From across the UK,
32 up-and-coming chefs
are putting their reputations on the line
in a battle to become professional MasterChef champion.
Tonight, four new hopefuls compete to impress MasterChef judge
Gregg Wallace, renowned chef Monica Galetti and culinary
legend Marcus Wareing.
This is amazing.
I've got my name on my chef jacket and I'm seeing
all the bright lights.
I want to shake up my skillset, my environment.
It's all about me and my personal growth.
I love getting pushed out of my comfort zone.
I'm here to prove that I can compete in a competition like this.
Nothing can prepare you, but I'm ready to rock and roll.
We're looking for daring and delicious food.
Who are we going to discover this time?
We are well into our competition.
Brand-new group of chefs waiting to do their Skills Test.
Monica, we're kicking off with you.
What is your test, please?
I would like our chefs to cook us five-spice duck breast
served with a duck heart skewer and a orange sauce.
Beautiful. Classic French.
Bit of classic Chinese there.
Fantastic blend.
20 minutes. Chef, off you go.
So the key skills for our chefs is to remove a duck breast.
The first bit of butchery in the competition.
Just taking the wings off.
Great to use in a sauce if they want.
It's pretty straightforward. It's the same as a chicken.
Keep it close to the bone.
It's also very important to remove
the sinew, cos if you do leave that on,
it does tend to make the duck breast tough.
I'm going to just score it a little bit cos I want
the spice to sort of soak into the duck breast.
I've got five-spice.
Do you know the five spices in five-spice?
I reckon we can do it together.
Cloves. Yeah. Szechuan pepper. Fennel seeds.
Cinnamon. Star anise.
Oh, you're good. Hey!
So I've got a cold pan here, and I'm just going to bring
that up gently.
If you use a very hot heat, it will burn the spice
before that fat renders down.
I want to do that for about four, five minutes.
They've got to get that breast off the duck really quick,
get it in the pan quick. Yes,
if they're going to do what Monica's doing, which is rendering the fat
down. You're going to need all of your 20 minutes to get
this done properly. Absolutely.
You don't want to rush the cooking of the duck, and also allowing
it to rest. So I've got my hearts here.
There's a bit of fat, so very simple, just cut that off.
Duck hearts, I love. I've had them in France and they put them
through the salads. Just delicious.
Hearts are quite a delicacy, and I'd imagine a lot of chefs
have not cooked many hearts.
I'm going to skewer them on the griddle.
Got to get the cooking just right.
Undercooked, you're not going to eat it.
Overcooked, it's going to be chewy and rubbery.
Just going to turn it over.
It's gently roasting
on the griddle pan there.
I'm just going to get this in the oven.
I'm going to give it three, four minutes and then out to rest.
So I've given our chef some pak choy that they can use
for some garnish. It works really lovely with the spices.
I'm going to make an emulsion, which will just cook the pak choy
very quickly.
Chicken stock.
Foaming butter in stock, look at that.
I'd sling anything in there.
Duck breast,
I'm just going to let it sit here.
A rule of thumb with meat is I tend to rest it for the amount of time
I'm cooking it.
I've got my pan that the duck
was in, and I'm going to use
this to make a quick sauce.
I've got some brown sugar.
Squeeze some fresh orange juice onto it.
Touch of soy sauce.
We have some orange liqueur.
Just letting the sauce reduce.
It's nice to see chefs making a sauce a la minute,
of the pan, where the juices of the duck
have been sitting, it's what cookery is all about.
And that was really quick as well.
I've got pak choy.
Ooh, come on.
That smells good, really good.
The duck looks beautiful.
It's the time, it's the detail, it's the resting.
The process has to be done properly.
There we have it, guys,
my five-spiced duck breast
with duck heart skewer and orange sauce.
The cooking of the duck is sublime.
It's like butter melting in your mouth.
The spice is coming through.
The time you've taken over it.
Lovely combination of the sticky sweetness of the orange.
But it's the breast and heart cookery.
It's all soft and juicy.
Absolutely delicious.
Marcus, it's lovely to have a lunch of duck with you.
You're going to have to go in the other room to watch
the chefs perform. I'm off.
Great dish, great challenge.
It will really test our chefs.
Let's see what they can do.
First in is 30-year-old
Portuguese-born Rachide, senior sous-chef
at a London restaurant serving modern interpretations
of classical Mediterranean dishes.
Food was a massive part of my childhood.
My mum used to cook a fusion
of Portuguese and English food, I guess.
One day, spag bol, the next day,
pastel de natas or bacalao com natas,
so I think that's where my passion for food comes.
I've been fortunate enough to see the world through this job.
I've lived in Singapore and Switzerland, saw a different style
of food, different way of cooking.
I get asked the question, "What is my style of food?"
The truth is, I don't actually really know at this point,
but, hopefully, through the process of this competition, I'll be able
to find out and have more clarity.
If I could show my personality through food,
that'd be the most important thing.
Hello, Rachide. Hello.
Welcome to MasterChef.
This is the Skills Test.
This particular test was set
by none other than Monica.
Rachide, I would like you to make for us
a five-spice duck breast
served with a duck heart skewer in an orange sauce.
I have worked with duck before. Brilliant.
20 minutes. Good luck.
Thank you. Right, we're under way.
Nice and clean.
Oh, should take these off first.
God, this is so nerve-racking, innit? Yes.
That's all right. Could have been a bit closer, but that's not too bad.
Take us through your plan, Chef.
So, I'm just going to cook the duck with the five-spice over it,
and do, like, a little rub.
So, scoring the fat, that's good.
I meant to put it in a cold pan.
Hey, there we go. Come on, then. You know what you're doing.
Yeah, I do, I do.
He's got the cold pan aspect, which is good.
Hope he remembers the five-spice, which is really important.
All that fat around the outside, he needs to trim that off.
You can see the sinew's left.
That'll just tighten up when it's cooked.
So, what's on your duck right now?
Currently, nothing at the minute.
Yeah. I'm just going to get it going a bit, and then I'll add
the rub onto it. OK.
He's left the sinew on it,
a little bit of fat on there.
That's not how you prep a heart.
So, duck breast is in the pan, hearts are in the pan.
Yeah, I'm going to cook this,
and then with all the juices off the back of this, I'm just going
to make the sauce. I might even add the duck legs in.
That's the thing.
You've had 12 minutes, you've got eight minutes left.
This better hurry up.
Completely forgotten about the five-spice.
Are you relaxing into this a little bit more now?
Yeah, but I feel like if I get too relaxed,
things might go sideways.
Orange juice.
Squeezes his oranges, good, for his sauce.
Have you got a cookery ambition, Chef?
It would be nice to have, like, a family run business.
My sister, she does, like, pastry.
But the question is whether me and her get along enough
with each other.
LAUGHS: Yeah. To work together? Yes.
Tell me about your sauce, what's in there so far?
Just, like, the duck bones and the chicken stock.
Orange juice in there as well.
I'm just reducing it down just to intensify the flavour.
Orange liqueur is what's missing in the sauce.
This is the first time you've added the five-spice, right?
Yep.
It should have gone on at the beginning. That's OK,
it's going in there now.
There's plenty of it, which is good.
Let's get that in the oven.
What's the griddle pan for?
I'm going to do the bok choy in it.
He's got his veg on. He's getting there.
I need this duck breast to cook. Yeah.
How long do I have left?
You've got three minutes left.
Three minutes? All right, well, this is not good.
I cooked the whole breast instead of cooking parts of it.
You're supposed to cook the whole breast,
what are you doing?
No, no!
What's that? Sugar?
Monica's not going to be impressed with that.
How long do I have left?
Two minutes. Two minutes.
All systems go. A bit of soy sauce.
He's just throwing everything at it. Not good.
All done. You can breathe now.
Oh, my gosh, that is bad, innit?
Tell me it's good, please.
Hey, Rachide. Hiya.
The butchery of your duck,
you took the breast out quite neatly,
however, you didn't trim anything else after that,
which was a bit careless.
The cooking of it, you started to render it down, and it went in
the oven. Comes out...
SHE CHUCKLES
..it's raw.
It all went very wrong after that.
You cut it up into a pan with sugar.
You just sort of started to lose it at the end.
And then the duck hearts, mine are overcooked,
so they're quite tough now.
Some of your methods are unusual,
but I've got that little tingle of five-spice.
I've also got a sweet, sticky sauce
tasting of orange.
Overall, everything was on the plate,
and also five-spice got onto the duck, which is really good.
that was one of the key elements.
Big round next, we'll see you then.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
I was making mistakes that I wouldn't normally make.
I was just rushing things because of the time.
The next round's critical.
NARRATOR: Next to face Monica's test
is 22-year-old Cristina,
originally from Rome,
and a self-taught cook.
She now works as a chef de partie in London.
Being a chef is very demanding,
not just physically, but very, very
much mentally as well.
It requires quite a lot from a person - your time,
dedication, passion.
I work in a fine-dining restaurant.
British cuisine, but is influenced by the Caribbean.
I feel like I have a very creative mind.
I've got passion for music, I DJ,
I love painting, I love colours and food.
I love living life fully.
That's definitely something I'm going to show in the competition
because that's what I am.
Hi.
A warm welcome to professional MasterChef. Cristina,
I would like you to make for us a five-spice duck breast
with duck heart skewers in an orange sauce.
OK.
I'm not sure if that's a look of confusion or a look of confidence,
she doesn't give much away.
20 minutes. Good luck.
She's prepping the duck down very nicely.
Right, duck breast is off the bone, which is good.
More trimming up would be good.
Now she's on the duck heart, but she'd be really better
off getting that duck scored, five-spice rubbed onto it and get
it in the pan. How long have you been cooking for?
I've been cooking for three years now.
I'm from Italy. I moved to the UK just three years ago.
I didn't have a classic training.
I've always tried to, like,
push myself and learn in different kitchens.
And then I fell in love with the fine-dining cuisine
and I just never left ever since.
You've had five minutes already.
She's put the oil in the frying pan,
so it means she's going to be frying the duck rather than cold pan, dry
and just let it come up to temperature.
She certainly doesn't need the hearts in there just yet,
they don't cook at the same time.
There's no seasoning, there's no five-spice.
I'm curious as to where
the five-spice is going to come into this.
You, Chef, are halfway,
you got ten minutes left.
Ten minutes left, yeah, thank you.
I'm going to make my sauce.
What's in there, please?
Soy sauce and sugar.
There's a little bit of demi-glace in there.
Trying to reduce it down with a chicken stock and orange juice.
She's got liqueur on the bench, she could be reducing some of that down.
What's your favourite type of food? I love Italian food.
I've got a West African background,
so I love to cook that as well.
Where in West Africa?
Nigeria.
It keeps going crazy right now.
Lift it up, lift it up, yeah?
Five-spice should be on the duck.
You got three minutes left, Chef.
Yeah. Cooked my duck.
That duck's not going to be cooked.
Try to make it rest.
Two minutes to let it rest.
No, she doesn't look happy at all.
Her hearts are maybe a little bit rubbery.
So you've got a minute left,
all right, so you've got to get stuff on a plate now, please.
What about the duck - what are you going to do with that?
I'll just leave it to rest for a little bit.
That's not enough time to rest a duck breast, that's for sure.
Can you put everything on a plate now, please? Yeah.
OK, here we go, the moment of truth.
I'd be very, very, very surprised if that duck breast is cooked.
Sorry, how long have I got left?
You've got 30 seconds. 30 seconds, yeah.
Is that duck not cooked?
Not as much as I want it to be.
Time's up. OK.
It's all over.
Well done. Thank you.
There's one big thing missing here,
and that's the five-spice.
I can't taste the five-spice.
Whenever we say we need something in the dish,
that's what we're looking for.
The heart skewers.
You've cooked them whole, which is fine,
but they're raw in the middle.
You really need to treat it like proper protein, you know,
baste it and maybe get it into the oven.
The sauce, it's been reduced and reduced and reduced,
but it's so salty.
When I made my sauce, I used the pan that I cooked the duck in.
I deglazed it with some of the alcohol.
But all of these things, they come with experience
and I'm sure you could do a better sauce
if we were to give you another try.
The key to success for duck cookery is the resting.
As soon as you cut that breast, we could see the blood on the board
and, of course, it's gone into the dish as well.
But you've got a plate up.
And, surprisingly, your duck is cooked
which is the biggest shock of all for me!
I'm hoping you are going to bring something exciting in here
with your own food. We'll see you in the next round.
Thank you. Off you go, Cristina. Thank you.
I am definitely feeling relieved that I've done the Skill Test
but a little bit annoyed at myself.
I can't wait to show all the love I've got for food in there,
my own style of cooking.
Monica, we've seen two chefs do your Skills Test.
We're going to meet two more.
Marcus - eagerly awaiting your Skills Test.
What is it going to be, please, sir?
Can you work it out?
I actually can't.
The cheese and the plums is really confusing me.
I've got no idea what that is.
I want our chefs to make us Welsh cakes with poached plums,
plum syrup, and some cheese.
Ah, OK.
Cheese, fruit, Welsh cakes - flavours of a cheese platter
but still keeping it sweet.
It's a little twist, let's say.
20 minutes, chef, let's go!
First thing, they've got to get the Welsh cake mix made.
I've got all the ingredients weighed out for them.
What they need to do is to work out the process.
It's a short pastry.
They're like scones. They're done in a pan instead of the oven.
Teaspoon of baking powder, and a teaspoon of mixed spice. Right.
So all the dry ingredients together. Nice.
Equal quantities of butter and lard.
The key is to make sure you've got the fat rubbed in evenly
and bring it together as a dough.
It's a scone mix with fat in it.
There are different variations, aren't there, all over the country?
Yeah. Lancashire - griddle cake.
In the north east, singing hinnies.
It also reminds me of something my nan used to make.
She used to call it flour bread.
We just used to eat it with butter and golden syrup. It was lovely.
I've just added my currants.
Add one egg.
Just bring that together.
That took no time at all to bring that together.
I'm guessing you roll it out and then use a cutter, do you?
Yeah. You don't want to roll it out too thin. Nice and evenly.
Ooh, that looks lovely.
Now, poached plums with a plum syrup.
These are really firm.
They're perfect for poaching.
So we can get them nice and soft and get a lovely flavour.
My dad used to grow them.
My family had trees in New Zealand,
and I'm just used to just picking them off
and running off to play. Yeah. Is that right?
I've got some Cognac, orange juice, a little bit of sugar,
cinnamon stick and star anise.
That's your poaching liquid there? This is my poaching liquid. Right.
The key here is poaching the plum beautifully well.
I'm just looking for a really tasty, sweet, seasoned syrup
with all these lovely spices.
It's going to go on to the plate.
I'm going to leave those just to come up to the boil,
and we'll let that simmer.
I've got some lovely soft cream cheese. Mm.
Oh, this is absolutely yummy.
And I've got a little bit of goat's cheese there too.
I think plums are particularly well suited to the saltiness of cheese.
So, my cream cheese ready to go.
Get on to these Welsh cakes. There we go.
Let's take a little bit of butter... Ooh! ..into our pan.
Let them do their thing.
They're lovely, aren't they?
You want them to have that lovely colouring on both sides.
A bit like a fruit toast the way it's been cooked.
There's no time with these. You've just got to just try them out.
They're ready to go. Check these plums.
Mm. Wow!
All right. We are ready to dress. Come on.
Oh, how lovely.
A little bit of Cheddar cheese there.
That syrup looks fab, doesn't it? Mm. Mm.
A little bit of coriander grass. And there we have it.
Welsh cakes, poached plums, plum syrup and cheese.
Bravo.
Absolutely beautiful. I'll go and make a pot of tea.
Cheers.
The cake itself isn't too sweet.
The sweetness comes from that syrup
with a lovely hint of cinnamon in it.
It's absolutely wonderful against the salty, creamy cheese.
This is a great test.
You know, poaching fruit sometimes is a skill that chefs get wrong
when they're under stress.
They've got a little bit of bite but a huge amount of flavour.
That's what we're looking for here.
Monica, we'll see you back for the chat and the tasting.
See you in a bit.
Come on, let's get them in.
First to tackle Marcus' Skills Test
is 31-year-old freelance chef Pippa
who has spent five years running her own eco-friendly restaurant
on the Isle of Man
before moving to Sheffield.
My style of food is really, really simple yet quite bombastic.
I really like working with plants and weeds and herbs
and turning not much into something great.
Food allows me to be myself
and as someone with ADHD
that constantly wants to do different things,
it just suits my personality really well.
I'm always excited by new experiences
and I don't see many neurodivergent women
at the forefront of the industry,
which I think is a shame because we have a lot to give.
I am a bit bish-bash-bosh,
but all chefs are very, very different, and that's OK.
Hello, Pippa. Hi. Welcome to MasterChef.
I would like you to make for us Welsh cakes. Wow, OK.
Served with some poached plums, plum syrup and cheese.
I think I'm familiar with it.
Some kind of spicy, fruity scone thing.
So you've just pretty much identified it, so that's great.
And the Welsh cake recipe is everything that's on that board.
20 minutes.
Off you go, Pippa.
You are underway.
I've never, ever done it before, so...just make something, hey?
Come on, Pippa.
I think she's put the spice into the egg yolk
but she could just make the mix like you would a scone mix,
everything in.
My fingers aren't going fast enough.
I'm not super-technical in the pastry department
but I like to focus on flavour.
I'm also one of those neurodivergent women as well
that can't do more than one thing at once.
OK.
I'm having super-bad sensory overload right now.
That mix looks soft.
You've had six minutes.
Uh, yeah...
She hasn't got anything else on.
She needs to think about poaching those plums as well.
What was your route into cookery?
I didn't train to be a chef.
I fell into it,
studying classical music and theatre and things.
Are you musical?
Yeah. I like to drum.
But I just love the...the artistry
and the theatre of good food and stuff as well.
So how's that Welsh cake getting on there?
It feels very messy everywhere.
Really need to get some kind of plums cooking.
Oh, she's going to get her poaching liquid on. Good.
Toast this off a little bit.
She's got lots of sugar, cinnamon, some cardamom,
star anise in the pan.
Oh, that smells like I really would like to have a sip.
The sugar is now hardened in the bottom.
She needs to boil that hard to get that dissolved.
You have nine minutes left.
So I'm just going to cook a few of these.
That's a lot of flour on those Welsh cakes.
It's going to burn before it cooks.
When you see the butter just leaking out of there
because it's just hasn't been broken into the dough properly.
How are you going to bring cheese into your dish?
I'm going to...
..just loosen a little bit of the goat's cheese.
A little bit of this.
She's going to have to think about getting those plums in
her candied sugar alcohol mix with spices.
A bit of honey.
And just loosen it down a bit.
I don't know why you'd put milk into the cheese.
Oh, she's cutting her plums up.
They'll definitely cook as she's cut them up so small.
You have five minutes, Chef, OK.
MONICA GASPS
They're so very burnt.
Are they? Yeah. They're...
Yeah. Definitely not good.
Can you do some more?
Oh, she's going to put another one on. OK.
Got a couple of minutes.
I'm just going to quickly strain off this syrup.
A bit hot. It's nowhere near thick enough.
Because the sugar did not caramelise properly.
Don't burn the other cake.
GIGGLES NERVOUSLY
Thank you.
Too late, Gregg, it's burnt.
Right. Are you ready to plate up?
I'm going to have to.
Your time's up. You're done, Chef.
Hi.
Unfortunately, the Welsh cake is burnt, and does taste burnt.
Yeah. Very embarrassed.
You've got some very soft poached plums.
You had a little bit of cream cheese,
a bit of honey in there as well.
And that would have been really nice if it had been just a bit thicker.
I think this is just a classic case of you just not finding your rhythm.
So you made a syrup, you added spices into it
but that sugar did not caramelise before you added the alcohol to it.
Then you poured water into it. That's not how you make a syrup.
Lovely amount of cinnamon butter is going on in the Welsh cakes.
But, of course, you burnt them.
Twice.
There's a big round coming next, and that's your food.
We'll see you soon. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Pretty mortified.
I was distracted left, right, and centre.
But it just all went wrong.
Finally, it's 33-year-old head chef and father-of-two Ian
who runs the restaurant kitchen
at an award-winning wine estate in West Sussex.
It's all about pairing the wines with the food.
There's so much on our doorstep, it's absolutely incredible
and I've got a beautiful kitchen garden
that we can take some of our produce from,
so, from spring through to summer.
I'm quite a zero-waste approach to everything,
so, even the peelings and stuff need to be used.
I didn't start with a passion for food, I really didn't.
As a child, I think I genuinely had a food phobia.
I used to have a real problem with textures
until the day that I became a KP.
Then I was scared into trying new foods
and it was a light-bulb moment.
Cooking my own food and having to taste it just lit a fire in me.
Ian, welcome. Made a Welsh cake before?
Never. So this could be fun.
20 minutes. Over to you, Ian. Thank you.
Is there lard as well, is it? Yeah. Lovely.
So I'm just going to rub my butter into the flour
just to get a slightly sort of, sort of breadcrumb consistency.
Then I'm going to add all my spices,
my baking powder, my sugar, and probably an egg to bind it.
Ian is cracking on with his dough already.
Butter and flour. Lard.
What made you become a chef?
For me, it was either cheffing or acting, really. Cheffing came first.
Bit of a show as well, you know,
like, performing for people and doing nice food.
Do you do any acting now?
No. No acting now. No time. Not with two kids.
How old are the children? Five and two.
They both actually like to cook with me, which is quite sweet.
I'm going to make a light caramel.
Put my plums in, add some spices to it.
Let them cook down. Take them out and then reduce the sauce.
Seems very competent.
I'm going to use all this juice that comes out as well.
You've had five minutes. You've got 15 minutes left.
These plums are not my friend at the moment.
Ian is having real problems in getting the stone out of the fruit
but just cut it into four.
So, MasterChef - why?
I think I needed to challenge myself.
And I'm in a position where I can take time away from the kitchen.
I've got a good team.
Yeah? I didn't feel like I was abandoning them.
That pan could be a bit hotter.
The lumps of the sugar are not melting in.
All right, so I'm going to place this one in first.
Did he just put it in whole?
Get some spices in there.
So what's going on, on there?
So I'm going to try and roast them and poach them
in this light caramel.
And then I'm going to add a bit of brandy, a splash of water,
and I'm going to keep turning them
so they're both poaching and basting in their own sauce. What, whole?
I'm going to do that one whole
and I'm going to do these unfortunate halves.
Why would you put them skin-side down first?
Smell incredible.
That's going to blister.
Caramel has now started setting.
Oh, my goodness. It's a bit of a sticky mess.
I've never seen poaching done this way.
Now I'm going to get on to my cakes.
I'm going to make them quite thin so they cook evenly on both sides.
I don't want to do them too thick.
Nice. Looks good.
You've got six minutes left.
Are you happy with these, Ian, these cakes? Yeah, I'm quite confident.
So how are those plums looking? Terrible. Sorry.
They're looking a bit more like stewed plums.
Too doughy, too raw, I think.
Two soft. Careful, careful. Gentle. Just leave them! Just leave.
Just leave...leave them!
You've got three minutes. Yes, Chef.
A bit too sweet.
Are you OK? Get a bit of colour on them?
Yeah. Colour is not the problem.
The actual inside being too doughy is the actual problem.
He's not happy.
You've only got a minute, Ian. Right.
You're going to have to think about plating up.
I hope they cook through.
He's got some nice colour on them, at least.
Cheese? Yes, Chef.
I like that he grated the Cheddar like it was Parmesan.
Your time's up. Take a breath. Thank you.
Your Welsh cake's not cooked, which you identified.
You were cutting them out, and then you were working it.
The more you keep kneading it, the tougher it becomes
which means it's a little bit more difficult to cook.
The plum cookery isn't right.
How do you cook plums in so much sugar
and retain the sourness of the plum?
They're so sour!
And you can grate as much cheese over that as you like,
that ain't going to make it... It's covering it up.
..it ain't going to make an ounce of difference.
The syrup to make a caramel, you can do that.
But you put the plums in
and then straight away the caramel
just set around the plum.
You had to poach them.
It wasn't a poaching liquid.
But you kept your cool.
You didn't panic, all right.
Now that can take you quite a way.
Look forward to seeing you in the next round. Thank you, Ian.
Thank you.
It could have gone a lot better
but the game plan now is to blow them out of the water
with the stuff that I like to cook.
Got to try and pull it back somehow.
Nobody actually smashed it. No.
Everybody had some issues.
It's their food next. Dig deep and have no fear.
Chefs, welcome back. Great to see you again.
There were issues in the skills. That's to be expected.
Leave that aside.
This is where the competition really kicks off
and when you start to fight to stay in it.
This is your signature two-course menu,
your chance to really showcase your talent, your style.
At the end of this, two of you will be leaving the competition
but two of you will become MasterChef quarterfinalists.
90 minutes. Off you go.
I'm hoping to showcase flavour swaps and alternatives
with things that are on our doorstep,
changing thoughts and attitudes around sourcing food.
This is Alexanders,
a weed introduced into the UK
in Roman times from the Canary Islands.
But now it's so aggressive and invasive
that it's absolutely taking over everywhere.
But the stalks you can use just like celery in your cooking.
The leaves taste just like parsley
so I'm trying to show it off. Fascinating.
Pippa's food is all about the ethos.
She's someone who wants to eat locally as much as possible.
Pippa's main course - glazed celeriac
which she cooks as fondants. Interesting.
Applewood-smoked celeriac puree.
She's basically made the puree,
and then she's just putting the smoke into a bowl of the celeriac.
We want to taste the smoke.
Pippa is using the Alexander weed to deep fry
to bring some texture to her dish...
This is going to be like a little translucent garnish for my celeriac.
..as well as to decorate it with some oil.
Very earthy, parsley-like flavours through it
and that's going to work wonders with her celeriac.
And the dessert is strawberries and cream, but gone wild.
Why? So, there's, like, a meadowsweet cream.
So I'm using meadowsweet instead of almonds
because I love almonds but they don't grow here.
I'm doing a coconut oil but it's fig leaf because we've got no coconuts.
I'm doing a granola-ish - quinoa, hemp, oats
and then there's strawberries in the bottom. OK. Yeah. Wow.
It sounds delicious. The granola hopefully has got
great texture to it which will work well
with the cream and the strawberries.
I really love the idea of the fig leaf oil,
the meadowsweet being the replacement for almonds.
It's just beautiful ingredients,
and I think we're going to be in for something really different.
You've had 20 minutes.
Everything's riding on the next cook.
But I don't want to aim for something that is not achievable.
I want to be able to create something, execute it really well.
If it's done right, it's going to be really good.
Rachide, how are you feeling now, Chef?
Er, feeling fairly confident.
I've got to keep on moving.
Are you a naturally cheery soul?
Yes, I am. I always smile as well when I'm under a lot of pressure.
What are you cooking?
It's chicken cooked on the crown
with gnocchi, in a wild garlic sauce, and morel mushrooms.
The flavours work really well
and I'll be happy for you guys to try this.
Cooking the birds on the crown, as we know,
is a great way to do this because it just retains all the flavour,
all the moisture.
We have potato gnocchi.
The potatoes need to be baked. He's got to make sure they cook properly.
It needs to be a smooth texture.
You don't want lumps through it.
The most important thing about morels is make sure
they're perfectly washed.
They do hide lots of little grit on the inside.
Wild garlic, vibrant. Want to taste the flavour.
Little bit of cream in there.
Of course, these flavours work beautifully.
It's just execution is going to be the key.
And my second dish is a cranachan tart.
Cranachan is a Scottish version of an Eton mess
and I'm putting it in a tart form.
I would imagine there would be a few Scottish people
very upset that you called it a Scottish Eton mess.
Well, er, that would probably be an interpretation.
What are you doing to it? So, raspberry jam at the bottom,
set honey custard.
A Scotch whisky vanilla Chantilly.
And then, I'm doing, like, an oat and nut praline.
In a pastry case? Yeah, I wanted to do, like, a nice take on something
that was known rather than try and reinvent the wheel.
I haven't been to Scotland to try the cranachan
but I have Scottish friends and they say lovely things about it.
So it's a raspberry tart.
It's no longer a cranachan.
But I do like the sound of this dessert.
Flavours of cranachan - custard, whisky, raspberries.
Rachide's got to make sure the custard is cooked
and set in the tart
because if that's not set, there could be an issue.
Chefs, you're halfway.
You've got 45 minutes left.
Rachide has made his first batch of pastry. He's not happy with it.
He's had to start again. I hope that's not going to set him back.
How long would they normally bake for? 45 minutes.
Right. So you are right to the wire. Yeah.
How confident are you we're going to get a dessert?
Oh, I'm confident you're going to get a dessert.
I am slightly concerned.
I'd really like to, yeah, go quite far in this competition.
I just want to make my kids proud.
I think that's just a cliche thing that a dad can say.
But, no, to make my family proud would be... Would be good.
Ian, tell us, what are you making?
My first course is a hake with cauliflower veloute,
burnt cauliflower puree, fennel and curry oil.
And then my dessert is a baked toffee apple
with bacon and hazelnut crumb and blackberry ice cream.
Why are you adding bacon?
It just brings a saltiness to it.
I think it works really well. It's been well received.
Why these two dishes?
I think it's flavours that I like to eat, basically.
Cauliflower and curry is a match made in heaven.
And I really like apples in a dessert.
Apples and blackberry go hand-in-hand, I think.
Ian's hake main course,
flavours of cauliflower and curry.
CLICKS TONGUE
One of my favourites!
Hake is a very fragile fish.
Overcook it, it will fall apart.
Cauliflower is a great carrier of flavour
so it's the right choice for the hake.
Puree - a beautiful, smooth, velvety
veloute, almost soup-like in a way.
Ian nearly made toffee plums in his Skills Test
but now he's making a toffee apple for dessert.
He's cut the apples top and bottom.
Letting them absorb the caramel as they're cooking through.
Bacon and hazelnut crumb!
Hopefully it is just the saltiness that he brings to it
because too much bacon could ruin this dessert.
30 minutes remain.
Cristina's menu is flavours of Nigeria.
A hot pepper soup which is slightly smoked, which is more like a broth.
My grandma always made this for me.
When I went to Nigeria,
I wasn't very used to eating Nigerian food
because I was born in Italy and raised in Italy, obviously,
so it has a lot of flavours inside.
Got lemongrass, lime leaf, some veg
and a lot of spices.
She always used to use this soup
to make me kind of get used to the kind of African food.
She's doing catfish, which I don't think I've had before, pan-fried.
Steamed plantain, yam.
The three of them are going to come together to be wrapped in nori.
And then she's pouring on the pepper soup.
There's over 25 ingredients just in this soup.
That excites me. I love trying new food.
My dessert is going to be a chestnut puff-puff.
Puff-puff is a kind of doughnut. It's a very Nigerian dessert.
We have that normally during a celebration.
A puff-puff filled in with Camembert and walnuts
because I like a little bit of cheese in my dessert.
Then I'm going to have some white chocolate and coconut on the side -
coconut and chestnut sorbet.
I hope you do manage to get it all done
because it sounds like a lot of work.
I'm going to push myself a little bit more
to show you that I can have a little bit of experience
but I have got a lot of passion for food.
It sounds very interesting and quite unusual.
I love the idea of puff-puff.
She's made a batter, it's going to aerate,
and then she's going to cook those off in a deep fat fryer,
cool them down before she fills them with the Camembert and walnut.
Cristina is making a chestnut sorbet and a coconut sorbet.
A chestnut sorbet, white chocolate...hm. Camembert?
It's quite a lot of flavours that you don't necessarily see together.
I'm a little bit unsure.
These are the dishes that are very, very close to my heart
but show technique and obviously taste at the same time.
You have just five minutes.
I'm a little bit behind right now
but I'm going to push in as much as I can.
I think it's OK.
You've got to get stuff on a plate. You've got nothing right now.
Bring it all together now.
Everybody, you've got a minute. Get it on a plate right now.
Those tarts are no good.
I'm just going to do a cranachan - not on a tart.
That's it. Stop!
Time's up, everybody. Well done.
First up is freelance chef Pippa
with a signature main course of roasted celeriac
caramelised in apple port
with smoked apple puree,
pickled celeriac,
vintage Cheddar sauce,
Alexander leaf crisps,
Alexander leaf oil,
and a cheese crumb.
The cooking of the celeriac is spot-on.
A little bit of texture with the smoked puree
and that cheese, the tanginess of it,
I'm really enjoying it.
The Alexander, I think you could have been more brave.
Pack it full of that stuff so we can taste it and it makes a difference.
But a good start. Thank you. Thank you.
I really like the woodiness that you've got from that celeriac
with the sweetness around it that is like apple.
And I get a little bit of pickling.
I get a little bit of burnt flavour as well.
It's a very, very enjoyable and fascinating dish.
OK.
I like the combinations, I like the flavours,
I like the textures, I like the acidity, the crispness.
You have a very unique philosophy with food
and that's a very enjoyable story.
I appreciate that.
Pippa's dessert is her take on strawberries and cream -
wild strawberries infused
in fermented elderflower
with a five-seed granola,
meadowsweet cream
and a fig leaf oil.
That was absolutely sensational.
The strawberries are delicious.
The meadowsweet cream
I absolutely adore.
And I think the salty little granola
base at the bottom is just fabulous.
I'm really impressed.
The star of it for me is getting
some of that fig leaf flavour.
I love that kind of coconut,
almost vanilla mix
and I think it's wonderful.
I am thoroughly enjoying that.
It's a really tasty bowl
of strawberries and cream
with the oats here, and there is
very much a great representation
of the style of food that you do.
That's what signature dishes are about.
Thank you.
I'm really grateful they understood what I was trying to portray.
That means the world.
There's a lot more invasive weeds out there!
Senior sous-chef Rachide has served
roasted chicken breast
with gnocchi in a wild garlic sauce,
braised morels, and asparagus.
The chicken's got nice seasoning across the skin.
Gnocchi - I like the little bit of
Parmesan you got through there,
giving that saltiness.
But those luxury mushrooms
are gritty.
Morel is one of the tricky mushrooms to get right
because it has little hidden pockets where it holds in
grit of the soil, and they become very unpleasant to eat.
It is rushed.
The gnocchi has not got that lovely
texture we so love about gnocchi,
and that's just a shame.
The sauce isn't right.
It's not binding together.
It's a bit runny and wishy-washy.
There is so much potential here
but you should just calm down a bit.
Rachide's dessert is based on
a Scottish cranachan.
It's missing a vital element.
I basically didn't get the tart case right.
He serves set vanilla custard,
raspberry jam,
Scottish whisky Chantilly cream,
walnut and oat praline,
and fresh raspberries.
I'm sorry you didn't get it into your tart case
because that was the dessert you wanted.
That doesn't work for me because it's just too sweet.
I do get the heat of whisky
but praline, custard, and the raspberry jam,
it's just getting sugar on sugar on sugar.
The custard, the cream, the raspberry puree at the bottom.
There's no texture to it whatsoever, in a sense,
it's just lost, unfortunately.
That tart case, I saw it in the oven and I thought
you were going to smash it up and make that into your crumble
but you just swapped your head.
You have to turn it into a positive
especially when you've got
the opportunity to do it there.
I kind of choked under pressure.
I definitely let myself down.
Head chef Ian's main is roasted hake
with a burnt cauliflower puree
and toasted buckwheat,
Savoy cabbage,
poached fennel, cauliflower veloute
and a curry oil.
My fish is nicely seasoned.
It is just flaking away.
The burnt cauliflower puree
has got the bitterness
and it works really well with the buckwheat you've got on it.
The fennel, there is still texture
to it. It's tasty.
I've got a really nicely cooked piece of fish.
Cauliflower underneath that's well made.
The oil, a little bit of spice.
It's good brasserie cookery.
You know what? You can get good food in brasseries.
For me, this is exactly what that dish is.
Your fish is nicely cooked.
The oil is nice and vibrant.
But your fennel is not peeled.
It's big, it's chunky.
The cabbage definitely needs a little bit more cooking.
There's refinement missing within it.
For his dessert,
Ian has baked a caramelised apple
and served it with
a bacon and hazelnut crumb,
pickled blackberries
and a toffee sauce.
Are we missing something?
It's missing the blackberry ice cream.
The apple is beautifully cooked and caramelised.
You took a lot of time and care to caramelise that.
I watched you in the oven. You kept turning them over, basting them.
The blackberries on top, they work.
One thing I was really looking forward to is the bacon.
It was in the crumble and I can't really taste it at all,
which is a shame.
It reminds me very much of
an apple and blackberry crumble.
That oaty kind of nutty crunch
and the soft apple. It's lovely.
I very much wish
I had the ice cream as well.
You have great flavours on this dessert.
I love the toffee sauce you've got.
I think more of it would be great because it's so delicious
and it just brings it all together.
And I think that puree would have also just really
enhanced the use of your blackberry.
Yeah, just frustrated.
I think I just needed to refine it slightly.
A lot tougher in that kitchen than I thought it would be.
Finally, inspired by her Nigerian heritage
is chef de partie Cristina
who is serving a terrine
of pan-fried catfish,
steamed yam and plantain
wrapped in nori seaweed sheets
topped with steamed crab
and caviar and finished
with a hot pepper broth.
I cannot stay away from that broth.
That almost honey sweetness that
very quickly gives way to pepper
which very quickly gives way to
chilli, is absolutely delightful.
Plantain and yam, I've had them many, many times in this kitchen,
but I've never had them as good as this.
And wrapped in the seaweed,
I think that's a really lovely idea.
The fish is sort of getting lost in there
so I think maybe a bigger piece of fish within that
would make this even better.
But the crab and then the saltiness
of the caviar on the top there,
it is quite delightful.
Cristina's dessert is a chestnut puff-puff
with Camembert and walnuts,
white chocolate and coconut
dipped in a charcoal glaze,
and a sherry and chestnut sauce.
Inside that doughnutty affair is cheese. Yeah.
No, I've put the cheese on the side. I wasn't able to put that in time.
I was supposed to have a coconut sorbet as well.
I don't like this. It's texturally all wrong.
You've got a very, very heavy dough,
and then you've got this very, very heavy cheese and walnuts.
And the sweetness of the dish is just very, very confusing,
which is a shame.
I'm struggling here.
I can dip the doughnut into
the coconut and white chocolate,
but the sauce with sherry and chestnut,
you can taste the heat of alcohol
and that definitely wouldn't go with coconut.
They're not working for me together.
I think the only thing I've enjoyed on here was
the nuts and the cheese on its own on the side.
You're missing a sorbet
but I don't think that could rescue this dessert for you.
Sometimes you just need to pare some things back
and no need to push it so much.
I'm feeling a little bit disappointed about my dessert.
Maybe my ideas didn't come together because I was missing some elements.
I still feel proud of myself. You know, you never stop learning.
A lot of stress in the kitchen today.
A lot of timing issues. Recipes didn't go quite right.
But we have one chef that stuck true to how she likes to cook.
Yeah. Pippa brings something very, very different
to the MasterChef kitchen, doesn't she?
Her celeriac and cheese dish,
I wanted more of the Alexander, the weed,
but I really enjoyed the flavours of it. Celeriac was cooked nice.
Her dessert was delightful,
her take on strawberries and cream with the fig leaf.
The dish of the day for me. I thought it was excellent.
Pippa goes through.
I had high hopes for Rachide after the Skills Test.
I really liked his attitude. There was a spring to his step.
Chicken, yeah, that was nicely coloured.
Nice crispy skin on the outside.
But morels, come on! Gritty.
We know where it went wrong with the dessert
but the pastry was there. It could have been used as a crumb
and it desperately needed a texture.
I could find very little wrong
with the cookery on Ian's main course.
Overall, yeah, I liked the cauliflower puree.
I thought the fish was nicely cooked.
Oil around the outside was delicious.
Pudding - apple, nicely caramelised. The fresh berries on the plate.
He left off an ice cream. That's a real shame.
I really loved Cristina's dish with the crab and the caviar.
Absolutely lovely.
I think the broth was good. It was hot. Sweet at the same time.
Vegetables were beautifully cooked.
But dessert - ohhh, yeah. Really disappointed by that.
That was not a doughnut.
Thick and stodgy like that. Not great.
We didn't get a sorbet up on the plate.
It was just all too many levels of wrong on that dessert for me.
My mum always tells me to just remember at the back of my mind
that she's very proud of me.
To get through and become a quarterfinalist
would be very big to me and to my family.
I would like to 100% go through to be able to show
what I'm about, to show how good I can cook,
rectify what I haven't done right.
I feel like I've got something more to prove now.
I'll be a teary, happy mess if I do get through, but...
we shall see.
That was, without a doubt, a tough day.
But we appreciate that you come in here, show us what you're all about.
It's not easy.
We can only take our best two chefs through to the quarterfinal.
And we have made that decision.
The first chef leaving the competition is...
..Rachide.
Rachide, good to meet you.
The second chef leaving the competition is....
..Cristina.
Thank you. Thank you very much. You've got promise.
Obviously, I'm going to feel a little bit disappointed with myself
but, at the same time, I'm quite young in my career
and I've got a lot ahead of me
so I'm very happy about the experience.
The whole thing was a dream come true.
I'm so upset.
The hardest part about it, I feel like I never got to show the judges
what I am able to do.
You know, I had high hopes for myself. But that's life.
Ah... I'm about to cry. Jesus.
Phwoar.
Congratulations, the pair of you.
You are going through to a quarterfinal. Well done.
THEY LAUGH
Whoa! Get in!
Have some of that!
I feel really proud of myself just for completing the task,
let alone getting through. So that's really cool.
That's so mad! A quarterfinalist of MasterChef.
I'm really looking forward to ringing my wife and my kids.
They're going to be really proud.
Happy tears! Happy tears.
Next time, four new hopefuls...
Oh, no!
..fight for their place in the quarterfinal.
Definitely up against it.
My timer just didn't go off and my tuile's burnt.
This is absolutely sensational.
It's possibly one of my new favourite things.