
The dessert's great. Let's go, let's go, let's go.
We've got a good-looking Italian waiter,
we've got good food.
What else could we want?
As a dessert, I made limone crema.
Background refresh taste of mint
and a bit of granola, like, on top.
The limoncello to the side is to digest.
Enjoy. Mwah!
Thank you. Well done, mate.
I think it's simply delicious.
I love the fact that when you dive down into it,
you get more crunchy bits.
The crumb's great.
It tastes amazing.
When I tasted this limoncello by itself, I weren't sure.
But you see when you put this bad boy inside the cream,
with the crunch, it works, you know?
I love the fresh lemon.
I love that it wasn't too sugary.
It was like a lemon cheesecake, but it was really pillowy,
soft and light.
Well done. Love it.
It's yummy. It's not too sweet.
It's almost sour.
Wonderful flavour.
Sharp sourness of that cream cheese against the freshness of the mint
with a little bit of sharpness of lemon.
The little crunch of the biscuits is a texture.
It's very, very clever indeed.
I'm feeling happy, actually.
I really felt that I was not alone in the kitchen, so I was full of
family behind me, so hopefully I get to the semifinal.
Six minutes, Dominic. Six minutes.
Are your prawn toasts cooked?
They, ah... They're still in the oven.
How are you going to know when they're cooked?
Is it only when you cut into them?
Yeah. Oh.
So, Dom's starter is a pink prawn toast and a creamy
sweet chilli dip.
I'm a bit dubious as to why he said "pink" prawn toast.
Like, if a prawn is cooked, then it's pink.
As long as it's crispy, super light, and then you get the bite
of the prawn, and I hope it is colourful,
I hope it is tasty and I hope it's cooked perfectly.
This is going to be some posh prawn toast today
so I'm actually intrigued.
All done?
All done. Shall we go?
Yes.
OK.
Hi. Hi, there. Hi.
Oh, dear. Right.
For starters, you have pink prawn toast with
a creamy sweet chilli dip.
Enjoy.
ALL:Thank you.
It looks like a burger with, like, sesame seeds.
I hope it's nice because, visually, I'm not sure yet.
He's so creative and I love that he's used rye bread.
And I like that you can taste sesame.
But to put the dragon fruit in to make it pinker,
I don't think it's really worked, and what we've got is sort of...
It doesn't taste of prawns.
The compromise for that colour wasn't enough for what it's done
with the flavour of the prawn.
But it's crispy. The sauce is nice.
I couldn't really taste any prawns.
He's very creative. I'm going to give him that. Yeah.
It's really quite unusual.
It's quite addictive. It's very, very moreish.
The crispy bit on the outside, tasting of sesame toast
from a Chinese, and the creamy chilli sauce almost tasting
like a sauce you'd get on your prawn cocktail,
so there's a bit of comfort there as well.
I like it.
I think it's really brave.
The first bite slightly disturbed me but actually once I got used
to what it was, I've actually finished it.
Oh, my God.
We're getting colourful bang bang chicken. All right. Mm.
With BLUE basmati rice.
I'm scared.
Is it just going to be colour, or is it actually going to be a flavour?
Blue food is odd, isn't it...? It is. Because it doesn't really make
you want to eat it, so it's hopefully going to be delicious.
It's a strange one!
There's a lot going on.
He's got a trio of sauces.
Are you airbrushing?
Yeah. Just to, you know, make it pretty.
Brilliant.
Sriracha bang bang chicken sauce and a Korean demi-glace?
Does it need it?
Oh.
Looking very colourful.
You know what?
It looks exactly how I imagined it.
We should be going now. Yeah.
Chicken, rice and broccoli, they're three quite simple things.
There really is nowhere to hide.
So you have to do them well.
Go. Right.
Go in there in a flash of colour!
OK...
For mains, you have got bang bang chicken with blue basmati rice.
Then you've got airbrushed sriracha.
You've got a creamy paprika and sweet chilli sauce
and then a Korean glaze over the top.
Please enjoy, please.
Thanks, Dom. Thank you.
That is a very, very colourful, creative plate.
Yeah.
The chicken's really nice, you know.
It's crunchy.
I love the sauces.
That lovely demi-glace is sort of smoky and rich.
And then you've got the sriracha, sort of punchy and fiery,
but not too much.
And then you've got that gorgeous bang bang sauce,
which is like a great big whack of paprika.
The rice didn't need to be blue.
But not bad. The chicken, oh, definitely, I'm going back in.
The star of the show is just that chicken and that sauce,
and that would've been enough.
But I love the creativity.
What we have here is really good Korean-style fried chicken.
That's great.
However, the rice unfortunately doesn't have any seasoning,
which is a real shame.
Gives us sauces, gives sweetness, smokiness and heat.
It tastes good.
That was the toughest challenge I think I've ever had,
not just in this competition, just in life.
That was really tough.
Oh...
Right, Mutya, you have five minutes.
Go, Mutya, go.
Right.
Mutya's starter,
garlic butter fried prawns
served with a mango salsa.
Mmm. Mm, mm, mm.
Simple...
..but beautiful if it's done right.
There is nothing worse than when you get those prawns
and they've been so overcooked that they're these tiny
little, like, hard things like that and you're like, "Oh."
So hopefully she cooks them beautifully.
Use all those prawns up, go for it. Yeah, I'm going to.
Yeah, that's it.
Jamaican girl, like, you know, bring on the mango.
So I'm very excited to see what she does.
There's a mango salsa.
JOHN:It smells great.
Anything else on there?
Yes, a little bit of...
A little bit of rocket. Just a little bit of rocket on the side.
That looks lovely.
Thank you. All right? Go get 'em.
SHE LAUGHS
Hi.
ALL: Hi.
So I have cooked garlic prawns over a mango salsa.
And what's the sauce?
Oh, just one I made up now.
It's sweet chilli, soy sauce, a bit of ginger, a bit of garlic.
Lovely.
I hope you enjoy it, ladies and gents.
Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.
I think that was quite yummy.
Mmm! Prawns were cooked really lovely.
The sauce, great, well-balanced.
Works well with the prawns.
It's a great starter.
The taste of the tropics was there.
There's, like, a kick in the mango salsa.
It's lovely.
The simplicity of it is really nice.
I think she's done a good job.
Yeah. Mm-hm.
The prawns have been cooked very, very well.
Good amount of seasoning on the outside of them and
a good amount of garlic. That's good.
That sauce she's made on the side there is smoky,
slightly sweet and chilli.
That tastes good.
We just need something else.
Hey. Are you all right?
Yes. All right. Your timing good?
Timing's great. All right, OK.
You've got 15 minutes now.
Perfect.
For Mutya's main, we're going for a salmon fillet
served with a barbecue sauce, coconut rice
and a mixed leaf salad.
Very interesting. Barbecue sauce with salmon?
I don't know about that!
To have it with salmon, which is quite delicate,
it has to be a delicate sort of barbecue sauce, doesn't it?
I don't want the coconut rice to be too sticky.
Salmon, I never want it cooked all the way through.
I want it to be a little bit pink.
Come on, Mutya.
MUTYA:OK, one of the little pieces has come off, but...
Oh, Lord.
JOHN AND GREGG:Oh!
Lord!
OK. You're OK.
You're OK. We can do this, we can do this.
That little bit there. You'll be OK.
That's well-rescued.
There we go.
Yeah!
There we are. MUTYA LAUGHS
You happy?
I am.
Go on. Well done, Mutya. Thank you.
See you later.
Hi, guys, again.
LAUGHTER
So I've done a barbecue salmon,
and then I did a coconut rice with a little bit of salad.
Enjoy!
Thank you, darling. Thanks. You're welcome.
The rice is nicely cooked.
I can definitely taste the coconut.
I do like my salmon cooked a little bit less.
The side salad I'm not too sure about.
Maybe some, like, pak choi with garlic or something
going on like that would've been nice.
It's an interesting sauce.
It's, like, in between teriyaki soy ginger
but then it's got that barbecue flip to it.
But it's nice.
I think the fish is overcooked.
I could have had a bit more sauce and a bit more of a bringing
together of the plate.
The salmon is cooked too much
and it needs more sauce.
I don't want the salad on the side.
I think it's a bit dull.
I am feeling glad it's all over.
I feel like I did my best,
but I don't know if it was enough.
We've got the feedback from the dining room.
We know what they think about the dishes.
We've got to make a call,
I think a big call.
There was one person today who did a fantastic job.
The dining room loved Vito.
We loved Vito.
His food was great.
I just loved that chicken.
Beautifully moist chicken flavoured with lemon, enriched with butter.
I just demolished it.
Dessert. Mint, cream, more lemon.
Limoncello across the top.
Really lovely and refreshing.
He's got himself a semifinal place.
I enjoyed Mutya's dishes to a point.
The prawns with the mango I thought was a lovely idea.
Prawns cooked well.
Mango, slippery sweetness.
That dish needed something else.
The main course - that salmon was overdone
and there wasn't enough sauce.
But she can flavour and season food well.
Dom made for us a sort of black sandwich filled with prawns,
which he'd coloured with pink dragon fruit.
The textures were good, crispy on the outside, soft on the inside.
However, the dining room was scared of it.
I was scared of it, but actually I had a couple of bites and found
that I actually found it quite pleasant.
I finished it.
Main course from Dominic,
very, very good chicken with a couple of sauces that I enjoyed.
However, the bright blue rice, it wasn't seasoned.
But you can't deny the man is pushing himself.
He wants to cook outside the boundaries
of normal everyday food.
He sort of wants to shock a little bit,
and in a way he has done that.
This challenge has proved to myself that I can do this.
So, yeah, I want to be in that semifinal.
I would be lying if I said I was confident.
I don't even know whether I did good enough, but I just know
that I did what I could do.
The question is, who has the skill now to actually fight it out
amongst the other semifinalists?
Is it Mutya or is it Dominic?
What a quarterfinal!
Congratulations.
All three of you, well done.
Tough decision.
Two semifinal places.
And that does mean, sadly, one of you is leaving the competition.
The celebrity leaving us is...
..is Mutya.
Aw! OK?
It's all good.
I can't believe I even made it this far, to be honest,
so I'm happy.
Thank you so much, guys.
Bless you. Loved having you here.
I've had such an amazing experience.
So I am not hurting, I'm not disappointed.
This is further than what I thought I was going to get.
So I'm happy to go home and, and...sing.
You are MasterChef semifinalists.
Yay!
Yeah!
I am super happy.
I am, like, infinitely happy.
Tonight I'm going to call my grandparents, and I'm going
to say like, "Nonna, Nonna, I got to the semifinal!"
I'll be so happy.
Honestly, I cannot wait.
I'm so shocked.
I thought I may have pushed it a little too far with the blue rice.
But, yeah, maybe colour's the thing.
Semifinal! Oh, I love it.
I love it! Oh, my word.
Next time, the eight best cooks return for the semifinals...
The Vikings are coming!
Raarrgh!
Go on, then, 'ave it!
Yeah! LAUGHTER
..and the temperature rises.
Ow. Ah, ah!
Fish has got to get in the oven!
It's a minefield!
Only the best will make it through to the Celebrity MasterChef final.
Oh, oh, oh!