It's week three of the MasterChef heats.
Last time, nine enthusiastic home cooks
auditioned for a place in the competition.
It's a bit stressful.
It's modern and it's smart.
My duck is cooked really, really well.
It's just not punchy enough.
Only seven earned themselves a MasterChef apron.
After the first round, I did feel relief.
I mean, I cried like a baby.
I'm hungry for this now. There's a bug in me that's got to carry on.
It's hitting the dopamine.
Everything is hanging in the balance here, so we'll see.
Tonight, they face two tough challenges.
First, they will have to cook a dish
to a brief set by one of the country's top food critics...
Ah!
This is totally restaurant-level.
..before cooking off for a place in this week's quarterfinal.
Dip Dab, that's fab.
Only the best will make it through.
We've got our seven best cooks,
and they've now got themselves a MasterChef apron.
Now they have a fantastic opportunity
to show us what they're all about.
Welcome back, and congratulations for winning your aprons.
Now you're here in the competition,
we want to know how great you can become.
You have been set a brief.
That brief wasn't actually set by us.
The person that set that brief is one of the most travelled
and knowledgeable food writers I have ever met.
Ladies and gentlemen, Leyla Kazim.
Hello. Welcome. Hi, everyone.
They look a bit terrified, don't they?
LAUGHTER We'll warm them up.
So, the brief I have set you today is to create a dish
that showcases either sour or bitterness.
Out of the five tastes,
which are salty, sweet, umami, sour and bitter,
sour and bitterness, I feel like they get lost.
Bitterness is, like, quite a sophisticated taste.
Sourness is personally my favourite,
so I just want to see how you manage to showcase one of these,
but also keep a good balance in the dish, which is key.
You'll have one hour and 30 minutes
to produce for us an extraordinary plate of food
that cements your place in the competition.
At the end of this, we will only take the best cooks with us.
Let's cook. Hey, yeah! How exciting!
The possibilities are endless with bitter and sour.
Those two tastes can show up
in either a sweet dish or a savoury dish.
I like the brief. I think it's exciting.
I don't want to cook something I cook all the time.
I want to be challenged, so...
Bitter things include coffee, chocolate,
you get a lot of bitter salad leaves.
Sour, we're talking vinegars, pickles,
things that are fermented, citrus family.
Acid is good.
It's going to make this bit of my cheeks tingle.
She knows her stuff, so, yeah, it's nerve-racking.
With bitter and sour, if you overdo either of them,
a dish can quite quickly and easily become inedible.
It's always risky using these really strong flavours.
Piano teacher Thuy learned to cook from her mother and grandmother
in her native Vietnam.
She hit all the right notes in the audition round
with her bold Southeast Asian flavours.
Your dish is absolutely delightful. Thank you.
What I've learned about myself is that
I cope quite well under stress, much more surprisingly than I thought.
I thought I'd be that person in the corner
rocking forward and backward and silently crying,
but that hasn't happened...yet.
Thuy, please tell me what you are rustling up today.
I'm going to make you a brownie,
but I'm hoping it's going to be dark and unctuous.
And I'm going to put some raspberry to get the tartness into it. OK.
And I'm going to attempt to make a raspberry sorbet at the same time.
OK. So, please like it. Yeah! Please, please like it.
Can I bribe you with something? Would you like some chocolate?
I mean... Yeah. Absolutely up for bribes.
A disappointing brownie is a dry brownie,
but I think the key thing here is raspberry,
how that's bringing the sour element.
She's adding lemon juice to the sorbet.
That will certainly bring the required acidity,
but I don't want it to end up tasting like a lemon sorbet.
Lemon and chocolate, for me, don't really go.
"Fingers crossed she will love it," she said.
JOHN:The thing is, does this really hit the brief?
Cos I think Leyla's looking for properly sour,
not apologetically sour.
I mean properly sour - slap-you-round-the-face sour.
South African-born Owen
works as a hotel supervisor and speaks five languages.
After holding back on spicing in his audition...
Have you toned this down for Gregg and I? I did indeed.
..he proved he could pack a punch with his lamb dish.
I like the spice. I like the amount of chilli in it. Well done.
OWEN COUGHS
There's a bit of chilli in there, of course.
Owen, you look like you're having fun
and you're really happy.
I don't know if this is how you actually feel inside!
I'm usually a happy person, a happy-go-lucky person,
but this is the first time ever I do feel a bit of the tension.
I would love to know what you're cooking for us, please.
Yes. Today, I'm going to be cooking a cod tamarind curry sauce
with coconut rice and pickled veg.
I've got the radish. Am I going to get a hit of sourness?
Yes. Yes, I'm hoping so.
It did hit me. It's something different for me altogether.
Owen is making a cod tamarind curry.
I mean, it sounds good because
tamarind is a great source of sourness.
And I love the fact that there's pickled veg on the plate
because I'm a big pickle fan.
On the side of this cod dish, we've got coconut rice.
Coconut rice is sweet, so I hope that sweetness
doesn't wash away the sharpness and sourness.
I'm not the greatest at cooking sour dishes.
I did try it once.
It gave a nice kind of smack on the lips...
The crunch!
..so I was like, "Wow, why didn't I ever think of this?"
So, I've opened my taste buds to more things.
Ah! HE CLEARS HIS THROAT
You've had 20 minutes, guys. 20 minutes gone.
Oncology nurse Ngoneh is passionate about Gambian flavours
and caught the judges' attention with her spicy red mullet dish.
Ooh! Fairly spicy. Excuse me. I've got chilli hiccups.
I like that.
I think what Ngoneh's doing
is probably the most risky dish in the whole room
because Ngoneh is making one large lemon tart.
She's got to make pastry. It needs to be blind-baked,
which takes between 20 and 30 minutes.
She then has to make the lemon filling.
She's got to get it into that tart case
and she'll let it cool down enough
so she can actually cut it into a perfect wedge.
This is really, really difficult to get right.
I mean really difficult to get right.
How's it going? NGONEH:Hmm. To plan?
Yeah, it's all fine. You seem very chilled.
Staying calm. Calm. Yeah.
Why a lemon tart?
Well, you know, my cooking is inspired by
what my family like to eat,
so if we are doing dessert, it's definitely lemon tart,
so why not do it today?
Who is at home? My husband and my two little girls. OK. Yes.
Is the lemon tart going to make me go...around here?
I hope so.
It's a bit stressful because
baking is not my forte, so, yeah...
You just put it in the oven and you're not in control of it,
so you don't know how it's going to come out.
I'm hoping I'm not going to have a soggy bottom.
SHE LAUGHS
Lemon tart is the dessert
that I will always order if I see it on a menu.
I hope it's really lemony
because there is nothing more disappointing
than biting into a lemon tart and not feeling the presence of lemon.
Hairdresser Mirel was born in Romania
and is passionate about both cooking and modern art,
which he demonstrated to the judges with an impressive vegan dessert.
I love the presentation. I think it looks quite contemporary.
The feeling is slightly daunting,
knowing that a food critic is going to taste my dish
and I'm not a professional chef.
We'll wait and see what's the opinion
because I don't think they've ever tasted a dish like this.
What Mirel is making is completely out of his own imagination,
and it sounds quite fascinating.
He's making a clear vegetable soup.
He has got some beetroot,
some orange, some red chicory and some bitter melon.
It's very bitter. It's one of...
I think it's one of the most bitter ingredients on the earth.
In the bottom, we're getting little bits of tofu.
How do you cook the tofu? I'm not cooking.
Pickled ginger, wakame,
which is a seaweed which is quite salty,
and wasabi, which is horseradish.
Horseradish and beetroot we know belong together,
so there's no reason why this can't work.
So, this is a vegan dish? Yes, it's vegan. It's 100% vegan.
Who else has tasted it? Quite a few of my friends.
What was the verdict? They really liked it, surprisingly.
Were you surprised? LAUGHTER
Well, I know it's really hard, it's very difficult
to balance the bitter melon, but I balanced it quite well.
I like how he's balancing the bitterness with the sweetness
and earthiness of the beetroot.
Pickled ginger - great. Acidity. A little bit of heat.
It's just whether he has the right amounts
of each of those elements.
JOHN:You guys are halfway. 45 minutes gone.
Just 45 minutes left.
Classroom assistant Michelle
loves cooking for her three daughters
back home near Belfast
and enjoys making hearty Irish dishes.
Your champ is superb.
I mean, enough butter in there to sink a battleship.
I'm relieved to have the first round out of the way.
Yeah, I'm relieved I've got an apron.
So, today, I just want them to say,
"That's lovely, Michelle."
And then I'll just go home then!
So, what are you making for us today?
I'm making a spiced ale cake with roast plum and whisky cream.
What ale are you using? It's pale ale. Interesting.
Now, that's bitter. Are you a beer girl?
I'm actually not that much of a beer girl... Yeah?
..but the fact that it's in this dish,
I'm quite excited about.
So, what's inspired this?
This is a recipe that my granny would have done.
So, I've tried to bring the ale and stuff into the recipe,
along with the Irish whisky, to get the bitter, sweet
and spicy sort of flavour.
I'm looking forward to getting stuck into the boozy cake.
Whisky and beer - can't be all bad, can it?
It's win-win!
I'm excited about this.
I love the fact that she's gone with ale and whisky
for the bitter element.
Ooh!
Graphic designer Miles loves to experiment
and create original dishes in the kitchen.
He showed his potential in the audition round
with an innovative dumpling dish.
If this is your own invention, I am amazed and so excited for you.
My style is forever changing, like the tides.
HE LAUGHS
I just like throwing myself in the deep end,
so if it's something that's technically challenging,
I would want to have a go at it.
I just don't like the comfort zone. Not one for comfort zones.
Miles is making a really interesting dessert,
all of his own design.
Panna cotta - cooked cream set with some gelatine,
but he's not using cream, he's using kefir,
which is a cultured milk drink, and it's got lots of acid in it.
Then we've got a basil and lime sorbet.
Lime is really sharp and really acidic.
Love that as a sorbet. There's our sour.
With that, we've got strawberries in balsamic vinegar,
but we've also got the addition of soy sauce,
soy sauce being really salty.
I hope the strawberry can actually stand up to that.
So, we've got sour appearing a lot, right?
In balanced doses, though.
So, is this the kind of food you would cook at home
or are you pulling out the stops for MasterChef?
When I'm at home, I do stuff like this all the time.
It doesn't always work out, though. You don't see the failures.
Very excited about the inclusion of kefir, firstly,
because it's a fermented food, one of my favourite groups of food,
a perfect source of sourness,
and quite an inventive way to make a panna cotta.
And he had lots of other interesting elements.
To me, I felt like he was taking on a lot.
What are you most worried about potentially going wrong?
It's the panna cotta. It gives me great anxiety.
It's so temperamental.
Medical secretary Linda is inspired by North African cuisine
that she cooks for her Moroccan husband.
She also showed a flair for pastry with a fantastic fondant.
Oh, look at that!
That right there is a thing of absolute beauty.
I hope it works out as good as the other day,
but it's asking a lot, that, isn't it?
So, I'm doing a lemon tart
with lime sorbet and raspberry sherbet.
All right! Two lemon tarts! I know. Oh, my goodness!
I just thought it was a good one to go with for sour,
and I was thinking about, with the sherbet,
sour reminds me of when you're kids and you'd have, like, the...
Dabbing the lollipop in the sherbet. A sherbet dab! Yeah!
The second lemon tart in the room.
However, Linda is doing individual, small lemon tarts.
Probably nowhere near as risky.
A little bit longer.
Lime sorbet - lovely and sharp. She's making her own sherbet.
Say the word "sherbet" to a sour-lover like me
and I'm, like, already very excited.
Do us the face, when you were a kid,
when you first got your first hit of sherbet off the dab.
Go on. Do the face. Do the face.
I never thought I'd be serving food to a food critic.
I can only make it and hope for the best
and just hope that it's not a disaster on the day,
cos I think that would be hard,
to have them look at it and think, "Oh, my God. What is that?"
Five minutes!
Going to put it back for another minute.
Just want to get it out in time.
How many minutes? 90 seconds. That's what you have.
Just need to make it look beautiful.
I think I might have overcooked the brownie.
It's really hard to... It was a hard cook. I'm hoping it's OK.
That's it! Time's up! Stop.
So, that's it. That's me done.
Right.
Owen, please, up you come.
Hotel supervisor Owen has served cod loin
poached in tamarind curry sauce,
with coconut rice, pickled radish,
fresh chilli, spring onion and coriander.
Your fish is cooked really nicely
and your sauce has definitely captured sour -
a sharp sourness coming from tamarind.
Really fragrant, and I like it a lot.
What I love is that your tamarind sauce
has a level of sourness,
but then you've got, like, the extra sour hits
of the pickled radish on top.
The brief was to showcase sour or bitter.
This definitely showcases sour, so well done, Owen.
Owen, I'm really enjoying this dish.
I'm really happy that you nailed the brief,
and I'm really happy because this tastes great.
What great feedback! Oh!
That's going to be playing back on my...
I won't say VCR, but it's going to be playing back on something.
Delighted.
Hairdresser Mirel has served beetroot with raw tofu,
pickled ginger, wakame seaweed,
wasabi, toasted hazelnuts,
sesame seeds and caraway seeds,
with a bitter melon, beetroot and chicory broth.
There's a lovely sweetness coming from that beetroot,
and then the bitterness that comes from the melon.
And this blandness of the tofu actually then gives you
a bit of relief from the bitterness and the sweetness.
I marvel at anybody who can get those notes
to flow the way you have. It's extraordinary. Thank you.
What I love is that
there's bitterness in the broth on its own.
All of the elements are well balanced.
You've got it just right. You've just got it right.
I am getting bitter notes.
It's a slightly sweet broth.
There is saltiness, of course, of the seaweed.
I'm enjoying this, but in a cookery competition,
I'm looking down at not very much cooking.
Got mixed feelings, mixed emotions
because the judges said I could have cooked more.
I was just really focusing on the balance of the flavours.
Medical secretary Linda's dish is a lemon tart
with fresh raspberries, raspberry sherbet and a lime sorbet.
Come on, sour! Yes!
Linda, this has got all of this going.
That is what I want when I'm eating a lemon tart.
I'm getting a good amount of sourness from the lemon filling,
and then I'm dipping that into sherbet
and I'm, like, getting a double hit, which is excellent.
You have got sourness through everything here.
You've produced sour hour. Well done. Well done.
Dip Dab, that's fab.
LAUGHTER I think that's great.
Fizzy bits of sherbet, sharp bits of lemon,
then the coolness that comes from that lime sorbet.
It makes me smile, it is reminiscent of my childhood,
and I think that good food always takes you back to a good place,
and that's taking me to a good place.
May I add I've finished mine?
The feedback from Leyla - I wasn't expecting that.
She ate it all, as well, so that's a bonus!
Graphic designer Miles
has served a kefir, yoghurt and honey panna cotta
with a walnut, fennel and black pepper crumb,
pickled strawberries,
and a balsamic and soy sauce vinaigrette,
with lime and basil sorbet and a tequila cocktail.
Phwoar, mate!
You've got a mildly sour panna cotta
with a hint of strawberry that then goes almost into vinegar sharpness.
Around this is a really delicious sauce
that's got that intense sweetness of balsamic
that ends in sharpness, with saltiness from the soy.
I'm really, really enjoying this.
Your basil and lime sorbet,
that sort of slight aniseed sweetness,
is fantastic.
It's vibrant. It's sharp. It's refreshing.
I'm not necessarily getting the sourness
from the kefir coming through, but I don't think it's a problem.
Loving the pepper in the crumb!
This basil and lime sorbet is incredible. It's so sharp.
This is totally restaurant-level.
I hit the brief and I nailed everything
I wanted to do, and they said that, so I can't lie - I'm happy I'm here.
Piano teacher Thuy has made a raspberry and chocolate brownie
with a chocolate soil, chocolate sauce,
a raspberry coulis,
and a raspberry sorbet topped with spun sugar.
I really like your raspberry coulis.
That's where I'm getting sourness from.
It kind of ends there for me. OK.
The brownie, for me, it's too dense and it's too dry.
It's heavy. I know what you were trying to do.
You were trying to get the bitter element with the chocolate.
Actually, what I'm getting instead is just a lot of sweetness.
Your raspberry sorbet's ace. Love it.
Nice and sharp with lemon-flavoured raspberry going through it.
Really cooling. That's really, really good.
But your brownie itself is not that moist.
It's still quite dry.
Yeah. It should be crispy on the top and gooey in the middle,
and it's not quite there. Nice, sweetened crumb.
Nice chocolate sauce, as well.
However, the sweetness means
you're not getting enough bitterness through that chocolate.
It's funny cos I really love this dish.
You know, generally, my brownies are really good at home.
It just... I don't know what happened today.
It just didn't go my way. But you know what?
That's just the way it is,
and I've just got to learn to deal with it.
It's fine. It's all good.
Classroom assistant Michelle
has served a ginger and nutmeg-spiced pale ale cake
with roasted plums, a whisky cream and a plum sauce.
That is a really nice cake.
You were going for bitterness, which you have, very subtly.
I reckon you could have gone slightly bolder with it.
But you've got sourness, as well.
This plum sauce - I love it.
And it's working with the sweetness from the cake, and the spices.
In there, you've got lots of nutmeg,
you've got spice, you've got ginger -
all those things in there -
and that there is giving you your bitter note inside the cake.
There's nothing majorly sour. There's nothing majorly bitter.
And it's, for me, a little bit subtle.
You have a really nicely made cake.
I've got the unmistakable bitterness of hoppy beer.
You could up the sourness. You could up the bitterness.
But I'm getting it and I'm really enjoying it,
mainly, I think, because you've got whisky and beer,
which are two flavours I really like a lot.
Whisky, beer and cake? There's a Wallace!
I think you've pretty much summed up my weekends.
LAUGHTER
Some good comments, some not so good,
with, you know, being a bit subtle with the flavours.
Maybe next time I'll put a bit more alcohol in it. Seems to work!
Finally, it's Ngoneh.
She has served lemon tart,
mixed berries in a chocolate bowl, and a vanilla ice cream.
Your ice cream, what, didn't set? No, it didn't set the way I like it.
You've got a good amount of acidity in your lemon tart filling.
However, that base is very thick.
The ice cream, which didn't set, is grainy, lumpy.
You used double cream, which you whipped,
so I think it's starting to turn to butter.
The pastry's too thick. It hasn't been cut properly,
so it's all oozing all over the place.
Your lemon is most certainly sharp enough,
but the two glaring issues for me...
One is the ice cream that just hasn't worked at all.
The other one is the thickness of this pastry.
So, it hasn't quite worked out.
Ngoneh, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
I am very disappointed because I did put a lot of effort
in the kitchen today, but it is what it is.
It didn't come out the way I planned it to be, so, yeah...
I really appreciate the amount of work
you guys put into your dishes.
I love that there was so much creativity.
Really, I think you did well.
As we said at the start of this,
we can only take the best cooks with us.
Thank you very much indeed. We'll call you back in as soon as
we've made our decision. Thanks a lot. Off you go.
We set a brief cos we want to be able to push our contestants,
and I've got to say, I think that brief really pushed them.
This is a difficult conversation because they're all stepping it up.
Owen and his cod poached with that tamarind sauce
was just delicious - sharp and sour, nice and spicy.
There was nothing apologetic about it at all.
It was delicious! All three of us loved it.
Owen has had a really strong round. Good for him.
Miles came with a dessert - a panna cotta made from kefir.
He hit the brief, absolutely. Leyla loved it.
You delighted in it. I mean, what's not to like?
There was sour in his sorbet, sour in his sauce,
sour on the pickled strawberry. He's good!
Linda - she had nailed the brief.
We had a sour curd. We had sweet-sour sherbet.
She smashed it, John. Mm. I think it was delicious.
Michelle made an ale cake,
the whisky giving smokiness and a slight bit of bitterness.
Then we had that lovely sourness coming from the plums.
For me, it was a little bit subtle.
However, there was nothing wrong with the dish.
I really enjoyed Michelle's dish, but then she used whisky and beer,
which are two of my favourite flavours.
Right, we know who's going through.
Now we have to discuss who's staying
out of Mirel, Ngoneh and Thuy.
Thuy - we had a chocolate brownie.
The raspberry sorbet, I thought, was sharp enough,
but the chocolate brownie was dry. It didn't really give us bitter.
But well-made soil,
nice chocolate ganache across the base.
I found a lot to admire there with Thuy.
Ngoneh - we had a lemon tart. Lovely lemon tart filling.
But the pastry - a little bit too thick.
The ice cream didn't work. It looked a little rough.
Ngoneh has not had her finest dish.
Now we need to talk about Mirel.
We had an amazing broth, which was bitter,
with that bitter melon and chicory going through it.
It was an extraordinary creation of his own mind.
I really liked it. It was delicious.
But when you looked down at the dish,
there wasn't a great deal of cookery going on.
Right now, Ngoneh, Mirel and Thuy, they are all at risk.
Who stays in the competition? Who's leaving?
I think I'm going today
because everybody else had beautiful dishes.
Today wasn't my day, didn't go my way,
and that's just the way it is.
I'm feeling extremely nervous, actually.
I was a bit more confident before the tasting,
and now, not really.
Things didn't go according to plan.
I hope that's good enough to get me through to the next round.
We'll see. Fingers crossed.
Congratulations, all of you,
because we think that was a particularly tricky brief.
We said, at the start of this,
we could only take the best cooks with us,
and we've made a decision.
One of you is leaving the competition.
The person leaving us is...
..Ngoneh.
Thanks very much for everything. Thank you.
I am disappointed that I'm going home,
but I did enjoy every minute of it.
It was more stressful than I anticipated,
but, yeah, it was lovely.
I would do it again all over.
Congratulations. You guys are through to the next round.
I'm just pleased to be here. Really pleased.
Oh, my God! I'm never going to make brownies again.
I was very worried. No time for celebrations.
I am going to show a lot more technique.
I'll cook more!
I'm buzzing after that round, yeah.
I was a lot calmer today in the kitchen.
I'm so happy still to be here.
Best ever feeling.
I think I can keep the momentum going,
but I've got some strong competition, as well.
There's another round to come, so we're going to see what happens.
We've got our best six cooks, and right now,
I just want to see a little bit more.
They got this far, but they can't rest on their laurels.
They need to keep pushing. They need to keep growing.
I'm hoping that I will get a place for the quarterfinal,
but it depends on how good I cook today!
So, fingers crossed. Keep them crossed for me, please.
I'm feeling great. I'm really happy and excited to be here again.
I have another chance to show off my cooking skills.
Most definitely, I have to prove myself.
Yeah, quarterfinals coming up. I can see it now. It's just...
It's within reach, so I'm going to do everything I can to get it.
Welcome back here to the MasterChef kitchen.
I have to tell you, these rounds aren't going to get any easier.
Right now, John and I are looking for four quarterfinalists,
which means, of course,
two of you will be leaving the competition.
You've been given a brief,
and that brief is to celebrate stuffings and fillings.
From ballotines to sausages,
from dumplings to empanadas, from cannoli to doughnuts -
whatever you like, it's got to be fantastic.
There are just four quarterfinal places up for grabs.
You'll have one hour and 30 minutes. Let's cook.
So far, so good. I got the first thing done.
I'm looking forward to this challenge, very much so,
so it's going to be a good day.
We eat dumplings for dim sum on Sundays -
my father's favourite Sunday lunch - so I'm very excited about the brief.
I'm going to make ha cao dumplings, which are prawn dumplings,
on a bed of egg noodles in a chicken and pork stock
and a spicy chilli oil dipping sauce with some black vinegar.
The ha cao is my favourite dumpling.
And then I discovered, not long ago,
that when my mother was pregnant, she ate a lot of ha cao dumpling.
When we go out for dim sum,
it's the only thing that I really love eating.
Thuy is promising us a really, really complicated dish,
especially in one hour and 30 minutes.
The dumplings, they're made from a dough of tapioca and potato starch.
It has to be lovely and thin.
That flavour inside of that ha cao should be prawn
and a little bit of sesame oil,
spring onions to give it a small bite.
If she gets this right, fantastic. I'd be very, very happy indeed.
If this competition was a piece of work on the piano,
what would it be? I think a classic, so I would say something like Bach.
Any other bit of the tree?
THEY LAUGH
Come on, Thuy. You can do this.
I'm feeling excited for today. This is a dish close to my heart.
I'm wanting to showcase the flavours of Northern Ireland,
so I'm hoping it all works out.
What's your dish, Michelle?
I'm making home-made Irish potato bread
stuffed with devilled lamb kidneys, lardons and some spring onions.
Why this dish? Well, kidneys was one of my dad's favourites,
and, also, I love potato bread.
You're just going to have the bread with the kidneys inside?
Yeah, I'm just going to roll it up.
Devilled kidneys should be quite spicy.
They're called devilled cos they're hot.
The potato bread is mashed potato
mixed with a little bit of plain flour and then bacon.
But then, somehow or another, once it's cooked,
she's got to roll that potato bread up
so that she can actually put the kidneys inside.
Otherwise, she doesn't really fulfil the brief.
I don't know why I'm doing this. I should have just done a pie!
This dish, I chose because it has a wow factor.
I did make it once. I was like, "Wow!"
So, I'm hoping to bring that "wow" to John and Gregg.
Owen's making for us a stuffed pork loin.
It's got no fat, so the only way of keeping it moist
is to actually wrap it in something or to stuff it with something.
He's made a stuffing from spinach, cream cheese and mushrooms.
We've got a cream of mushroom sauce. With it, he's serving mashed potato.
There has to be an even amount of pork
around the outside of that stuffing.
If the pork is thin at one side and then thick at the other side,
we're going to have dry pork on one side
and pork that's not cooked on the other side.
How do you feel about the competition now?
I feel good. I'm like... I'm floating.
At this moment, I'm floating,
but I just want to go one step higher to impress.
One step higher than floating? Yeah.
What could that be? Flying!
Guys, you are halfway - halfway to a quarterfinal.
Today's dish is Thai-inspired sausage and mash.
Oh, man, that onion and chilli is really getting in my eye.
I'm trying to show some versatility.
I want to show that I can just do really nice comfort food,
really rich, bang full of flavour, loads of chilli, loads of aromatics.
Yeah, good, hearty food.
He's making a Thai-flavoured sausage,
which he's filled with galangal, lemongrass, lots and lots of pork.
Making a sausage - this is brilliant.
It's a lot of work in a sausage.
It's showing a huge amount of technique.
Served on sweet potato mash.
He's got a red curry paste going through the mashed potato,
with a green curry gravy.
Green chillies - really, really fragrant.
A little bit of coconut milk.
As long as I can stuff my meat on time...
HE LAUGHS
..then everything else should fall in place.
Do you make sausages at home? I do, yeah.
I make a lot of salamis, chorizos. Mate, get you!
So, what is it about making sausages that appeals to you?
Personally, the thing I love the most about them is that
you can make whatever kind of fillings that you want.
You can really customise it when you know the process.
Linda is making for us arancini.
Arancini is born out of leftover risotto.
The rice mixture which is made and lovely and creamy and rich.
And with an arriabbata sauce.
Arrabbiata? Arrabbiata.
I prefer your one! I'm surprised I remembered it!
Arrabbiata really is a spicy tomato sauce.
Linda's got a huge amount of process going on here because, first of all,
she's got to make risotto, then she's got to cool it down.
Once it's cooled, she's got to fill it,
and what she's filling it with is mozzarella.
Then they are crumbed and then they are deep-fried.
I feel like I have something to prove with this dish
because I do want a place in the quarterfinals,
but the pressure in there is immense.
It can make you feel, like, hysterical one minute
and then laughing the next, and, yeah, crying!
Are you enjoying this competition? I am, yeah.
Yeah, I'm loving it. I think it's great.
Everybody else is stressed and you're having the time of your life.
SHE LAUGHS It's that wine over there!
THEY LAUGH
Have you...?
Ooh! SHE GASPS
Oh, my God. Oh, my God!
That's your fault!
There's enough sauce in there to serve, you know? Yeah.
Yeah, there is. Are you OK? Yeah, I'll be fine.
Disasters happen, and I'm usually in it!
Guys, you have 20 minutes left, please.
Phew! Oh, my God!
My stuffed dish is going to be sarmale,
which is a traditional Romanian dish.
He's making a stuffed cabbage roll.
He's taking white cabbage
and he's cooking that in a broth which he's got some beetroot in.
Inside the cabbage roll, he's making a mixture with rice,
mushrooms, spices and herbs.
I'm using this Romanian spice which is called yeni bahar.
And then he's going to bake those cabbage rolls in the oven
with tomato sauce.
It's quite tricky, the folding.
The important thing is
that cabbage has to be lovely and tender,
and a cabbage leaf, to be tender, takes a long time.
I need to prove that I've got some technique
and I need to do more cooking.
Did you know this dish, growing up? Yes, yes,
and it reminds me of Transylvania and the forest and the gardens
and all my childhood.
The challenge with this dish is to make it look appealing
because it's very rustic,
so I've got to up my game on the design with this one.
How long's left? You have just eight minutes.
The dumplings are not cooking fast enough.
MICHELLE:It's not sticking.
You have just 90 seconds left to finish off your plates.
I'm just literally panicking
and throwing everything together in a rush right now.
Yeah, this is all mad. Right.
That's it. Stop, please. Your time's up. Stop.
HE EXHALES DEEPLY That is so stressful.
Oh, my God! SHE LAUGHS
Linda, please, would you?
For her stuffed dish, Linda has made arancini -
deep-fried balls of risotto with a mozzarella centre -
and an arrabbiata sauce.
I like the fact that you battled on,
despite the fact of sending a pot of red-hot sauce over your arm.
They are really well-made arancini.
I'm enjoying the creamy mozzarella
in with the well-seasoned, well-cooked risotto.
You've breadcrumbed them and fried them perfectly.
They are a lovely, light tan colour.
Your risotto's cooked beautifully. I really like it,
mozzarella cheese running all the way through it.
I like the crust on the outside. It's not too thick, nice and crispy.
Your sauce is ferocious.
Really like the chilli heat in there.
I think that's really, really good. You've really hit the brief.
You've got something which is stuffed and filled.
Linda, thanks very much. Thank you.
Feeling good, really, after the disaster of
knocking my pan over and burning myself.
John and Gregg seem to like what I'm giving them and I'm like...
Yeah, I can't believe it, actually. It's amazing.
Thuy has made ha cao - prawn fried dumplings -
and served them with egg noodles and pak choi
in a chicken and pork broth
with a black vinegar and chilli dipping sauce.
Your ha cao are made really, really nicely.
I love the fact that every single one of them is properly pleated.
Inside there, you've got a small amount of seasoning
of sesame oil and a little bit of ginger.
The actual broth itself, it's very subtle.
Nicely made, and, I think, a real challenge,
in an hour and a half, to get that right. Thank you.
I have to confess to you, I'm really, really enjoying this.
Your dumplings are gorgeous.
Inside are sweet prawns, slightly salty.
And your dip - it's a sharp, like, vinegar,
finishing with a little bit of chilli, and almost salted.
It's like black bean.
As far as the brief goes, we asked you for stuffed or filled.
You've given us really lovely, light dumplings. Well done.
I feel great!
No crying. It's good. It's all good.
Much better than the last brief, so I'm really pleased.
Miles has made a Thai-inspired bangers and mash -
sausage filled with minced pork, lemongrass and chilli,
steamed morning glory - a Southeast Asian vegetable -
a Thai green curry sauce,
and sweet potato mash flavoured with red Thai curry paste.
I never expected to find those big Thai flavours inside a sausage.
You've definitely fulfilled the brief.
I can't think of a more classic filled food than a sausage.
That sauce is so powerful - citrusy with lime.
And then in comes the salt and the chilli.
The flavour of that sauce makes it difficult
to discern the flavours in the sausage.
Your mash has got lumps in it,
but your sausage - I think it's a great idea.
As a man who makes sausages at home,
I'm going to implore you to not grind your meat so much
because your filling has gone dry.
It didn't come out the way I wanted it to,
but they did give me some good feedback.
They liked the flavours.
I think I need to stop being so hard on myself.
Michelle's dish is devilled lamb's kidneys and oyster mushrooms
in a creme fraiche and mustard sauce,
wrapped in Irish potato bread,
flavoured with pancetta and spring onion.
It's more of a wrap, isn't it?
Your kidneys are cooked really well.
You've got a little bit of pink in there.
They are devilled.
There is definitely the heat coming, the background.
Your potato bread is lovely - really soft, smooth, salty
because you've got little bits of bacon in there, as well.
It doesn't look right and I'm not sure it works
as a stuffed or filled dish.
I find your sauce a little bit too thick.
Your potato bread - I've got some scorched bits on there.
Gregg and I both agree it doesn't look right.
And, actually, wrapping something in potato bread is really difficult.
I know! Why did I do it on MasterChef?
Well, at least you gave it a go. And I like your bravery.
I'm feeling OK. The judges were very fair with their comments.
I think it was maybe a risk doing the kidneys.
Maybe it just wasn't what they were looking for.
But you know what? I gave it a go.
Owen has stuffed his pork tenderloin with mushrooms,
cream cheese and spinach,
and served it with mashed potatoes and pea shoots
and a mushroom cream sauce.
Your pork wrapped around that filling is lovely and moist.
The crunch of the pine nuts, I think,
is really, really lovely with the mushrooms.
I think that's wonderful.
The mushroom sauce is fantastic,
and it's rich with woodiness and mushrooms
and lots and lots of pepper.
I'm impressed with this, Owen. I'm really impressed.
I am really enjoying this.
Beautifully cooked, moist pork, really well done.
I like the cream cheese in there, giving saltiness. It tastes great.
We wanted stuffed or filled. You did exactly that.
Are you all right? Yes, just a bit emotional.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
I'm stunned. I'm amazed.
This means so much to me. So much to me.
My dad would be so proud of me.
Wherever he is, he'll be looking down.
Mirel has served a vegan version
of the traditional Romanian dish sarmale -
white cabbage leaves stuffed with rice, mushrooms,
carrots and yeni bahar, a Romanian spice,
all baked in a tomato sauce
on saffron polenta and vegan cheese and a vegan sour cream.
It was always going to be difficult to make this look pretty.
I feel it doesn't look pretty.
There's... There's a strong flavour in there, like mace.
What's that spice called? Yeni bahar.
That's really quite strong.
I mean, it's almost numbing the palate.
Polenta's nicely cooked.
I like the filling of the rice and the vegetables.
I'd like those cabbage leaves a little bit softer.
You need to cook them some more.
I feel this whole thing could do with more seasoning.
I think the tomato needs to be richer and cooked down.
The actual cabbage leaves themselves are tough.
They just need more time in the oven.
Cooking traditional Romanian food doesn't suit me.
Perhaps I should have stayed with my bold flavours
and my extravagant style.
By and large, I think, a decent standard.
Some things that really made me sit up and take notice
and obviously - obviously - things that didn't quite turn out.
Four quarterfinal places up for grabs.
That does mean that two of them
are sadly going to leave the competition.
We've now got a big decision to make.
I am going to sing the praises of Owen.
He delivers flavour. He's learning.
He's getting better and better and more and more confident.
Really well-cooked pork, really nicely made mashed potato,
and a really, really good mushroom sauce.
I'd very much like to see Owen in the quarterfinal.
I was really pleased today that Thuy gave us some Vietnamese flavours
cos I think she does it brilliantly well.
Nicely cooked noodles and those really good prawn dumplings
across the top. Lovely dipping sauce, as well.
I found myself munching the living daylights
out of that bowl. I'd like to see her go further.
She hit the brief, that's for sure. Those ha cao were really beautiful.
I thought Linda did a good job today with the arancini, and in adversity,
because she knocked the pan of sauce over.
But she still gave us really well-made arancini -
nicely cooked rice inside,
some gooey, salty, creamy mozzarella.
Nice crust around the outside. Well-made risotto.
That's a really difficult thing to do. I think she did a good job.
We've got Owen, Thuy and Linda going through.
That means now we've got to discuss Miles, Mirel and Michelle.
Michelle made for us a classic Irish dish
she turned into a wrap, and it didn't work,
potato bread, which was slightly scorched,
with the kidneys inside.
The kidneys were cooked beautifully with a mushroom sauce.
But was that a complete dish?
And did she actually fulfil the brief?
Miles rushed today.
It's the first time we've seen him really under pressure,
and there were errors.
But the idea of bringing Thai flavours together
in sausage and mash and gravy, I thought, was brilliantly clever.
The sweet potato mash had lumps in it.
However, that green curry sauce - delicious.
We actually really liked the flavour inside that sausage.
Mirel today didn't manage to capture the elegance of previous dishes.
That cabbage was hard. They needed more cooking.
There wasn't quite enough flavour in there.
It wasn't really a plate of food for a quarterfinal place.
We've got issues with Miles, Michelle and Mirel.
Who's just had a wobble
and who's really at the end of their journey?
To stay in the competition, I want to cook into the quarterfinals.
I can only hope. Om! I'm praying in every culture!
I might need to light a candle or something.
I knew it was risky doing the dish.
So, yeah, I've done it now. You can't turn back time.
Let's just wait and see what the judges say,
and hope for the best.
I think I've done the brief in each challenge.
I'm feeling hopeful that I've got this in the bag
to move on to the quarterfinal.
Thank you very much for all your hard work.
Some great food, some inventive food,
and dishes we've never seen before on MasterChef.
As hard as you've all worked,
we have only four quarterfinal places.
The first contestant leaving us is...
..Michelle.
Sorry to see you go. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers, guys.
The second person leaving the competition is...
..Mirel.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thanks, Mirel.
Thank you.
I definitely feel disappointed, but this is a competition,
so you've got to be ready for everything.
I would have loved to have stayed longer,
but I'm going to look at it as a great experience.
It was fun.
I'm feeling sad it's over, I'm not coming back tomorrow.
It's definitely had its ups and downs,
but, yeah, I think it's my time to go.
I got an apron. I didn't make a complete fool of myself, so...!
Well done, you four!
You can call yourselves MasterChef quarterfinalists.
It's a relief, actually. My heart is still probably up here.
But, yeah, it's more than a dream now.
The reality of it is kicking in
and it's becoming more serious and it just feels really exciting.
It's amazing.
I feel emotional right now, but I'm so happy.
I'm really so happy to be here.
It's been an amazing day. It's beyond what I would have expected.
I'm super delighted.
I got one cloud higher, and I'm not sure if I can reach the next one,
so fingers crossed I can do it.
I've got a place in the quarterfinal!
Oh, my gosh! I'm beyond excited. Beyond excited.
I'm just so, so chuffed.
If I could kiss you, I would, but I think you're married.
You might not... Your wife might not like it!
Next time, it's the quarterfinal,
and Miles, Thuy, Owen and Linda return
to face their toughest challenge yet...
You need to roll and fry as fast as you can.
..as they battle for a place...
Just to relax you even further, you're supposed to be serving now.
..in knockout week.
It's really quite delicious.