Episode 3 MasterChef

It's the MasterChef quarterfinal...

..and this week's best amateurs are back.

To say that I am a MasterChef quarterfinalist is a sentence

that I never thought I would utter.

A pile of different emotions

all coming in one on top of the other at the moment,

but excitement's right there at the top.

I feel great today,

I'm very determined and I'm ready to power through it.

Tonight, they will face just one challenge -

to cook an exceptional dish from a brief set by broadcaster

and restaurant critic Amol Rajan.

We started off with 16 cooks and we've got our best six.

But every stage of this competition gets tougher.

This is a MasterChef quarterfinal.

You've done amazingly well to get here,

but today is a real step up in terms of quality and skill.

You've been set a brief to make a dish using either Indian spices

or chocolate. Your decision.

This brief was set by Amol Rajan - writer and food critic -

and he's coming in here to taste your food and help us judge.

Now is a chance to really show off.

Make those spices sing, make that chocolate amazing.

We will only take the best cooks through.

Ladies and gentlemen, one hour and 30 minutes.

Let's cook.

I grew up eating incredibly strong and wonderful,

flavourful Indian cuisine.

The really important thing I will be looking out for today

is the difference between spice and chilli.

Spicing is about something much more subtle and much more delicate,

and I hope that the cooks today understand the difference.

I choose chocolate for dessert as it brings back happy memories.

Whenever I eat chocolate at the end of a meal, it reminds me

of being 15 and stuffing my gob full of the most delicious cocoa flavour,

so that's what I'm looking for from dessert today.

Leanne, so far, has looked solid,

especially when it comes to desserts.

I've got my fingers crossed for Leanne,

I think she may be the real deal.

I'm really enjoying the competition.

It has taken over my life.

Every evening, my husband gets a new dish

and I very much value his honest feedback.

It's my life, it is my life.

Happy to be here?

Really pleased to be here,

really pleased to be cooking Indian food as well, which I love.

When I was younger I spent a lot of time backpacking through India

and I stayed on a spice plantation in Goa,

so I'm really happy with the ingredients, yeah.

Leanne, you do realise now our expectations of your food's up here?

-Yeah.

-Good luck.

Thank you.

Leanne is making for us a thali,

a mixture of very, very small different dishes,

all together served as an Indian feast.

She's got to cook a piece of hake and serve that in a yoghurt sauce.

She's going to cook some scallops, which will be poached

with coconut milk and curry flavours. Beautiful.

The seafood's got to be cooked properly.

David is obviously in love with classic French cuisine.

He's most certainly got talent.

He has issues with presentation.

For me, David needs to show a little bit of style.

I wouldn't say I breezed through the first couple of rounds at all.

The market test was a real challenge, but overall

it's been the most fantastic and exhilarating experience.

David, you are cooking Indian.

I am cooking Indian,

I threw myself down a challenge, which I'm starting to regret,

because all my learned colleagues here

have all got experience of India

and I think the last time I cooked Indian was maybe 20 years ago.

Slightly sick in the pit of my stomach but then I thought,

maybe I can do this, maybe I can rise to the challenge.

I'm taking a gamble, but then life's full of those.

-What is it you are making?

-Well, I'm going to do some seared sea bass,

which has a nice marinade over the top of it.

I've got some kachumba, which is a vegetable pickle, to go alongside,

and then coconut fragrant rice to go with it.

David, I can see what this means to you.

-Good luck.

-Thanks, Gregg.

David's got to make sure that piece of sea bass is cooked beautifully.

It's got to be spiced really well.

The prawns have to be lovely and soft and not like bullets.

The rice has to be cooked absolutely perfectly,

and I hope, for his sake, that he does himself proud.

Jamie's a man who works in the wine industry,

so his palate is practised.

He's bursting with ideas.

Unfortunately, he wants to put all of those ideas

on one plate at the same time.

I know he can cook, I know he's got skill,

but it's about the heart and the soul of the dish.

I'm pretty confident today, you know.

I'm feeling good about my dish.

I'm not going to put something on the plate

just for the hell of it.

You are obviously cooking with chocolate.

We haven't seen anything sweet from you so far.

Yeah, I need to get a dessert up and see what you think of it.

You are the king of desserts

so I want to please you today and give you a dessert

that you'll like.

What are you making, Jamie?

I'm making a chocolate genoise with a chocolate ganache, toffee sauce,

raspberry coulis and some cereal milk ice cream.

Jamie, forgive me, you chuck more at a plate

than three contestants put together.

Why give yourself so much to do?

I think when you come on MasterChef,

there's only one opportunity to show off

and make sure that you give it your best shot.

This sounds fantastic -

but it also sounds as if you've given yourself

a massive challenge, Jamie.

-Good luck.

-Thank you, Gregg, thank you.

Chocolate cake, a genoise, the classic confectioner's cake,

as light as you like, rich with chocolate.

If he gets it right, I'll be really, really happy.

Ganache should be thick, it should be glossy.

There's lots of technique in here.

But it's the addition of toffee and raspberries.

Toffee, raspberries, cereal milk ice cream, cake and chocolate sauce?

It's getting a bit scary for Jamie.

You're halfway! 45 minutes left.

Alison is impressive.

She has given us three dishes, one from Southeast Asia,

one from North Africa and another one from Italy,

so she's got versatility.

What she's going to do today, I have no idea -

but I hope for more of the same.

I'm lucky in that the nerves haven't really gotten the better of me yet.

That's not to say that they won't at some point,

but now we're with all these new cooks,

I don't have any idea what standard they are,

so I'm never going to be 100% confident, that's for sure.

Yeah, I was happy with the brief but I've given myself quite a lot to do

because I'm trying to sort of up it a bit,

so there's lots of different elements on this.

I think, like everyone, I'll make Indian curries

but I wouldn't necessarily know the intricacy

of different regional cuisine,

but in terms of the flavours, in terms of the colours. I love it,

-absolutely love it.

-Good to hear, good to hear.

What are you making for us?

So I'm doing a Bengali-style rack of lamb

and a coriander and coconut potato

with beetroot and carrot pakora,

a saag sauce and a date and tamarind chutney.

I've cooked elements of this before and I've never done it all together,

I've never put it on one plate.

Alison's cooking Bengal lamb.

She's cooking a sticky coconut and coriander potato,

a beetroot and carrot pakora,

or a fritter, that is bound together with flour.

I want those lamb cutlets to be crispy on the outside and lovely

and juicy on the inside.

I want the pakoras to be cooked all the way through.

I want the spice of India and I want the textures of India

all on one plate.

Maria, she's an artist and her food is artistic.

Maria's food, at its best, is just truly delicious.

I work great under pressure.

The more pressure, the better.

I don't think that's what's going to throw me.

I decided to go for the dessert,

but I'm going to tell you a little secret -

I don't make desserts.

-Maria.

-Yes?

How does it feel being a quarterfinalist?

It feels great. I feel hot, hot, hot and ready to rock.

Wow! So you really are up for this.

-Yeah, I'm ready.

-What are you going to make for us?

A chocolate molten lava cake with a green tea matcha glaze

-and a white chocolate cream.

-Wow.

Why did you choose to do this?

Indian is not something that comes naturally to me,

Indian food, Indian spices, so chocolate, I love chocolate,

and hopefully it will be molten

and the lava will come nicely pouring out.

-Like a little volcano?

-Yes.

Maria is making us a molten chocolate cake.

It's actually a chocolate fondant,

and if it goes wrong, it's going to go wrong.

Who knows?

Right now, though, it's whisk a go-go.

Imran really interests me because his plate has colour, it has style,

great presentation.

On Imran's bench, there are 14 different spices.

14!

Imran, how did you feel when you saw the brief?

I felt great, actually. I felt... I saw it as an opportunity, actually,

because this is not the style of food I normally cook.

It's the food I've been brought up with,

but I've never had the need to learn it.

Did you have a teacher?

Yeah, my mum's been instrumental in this.

I asked her for her help

and the first thing that she said was, "It's about time".

Now, in the last round, you were late.

-Yes, I was.

-What about today?

I'm going to be on time today.

Fabulous. Thank you very much.

No worries, take care.

What we have is a feast, we've got poora, little puffed up breads,

which are hollow inside and crispy on the outside.

We've got kale pakoras.

We're going to have salad made from green apples and chillies.

It sounds really exciting.

What's really exciting about this -

there is not a stitch of meat nor fish on his bench.

You cannot prepare for how hard MasterChef actually is,

and, this time, I don't only have pressure from John and Gregg,

I'm cooking food that my mother makes,

so I've got pressure from home as well.

Guys, just ten minutes, all right?

I think one of the humbling privileges of being a critic

is that you never actually have to confront

the people that you're criticising.

I think the thing that's going to be different today

is being right there, face-to-face with the cooks

that you are critiquing.

I want to be tough,

I want to be scrupulous,

I want to be constructive - but I want to be fair.

Only five minutes, please.

Ah, I'm screwed.

That's it! Time's up.

Time's up.

Let me introduce you to the gentleman that set you this brief.

Writer and restaurant critic Amol Rajan.

Leanne, please, up you come.

NHS worker Leanne has created a seafood thali of machchi sufyani,

using hake, tamarind prawns, scallops, served with puri bread.

Leanne, I was hoping for a dish

which showed the vibrancy and the visual explosiveness

of Indian cuisine and you've certainly got that.

This is a riot of colour and it looks hugely appetising.

A lot of people get hake really wrong.

A lot of times, you go to a restaurant

and it's undercooked and translucent,

and that's actually spot on, it's succulent,

and I think that shows real technical skill.

One thing that is a bit disappointing

is that I would have liked a bit more spice

and a bit more flavour, so, with the scallops,

it tastes almost like a sweet dish.

The things that I think is a slight let-down is the puris.

Puri, you know, are puffed up and they're light.

The oil wasn't hot enough and, you know what,

if it doesn't quite work, don't serve it.

Yeah, I was wondering whether to or not and I wish I hadn't.

But I think that hake is delicious.

I love it because there's a real wonderful sourness, the yoghurt,

it's smoky and it's vivacious and it's vibrant and it's exciting.

You've cooked all three fish really well.

I'm feeling like it was a mixed bag of emotions,

but he seemed to like the presentation.

I just wish I hadn't served the puri.

They were terrible - and I knew they were going to be terrible.

So, yeah, that's a big learning curve.

Classic car enthusiast David is serving seared sea bass

on an aubergine, tomato and potato crush,

kachumba pickle and a Bhagari jhinga with lemon basmati rice.

I'm slightly concerned that the aubergine, potato,

fennel and tomato isn't going to necessarily reflect

-what I think of as Indian cuisine.

-Yes.

The prawns work well,

they're quite soft and slightly overcooked, in my view,

but I think the sauce is creamy. The pickle that you've got there,

the modern take on a kachumba,

could have just done with a bit more acidity

to make it a bit more of a pickle.

What I'm less convinced of is what's basically a potato salad

with aubergine and fennel.

The potato is very, very soft and, you know what,

that could work perfectly well as a side dish -

but not really on this dish.

Yeah.

I feel that your fish is overcooked,

the potatoes underneath the fish are also overcooked and a bit mushy.

It's all gone a bit sloppy.

For me, the whole thing needs a little bit more spice.

It's not your style, it's not the style of food that got you here,

and it's lacking vibrancy of spice

and heat and sharpness, unfortunately.

It was an uphill challenge.

I'm not expert enough in spicing,

I'm not expert enough in composition of the plate,

and it kind of showed on the day.

29-year-old Jamie has made a chocolate genoise

on top of chocolate ganache,

served with cereal-flavoured milk ice cream, a toffee sauce,

raspberry coulis and a toffee crisp rice.

I think it looks lovely.

It's a chocolate and raspberry sweet rockpool.

Jamie, you can be really proud of that.

It looked incredibly appetising,

like the sort of professionally delivered dessert

that I would expect at this stage of MasterChef.

I like that you've got some accompanying ice cream

and I really like the contrasting textures that you've got here.

There's a smoothness in the ganache,

there's a flouriness in this sort of...

it's almost like a deconstructed brownie,

and I really like the little toffee crisp.

I wanted to be reminded of my childhood

and that is exactly what that does.

-Thank you.

-Technically, I think your work is great.

I really like your little toffee crisp from the puffed rice.

Your genoise is made very, very nicely,

slightly dense cake and you've got a very smooth ganache underneath.

There's a touch of toffee, which I quite like, with the chocolate,

but, for me, the raspberries are just one ingredient too many.

That's a really skilful, very attractive dessert, Jamie.

-Thank you.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah,

-I think you're proving a certain amount of skill here.

-Thanks.

To get that critique, to get that feedback, is really rewarding.

Whatever happens, I'm happy with the way I did today.

Marketing consultant Alison is serving Bengali-style rack of lamb,

with coconut and coriander potato salad, a saag sauce,

beetroot and carrot pakora and a date chutney.

I don't think I've ever had a beetroot pakora,

-so I'm very, very excited about that.

-Yep.

I think that the lamb and the Bengali five spice

reminds me of India,

it reminds me of happy times that I've spent there,

but you've clearly put very much your own interpretation on it.

The potato salad doesn't strike me as particularly Indian.

What I'm really excited by

is the beetroot and carrot and red onion pakora.

That's a very Alison interpretation of a very Indian idea

and I think it works well.

Those potatoes aren't cooked enough, that is my one and only complaint.

There is such a beautiful mixture of flavours

that absolutely fill me full of joy.

The lamb is lovely, it's cooked really nicely,

spice around the outside starts off being quite mellow and creeps up on

you and then bites you.

As for raw potato salad...

Of all the things that could have gone wrong in that dish,

I never thought the potatoes would be one of them.

Other than that, I think it went really well.

American-born designer Maria is serving a molten lava cake

with a green tea matcha glaze and white chocolate cream.

Didn't quite turn out the way you expected, did it?

No, it did not. It's not supposed to be in the mould but I had it

on the wrong setting in the oven.

Have you cooked with chocolate and green tea together before?

-No.

-I'm looking forward to it.

Have fun.

Mmm.

We asked for chocolate with a playful twist

and the real twist was that it all went slightly horribly wrong for you.

-Yeah.

-I have to say, I quite like the white chocolate.

It's thick, it's gloopy,

its moreish, but the chocolate cake hasn't ended up

how you wanted it to be.

It's a sort of mulch which doesn't really have any shape or form.

The green tea-chocolate combination, you know,

this is a very fashionable thing in modern America.

I think these sort of droplets you've got there work fine

but I think you've been let down

by not switching your oven on to the right temperature.

Exactly.

Technically, it's not what it should be.

However, dark chocolate with white chocolate creamy sauce, it's tasty,

that's for sure.

For a chocolate lover, it's very, very moreish.

However, as you well know, there is no texture to that pudding.

It's a shame and it's a problem.

Very disappointed.

Oh, my God, I cannot believe that happened.

The oven, the oven...

Didn't cook it.

Cardiff-based dentist Imran has created a thali -

a selection of dishes including lentil dhal,

potato curry, rice, kale pakoras,

green apple salad and puris.

For me, this is the best-presented dish I've seen so far.

I was really hoping someone would turn up with a thali,

and you did that, so it's hugely exciting.

And I've travelled the length and breadth of India

looking for the perfect pakora

and that's up there with some of the best.

There's a sort of chewy,

succulent texture which is really nice and the seasoning is spot on,

-which is absolutely key in a pakora.

-Thank you so much.

I think the dhal has got huge aroma.

Quite often, people confuse spice with chilli

and actually that's got a really good spice

without having too much heat and I think that speaks to someone

who understands spicing in a really impressive way.

The thing about the potato curry is

I just wish there was a bit more heat and a bit more kick to it,

but the smells are fantastic, it looks very good

and I'd be very, very happy to pay for that in a restaurant.

I like the kachumba because I love that sharp sourness of the apple

and the bite of the onion

and I really like the texture of the pakoras.

I'm going to nick them for me, they're going in my recipe book.

The other ones, I just think you need a bit more spice,

but considering the amount of spices you used,

I think they could just be a bit more powerful.

This potato curry, I love.

I absolutely love it and it's spicy enough for me,

but, personally, I'm struggling with some of this. The lentils,

although I love the flavour and the aroma coming off,

it's too wet for me and it's not like a dhal I've ever had before.

Slightly disappointed that I did split the judges, but I feel great.

A fully-fledged, paid-up, respected restaurant critic

said he would pay for my food.

I think that's the biggest compliment I could get.

I think it was a very bold brief,

I think it was a fascinating brief because if there's one thing this

country loves, it's its curry and its chocolate.

They all pushed themselves, really worked very, very hard

and with some good results.

For me, one of the standout performers,

even though she undercooked her potatoes, was Alison.

-I agree.

-I was knocked out by her flavour combinations,

I thought they were stunning.

The other person, for me, who fulfilled the brief

and delivered a huge amount of work was Leanne.

That piece of fish, that hake, was fantastic.

Jamie's dessert really impressed you.

I have to say I liked the cake, the genoise, I thought it was nice,

I liked the ganache.

What impressed me was the amount of process and skill that he managed to

do and show in a limited amount of time.

Maria messed up, there's no two ways about it.

White chocolate sauce with dark chocolate sauce, and that was delicious,

but it wasn't MasterChef quarterfinal material.

If you mess up on that scale, I think you're gone.

I think David is a very, very good cook.

This brief, however, was not his brief.

The prawns - cooked nicely with the sauce,

but, again, where was the vibrancy of flavour?

I think I'm in No Man's Land at the moment

and I couldn't call it either way.

What was really interesting about Imran - he used 14 different

spices in that thali. Fantastic.

You and I can't quite agree on Imran.

The dhal, for me,

seemed to completely lack lentils

and looked like very nicely flavoured water.

To make it slightly further

would just be incredible.

Actually, that's it, it would be incredible.

Sending somebody home at this stage of the competition

is always going to be really tough.

I tell you what, I think this is a very,

very difficult decision.

We understand what this competition is all about.

Who can cope with the rest of the competition and who can't?

We are going to take four of you

through to the next round.

The first person going through to knockout week...

..is Alison.

The second person going through...

..is Jamie.

The third person going through to knockout week...

..is Leanne.

Now, one more place,

which means that two of you will be leaving the competition.

And the final person going through to knockout week...

..is Imran.

So sorry, Maria, so sorry, David.

I feel gutted to be leaving.

I'm not terribly surprised, I think it was a very fair judging.

Maybe on reflection, I should have gone for the chocolate option,

but it wasn't to be.

I'm definitely a better cook than I showed today.

If I had made something like that at home,

I would have never served it. It's a shame.

You four, congratulations.

I'm feeling absolutely amazing, honestly, I'm just so,

so happy I got through. Delighted.

Today, I presented food that means a lot to me, so, yeah, proud.

I can't really put it into words right now.

It's really great to make it through to knockout week of MasterChef.

My heart can't take it.

I'm going to have a really large gin and tonic.

Several gin and tonics, maybe.

Congratulations!

-ALL:

-Cheers!

Whoo!

Next week: Eight more cooks battle it out

for a place in the quarterfinal.

Oh, watch out.

I'm already basically changing my mind.

It looks fantastic.

I think this is probably the best thing I've tasted in this room...ever!