It's the final week of the MasterChef heats.
Last time, nine hopefuls auditioned
for a place in this year's competition.
I think I've cocked it up.
Your food tastes absolutely lovely.
It's interesting, sophisticated and delicious.
Only seven cooks earned themselves an apron.
Not too bad.
Looks great, mate. It suits you.
Definitely, man.
It's far more intense than I could ever have anticipated.
One minute you're nervous, the next you're excited.
There's so much adrenaline,
because you never know what's around the corner.
Like, oh, my days, I'm back.
I'm having such a good time!
Tonight, they face two demanding challenges...
Ooh.
My mind's going crazy at the moment.
..including cooking a dish
to a brief set by one of the country's leading food critics.
It could be famous for being on the menu of a restaurant,
and as an amateur chef, that's an amazing achievement.
Only the best can go through to this week's quarterfinal.
Big round.
They've got to be ambitious and they've got to deliver.
This will show us how much cookery they really do at home.
Auditions are over. Well done.
You're in the competition, you got your aprons,
congratulations.
Now we want to see just how good you can be.
This test is the market challenge.
Through those doors over there is a market,
and we have stocked it full of fantastic produce
to give you an opportunity to cook for Gregg and I
a dish that shows off your culinary skills...
..because, at the end of this,
one of you is going home.
Grab yourself a basket...
..and off to market.
From that market, they can make whatever they like.
Ha-ha-ha!
There's whole plaice, fresh oysters,
bream, pigeon, there's tofu,
there's mushrooms, nettles,
salsify.
There's chocolate, there's syrups, there's sauces.
Anything to make us a wonderful dish.
Let their culinary mind go wild.
There's a lot of ingredients here,
some of which I haven't cooked with before.
So it's...it's a whole new challenge.
This is exactly the kind of thing that I love doing -
is just looking at ingredients
and having to come up with things randomly.
I would have gone for steak, apart from all the steak is gone,
so I'm ending up with a fish, and it's a slippery fish, man.
Yo, on there!
There you go. Happy days.
You've chosen your ingredients.
We want to see something stunning.
1 hour 20 minutes. Off you go.
Multiple sclerosis campaigner Dean is a single father of three
and loves to experiment in the kitchen with his sons.
He earned himself an apron
with his accomplished classical cooking.
This is decent work, mate.
Keep an eye on you. Thank you, Dean.
I'm very much a
fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of cook.
What's that called?
Is it called his top or his bottom?
That's his bottom.
That's his bottom, isn't it? DEAN LAUGHS
Quite often, with having three kids all wanting to eat different food,
sometimes you look in the cupboards and they're bare,
sometimes you've got to be creative.
So I would like to think I'm not bad on that front.
What you making, Dean?
So, I'm going to have a bash at doing pigeon teriyaki.
What? Yeah, pigeon teriyaki.
Have you cooked pigeon breast before?
Not teriyaki style. Right.
OK, OK, OK.
I love having a wee go at most things
and just playing around and seeing what works and what doesn't.
I've had a go with doing beef teriyaki, which was lovely.
I have no idea what it's going to taste like with pigeon,
so we will soon see.
He's got to make sure that teriyaki sauce,
that reduction of soy, mirin and sake, is thick
and wonderfully flavoured.
Pigeon in teriyaki sauce. I hope it works.
There wasn't really much of a plan, so...
..time will tell how we do.
Iranian-born Farokh captivated the judges
with his imaginative flavours and highly original ideas.
I have never been served a kitchen sponge
on MasterChef before!
And you've used the sponge to wipe away the dirt.
Exactly. As you do with sponges.
I really respect what you're doing.
I absolutely love improvisational cooking.
I enjoy going into chaos and finding order.
I think that's what creativity is.
And a lot of fun. Fun, fun is good.
Good is fun.
Farokh throughout the competition has shown himself
to have an incredible mind.
In this round, what he's decided to do is
four different types of oysters, all of them in the shells,
served with their own little garnish.
Very, very brave to take the oysters.
Why?
Oh, I love oysters,
so I'm going to try and tell the story of oysters
coming into and then going out of season.
So I'm going to make a bit of a hot element
and a bit of a cold element.
The first oyster he's going to serve with shallots
and a baked heart of cucumber.
Second oyster, he's going to do it
with a cucumber and camomile granita.
So, making an ice out of cucumber water.
The third one is going to be a tempura oyster
with an oyster mayonnaise.
The fourth was inspired by the oysters he grew up with in Iran -
smoked oysters from a tin.
So, what he's going to do - he's going to smoke an oyster,
and he's going to serve it with a piece of bread
so we can spread our oyster across the top of the bread.
It sounds extraordinary.
POP
20 minutes have gone, everybody.
20 minutes gone.
Childcare worker and mum-of-two Angela, from Cumbria,
is passionate about nature
and has shown a unique cooking style
using locally foraged ingredients.
Your hogweed jam, I like.
Your baobab, no,
I'm loving it, because it's like a sherbet.
You use many ingredients I've never seen before.
Fascinating stuff.
I think John and Gregg like that I'm a little bit different,
a bit unique, using wild ingredients.
I just need to have it look and taste worthy of MasterChef.
What are you making? Potato curry.
And I'm going to put some nettles in it,
flatbreads and some courgette fritters,
and hopefully a garlic yoghurt to dip.
Yay!
It's a very similar dish to what I cook for my children.
So it'll have a taste of home, hopefully.
Nettles are quite a sort of subtle flavour, like a spinach flavour.
I hope they can survive the strength of that curry sauce
around those potatoes.
Ooh!
50-year-old vintage clothes wholesaler Martin likes to champion
the food of his Caribbean heritage
and wowed both judges
with his Jamaican sweet browned chicken.
This may well be one of the best bits of chicken I've ever had.
Martin's cooking for us sea bream,
which he's filleted, and filleted very, very well indeed.
He's put across the top some spices,
including turmeric and curry powder, some thyme and some scotch bonnets.
Then he's going to serve that with some spinach and some shallots,
and then he's got some fondant potatoes,
and a mayonnaise with some dill.
But what's important with this dish is that fish is cooked really well.
What part does cookery play in your life, Martin?
When I've had a hard day at work, I'll come back,
get into the kitchen.
And it's my way to relax - feed the kids, feed the wife.
Happy families.
A way to a lady's heart is through her belly?
You've got it in one, sir.
In Martin's world, it's my version of Caribbean.
I always just want to deliver good flavours, which are intriguing,
but hopefully work.
It's going to be interesting.
How are we doing, Hannah?
Not bad. How are you? Good.
27-year-old Hannah is a food supply manager in London
and started watching cookery programmes at an early age.
She took a risk in the first round
with her take on a breakfast classic...
You've created all the flavours of a kedgeree,
but I think what makes kedgeree lovely is the rice.
I'm not sure it works as a dish.
..but secured her place in the competition
with a daring whisky pear tart.
I think it's really fascinating, I think it's really interesting,
and I like it.
This MasterChef experience is completely and utterly
like nothing else ever on the planet.
It is a tiredness like I've never known, and we've only cooked twice,
so if I proceed any further on,
I think I might need to sleep for a month.
But, no, it's been brilliant.
Today, I'm making for you wild mushroom cappelletti,
a roasted Jerusalem artichoke puree,
some pan-fried mushrooms, some cavolo nero,
possibly a bit of truffle.
Who first taught you to cook?
Probably Delia Smith. No, don't tell me mum!
No, me mum, me mum and me grandma.
Is your mum Delia Smith?
My mum is not Delia Smith, but then, she taught her as well, so...
Cappelletti, you make a round bit of pasta first,
which she's filling with mushrooms,
and she's got a little cream sauce as well.
And then you fold it over, so it looks like a little tiny hat.
Fantastic.
An hour has gone.
You've got 20 minutes left.
Born in the Philippines, accountant Mark's cooking is influenced
by his travels around the globe.
He delighted the judges with his Japanese fusion twist
on a Filipino classic.
I think it's interesting, sophisticated and delicious.
Thank you.
I am a very creative person.
Some people think, "Why are you an accountant?"
I cook for my husband.
On a weekend, that's my practice of like a mystery box.
But this is not my own kitchen, this is the MasterChef kitchen.
So, you just don't know.
I'm doing an Argentinian bavette steak with chimichurri sauce,
celeriac remoulade, some anchovy fritters
and a little bit of pickling on the side
to just tie in all the flavours.
Does your food have a style?
No, my style is quite eclectic,
but obviously, I draw inspiration to these places that I've been to,
and my Filipino heritage.
Good luck. Thank you, Gregg.
Cooking a bavette is risky business.
It has to be around about medium.
Go any less than that, rare, then it's going to be really chewy.
Go any more than that, it's going to go dry.
If it is tough, we've got a problem.
Despite only starting to cook during lockdown,
23-year-old law graduate Radha made her mark on the competition
with an ambitious and technically challenging pudding.
You are a superstar.
That is a knockout pudding.
Thank you. I absolutely love it.
Thinking on my feet, I think I'm going to find it quite difficult.
The other contestants,
they've had that experience of looking in the fridge
and just cooking a dish from what they've got.
But with me, I've had Mum and Dad do that for the majority of my life,
but I'm just going to try and stick to what I know and keep positive.
What are you making?
Apple crumble, vanilla ice cream.
I'm also going to try and do a walnut sort of brittle as well,
and then some blackberries. I might do a coulis.
Why a crumble?
Apple crumble's one of the family favourites.
My mum does the crumble in the house.
I'm trying to remember what she put in the crumble and how she made it.
Your last pud was magic.
Do it again. I'll try. Thank you.
We know that Radha can make ice cream,
but she's making vanilla ice cream,
and she needs a whack of vanilla inside that.
However, Radha's not going to make an apple crumble in a dish.
She's going to do the component parts of an apple crumble
and put them together on a plate.
I hope this dish works.
You have nine minutes to go, everybody.
I don't think it's perfect, but it's food that I'd feed my kids,
so I'm happy with that.
It's a little bit on the rare side but...
Wondering whether I've done the right thing to do this,
but it's too late for that, so I'm just going to...
..do what I do.
You have just 60 seconds, please, everybody.
My mind's going crazy at the moment, so...
But I think...I think I'm OK.
Right, fondant potato, fondant potatoes, where are they?
Right, that's it. Stop.
Time's up.
That was down to the wire for the first time.
I'm happy, I've got a smile. I'm not crying, so...
..we'll go from there.
First up is multiple sclerosis campaigner Dean.
He's made teriyaki pigeon -
a pan-roasted pigeon breast glazed in teriyaki sauce
and topped with chilli, served on shiitake mushrooms and bok choy.
This pigeon, for me, is perfect.
Beautifully soft in the middle.
And I really like the hit of chilli that I'm getting in there as well.
I know it's an invention, but this is working for me.
Your teriyaki sauce is nicely made.
It's nice and shiny, that's great.
But you unfortunately have a flavour thief on your plate,
and it's those thick stems of the bok choy.
They're so full of water,
it literally washes your palate completely clean.
However, I think it's a nicely made dish.
I'm pleased.
I can't believe it. Yeah, the feedback was pretty good.
That's kind of exactly what I hoped in my wildest dreams to achieve.
To represent oysters going in and out of season,
drama lecturer Farokh has served them four ways.
Raw oyster infused in shallot vinegar
with grilled cucumber hearts,
raw oyster dressed with a cucumber, chamomile and lemon granita,
tempura oyster with a pickled cucumber and chamomile emulsion,
and a smoked oyster in oil
served with a cucumber and mustard pickle on toast.
The first oyster with the cucumber is the first of the season, OK?
And it's starting to get cold.
Then it goes really, really cold in the middle of winter,
we get the granita with the oyster.
Then we get tempura, cos the oyster's starting to get warm,
and then we get smoked oyster
when you can't eat them because they're out of season.
Great story. Thank you.
I think it's an incredibly brave and confident cook
who does something like this.
I really like this classic one
with the little bit of burnt cucumber across the top.
The cucumber granita - wonderful.
For an invention test, I think it's marvellous. Well done, you.
Thank you very much.
The third oyster has got a little bit of batter
and a kind of oyster-flavoured emulsion underneath it.
I enjoyed that.
And the one in the oil, got a beautiful smokiness to it.
You've been incredibly creative
and I have thoroughly enjoyed every single one.
Oh, sorry.
That was definitely the best feedback I've gotten.
I'm very happy that they liked it so much.
Childcare worker Angela has cooked a potato and nettle curry
with courgette fritters, flatbread and a garlic and lemon yoghurt dip.
Your potato curry...
..I like the flavour. There's a lot of spice in there.
You've used nettles
but you can't taste them in here amongst all the spice.
I like your breads. We could do with some more heat on this side.
Mm-hm.
This yoghurt dip, there's so much garlic in there,
that's all you can taste on the plate. Yeah.
Your fritters, unfortunately, they've caught on one side,
and because you've used an egg, they've become quite stodgy.
I like the flavour of the curry... Thank you.
..but there's lots of things that haven't worked for me.
Obviously, there were some issues.
I definitely don't feel like I am at the top,
but you don't know, maybe mid to bottom.
Vintage clothes wholesaler Martin's dish is curried pan-fried sea bream
with fondant potato, spinach with shallots and garlic,
and a dill mayonnaise.
Whoa!
I like the spice on the fish.
The skin is lovely cos it's gone crispy,
but your mayonnaise is thin.
However, I think your flavours are right.
Love your potatoes.
Flesh in the middle is soft.
Your greens are nicely cooked, but your mayonnaise hasn't worked.
It's too runny.
It was tough.
It didn't go according to plan but...
..there's obviously some things they liked.
So, we'll wait and see.
Food supply manager Hannah has made wild mushroom-filled cappelletti
on roasted Jerusalem artichoke puree
with pan-fried girolle mushrooms,
cavolo nero, Parmesan, and shaved truffle.
Your pasta is lovely and thin.
It's rich with a creamy mushroom filling.
I think that's very, very good indeed.
And you've finished it really well with some truffle and some Parmesan.
I think it's a very good dish.
Your cavolo nero is a tough cabbage to cook, actually,
and yours is perfect.
Your artichoke puree is smooth, nicely made.
It's almost got a slight nuttiness to it.
That tastes like a northern Italian autumn.
I'll go with that.
I'm feeling really good.
Feedback was great.
I want John to keep looking me in the eyes
and telling me it's delicious.
Accountant Mark chose the bavette Steak
and has served it with a chimichurri sauce,
celeriac remoulade, roasted Jerusalem artichokes,
anchovy fritters,
and pickled cucumber and red currants.
That beef is pretty chewy.
I like your green sauce. You called it chimichurri.
Your celeriac is cooked and it gives a pleasant, mellow nuttiness.
Your pickled cucumber, I really like.
It is sweet and it goes sharper.
You are somebody who really likes to pack a punch into your food.
Your chimichurri has got a load of vinegar in it,
so it's quite strong and sharp and sour.
Those little fried anchovies, they are lovely.
But the problem we've got here is the way
in which you've cut the bavette,
so you've cut it against the grain, and that's always going to be tough.
It's a shame, cos if that beef was cooked well,
I think this could be a great dish.
Disappointed in myself.
Tough day in the office.
I think the nerves got the better of me.
Yeah.
Finally, it's law graduate Radha.
She's made a deconstructed spiced apple crumble
with a walnut brittle, port-infused blackberries,
pickled apples, and a blackberry coulis,
served with a vanilla ice cream.
Only person in the room to do a dessert. Good on you.
Really like the blackberry coulis.
I love the pickled apples, think that's great.
I think you got the flavours of an apple crumble right,
but to actually deconstruct, then reconstruct it,
it's all out of proportion.
That's lovely vanilla ice cream. It's so creamy.
I like the fact that you've got walnuts in with your crumble,
cos walnuts give a slight bitterness.
You've got some nice ideas. You've got good flavours...
..but it looks really funny.
I don't think I showed them the best of me.
That's why I'm a little bit on edge.
We've got a lot to discuss.
John and I will call you back as soon as we can,
once we've made a decision.
One of you is leaving the competition.
Thank you. Go and take a rest.
The last market challenge of the competition this year.
Some good cookery but there were some ups and downs.
Farokh is actually quite incredible,
but he wanted to celebrate the way in which oysters have their seasons.
He did it in various ways, which I thought was delicious.
I think Farokh is the cook of the day. You're absolutely right.
Farokh is definitely going through to the next round.
Hannah had a good round.
That filled pasta is not easy to do, and hers was absolutely perfect.
I think it was a great dish.
Hannah deserves to go through.
Dean, he'd cooked a pigeon before and he'd made teriyaki before
and he brought the two together.
I really liked the sauce. I think it was great.
I liked his pigeon cookery and I liked his flavours.
Dean's got himself a place in the next round.
Martin in this round took a whole sea bream.
He filleted it really well
and he spiced his fish with some Caribbean flavours.
He's demonstrating skill.
His mayonnaise didn't work, but I like Martin's style.
Martin gets himself a place in the next round.
Radha's crumble, the presentation was wrong,
but the flavours, I liked, and she makes good ice cream.
Radha's through.
Right, we're left with a conversation about Mark and Angela.
I enjoyed the flavour of Angela's curry.
But the rest of the stuff around the outside, it didn't work for me.
The courgette fritters, they were burnt.
I had bread that wasn't cooked enough,
and that yoghurt garlic mixture, that was ferocious.
Mark chose bavette, and it's a tough piece of meat to cook.
It was a little bit chewy
but all those flavours around the plate did work.
Those little anchovy fritters, I thought they were delicious.
The chimichurri, I really liked it.
I'm very worried.
I hope that John and Gregg has seen enough of me, in terms of potential.
ANGELA:Maybe I've done enough to stay, I'm not sure.
What'll be will be, but I really want to stay now.
Who's going home, who's staying in the competition?
Well done, great effort.
The market challenge is a tough challenge, we know that.
We've made a decision.
One of you, unfortunately, is leaving the competition.
The contestant leaving us is...
..Angela.
Angela, thank you very much.
Sorry to see you go. No, it's OK.
See you later.
I'm really proud of myself.
I left my little village and went on big old TV,
got myself an apron, so got myself some bragging rights.
THEY LAUGH
Congratulations. On our spot. On your spot.
Yay! Congratulations.
Very, very lucky today.
I'll take that and power through the next round.
It's a really tough ride, innit?
Bumps and everything else, but, hey, I'm still here.
I think I'm in shock.
Clear head for the next round.
Probably a lot more tears as well, but happy tears.
Oh!
Happy days. We did it!
Six cooks with real talent,
and we're looking for the last quarterfinalist
of this year's competition.
We are going to really test them.
Bring it on.
I see this as a second chance to show that I have the potential
and the skills to get to the quarterfinals.
How incredible it would be to become a MasterChef quarterfinalist.
To be on the cusp of it is...
Yeah, it's a little bit scary, but exciting.
The buzz of that kitchen,
when you come out of that, it's like nothing else.
I just want to keep doing it again now.
This is a big day.
We've invited somebody in to taste your food
and help us make a decision.
That person has set your brief -
to create for us your guilty pleasure
built around a well-known food brand.
Can I now introduce you to food writer
and restaurant critic William Sitwell.
Welcome, William.
I want to see your imaginations run riot.
It could be a bar of something, it could be a packet of something,
it could be a can of something.
Something naughty, something that you wouldn't necessarily expect
to see on a dish on MasterChef.
We have just four quarterfinal places.
That does mean that two of you will be leaving the competition.
You'll have 1 hour and 30 minutes to satisfy the brief.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's cook.
I came up with this brief because...
..I thought it seemed like quite a cheeky idea,
to cook a dish that's a guilty pleasure.
A food that isn't generally thought of
as being particularly good for you.
There are dishes out there such as, you know, chicken
that people have roasted by pouring a can of coke in it.
I hope that we see a little bit of flair and imagination
and a clever way of actually then delivering it.
The guilty pleasure makes you smile.
That's the whole idea of it.
Absolutely, this should actually take us down memory lane.
My guilty pleasure is a classic that everybody loves,
whether they'll admit to it or not.
It's something I love eating.
I want to turn it into something that you could eat in a restaurant
as opposed to out a paper bag.
What are you going to cook?
My dish today is based off arguably the most famous burger in the world.
Big Mac.
Yes, but it's going to be a fillet steak, bacon jam, sesame flatbread
topped with plastic cheese, charred gem lettuce,
chips, burger sauce and a couple of tempura gherkins on top.
What is it about a burger that you love so much?
It just tastes good, doesn't it?
And I've not cooked it myself and the chips are greasy.
I'm excited because I honestly can't remember
the last time I had a McDonald's.
If I pay an extra 30p, can I go large and get extra chips?
Absolutely. I've made enough to cater for the whole room, so, yeah.
The creation of her plastic cheese I'm sort of intrigued by
because she's mixing mozzarella and gruyere and she's going to dye it.
Incredible. I'm excited. Let's see what that looks like.
I mean, will that work?
Now, the burger sauce is a big thing.
If you examine a special sauce, it is quite complex.
She has got white wine vinegar, sherry vinegar
and gherkin vinegar all mixed together.
And then, she's going to make like a mayonnaise base
with cream running through it and she wants it to be orange.
It's a fascinating mixture of things.
Is that the cheese that you've made? Yes.
That is brilliantly clever.
That is really clever.
It's tasty as well.
Most of the brands that I now consume,
I did not have access to for the first 25 years of my life,
so I was really excited because it made me have to think,
"Oh, what do I actually eat?"
Turns out, I eat a lot.
My guilty pleasure is supermarket own-brand prawn crackers
and sweet chilli sauce.
Fascinating. So, are we going to get a bowl of prawn crackers
with some chilli sauce?
No, you are going to get a prawn broth
with some chillies marinated in honey,
a roasted prawn, a prawn dumpling filled with cream cheese,
a deep-fried prawn head,
and then, on top of that is a massive tapioca cracker.
Wow!
This is a perfect interpretation of the brief,
so I'm really intrigued.
Oh, hopefully, it will work.
Farokh's prawn broth has got to have great amount of flavour.
And those prawns are massive.
They're going to be cooked really, really well,
so they've got a little bit of crunch to them.
And the prawn cracker element is made from tapioca.
So, when he throws it into hot oil,
then it should actually blow up and become like a cracker.
That's going to be really exciting.
I'm completely captivated by the idea of Farokh's dish.
However, the balance between that sweet chilli
and his broth and the crisp,
I think, could be a bit of a challenge, but let's see.
How are your crackers?
Not good. They should've puffed a lot more.
It's all right. At least you've got something. Yeah.
35 minutes have gone.
35 minutes gone.
There's a lot to do.
Just trying to keep calm.
Every Christmas, there's always a chocolate orange in my stocking,
so if I have a chocolate orange at any other time of the year,
I just feel a little bit guilty.
That's the flavours I'm going to be playing with today.
I'm basically going to do a chocolate brownie,
chocolate sauce, chocolate soil crumb.
I'm going to do an orange sorbet, a Chantilly cream,
but I'm going to also put some orange liqueur into that,
and then, I'm going to use kumquats as well.
People say that orange enhances the flavour of chocolate.
To me, it just makes the chocolate taste of orange.
Do you not like chocolate oranges?
No, I can't bear it.
Me neither.
So, I'm interested to see if you can convert me.
I hope you're going to like it cos it is just chocolate and orange.
Radha's showing lots and lots of technical skill.
Chocolate brownie, which needs to be crispy on the outside
and soft on the inside.
We've also got kumquats, which are like little tiny oranges,
but they're very sharp, very, very bitter.
And she's taking the flesh out and using the skin as a boat,
where the Chantilly cream is going to go.
It could look fantastic...
..but it's the flavours that have to work together
alongside the textures.
My aversion aside,
brownie done well is a thing of absolute beauty.
Great sorbet is a wonderful thing.
Who knows? I might be blown away by it.
I am very, very worried.
There are elements that can go wrong.
Chocolate and orange are both two quite powerful flavours,
so I want to get the balance right.
But what's going to make this dish stand out is
the way that it is presented.
Get that out of the way.
For this brief, I've taken the concept of high street takeaway
and I've got Martin's version of it.
It's a bit like doing a remake of a song, isn't it?
You take influences from it but you're not trying to copy it.
What are you cooking?
I'm doing a take on a posh fillet of fish burger joint as we know it.
I'm doing a beer battered fillet of fish.
That will be going inside a coca bread, right?
Served and topped with fresh tartare sauce,
chilli salt fries with fresh coleslaw.
What's coca bread? Coca bread is Jamaican bread.
We put some coconut milk in there with some coconut oil.
It's one of the breads I really like to have
obviously when I go to obviously a Caribbean takeaway.
So, I thought, "Why not do a Filet-o-Fish coca bread?"
Interesting. Why chilli salted fries?
I like a bit of spice. You know that already, Gregg, in my dishes.
Right, so, if I can't get a scotch bonnet in there,
I've got to get a chilli in there somehow.
Haddock's a great fish.
He needs to get that crispy, lovely, light batter you get on a burger
with fish inside it.
And then, we're being promised tartare sauce, which is great,
but right now, Martin's not even making mayonnaise
and we have got tartare sauce being made with a bottle of mayonnaise.
He is taking the classic Filet-o-Fish,
elevating it to the Caribbean cooking that he so loves.
I haven't seen this bread before.
I've never eaten a Filet-o-Fish
but I do like the idea of chips with a bit of salty spice,
so I'm excited by this.
Mark is making a dish inspired by his favourite chocolate bar.
Oh, my God. I am making a dessert.
Not my key strength.
He's doing a chocolate sphere,
which has got chocolate mousse inside it
and he's making nougat mixture, which is peanuts all mixed together.
He's going to give us hot caramel sauce,
but he's also adding to it salty miso as well,
which works beautifully with caramel and chocolate.
I'm so anxious about the sauce.
If it's not salty enough, it can be really sickly.
We're going to pour that butterscotch
across the top of this chocolate sphere,
and the chocolate sphere should then melt together
to give us an incredible, oozy, wonderful, luscious dessert.
It could be delicious. I hope it works.
There is a lot of risk of error
but you have to challenge yourself every time.
I always have a Snickers bar in my bag, so if I have a bad day,
I just have a bite and it makes me feel really good.
How difficult is it to make a chocolate sphere?
Very challenging.
Tempering chocolate is so tricky, so...
..fingers crossed.
So, you've done this before, I assume.
I've practised it twice, so let's see if it turns out well.
Tempering chocolate,
balancing all these flavours, creating spheres out of moulds,
these are amazing techniques.
If he pulls it off, it'll be phenomenal.
It's like kids - the first one's always a bit iffy.
The first one never works.
What are you cooking, today?
I'm taking you back to the '80s... Right.
..to a time when I would go to the football with my dad
and the guilty pleasure would be
going and getting a pie and chips at half-time.
So, I'm giving you a posh pie and chips.
It's beef Wellington, which is the poshest pie I know.
How many beef Wellingtons have you cooked in your life?
Four, maybe five.
Very first time I'd done Wellington and I said to my son, "How was it?",
the youngest one said, "It reminds me of a song",
and he put his hand on my shoulder and he went...
# When you've tried your best but you don't succeed. #
So, we'll have to wait and see.
From about seven or eight, my dad would say,
"Right, Dean, there's the money.
"Go up and get the pies and the beef drink."
They would give you like a sweetie box or something to carry them back,
so that you didn't burn yourself.
Happy, exciting and fun memory.
And that's what made me come up with the tray
and how I'm going to serve it to the...to the judges, today.
Dean is doing a beef Wellington.
A fillet of beef covered with mushroom duxelle.
He's going to wrap the whole thing in a pancake
with ham around the outside,
and then, in puff pastry and he's going to bake it.
If Dean can get all this done, I'll be amazed.
But the important thing about a pie -
the pastry is crispy, the meat is lovely and soft.
A beef Wellington is one of the great treats
but it's a very challenging thing to cook
and it's so disappointing if it doesn't work.
Just 15 minutes left. 15 minutes.
If it should be in the oven, get it in the oven.
You're struggling here, aren't you? Yeah, just...
How long do they normally take to cook?
About 18, 21 minutes, maybe.
We're getting there, just got to get chips in now.
It's tough but we can do it.
And it's stuck to the bottom of the pan, never mind.
How is the bearnaise coming along?
Getting there.
That'll have to do.
Ticking off every element I need to get.
I think we're OK, so far.
Ladies and gentlemen, you have just four minutes.
Not great, not great.
The really fiddly, technical things didn't work out as well as I hoped.
You need to be able to find a place to plate up
cos you're going to run out of time. OK.
At least get something up, OK? OK.
Not perfect but...
..I had fun, today.
Where's the third one?
I could only get two in in time.
It just was getting away from me.
That's it. Time's up. Everybody stop.
HE EXHALES HEAVILY
Yeah, good? Yeah. Good.
You good? Yeah.
Hannah's dish is based on her favourite fast-food burger.
Pan-fried fillet steak
topped with a gruyere and mozzarella cheese slice
and tempura gherkins on a sesame seed flatbread
with bacon jam with charred baby gem lettuce,
mustard, vinegar and mayonnaise burger sauce
and triple-cooked fries.
Your beef is cooked really, really well.
I like your chips in this little paper carton
because you've stuffed them all in while they're hot,
which means they sort of go slightly soggy
but they're still crispy on the ends.
Your burger sauce has smoke going through it.
I really like the sharp vinegar through it as well.
And that goes really nicely with a piece of beef and with your chips.
I think you've done a great job.
I'm loving your bacon jam on your sesame flatbread.
The saltiness of bacon, almost goes treacly sweet afterwards.
I'm really, really impressed by your cheese and your imagination.
I think there's very good work in here.
I love this.
The gherkin tempura are fabulous.
I love your charred lettuce.
You stayed true to the original idea, so I congratulate you on this.
It's a bit of a triumph.
HANNAH:Thank you.
I'm really happy. Really, really happy.
I'd quite like to bottle the feeling
and just keep it for when I'm miserable
cos it is the best high ever.
Inspired by his love of supermarket prawn crackers
and sweet chilli sauce,
Farokh has served roasted and deep-fried prawns
with a prawn, cream cheese and dill dumpling
in a prawn and chilli broth
with a prawn and celery cracker.
The prawn with the prawn head and the bisque and the cracker,
I think is lovely.
When the cream cheese comes out of the dumpling,
that makes the sort of creamy mixture with dill.
So, we've almost got this sort of classic French bisque with dill.
It's an interesting dish, and I want to keep on delving into it.
However, the promise of sweet chilli I don't quite get.
The making of your dumpling is really clever.
I've never seen prawn flesh used like that to mould into a shape.
I particularly like your cracker.
I think that's another brilliant idea.
Your technique is clever.
Your original ideas are fascinating.
I really like this.
It's a really generous dish.
You've got that big, fat, juicy prawn.
It's cooked just...just right
and I really love the crunch of your very cleverly made tapioca cracker.
As a dish, it's rich and deeply flavoursome,
but it is so separated from the inspiration
that that's my only element of disappointment.
You've taken an idea of the prawn cracker with a sweet chilli sauce
and you poshed it up so much that there's almost no relation to it.
Is a terrible if I say I'm not feeling great?
I think I should've done better and I could've done better
and I didn't and that's sad.
Radha's guilty pleasure is a chocolate orange at Christmas.
She's made a fudge brownie on chocolate soil
with dark chocolate sauce
and kumquats filled with orange liqueur Chantilly cream
served with an orange sorbet.
What I like about your chocolate orange...
..is that the two are divided,
so they kind of join together in the mouth.
Then, you've got orange Chantilly cream
with what I think is a very nicely made brownie,
and then, you've got the texture of the soil,
which I really like, actually.
So, dare I say, I think this is fabulous.
My favourite bit is the fact that you've actually taken something
like a kumquat and put Chantilly cream in it,
because that's exciting.
It probably shouldn't work but I think it's delicious,
especially with the chocolate.
Your sorbet is absolutely superb.
It's like getting the juice from a chilled orange
squirted onto your tongue.
And then, to have a little crisp chocolate texture underneath -
not too sweet - is really, really nice.
This is jolly good work.
Thank you.
For someone who is a chocolate orange sceptic,
this is a very clever way of making it not just palatable,
but really, truly supremely delicious.
Gregg and William said that they don't like chocolate orange
and I managed to convert them, so I'm feeling very happy.
Buzzing!
As a homage to days out at the football,
eating pie and chips with his dad,
Dean has cooked beef Wellington
with duck fat chips and a bearnaise sauce.
Dean, why have we only got two?
I just think I gave myself too much to do and I got the timings wrong.
It just didn't go to plan, today.
The pastry on the outside of the Wellington is not cooked enough.
The beef inside has not steamed enough,
which means the centre of it's absolutely cold.
The bearnaise sauce, you've used just raw white vinegar in there
and that's really quite sharp.
I appreciate all the hard work.
It's a big thing to try to do in an hour and a half.
But, yeah, it hasn't worked for you. Yeah.
Whilst I actually like the cooking of the...of the beef,
there's too much of it and slightly too overseasoned.
Your chips, on the other hand,
I mean, they are unbelievably delicious.
Crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside.
So, I congratulate you on the chips.
Well done.
This is everything you need for a good Wellington
but it just needs more cooking.
You just ran out of time.
Gave yourself too much to do.
I pushed myself probably too far, today.
I'm big enough to know when you've not done good enough
and today just wasn't my day.
Inspired by a peanut chocolate bar,
Mark has made a tempered chocolate sphere
filled with chocolate mousse and peanut and cashew nougat
on a roasted hazelnut praline with a miso caramel sauce.
Oh. Oh, you clever boy.
There we go.
Mate, brilliant work. Look at this!
Look at this!
You go through chocolate into almost soft nougat
that's slightly toffee flavoured
and you finish with a salty, crunchy nut.
Mark, you are back with a bang.
That is fantastic.
You tempered chocolate very, very well.
We've got that lovely, shiny dome of chocolate on the outside.
What's inside, though, is really lovely.
Chocolate mousse, which is really rich and dark with cocoa.
Love the brittle underneath.
The textures are good, the flavours are good, the concept's good.
Mark, it's a great dish.
The way that the sphere melted,
when we poured over that hot sauce, was really beautiful.
And you've elevated that famous bar into a dessert
that could be famous for being on the menu of a restaurant.
And as an amateur chef, that's an amazing achievement.
WHISPERS:Thank you.
Wow.
Very emotional but very, very happy.
It feels like I'm in cloud nine.
I mean, getting positive feedback from William Sitwell,
I think it's incredible. It's thrilling.
Martin has recreated his favourite takeaway burger
with a Caribbean twist.
Beer-battered haddock in Jamaican coca bread with tartare sauce
served with chilli salt fries and coleslaw.
I really love your bread but there's no way I could eat all of that.
Your coleslaw doesn't have quite enough bite.
It's not quite fresh enough
to alleviate the heaviness of the Filet-o-Fish.
The chips are a bit sort of pale.
They look limp and they are inedible.
So, this just hasn't worked for me.
MARTIN:OK.
The tartare's tasty. That's good.
But you need lashings of sauce
and we've got a little tiny smear here of tartare sauce.
It needs to be ample.
And I'm sort of sad that you haven't made mayonnaise from scratch,
but used mayonnaise out of a jar.
I mean, it's MasterChef, after all. I know, I should have.
The fish is cooked nicely.
I really, really like your bread.
But we've got a batter that's too thick.
It remains a good idea.
It just needs some more care and attention.
I'm disappointed.
That was probably the weakest of my dishes.
I definitely could've done better on that one.
WILLIAM:Well, thank you very much.
It's been a really interesting day.
But there's been fantastic flavour, really good fun.
I really appreciate the hard work you put into it.
We've now got a job to do.
We have to make a decision.
Two of you, of course, are leaving the competition.
Thank you very much. Off you go.
We are looking for the last four quarterfinalists
of this year's competition. Right now we've got three who are safe
and three I believe are at risk.
Mark has downright amazed me.
That chocolate sphere was just extraordinary.
He poured over hot sauce to melt it into a thing of beauty.
I think it was really clever.
There was texture, there was flavour, there was ambition.
I think Mark has got himself a place in the quarterfinal. Absolutely.
I don't like chocolate orange. Neither does William.
But that dessert by Radha, that was different class.
Very well made chocolate brownie.
And then I loved her orange sorbet.
I think she's shown great work.
Radha's got herself a quarterfinal place.
Hannah's take on the Big Mac I thought was great.
What really, really impressed me and actually made me smile
was the way she'd made that slice of orange cheese.
I thought the burger sauce was great
and the chips she had put inside a cardboard carton so they went
slightly soggy in the middle and they still had the crispy ends.
I thought it was fun and I thought it was well presented.
Hannah deserves a place in the quarterfinal.
Farokh said that his guilty pleasure was prawn crackers
with sweet chilli sauce.
He made a very nice prawn bisque,
and that cracker was clever.
But it didn't resemble or taste anything like
a prawn cracker and sweet chilli sauce.
Dean, he wanted to do the poshest pie in the world,
so we got a beef Wellington,
we ended up with two beef Wellingtons, not three.
He made nice chips, but that beef Wellington,
the pastry wasn't cooked enough.
The beef inside wasn't cooked enough. It was a disaster.
My heart goes out to Dean. I like what he was attempting.
He just ran out of time.
Martin gave us a dish which was inspired by the Filet-O-Fish.
The fish flaked away well, it was cooked nicely,
but the batter was very, very thick.
The bread was great, but we didn't have enough tartare sauce inside,
and he didn't even make his own mayonnaise.
If I go home at this stage, I'm still going to hold my head up high
and go, "You know what? I did everything I could possibly do,
"so I'll take that."
I'm hoping they want to keep me around.
I've got quite a few things in store, so let's hope, let's hope.
If I was given another opportunity to get through to that quarterfinal,
I would bite your hand off for it.
I would love to stay.
Well done.
We really admire your ambition and your hard work,
believe me, we do. Thank you very, very much indeed.
There was one cook today who was simply outstanding.
Mark, congratulations, you've got yourself a quarterfinal place.
There were then two other people
we felt delivered great food with real style
worthy of a MasterChef quarterfinal place.
Radha.
Hannah.
Congratulations.
One more quarterfinal place left.
Farokh.
Congratulations.
Martin, Dean,
thank you very much for a great competition.
You're leaving us. Thank you.
Naturally disappointed at going home,
but it just didn't work for me today.
It doesn't take the shine off
how great it's been to come to MasterChef and cook in the kitchen.
You know, I might get a job making chips somewhere.
No regrets whatsoever.
It's something which I'll treasure for the rest of my life.
Been an absolutely wonderful experience,
and I'm excited to get straight back into a kitchen.
Aaah! I can't believe it!
I am still here.
I am absolutely loving it.
The more difficult it gets, the more I enjoy it,
which is a bit weird.
MasterChef quarterfinalist has got a pretty good ring to it, hasn't it?
I'll be carrying that one around quite proudly forever.
I can't stop smiling. To call myself a MasterChef quarterfinalist
is just absolutely amazing.
Great day today.
I'm going to celebrate with a good glass of red wine.
Can call ourselves quarterfinalists. I know!
That's my middle name, so... THEY LAUGH
Next time, it's the quarterfinal,
and Radha, Mark, Hannah and Farokh
face their toughest challenge yet...
That is so off-the-charts delicious.
..as they battle for a place in the semifinals.
Ooh! Oh!
You've been squashed.
I find this adorable.