It's the MasterChef quarterfinal...
..and this week's four best cooks are back.
It just feels like you need to keep pinching yourself every time
you come into the kitchen. But if I can get through today,
I'll feel like quite invincible.
Now I've got real urge and fight.
I'm not going home.
I'm buzzing.
I hardly could sleep last night.
We are now at a stage of the competition where everyone
is very good. If you mess up, then you're going.
This is a seriously tough MasterChef challenge.
It's like a sandwich but on steroids.
It's technically genius.
Today is all about the fight to go through to Knockout Week.
Welcome back to the MasterChef kitchen and welcome
to your quarterfinal.
You are going to present your dishes today not just to John and I,
but to three celebrated chefs.
Not only that - three previous champions of MasterChef.
Thomasina Miers,
Kenny Tutt,
and Dr Saliha Mahmood-Ahmed.
You're all fighting for a place in Knockout Week.
We can only take the best cooks with us.
You've got two courses.
One hour and 15 minutes.
Let's cook.
Adam's got a brilliant culinary heart.
However, in the last round, the presentation
was all over the place.
And what he's got to do is deliver two courses which are truly
delicious and show his true potential.
I think producing four plates today would come quite naturally
to me because I am quite used to serving up
three-course dinners with my wife.
We'd done it all through lockdown, but who's to say
what could happen today? They could end up with half a plate.
Adam. Hello. Quarterfinal, how are you feeling about it?
It seems like it's a dream. I honestly don't believe it.
What are your two courses? First of all, I'm making you a Spanish stew
with smoked cod en papillote,
with a chorizo tuile and a parsley oil.
And then I'm making you a lemon curd tart with a sable biscuit base
and Italian meringue, and a baked fig.
Did your wife give you any advice today coming into this? Be myself.
And did she give you any presentation tips?
I'm not listening to her. JOHN LAUGHS
And why are you not listening to her?
Because she told me to chop up a chicken and waffle.
So from here on, presentation - Adam,
but confidence comes from your wife.
Adam's got two courses which I think are crowd-pleasers.
Cooking the cod en papillote
I think is a lovely way of cooking it because it steams the fish.
He's also going to make a chorizo cheese tuile.
Got to be careful cos cheese and fish isn't an easy combo.
We've got a really complicated dessert from Adam.
We've got a sable pastry tart.
Sable being different because it's got an egg yolk
in the pastry. Inside that, we've got a lemon curd.
Then he's going to make an Italian meringue.
He's got to get the right amount of sharpness into that lemon curd.
Forest in this competition has only cooked for us sweet dishes
and we have absolutely loved them.
Today, for the first time, we are going to see a savoury
dish from him. Let's hope it's every bit as good as his sweet stuff.
So my first course is a lobster noodle.
It's called lobster cheese yee mein, which is a very traditional
Hong Kong-style dish. I'm not doing it the traditional way today.
I'm doing it in a kind of more of a modern style.
What's the cheese that's going in it?
I'm using Cheddar cheese today, but actually in Hong Kong
they use plastic cheese.
And then for our dessert, what have we got?
Taking you from Hong Kong back into the UK,
I'm making you an Eton mess.
And just like the lobster dish,
I am going to put a fine dining twist on it.
Yee mein is usually done when you're celebrating something
or you're getting all your relatives together to eat.
Many years ago now, when I found that I'd got into Oxford University,
I was like, "Yep, we're having lobster cheese noodle tonight."
And that's what we had.
And so this is a dish that means a lot to me.
Very interesting from Forest.
A lobster and noodles,
I could eat that all day long.
There's actually only three elements to this dish,
so they've all got to be perfect.
The dessert is a take on Eton mess.
Macerated strawberries with lots and lots of sugar.
Shards of meringue should be lovely, lovely and crisp.
And with that, we've got clotted cream ice cream.
How does ice cream and strawberries with bits of meringue come together?
Anurag has been very impressive so far.
He's given us great presentation, wonderful Indian flavours.
If he has a fault, that's attempting too much.
Can I be more minimalistic?
I think that's not me.
It's quite hard for me to do less.
Anurag, are you doing the same?
Are you going to really give yourself huge amounts of work to do?
It might look quite a lot again, but I'll stick to something
what I really love cooking at home.
So for starters, I am making chai pakora.
So it's like a favourite breakfast item
on a Sunday morning as a child.
Where's the chai come in?
So chai goes with it because there's not much drinking culture in India,
so it has to have tea with that.
And the next course is? I'm giving you authentic chicken curry
with basmati rice, some fried crispy okra
and onion rings. Ooh!
It smells good. It smells great.
Brilliant. Cheers. Thank you very much, judges.
So pakora's like a fried fritter.
His are going to be bread on the outside and potato
in the middle. Hopefully the bread is crispy and the potatoes
inside are light and fluffy.
Main course, we have got a chicken makhani.
Makhani, a northern Indian dish which has got
lots of rich tomatoes and cream. I hope that chicken's cooked
all the way through and it's not dry.
We've got okra fries.
They've got to be crispy on the outside.
He is using a huge amount of spicing and he's going to have to get
that balance absolutely right.
30 minutes gone. 30 minutes gone.
Omar is one of the most adventurous people we have seen
in the competition so far.
A lamb shank with chocolate sauce and butternut squash,
and it was delicious.
I want to say that my partner has a say in what he eats,
but I really don't think he does.
He actually really wasn't a fan of the lamb and chocolate dish.
Cos John and Gregg loved it,
he'll be eating that for the rest of his life.
For my starter today, I'm doing a prawn toast with some
Southeast Asian flavours through it, with a sweetcorn puree
and a prawn and chilli oil. Wonderful!
Are you staying with an Asian theme for the main?
Yeah, I'm doing a crispy chicken sesame ramen
with home-made noodles.
You're making a ramen, Japanese dish,
using lemongrass and coriander?
Yeah, and some sesame paste or tahini.
And a bit of gochujang, a bit of miso. Brilliant.
So we're going Middle East, Thailand into South Korea.
Omar, it sounds, once again, fascinating. Great.
Omar's got two classics, but he has changed them completely.
We've got a prawn toast.
Instead of sitting on a lovely thin slice of bread, we've got a thick
bit of brioche, which is really sweet.
So when it deep fries, I just hope that doesn't go greasy.
On the bottom of that, we've got sweetcorn puree.
I hope that works, cos my prawn toast -
where does it go on this corn puree without going soggy?
After that, a big bowl of ramen, which is a stock with noodles.
Everything depends on the quality of that stock.
Guys, ten minutes to go, please.
Service in ten minutes.
It's always incredible to be back, and it brings back
some fantastic memories.
Also, that little bit of fear
deep down. Deep down in the stomach.
But, yeah, it's a wonderful place
and it's a place where you can make dreams happen, really.
The nerves that these guys are going to be feeling
are going to be pretty high.
And it is all about... SHE INHALES
..taking that deep breath
and really trying to rein it in.
So many people over the years have tried to fit too much
into that hour and 15, and just fallen flat on their faces.
I am so excited and primarily I am really hungry.
Like "give me the food now" hungry!
It's like my Christmas. It's my favourite time of year,
coming back, getting fed. Yeah!
OK. You've got about four minutes left.
Herb oil done? Yep.
Tuiles done? Yep. Uh, no.
Oh! You're not doing them?
I'm doing a chorizo crumb. OK, fine.
I'm really excited to try Adam's cod because I love Spanish food.
So you've done a separate stew for Saliha?
Yeah. Because she doesn't eat pork. Because she doesn't eat pork.
In the time that he's got,
will he have time to punch loads of flavour into that stew?
I just can't wait to have the cod, when the cod just sort of
flakes apart. I think it sounds lovely.
The simplicity of it makes me feel he's got guts.
He knows what he's doing.
Are we ready? Yeah.
On time. Let's go.
Hello. Hello. Hello, guys.
Are you all right? Good. Thank you, Adam.
Little bit starstruck.
Well, so you should be, mate. LAUGHTER
Adam has served a Spanish bean and chorizo stew,
topped with smoked cod en papillote,
and finished with a parsley oil
and a chorizo crumb.
Looks lovely, Adam. Thank you.
The fish was really beautifully cooked.
The beans are really buttery and soft,
but I think the parsley oil could be more intense.
It's a big bowl of warm, comforting, smoky paprika.
Some lovely flavours,
but could there be just something that shows a little bit more skill
at this stage?
He didn't manage to make the tuile. That might have added that textural
side, which would have really helped lift this dish into something other
than just really good pub grub.
The fish itself, it's cooked very, very nicely.
He's kept it in the bag. It's stayed moist. That's great.
On a cold winter's night, I would eat all of that.
Come on, Chef. 15 minutes, yeah? Pastry work.
Let's go, let's go, let's go.
I really want to dive into this pudding.
It's screaming sugar and sweetness to me.
You know, it's got to have that real lovely zingy sharpness of lemon
to sort of counteract all those sweet elements.
Make sure everyone's got the same amount of meringue cos otherwise
you get envy. You've inspired me.
Have I? That frightens me. Don't blame me.
I'm also slightly scared for him because he's got to set a
lemon curd, cook meringue and caramelise figs,
so he's got a lot on his plate.
Oh, you little beauties.
Tap the side. Tap the side. Tap the side.
Don't put your finger in. There! Oh, I've got you.
That works...
It's a builder's approach to decorating, right?
I'm not allowed to paint at home. Great. Let's go!
Come on! Thank you, guys.
Hello. Hello. Hi. You OK?
Yeah. Yeah, good. Great.
Oh, wow. Look at that. Oh, thank you.
So I've made you a sable biscuit with Italian meringue,
lemon curd and a baked fig.
Thank you. Thank you, Adam.
I think because the biscuit is so sweet and the meringue's so sweet,
that acidity in that lemon curd is just perfection.
It's sensational. I wanted to faceplant myself in it.
It was that good.
He's totally nailed this. It is like eating a lemon sherbet.
It sparkles with flavour.
It's so sharp, it's just... It's just delicious.
So the fig, it's not needed cos that tart is banging.
The pastry just melts away in the mouth.
The meringue is just beautifully set and soft.
It's great. He's done really, really well.
Really good pastry, fantastic meringue.
And it's holding up perfect.
The Spanish stew I know was a bit rough and rustic,
but if they ask me about it, that's how it's meant to be.
But I'm so happy I managed to get all those plates done.
Phew!
Forest, first course in ten, please.
I'm really intrigued by this dish.
I think it's going to be interesting to see how noodles work
with the cheese sauce.
Lobster is one of those things.
It can be great, but it is really easy to overcook,
you can under-season it.
It's all sounding to me really rich.
How is there going to be a balance of flavours here?
Well done. OK. Off you go. Thank you.
Hello, guys. Hi, Forest. Hello.
So today I've made for you a lobster and cheese yee mein,
which is a traditional Hong Kong dish.
On the side, there is a cheese sauce.
Hopefully you'll enjoy it. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
This actually is very one-dimensional.
You've got lobster that isn't giving much flavour.
The cheese sauce isn't giving much flavour.
You're just not getting a great deal from it,
you know? And that is a shame.
I've got a sort of generic, cheesy sauce.
No lovely, delicate kind of brothy shellfish flavour.
My lobster was quite tough, and it had some little bits of shell
that hadn't been removed, which was a little disappointing.
There's something about the flavour profile that just hasn't quite hit
the spot. Mm.
First savoury dish from Forest. Yes, it's tasty.
But my concern here is that these are noodles that have come
out of a packet. There's not a lot to this dish.
Come on, Forest. 15 minutes, Eton mess, yeah?
15 minutes. You can do it.
Eton mess is such a classic.
I'm interested to see how balsamic glaze and clotted cream ice cream
works with that.
Is that just glaze? Yeah. So really sugary sweet.
It's sweet, but also give a good amount of sharpness.
For me, a perfect Eton mess is a mess.
I don't like it where they try and sort of construct it on a plate.
OK. Perfect. Nice little rocher. Very good.
Is that it? Is there anything else to go on top of the quenelle?
Nothing else. OK.
Beautiful. Very, very good indeed.
Today I'm serving you my version of Eton mess.
Macerated strawberries, topped with balsamic glaze,
a meringue shard and a clotted cream ice cream.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
I think it looks really smart.
The berries are lovely and glossy.
I think with the dish, I would have preferred a bit of cream
because my ice cream very quickly sort of dissipated and then I'm left
with a lot of strawberry, so the balance was sort of off.
This is a lovely shard of meringue, but it's not chewy.
And then the clotted cream ice cream, it's fine.
But together they're not just a kind of delicious pudding
that I can't stop eating.
I like the lightness of the strawberries, and actually,
the clotted cream ice cream was very milky.
So, for me, I don't think it was an Eton mess, but I enjoyed it
for a lighter dessert.
That balsamic is really strong.
He said it was going to be sharp. That's really sharp.
I think the meringue shards are lovely because they're so light,
they just completely melt in your mouth in a sugary puddle.
Listen, it's a smartened-up Eton mess.
It's an Eton tidy.
Seriously, one hour and 15 minutes just go immediately.
There was such a great buzz, erm, that I'm still buzzing!
Anurag, pakoras, four minutes.
Thank you. Great. What's this one?
This is tamarind chutney.
The tamarind chutney,
I think it's going to be really lovely to have that figgy, datey
sweetness to the dish.
That looks great, my friend. Thank you.
This is one of my favourite dishes
and I have eaten bread pakora many times before.
But, actually, this is a tricky, tricky dish.
The green chutney, I want it to be really spicy,
full of chilli heat to offset
that bread pakora, which if it's cooked right, I imagine
is going to be light and crispy.
Is there anything else to go on here? Yeah. Tea.
The tea. The chai. The chai, the chai.
It looks great. Fantastic!
Thank you very much.
I love that. I love that. Well done. Cheers.
Thank you very much.
Cheers. Wow, thank you.
For his starter, Anurag's made bread pakora,
stuffed with potatoes spiced with onion, coriander,
fennel seeds and garam masala,
served with a spiced masala chai.
The smells are wonderful.
And do you know what? It's my first time of having a battered sandwich,
so I'm really, really happy about that.
This is such a clever dish.
The tamarind chutney is, like, intense and sour
and sticky and sweet.
The coriander chutney is spicy and vibrant and delicious.
It's a dreamy dish and it's fun.
What he's done is put quite a heavily spiced filling
in the potatoes.
It's like a sandwich but on steroids,
cos it's deep-fried in batter.
Just so much flavour. Who would have thought
a bit of mashed potato, a few onions and a few spices could produce
something so delicious?
It's sweet and it's hot and it's sharp with the chutneys.
And I'll tell you what - for a deep-fried sandwich,
it is very well presented.
Anurag, well done. 15 minutes now for this curry. Yeah?
Thank you.
What have you got left to go on the plate?
Onion rings. Chicken.
Let's hope that chicken breast is roasted to perfection
with a juicy middle.
There's flavours on there that really jump out at me
that I love. Curry sauce -
I'm a big sucker for a nice, warming curry sauce.
Fabulous.
I like the look of this, Anurag.
Give them a big smile, my friend. Give them a big smile.
There we go. Go on, then. Off you go. Thank you very much.
Hello again. Hi! Hello.
Thank you.
Anurag's main is roasted chicken breast with basmati rice,
cucumber raita, pickled onion rings,
crispy okra fries, finished with a makhani curry sauce,
made with cream, fenugreek and garam masala.
Oh! I feel relieved.
I was worried about my chicken breast, whether it will be
too dry. But I'm glad. I think it turned out well
when I cut through it. It felt nice.
Hopefully it tastes nice as well.
The curry sauce is delicious.
It's well spiced, it's well seasoned.
It's the best thing about the whole dish.
But I'm sad to say that my chicken is just quite tough.
It's just quite hard to get into. The curry sauce,
totally agree with you. It's nice. It's warming.
The rice, I think, cooked perfectly.
Individually, I think the flavours are OK, but for me,
it just needs that extra oomph, which it doesn't have.
The makhani sauce, rich and spicy with all that cream in there.
The crispy okra, lovely and crisp.
That's really good. Perfectly cooked rice.
But the chicken breast is going a little dry.
Omar is cooking prawn toast. We've got chilli oil, which I love.
Sweetcorn puree which could be delicious, and add a sweetness.
If he balances out all those flavours,
this is a banger of a dish.
And prawn toast. There's no Chinese takeaway I'm ordering
without prawn toast. Yeah.
That's massive. I thought we were going to get little flat bits,
like you get from the takeaway. OMAR CHUCKLES
Mate! Not today. It's a Gregg-size portion. Luxurious!
My mouth is watering thinking about this dish.
Go knock them dead. Let's go.
It looks beautiful. Proper Omar dish. Well done.
Hey. Hi!
So I made for you a prawn toast with a sweetcorn puree,
some pickled radishes, and a chilli oil.
Thank you. Nice. Thank you.
Looks great. Cheers.
He's got big pieces of prawn in the prawn toast instead
of it all being mushed together.
It's kind of retro fabulous, isn't it, with the yellow sweetcorn
and the pink radishes on top?
The chilli oil is properly hot.
Deliciously aromatic prawn cake.
I...
I want to take Omar home. LAUGHTER
The sweetcorn is silky smooth and lovely,
and soft and sweet. It's a stand-out dish, so bravo.
Fantastic.
Love the sweetness of the corn puree.
Love the sesame nuttiness that's running through the prawn toast.
And there's a great deal of chilli to finish with.
Right, Omar, you've got 15 minutes till the next plate. Well done.
I've got to fry off my vegetables,
roll up my noodles, cook my noodles.
I think that's pretty much everything.
I love the idea of Omar's main, but I am really worried for him
about how he's going to make the handmade noodles in such a short
space of time, with so many other elements that he's got to get
ready as well.
Nice collection of ingredients there, mate.
Thank you.
Just drop them on from a height.
Yeah, they look lovely, don't they?
I love the idea of a really kind of wholesome broth.
Oh, that tastes nice.
It's got a lovely kind of balance of quite healthy and then some lovely
fried stuff in there to get our taste buds kind of tantalised,
so I'm kind of really excited.
Are you happy with it? I'm happy.
Well done. Thank you. Well done, mate.
Hey! Hey. Hi!
Omar's made crispy chicken and mushroom ramen,
flavoured with sesame, lemongrass and gochujang paste,
with water chestnuts and handmade noodles.
Honestly, these cannot be handmade. Oh!
Look at them.
They look shop-bought. No!
The chicken has the most delicious crispy skin.
It's tender and perfect.
The water chestnuts have got a tiny bit of caramelisation on them.
There's flecks of red chilli just to spark up
all those flavours. It's technically genius.
I'm still not over how good these noodles look.
I mean, they are so thin, so fine, and so regular.
That broth! I mean, I could bath in that broth.
There's so much going on.
Rich sesame, the chicken. It's dancing around the tongue.
Gee, yeah, this guy can really cook.
We wanted crispy chicken skin. We got the crispy chicken skin.
We wanted noodles which had a snap. We've got those noodles.
I think that's really good.
That broth starts with peanut butter, goes salty, goes quite
vinegary, and then finishes with chilli.
It's just very unusual. But then that's Omar, right?
That was amazing. You don't get the chance to take in that
there's three winners up there that you've idolised for years.
So, yeah, just taking a moment and a breath.
Quarterfinal days we know are always big.
It was an extraordinary array of food.
We got the comments from the guests in the dining room.
Brilliant feedback. We now need to make a decision.
Omar, we know, is a really, really adventurous cook.
He has got applauded by us and also by the dining room.
There's no reason why Omar doesn't go through to Knockout Week.
Is that agreed? Put him through. Omar deserves it.
Then there's really question marks over the other three.
I thought Anurag's starter
had an element of fun, and the dining room
really enjoyed it.
His main course - chicken curry.
We had a really lovely makhani sauce, but that chicken breast
was slightly dry.
Adam cooked a nice spicy bean chorizo stew,
but we didn't get the tuile.
That dessert, it was skilful. Very good pastry.
And the guests in the dining room were impressed by it.
For the first time in the competition, Forest cooked
a savoury dish. But it was some noodles out of a packet,
a bit of cheese sauce and a lobster tail. There wasn't a lot to it.
I thought Forest did Eton mess a good service.
The feedback from the dining room is that you've messed
around with Eton mess too much, it needs some cream to
bring it all together.
Right now, we've got a decision to make.
We know that we can only take the best cooks with us.
Who stays? Who goes?
I don't want to leave. I think I'm going to have to be pulled out
of here screaming, cos I'm not done. I'm not done at all.
Personally, I think I did a decent enough job, but you never know.
I would love to stay as long as possible,
yeah, but everybody else is so good as well
so I'll just leave it to the judges.
That was an extraordinary quarterfinal. At the start of this,
we did say we could only take the best cooks with us,
and we have decided that one of you is leaving us.
The person leaving us is...
..is Forest.
Lovely having you in the competition. Great to meet you.
I'm sorry you're leaving us. Thank you. Cheers.
Today the competition has been incredibly tough.
A bit disappointing, but I had so much fun.
You know, I'm still very, very glad that I went this far.
Congratulations, you three.
You are through to Knockout Week.
LAUGHTER
What?! Come on!
What?!
That is incredible.
Once again, I had my name just going through my head,
"You're going out that door." And I'm still here.
I'm feeling just top of the world.
That's what I came here for,
and I am so glad today they liked my cooking.
I feel like now I've got the little pat on the back,
a bit of confidence. I think there's hopefully no stopping me.
Next time, nine new hopefuls...
I'm stressing! Ah!
..audition for the right to wear a coveted MasterChef apron...
Can't believe it! Five minutes, ah!
..and to secure their place in the competition.
Wow. This is something I've never seen before.
It's divine.