It's finals week on MasterChef...
...and this year's five best cooks remain.
MasterChef is all-consuming,
it's taken over my world and I love it.
This process has been the most
challenging thing I've ever done,
I've not slept properly in weeks.
The fight is going to be extremely tough,
even the smallest mistake could be your ticket home.
Tonight, just one challenge separates them
from a place in the last four...
Absolutely ace.
...and the chance to experience a
culinary adventure like no other.
The wheels have come off.
Let's get some energy in here.
That is brilliant.
And you can't fault it.
I thought my life before MasterChef
was hectic enough.
But this is just beyond imagination.
You can do things if you push yourself.
I must be doing something right,
I'm still hanging on, so, yeah.
At the end of the week, only one will be crowned
MasterChef Champion 2022.
We've seen some extraordinary food from all five of them,
now they're going to have to fight for it.
This is finals week.
Welcome to finals week. We know we have got five
incredible cooks in here — we know that.
And at the end of this week,
one of you will be this year's champion.
But first, you've got to prove your worth.
So today you've got to deliver
the dish inspired by someone
or something that means something very special to you.
Now, the big thing...
...at the end of this, one of you will be going home.
1 hour, 45 minutes.
Let's cook.
Ooh.
Sarah has had a good, solid competition so far.
She shows good classic cookery technique
and she likes to champion the marvellous produce from Scotland.
Good on her, I love it.
So my inspiration for the dish
is the photographer Ansel Adams.
I lived in California for a time
and he's a Californian photographer.
All of his compositions are in black and white
and they're really pure and there's real
clarity in them all and I kind of wanted
a dish that really reflected that.
So my dish is a shellfish consomme
with crab meat, razor clams, clams,
mussels, some Scottish langoustine
and then I've got squid ink tuile.
So how do we see Ansel Adams in your dish?
So, it's about clarity.
So the clarity of the consomme —
hopefully — and then a nod to the kind of ingredients
that you get there and the ingredients
that obviously we share in Scotland.
Consomme, like Ansel Adams photos
has to be crystal clear,
it's got to have clarity.
Usually clarifications happens with egg white.
Whip up lots and lots of egg white,
drop it into a pot, it comes up to the boil
and then that way the whole thing is clarified.
It can be done in an hour and 20 minutes
but it's really, really pushing it.
25 minutes have gone.
Eddie has an Indian family, and they travel led extensively
in France, and his cookery mirrors both those things —
Indian spicing, French cookery technique —
it's a very winning combination.
Eddie is doing butter duck, a take
on a classic Indian dish called butter chicken.
Butter sauce has to be rich with tomato,
lots of garlic and spice.
On the side of that, he's going to do a coriander,
mint and green chilli chutney.
We're getting a little salad
inside a Jerusalem artichoke shell.
There's lots of danger points here.
That skin on that Jerusalem artichoke
has to be crispy, otherwise can be tough.
That duck's got to be cooked really well
and rendered beautifully.
That sauce has to be rich to be able to go with the duck, but not
too much cream that it becomes too fatty on the plate.
It sounds anything but simple.
The inspiration for this dish, please.
It's an Indian film and it's called The Lunchbox.
The film is centred around a lady called Ila
who has become unhappy in her relationship
and she sends one of these tiff in tins
to her husband every day.
And the tin is misdelivered and it goes to the wrong man
and he is wowed by her food.
And they start communicating
and they build a brand—new friendship.
And this friendship gives her the courage to make a change.
And that is really inspirational for me
because I believe that everyone
should do what makes them happy in life.
That's a lovely story.
Taste this.
The competition means everything to my life
because food is not just an interest of mine...
...it's my passion, and it's one of my
biggest beliefs that you must follow your dreams in life,
you must do what makes you happy.
loan is really focused, he's a great cook.
He likes to play with flavours, he likes to play with technique,
he is daring.
So today we're going to have a beef fillet
marinated in miso and sake
with a wasabi pomme puree,
a fried oyster and also
a kombu and shiitake jus.
We haven't seen Japanese influence
from you before, have we? No, no.
Where's this come from?
So, Tom Daley's inspired this dish.
He is someone who shows great
determination to actually succeed.
So it's his fourth Olympics that he's been to
and, eventually, he gets gold in japan
in the in the Summer Olympics. Right!
Tokyo Olympics. Absolutely. Fabulous.
Inspired by Tom Daley, you dive in. Thank you.
This is a real celebration in terms of LGBTQ+.
Tom Daley is a huge inspiration
and I wanted to really hone in on
the work that he's done within the community.
It's something that I've worked within and I really want
to demonstrate that within my dish today.
We have got a classic dish, really —
carrots and beetroot served with a jus.
But miso on the outside of that fillet of beef,
which is salty, mashed potato flavoured with wasabi.
That wasabi is horseradish
and it's ferociously hot.
And then he's going to make a sauce
flavoured with shiitake mushrooms and kombu.
Kombu being thick piece of seaweed.
He's got to complement that beef fillet and not overpower it.
Hopefully, OK.
One hour gone,
you've got 45 minutes to go.
Radha, our youngest cook in the competition,
she was unsure about her ability —
well, now the passion is starting to flow.
What I love is when she draws on the Indian flavours
that she learned from her mum.
Vegetarian Indian flavoured dishes,
they are fantastic.
So today, the inspiration is Rudyard Kipling —
his poem If is about believing in yourself.
And obviously, at the start of this competition,
I struggled to believe in myself,
so that means a lot to me.
My dish is going to be a biryani.
I'm going to serve with that a masala tomato sauce,
a puff pastry disc, a kachumber,
which is a cucumber and tomato sort of salad
and then a masala lassi.
A lassi — a creamy drink flavoured with what?
Salt and masala.
It's like Marmite —
my mum and dad absolutely love it,
I'm on the fence with it.
Radha's cooking for us biryani,
a rice dish flavoured with jackfruit
and potatoes, which have all been
deep-fried first, to give texture.
She's made a spice paste mixture
with lots and lots of onions,
chillies, cumin and coriander.
She's added to that the rice
and it's going to turn into a lovely cake.
On the side of Radha's dish we've also got
a spiced lassi, which is salty.
Now a salty drink alongside
a biryani with sweet tomato,
it could work.
But she herself says it could divide the crowd.
Oh. 30 minutes to go.
Wow. Ah, spicy.
Pookie, amazing, one of the most inventive,
creative contestants I have ever seen.
She also wants to indulge all our senses,
she's completely different from anybody else.
What is your dish, please, Pookie?
I'm doing saving life at sea.
This is dedicated to
Royal National Lifeboat Institute.
I never heard of the organisation
until the day that my husband rang help.
So I want to do the dish that represent
the boat that went to save my husband.
Wow.
Pookie is making for us what she calls choo chee fish,
now, choo chee fish is a piece of fish
with a red curry sauce.
And with that, we've also got some little dumplings
which've got squid ink skin around the outside
and then there's flavour of the choo chee fish —
red curry and fish — which is inside that dumpling.
However, salmon's got to be cooked beautifully
and really lovely and soft.
That sauce has to be vibrant
and red curry should be hot.
So the salmon is the orange
of the RNLI boat.
The rice, the blue of the sea,
and the dumpling will be the rock or
the island around our country.
I want to show that vision
in my head onto the plate.
You've got 15 minutes to go.
15 minutes, please, everybody.
Consomme has not worked,
it hasn't clarified properly,
so...no good.
That's it, that's it.
I just hope this is done.
Getting on just fine.
Duck's ready, just resting.
Oh, that hot?
I left it on there.
Have I burned it, though? Oh!
You have under ten minutes.
That means you should be thinking about plating it.
Three minutes, everybody.
That's it, time's up.
Stop, everybody, well done.
Eddie, please.
Inspired by the Indian film The Lunchbox,
Eddie is serving roasted duck breast
with pickled kohlrabi,
a coriander and mint yoghurt,
tamarind chutney and Jerusalem artichoke chaat,
finished with a spiced butter sauce.
Boom.
Absolutely ace.
Duck's cooked beautifully, butter sauce across the top,
rich with tomatoes, lashings of garlic
and the tiniest amount of cream
to make it really, really rich.
I've got sweet, salty, sour,
nutty, vibrant all on one plate
and it's cooked beautifully. I love it.
Your little Jerusalem artichokes,
I think, are a divine little snack.
The kohlrabi, you've put so much
sharp, sweet pickling.
You've also got little bits of fennel seed in there, as well,
this absolute burst of flavour. Well done.
Thank you.
It's just, wow, what an amazing feeling,
it doesn't get much better than this.
I love it, it's addictive, it really means a lot.
Well done. Thanks a lot.
loan's Tom Daley-inspired dish
is miso and sake infused fillet of beef
topped with crispy breaded oysters
with wasabi mash, sesame carrots,
beetroot, and a kombu seaweed
and shiitake mushroom sauce.
I'm very happy with the cookery of your fillet
and I love the beef with the oyster.
But the beef hasn't had enough chance to rest,
so it's leaking blood into the bottom of your mashed potato
and your presentation needs to be smarter
because it's looking a little bit like meat and two veg.
The miso on that beef, that probably needs some on the plate,
underneath so that when you actually eat it,
you can pick up the flavour of miso. Yeah.
Kombu is seaweed — all that's going to be is a seasoning,
you're never really going to taste it.
If you're going to go Japanese, don't try to be subtle.
OK, yeah.
I was pleased with... I'd really infused the flavours I wanted to do.
John obviously said he thinks I could have gone even further,
which is something I'll take
and obviously learn from.
Dedicated to the work of the RNLI
and presented with sea mist,
Pookie has made choo chee salmon —
fillet of pan-fried salmon served
with blue jasmine rice,
steamed choo chee salmon dumplings with samphire,
prawn crackers and crispy salmon skin,
finished with a red curry sauce.
Your imagination and your theatre
is stunning, as always, and I love it.
Your sauce is an absolute knockout.
Anything dipped into that comes
alive in an explosion of flavour.
I love the crispy skin —
you've managed to get sweetness in there as well as saltiness,
and I think they're absolutely delicious.
Your little steamed dumpling is really
intense and full of flavour.
These little crackers adding crunch and texture
and those with the sauce are brilliant.
But the salmon across the top of
that rice is going a little bit dry.
Feeling disappointed.
Because of the tray of this salmon
that I put on to rest after cooking perfectly...
Oh, I just want to kick myself.
Taking inspiration from the writer Rudyard Kipling,
Radha has cooked a spiced jackfruit biryani
topped with raisins and pomegranate,
served with a masala tomato sauce,
a puff pastry seeded disc,
kachumber salad
and a glass of masala lassi.
I'm not at all sure
about this creamy, spicy drink —
it's not for me — but I'm really enjoying this biryani.
I think the jackfruit is really quite clever,
it's got a lovely texture to it.
I particularly like the sweet bits I'm getting,
the little raisins, the pomegranate.
I'm really into this dish, I think this is a great dish.
Thank you.
Great flavours, sweet, sharp,
pastry's lovely and light,
cooked all the way through.
My cheeks are starting to sting,
my throat's starting to feel that heat of chilli.
Your drink, the flavour of the herbs are really coming through
and I quite like that because it
gives me a bit of respite.
Thank you.
I gave everything in that dish.
Everything turned out as well as it could have done,
so I am really, really happy.
Inspired by the photographer Ansel Adams,
Sarah has made a shellfish consomme
served with crab, clams, razor clams,
langoustine, mussels and rice,
topped with a squid ink tuile.
I love the presentation, Sarah,
I think it's absolutely beautiful.
But you have this look of trepidation upon your face.
My consomme has not clarified.
Right.
This dish has the makings
of something really stupendous.
In there, you've got very strong crab meat, which is great.
Those razor clams are cooked beautifully,
they're lovely and soft, the clams are delicious.
It's so close to being glorious.
It's got real elegance.
Every single bit of shellfish is
beautifully prepared, beautifully cooked.
The broth is subtle,
it's got a slight fennel flavour.
It's a really lovely,
lovely light dish.
It wasn't an absolute disaster by any means.
But you put your heart and soul into this,
it's such a takeover of your life,
I mean, it really is, it's so all-consuming.
You just want to do your best.
The start of this year's finals,
five incredible cooks, and we said they had to deliver.
And on the most part, I think they did.
Full of inspiration, full of heart,
full of passion.
We have to make a decision.
Eddie, what he's got is a love
of classic French technique
and Indian spicing know-how
and combining them absolutely brilliantly.
I mean, I don't see a fault in Eddie's food in this round.
Eddie's going through. Absolutely.
I think Radha's dish today just looked
fantastic and it tasted great.
She knows how to draw the flavour
out of absolutely everything.
For me, Radha's got herself a place in the next round.
We've now got a discussion
about Pookie, Sarah and loan.
Pookie is an extraordinary talent.
We had a salmon RNLI lifeboat
sitting on a sea of blue rice.
The sauce was wonderful.
The clumpling, absolutely beautiful.
But she took her eye off that fish.
Sarah's dish, I thought, was an absolute celebration
of beautiful shellfish and beautiful
shellfish cookery, but
she couldn't clarify her consomme —
it was a broth.
loan, we had really nicely cooked beef.
But with that beef, we didn't get
the flavour of miso, we were
promised shiitake mushrooms and
kombu, as well, in the sauce — we didn't get that.
We didn't get the Japanese flavours we were promised.
To leave at this stage, it would be really tough.
So hopefully I've done enough to stay in the competition today.
Oh, I feel like this, just upset
but I hope that I've done enough to stay
but I don't know now.
I just have to wait and see.
Yeah, I'm feeling nervous, I am. Yeah.
I would be devastated — I want to keep going, obviously.
An incredible start to finals week.
You five are talented indeed.
What you've all cooked in this competition
so far has been outstanding.
Two of you today
really stood out.
Eddie...
...Radha...
...absolutely top drawer.
You're final four.
Congratulations. Thank you.
loan, Pookie,
Sarah...
...one of you is leaving the competition.
The contestant leaving us...
...loan.
OK.
I know you're probably disappointed now
but I hope you are going to be
incredibly proud of what you've done when you look back at this. Yeah.
Well done, loan. Take care.
loan, thank you for everything. Thank you.
Take great ca re.
Yeah, I'm gutted. It's been an incredible competition.
But absolutely proud.
It's tested me mentally,
it's tested me in terms of creativity
and also my cooking ability but it's improved me as a person.
Final four, ladies and gentlemen.
ALL: Yeah!
Oh, my God.
Feeling so emotional.
Oh, I cannot believe it,
I'm just, I'm going to faint.
Just an absolute...
A blessed moment for me.
Honestly, just genuinely really stunned
but so happy, really excited about what's coming next.
I'm really excited, very happy to tell you
that we are now sending you to the Emerald Isle —
you are on your way to southwest Ireland,
to the world renowned Ballymaloe Cookery School
to experience first-hand the legacy
of the late, great Myrtle Allen.
You, I'm telling you, are in for a treat.
Standing proudly on 300 acres of farmland
near Cork in southeast Ireland
is Ballymaloe.
With an internationally acclaimed hotel,
restaurant and cookery school,
it's considered the birthplace
of modern Irish cuisine,
thanks to one remarkable woman — Myrtle Allen.
In 1964, Myrtle, a farmer's wife,
opened up her dining room as a restaurant.
She was entirely self—taught
but it quickly became a great success,
serving generous, uncomplicated food
that championed the best of her farms and local area's produce.
She was such a pioneer.
Doing farm to fork from scratch,
cooking everything in-season
and cooking it really simply,
long before any of that was sexy, you know?
And at a time here in Ireland
where we really had a huge
inferiority complex about our food.
In 1975, Myrtle became one
of the first Irish chefs ever
to be awarded a Michelin star.
And although she passed away in 2018,
her legacy lives on through the Ballymaloe Cookery School,
run by her daughter-in-law Darin a
and her brother Rory,
who both trained in her kitchen.
Good morning. You're so welcome.
Welcome to Ireland, welcome to Cork, welcome to Ballymaloe.
So over 60 years ago, my mother-in-law,
Myrtle Allen, decided to open a restaurant
here in their family home at Ballymaloe.
And at that time, men were chefs
and women couldn't get into top restaurant kitchens.
So the neighbours thought this was
a very peculiar thing to do.
And she wrote the menu every day,
depending on what food was in the walled garden over there
or what lovely fish came in from the boats in Ballycotton.
And we're very excited to show you some of the ethos of Mrs Allen,
which is reflected in what we do to this very day.
So over the next couple of clays, we're hoping to inspire you
in the same sort of way that Myrtle inspired us.
So let's start our adventure.
Tomorrow night, the finalists will cook for leading figures
from the Irish food world at a special VIP dinner honouring Myrtle.
Is this is your first time in Ireland? First time.
But first, to help inspire them,
they're spending time with Rory and Darin a...
Oh, they're gorgeous.
...visiting the surrounding farmland...
I'm a city girl in a farm
and I think I'm rocking it, so...
...and coastal fishing villages...
It's a beautiful place, isn't it?
Yeah, it is — really beautiful.
...where Myrtle drew so much of her inspiration
and all of her raw ingredients.
Look what I've got, guys.
It's a fabulous monkfish.
Wow. Have you ever seen more beautiful fish in all your life?
It's quite possibly one of the ugliest fish known to man.
When I started cooking in the kitchen in Ballymaloe,
we'd be anxiously waiting for the fish to arrive
from the pier in Ballycotton,
and the menu wouldn't be written until that point.
So sometimes, forget about six o'clock — ten to seven,
ten past seven, even though dinner started at seven o'clock.
And Ms Allen was all about that — it was the immediacy,
how quickly we could get the fish from Ballycotton
and onto the guests' plates at Ballymaloe.
From the catch of the day, Myrtle's kitchen would turn out dishes based
on the classics, like Monkfish with a cream and red pepper sauce,
which is still a favourite on the menu today.
Myrtle was also renowned for her sweet trolley...
...which used the dairy produced on her farm...
Wow.
Never had butter that tastes like that before,
it's so rich, it's delicious.
...herbs and fruits from the garden...
So here is the formal herb garden.
It's fantastic, as you know,
to have some lovely fresh herbs to cook with.
...as well as foraged ingredients from the local countryside.
I remember children would come to the kitchen door,
local children, with little tin cans
full of wild blackberries or mushrooms
and she'd come out and buy whatever from them
and then she'd put it on the menu.
And you might say, "Well, so?"
But, I mean, this is in the 1960s
when, basically, the word foraging we'd never even heard,
and when people didn't serve that kind of food in a restaurant.
Using foraged ingredients wasn't limited
to nearby fields and hedgerows.
OK, guys, here we are in Ballycotton Bay.
I swim here, we walk here and we also collect food —
and there are treasures here, I'll tell you.
There's one particular treasure that we're offering
this afternoon, and it's a little seaweed called carrageenan.
Oh, look, there's some just at your foot.
So you harvest this, leaving lots behind.
Here, have a little taste.
Carrageenan seaweed was traditionally used in Ireland
as a gelatine to make a simple milk pudding.
It has a kind of herbal quality to it.
Yes, it's herbal and it's quite tough, actually.
Isn't it? Mm. Yeah.
But Myrtle turned it into one of her most celebrated dishes.
The carrageenan moss pudding
is something that we get very carried away about.
You know, that dish is really the essence of what we do here,
in terms of the immediacy of the ingredients, our own milk,
the carrageenan from the beach.
Utter simplicity, but complete purity.
The idea that you would have put this putting on a restaurant menu
was just ridiculous because a lot of people's
expefience of carrageenan moss pudding
was having it at school, where it was that terrifying
confection of squash-ball-like consistency.
You know what I mean? You could have play squash with it, really.
OK, so I'm about to become immersed in the water
and my basket has gone floating.
See you, basket.
I'm definitely walking in the footsteps of food history here.
I mean, Myrtle Allen, what she set up so many years ago
was absolutely incredible.
Her concept of farm to fork was pioneering,
so with her creativity and her innovation in mind,
I feel hugely inspired.
I've known about Darin a Allen,
I've known about her ethos and about Myrtle for a long time,
so this has been actually absolutely thrilling for me.
I've been slightly overwhelmed by the whole process —
actually getting to meet her, it's like getting to meet a rock star.
It's day two
and the finalists arrive at the Ballymaloe Cookery School.
Great to see you.
Really hope you've been enjoying it,
looks like you have.
More importantly, we really hope you've been learning.
You are cooking a dinner tonight
that celebrates the life of the incredible Myrtle Allen.
Now, guests include one of Ireland's most famous Michelin star chefs,
an Irish food historian,
local producers who supplied and knew Myrtle,
and two of the people that have mentored you so far,
of course — Rory and Darin a.
It's a massive occasion, but the idea here is to celebrate
the extraordinary food of Ireland
and the extraordinary food that is just all around us.
Good luck.
Following in Myrtle's footsteps,
the finalist must create tonight's menu
from ingredients sourced on the farm
and the local fishing village.
Sarah has been given artichokes
and the local Gubbeen cheese to create a starter...
I'm looking for nasturtium buds —
they taste like wasabi, like really
peppery and mustardy — for a little dress salad on the side.
...while vegetarian Radha is preparing
a fish course made from local smoked mackerel.
Well, I don't know, I don't know the names of them,
I'm just going off taste.
Pookie will be cooking a loin of
local Irish lamb to create a main course.
This is a pineapple sage, the leaf,
it smell of pineapple and the flower.
It got aromatic and the colour
of the tropic.
And to finish the meal, Eddie is using
the Ballymaloe Dairy and fruit for dessert.
This is sweet cicely and it's got very faint aniseed flavour
and I'm going to infuse my milk ice cream
to go with my apple dessert.
Our four finalists now have to work together,
they're running that kitchen all by themselves.
They are controlling their own destiny,
they are controlling their own service.
The finalists each have three hours...
Right, looks good.
...and it's Sarah who will kick off the event.
I'm going to be doing a Jerusalem artichoke tart
with a Gubbeen sabayon, so kind of like a custard.
I'm going to be doing that with some of the Romanesco,
which we saw with Darin a in the garden yesterday.
A raisin puree with capers and port
and some crispy bacon for just a little bit of texture.
The whole inspiration for this originally was cauliflower cheese.
Right. Which is one of my favourite things. OK.
How do raisins and capers go to cauliflower cheese?
Well, just with cheese, we always have, like,
raisins or something with our cheese board at home, as well,
so it kind of came of that — it's lots of different things
bouncing about in here. Yeah.
It's a cold starter, which is great.
However, cold Jerusalem artichoke puree
with a cold cheese sauce —
it's an unusual thing.
Man, that's really dry.
My pastry just feels really dry and crumbly,
I'm trying to keep it really short,
but I'm... Yeah, I'm kind of struggling with it a little bit.
Vegetarian Radha is using Ballycotton
smoked mackerel to make fishcakes with a crushed pea mash,
olive and caper butter and a poached egg.
How are you doing? Bit nervous
I think because I've not cooked fish before,
that's where my confidence is at the moment.
But your fish is cooked?
Yeah, my fish is cooked, it's smoked.
I didn't think about it that way. Yeah, think about it that way. Yeah.
This little mix here. Yes.
By the looks, we've got some sorrel, summer savory,
yarrow, chervil —
what's the inspiration here?
I wanted to sort of keep this dish as fresh as possible
so I'm going to serve it with a salad.
So that is all of the salad which was picked from the garden.
I'm doing lamb but I'm taking
on the colour of Ireland, which is green.
So we're going to do lamb with the emerald curry, green curry.
Her green curry sauce, she's improvising,
using foraged herbs from the garden...
Wood sorrel.
...alongside more traditional ingredients
like Thai lemongrass...
...and coconut milk.
How do you adapt these local ingredients
to your Thai-inspired food?
Well, I've been testing a lot of herbs
and I found some ingredients
that I could use, like wood sorrel, which give the acidy sourness to it
and that can replace with my lime leaf.
Pookie wants to do a Thai-inspired dish,
and I love it that she's finding local
ingredients to match her Thai flavours.
But those ingredients that she's playing with now
are completely and utterly untested,
so she is cooking blind.
I'm making a rough puff pastry
for my apple Mille—feuille using butter
and dairy from the farm and seasonal apples
and a whiskey caramel.
Classic French idea, but with an Irish twist.
With the rough puff chilling, Eddie can now make a start
on an apple terrine that he'll serve alongside the Mille-feuille.
What sort of apples are you using?
They're golden delicious.
Presentation?
It's going to be like a classic Mille-feuille —
three layers of pastry with
creme patisserie, apple compote in there, as well.
The terrine is going to sit on the top layer.
And if the terrine doesn't set?
If it doesn't set, then we're going to have a mess.
An apple mess.
Eddie seems very, very confident.
But what he's got to get right is this
apple terrine — layers and layers and layers of apple
with caramel between them,
but when he cuts them, you'll see all the layers of apple in there
and that is going to be the thing that's going to make the difference.
With her shortcrust pastry chilled...
...Sarah must now carefully shape it into individual tart cases.
Sarah, you look a little concerned. What's the matter?
Er, I'm just trying to get my pastry done.
I'm trying to keep it really short, I want it to be really crumbly,
but that's making it really difficult to roll out.
Right now, the look on Sarah's face is slightly troubling me.
There is no tart without a pastry.
And, at the moment, that pastry is hard to handle, it's so short.
This pastry's not working.
On the fish course, Radha must make sure her fishcake mix of potato,
onions and herbs doesn't have any bones.
Pookie, are you free to taste this for me?
Just taste that.
Has that got enough salt and pepper in it?
Or more? More.
More salt and pepper? Both.
Radha is taking herself well out of her comfort zone,
cooking with fish as a vegetarian.
Do you mind trying that just for seasoning? No, not at all.
So she's very, very much relying
on the people around her to give her some guidance.
There's enough salt, maybe a bit pepper. More pepper.
OK, thank you.
They really are working as a team.
I've not tasted them, so if the seasoning's off,
I'll be blaming them. No, I'm joking!
Ah.
Why don't you tell me?
I can smell burning. Yeah, that.
Alongside Pookie's green lamb curry sauce,
she's roasting carrots and turnips to decorate her plate in the colours
of the Irish flag.
What are all the peas for? So I'm going to do the pea salad,
so that it will form part of...
...my flag.
So it's green from the pea salad,
white from the roasted turnip. Yes.
And the orange will be from the roasted carrot.
Rightio. Pookie, you think like nobody else!
On dessert... Ah!
...Eddie is juggling the two main
components of his apple Mille-feuille —
the creme patisserie and the apple compote
to go between the layers of pastry.
20 minutes.
To accompany the Mille-feuille,
Eddie is also making a milk ice cream
infused with sweet cicely — an aniseed—flavoured herb.
Ooh, sweet cicely. Yeah, I foraged it in the garden this morning.
Brilliant, I love sweet cicely! Fantastic.
Now I've resisted from this before, right?
But you are pretty much a steady Eddie, aren't you?
Yeah, yeah, I'm steady,
I like to keep cool, cool head, stick to my plan
and work diligently.
Eddie, I'm full of confidence at the moment, but let me tell
you something — that's normally a bad sign.
All right, lovely...
...jubbly!
Ah, you got 40 minutes on that first course.
Thanks, john.
On the starter, Sarah's artichokes are cooked.
More butter than you can wave a stick at,
that's how I roll.
And, having struggled with her pastry cases,
they now have time to chill.
You happy with your pastry now?
Yeah, I think it's going to be good.
Filling done?
I just need to stick the cream and the butter
in my Jerusalem artichoke and then I'm going to start on my sabayon.
We're winning, right? I think so.
As long as you're happy with your pastry.
I'm happy with the pastry.
But that doesn't mean you should slow down. No. All right.
Get out of my way, then. I'll get out of the way.
Radha is getting ahead, frying off her fishcakes,
while also turning her attention to the poached eggs.
The only concern I've got is, they need to have a runny centre.
In service, she'll need to serve eight
perfectly cooked eggs simultaneously.
So I'm prepping the poached eggs now,
so I'm just going to wrap it in clingfilm
and then four pans on the stove.
Why are you wrapping them in clingfilm?
For me, is the fastest way.
Who taught you how to do that? My dad.
Brilliant!
Ooh.
With time running short, Pookie still
has to butcher her lamb into a perfect round loin.
The lamb, not something that is cooked
very often in Thailand?
Maybe some Thai do it, but not usually.
So I don't eat lamb. OK.
I've not cooked lamb before, so it
will be the challenge for me, definitely.
You can do it, you know? Yeah.
There's half an hour until service, and the guests are arriving.
Myrtle was a giant of a person, really.
And to do what she did, at the time she did, what an influential person
she was in Irish food.
It's lovely, number one, to be celebrating her food
and to see what other people make of it.
Yeah, really, really looking forward to it.
Mrs Allen's food was so simple, yet
this is a cookery competition so you're going to want to do more,
you're going to want to embellish.
So I think there's going to have to be a certain amount of restraint.
I suppose what I will be keeping in mind
is what ingredients the contestants selected.
And then, of course, the simplicity of
really good cooking applied to those ingredients.
I'm really looking forward to lunch today.
Look, if I was within 30 miles of Ballymaloe,
I'd walk here for a lunch.
I will be looking at people not
changing the ingredients too much.
There's magic in the raw material.
Sarah. Yeah.
You know you go live in 25 minutes, right? Yeah.
You all right, kid? Yeah.
With service fast approaching,
Sarah is up against it.
She still has to separate her egg yolks
and make her Gubbeen cheese custard sabayon
filling for her tarts.
Sarah has to be on time,
she's got to call for help, she can't be proud.
Whoa, that's too hot.
Otherwise, service is going to be a problem.
You all right, Sarah? What's doing?
Oh, small disaster. Can I get brush, please?
Ooh.
Could someone make me a dress salad super quick?
Right, I'll do it for you if you want.
That would be amazing, Eddie, if you don't mind.
You got some olive oil here, have you, a bit of olive oil?
A bit of olive oil, yeah.
Do you want white wine vinegar?
Yeah, white wine vinegar would be awesome.
Black pepper and salt, as well.
That pastry is just not cooked.
Right, guys, my pastry is just not cooked,
I'm going to whack up the heat a bit.
It's been in there for 12 minutes longer than it needs to be.
Jerusalem artichoke tart.
This is great, actually, because when we went for a walk
around the gardens yesterday, they saw
the Jerusalem artichokes just ready to dig.
Gubbeen cheese is not something
I think you could necessarily easily make a sabayon out of,
but let's see what they do.
Right, there you go, there's your dressing. Thank you.
Pastry can often be a challenge for people, can't it?
So it's going to be interesting to see if the pastry is cooked enough
so we don't have a soggy bottom on the tart.
Yeah, that's about right.
Quite sure they will make sure that doesn't happen!
OK. You're OK, you got it, you got it.
Have you got a spare one?
No, I don't have a spare one.
It's a mess, it's a total mess.
How we doing?
The pastries are an absolute disaster.
I wanted to make it really short and it's just falling to pieces.
It tastes good.
That's good.
Oh, my Lord. Deep breath.
We will do this, yeah.
Right. Done?
Yeah. Well done, on time.
Service, please.
That was a disaster, man. It's OK.
It's OK.
I'm not going to swear...or cry.
Thanks.
Sarah has made a Jerusalem artichoke tart,
artichoke puree and a smoked Gubbeen cheese sabayon sauce,
topped with crispy bacon, raisin puree,
caramelised Romanesco tops and pumpkin seeds,
served with a picked garden salad.
It's not the neatest tart I've ever seen
but perhaps it tastes really well.
I think it's absolutely delicious.
I love the pastry — it's lovely and crumbly —
and the artichokes are just delicious.
I would tolerate any level of imperfection
in the constitution of that pastry
for the taste that I'm getting from it —
it's absolutely celestial.
The sabayon on top of it really lifts
the rest of the flavours, that bacon
is delicious and crispy, as are the pumpkin seeds.
The flavours all really worked together
and it's no joke, putting all that amount of things on the plate.
And I think the star of the show actually, here
in raising the flavour a little bit,
giving it a little peak is the raisin puree.
Yeah, I think it's a really great dish.
It just doesn't look right.
However, if you can overlook that,
this is a great combination
of flavours and it taste great.
With her fishcakes cooked and ready to plate,
Radha must now cook her eight poached eggs to perfection.
So far, so good but
I haven't poached my eggs yet, so that could be a different story,
depending on how they go.
The secret to a good fishcake is the right proportion
of smoked mackerel, not too potato-y and not too heavy.
Maybe a nice little crisp breadcrumb coating,
not too thick, not too thin.
For something so simple, it's actually not quite so simple.
(50, go, go, go, go.
With black olives and capers, you have to be very judicious
that you don't put too much in and overwhelm the other flavour.
Egg? Yeah.
Are your eggs cooked enough? No, they're not.
The eggs, you want something that's just perfectly poached
and that yolk just flowing down over everything
is probably the deal-breaker here.
Go, go, go, looking great.
Good job.
Come on, steady hand.
Yes.
Service, please.
Well done.
Oh, wow, that looks wonderful.
I mean, I've cooked my first ever fish dish, so I'm happy.
Radha has made smoked mackerel fishcakes
with a black olive and caper butter
on crushed pea mash, topped with a poached egg
and a garden herb salad.
I think it's absolutely fantastic, I love the green in the wintertime.
You know, I'd sell my soul for a pack of peas.
Ha-ha, ha-ha.
Um, oh, wonderful.
I think it's delicious, the fishcake is lovely and crunchy,
crispy on the outside and lovely, soft and flavoursome in the inside.
You can get the texture of the smoked mackerel
and it's all held nicely together.
I love the colour — they haven't been, you know,
afraid to really brown the fishcakes properly.
My egg was perfectly poached
and lovely and runny,
so I'd be very, very happy to eat
that fishcake every day of the week.
I think Radha's hit the brief really, really well here.
She's used the smoke mackerel
and it's strong but it's not too strong.
As a vegetarian, very good to get her friends around her
to taste it, to make sure it was right. This is a good dish.
Next is Pookie.
But she's left cooking her lamb to the last minute.
Don't have much time.
And, crucially, it needs to rest before it can be portioned.
I need a cornflour.
I never cooked lamb before,
so it's totally out of my comfort zone.
Really thrilled to see that she's decided to do
a little medley of seasonal vegetables.
That's definitely something that Myrtle
would be beaming down about, isn't it?
This is the coriander
and panko breadcrumb.
I'm doing the Emerald Isle lamb
so I want it to look green.
Happy with the way the lamb's cooked? Yes, I think so, yes.
Right. Go, then. Let's do it.
I'm loving the lamb.
There's your sauce. Thank you, honey.
Who doesn't like a curry?
A judicious use of spicing
is really, really important, I think,
because otherwise we're going to completely lose the lamb.
Oh, sorrel. Ah!
It looks like a shamrock.
Pookie, it looks great. Well done, you.
My first lamb.
Right, sorrel. Let's go. You're nearly there.
# Do the Irish way. #
Hooray! Service, please.
Oh!
That was crazy.
I hope that they enjoy the flavour, they enjoy the combination —
that I'm bringing Thailand to Ireland in the plate.
Pookie's served Emerald Isle lamb curry.
Herb-crusted lamb, green curry sauce flavoured with wood sorrel,
society garlic and lemongrass,
roast carrot, turnip,
and a pea salad,
all garnished with marigold,
pineapple sage and myrtle berries.
Don't we love the little wood sorrel leaf that looks like a shamrock,
the emblem of Ireland?
There's the green, white and orange in the vegetables.
Very sweet.
The lamb has a nice little crust on the outside
and she's cooked the lamb really well.
Many a restaurant chef would be very happy with that colour.
I also think the vegetables are delicious,
the lovely turnips and the carrot.
They're very nicely cooked.
How wonderful was it for Pookie
to attempt to make a Thai curry sauce with Irish ingredients?
And it had quite the little kick to it.
Number one, the creativity has to be applauded,
but I think our cook just underestimated the power
and the magic of a loin of Irish lamb.
And there was a little clash that took place,
and the green curry sauce won.
The lamb's cooked beautifully.
She's never cooked lamb before. Pookie's done a great job.
Last to serve is Eddie,
who's putting the finishing touches to his Irish whiskey caramel.
It can take more.
It's going to be very alcoholic.
My mother would have made an apple vol—au—vent
with lovely crispy puff pastry,
so this is quite similar to that with the Mille-feuille.
Definitely, a lot of this is in the pastry, you know.
A lovely, flaky puff pastry Mille-feuille,
and then all the rest will be a bonus, really.
Right, how many have we got? How many have we got?
He must now carefully build the layers of his Mille-feuille
with creme patissiere...
...apple compote and myrtle berries.
Right, what's going on now?
I'm going to do the second layer now. The trim's going to go on top.
It's a bit ambitious, I think. Yeah.
Had a bit of a... Ooh!
A slip and a slide?
I need some... Again, this one's falling, as well.
Oh, what a mess.
Disaster. And then you've got apple to go on the top of this?
No, it's not going on the top. Definitely not.
Right. How's the ice cream?
Ice cream's perfect.
The anise-y kind of flavour of the sweet cicely
going into the milk ice cream,
I wonder if it'll jar with the apples
and then with the Irish whiskey.
Lovely. Absolutely lovely.
Service, please.
It was really hard work.
They might not have looked perfect, but I think they'll taste great.
Hmm.
Oh, delicious.
Eddie has served apple Mille-feuille,
served with an apple terrine,
topped with sweet cicely-infused ice cream
and an Irish whiskey caramel sauce.
The flavours, I think, of this little Irish whiskey caramel sauce
add that perfect amount of burnt sugar flavour with the apple.
The apples were cooked beautifully.
The pastry is good. Lovely and textural.
I think the ice cream flavour's a revelation.
Sweet cicely can be overpowering depending on how you use it,
but there has been a very light touch here.
I just think the whole combination is very Irish, very traditional,
very Ballymaloe and delicious.
And I'll tell you what — I'd love the recipe
for the sweet cicely ice cream!
This is a proper big dessert,
properly highlighting local dairy, that's for sure.
I'm smiling, I'm laughing, it tastes great.
APPLAUSE
CHEERING
We are just so impressed and overjoyed
that in the short time you've been with us
that you seem to have absorbed so much
of the Ballymaloe ethos.
Myrtle being my mother, it's very personal to me,
and I think you really took in the produce around us here
that she would have used
and you really used it to very good effect.
There are delicious things.
You have given us some ideas.
I know Darina's going to be asking some of you for some recipes,
so thank you all so much.
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Whoa'. Oh, my God. Wow.
That was overwhelming, actually, really, wasn't it?
It really was overwhelming. Well done, guys.
What a fantastic way to start finals week.
All of them embraced the legacy of Myrtle Allen here,
and they all made beautiful use of this wonderful local produce.
This experience has just been absolutely unbelievable.
You know, being in a place like this with this sort of history,
yeah, it's just been great. What an experience.
I cannot believe what I've done over the last couple of days.
I've learnt so much.
Definitely taking back a lot of confidence right now.
It's such an hon our to cook for those guests, you know.
A brilliant two clays that we'll never forget.
I loved my time in Ireland so much.
I think I have shown them Pookie style!
Definitely.
It's cocktail time again!
There's still some tough challenges to come.
It doesn't stop yet.
Very soon, Mr Wallace,
you and I are going to choose our final three.
Next time...
Oh! ..the four finalists battle for a place in the final three...
I'm shaking.
...and face their most daunting challenge yet — Chef's Table...
Nice. ..under the guidance of world-renowned chef
Gordon Ramsay.
The wheels have come off. Let's get some energy in here.