Episode 6 Celebrity MasterChef

We've got 16 celebrities battling it out to win the MasterChef crown.

I'm very competitive. I'm in it to win it.

These celebrities have made a name for themselves in their own professions.

But can they cut it in the kitchen?

Going into that kitchen, if it's like an invention test, I'm going to crumble.

If I manage to not give Gregg and John worms, I'll be quite proud of myself.

Cooking doesn't get tougher than this.

These four celebrities are taking on the challenge to become the next MasterChef champion.

But at the end of this week, only the best cooks will make it through to the next stage.

As everybody knows, I'm used to coming second.

Winning this would mean the world to me, yeah.

I'll be really upset if I'm the first to go.

I will cry in front of the camera.

I don't know what I'll be like if things fall apart

and all go wrong. I hope I'll remain cheerful.

I'm really nervous. I'm really, really nervous about this.

I mean, I'm really nervous.

Four brand-new, sparkling celebs.

Four fresh celebrities to sacrifice on the altar of gastronomy.

Welcome to Celebrity MasterChef.

This is your opportunity to show the whole nation how skilful you are in the kitchen.

This, your first test, is the mystery box.

You will have just 50 minutes to cook for us one plate of food,

using some of those ingredients inside that box.

Remember, he who dares wins.

To be honest, I'll be happy if I can eat it.

LAUGHTER

Now lift your box.

Today's main ingredient is pigeon.

The box also includes savoy cabbage,

pancetta, a red pepper,

puy lentils, rhubarb and an orange.

So there's the rules. You have a set of ingredients. We would like one plate of food. You have 50 minutes.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's cook.

These celebs' first visit to the MasterChef kitchen

and they get a pigeon and a stick of rhubarb thrown at 'em.

It couldn't get any tougher.

The head on the pigeon has still got its guts in.

Oh! Oh, that's liver!

Fantastic. All four of you are cooking the pigeon.

Hi!

27-year-old singer Gareth grew up in a household of seven children

and his passion for food originally comes from his mum.

I'm used to singing and performing on stage.

I'm used to pressure, but it's doing something I'm good at.

This, um... Who knows what's going to happen?

Have you ever prepared a pigeon before?

No, never. The moment I took the box off, I was like, "Oh, God, what am I going to do?"

But you know, as I've relaxed a bit, I've found a dish.

I'm making pigeon breast wrapped in Parma ham, roast potatoes and a carrot puree.

I'm all about the way things look.

-So your food is about aesthetic. Can you visualise the dish in your head?

-Yeah.

-Can you?

-Yeah.

-Yay!

-Sorry.

-That's the first thing I did. I thought, looking at all these, "How will it look on the plate?"

Then I worked backwards.

Now you can see the dish in your mind's eye, can you taste it?

Ish, yeah, ish.

-Brilliant.

-We'll see what happens.

Are the gods smiling at you? Are you at one with the spirit in the sky?

HE LAUGHS

-I certainly am!

-Right, OK.

-Let's go.

-OK, brilliant.

-Good luck.

-Cheers, mate.

-Thank you so much.

15 minutes have gone. You've got 35 minutes left.

Both of actress Laila's parents are chefs,

but they wouldn't let her into the kitchen when she was a child.

When I get into that kitchen environment, nothing is going to kick in but pure fear and panic.

Don't look at me because you make me nervous.

When you're delivering lines on a show, you can cut and do another take.

Come on, cook!

There are no takes. You've got one chance and if you mess it up, it's over.

I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how long this takes to cook.

-What's this?

-The pigeon.

-Right.

-Yeah.

-Are you boiling it in a pot?

-Yeah.

Look, it's bleeding.

-OK, don't worry.

-What dish are you going to cook for us?

I've just put in some shallots, some coriander.

Is it cori...?

Parsley.

It's all right. Go on.

And some chicken stock. And that's it, really.

I feel a bit lost, if I'm being honest.

-What's in there?

-There's the pepper in there, but I'm not sure if I'm going to use it.

-What's the worst that can happen?

-We get ill?

-What's the best that can happen?

-We think it's delicious.

-Exactly. I've got to think like that.

You are halfway.

Author Emma claims that all of her cooking knowledge comes from years of watching MasterChef.

I'm a bit secretly in love with John and Gregg.

I've never met them before.

I'm going to have to really concentrate on not being a giddy goat.

I'm going to try and play it cool.

I will fail, but, you know, I will do my best.

Emma, what are you going to cook for us?

I've never, ever cooked a pigeon before in my life. I'm roasting it.

I've put orange zest on the skin, I've covered it in pancetta and stuck some garlic up it.

I'm going to serve it with a pommes puree, savoy cabbage with pancetta and a butter and flat parsley sauce.

That's brilliant. How much cooking do you do?

I cook every day, but I've got massive gaps in my culinary skills.

-If your food is as pleasing as your smile, we're in for a treat.

-Oh, dear. Eugh!

-They warned me about you.

-See you later, Emma. Good luck.

-See you!

Guys, 15 minutes left.

Actor and writer George is the main cook at home

and often competes with his wife in the kitchen.

I think what will give me an advantage is I'll be role-playing.

If I use this technique and pretend I am one of the great chefs we see on television,

maybe I'll do better than I should.

-You've got far too much hair for a man your age, George.

-You haven't.

-No.

-This round is all about invention. Are you OK with that?

-I'm not sure.

Usually, I plan a meal. This is a bit of a voyage of discovery.

You are going to cook for us what?

I am going to cook pan-fried pigeon breast with savoy cabbage.

I'm going to probably use the pancetta, I think. I like the look of that.

-And sauteed potatoes.

-Good luck.

-I'm really enjoying it.

Last three minutes, guys. Come on, last three minutes.

Guys, you've got just 90 seconds left.

You've got 30 seconds.

That's it. Time's up.

First up is Emma

with her orange-roasted pigeon,

wrapped in pancetta and stuffed with garlic,

served with pommes puree, cabbage, buttered carrots and a parsley sauce.

-You like your seasoning, don't you?

-Yeah, I put a bit too much salt in it right at the last minute.

-Perfect.

-No?

-Absolutely.

-Blimey, I am amazed!

The whole lot is cooked really nicely.

Your mash is lovely and creamy, I like the crunch of your cabbage, your pigeon is cooked beautifully.

-Then you get punched in the head with huge amounts of salt.

-I've over-salted things today.

Oh, yeah. But I love your pigeon. Good on ya!

Thank you, John.

I'm really impressed with everything apart from that ghastly sauce.

-I know.

-It's too thick and it just tastes like a bowl of salt.

-Yeah, it's horrible.

Let's hide it. I'm just going to put it in a cupboard and forget about it. There, it's gone!

It's making my eyes go funny.

SHE LAUGHS

I think I just panicked. It was like a salt frenzy had come over me.

It was a tsunami of salt. I'll keep an eye on that in future.

George took the breasts off the pigeon, pan-fried them

and served them with pancetta, savoy cabbage, sauteed potatoes

and a red pepper salad.

-You've cooked that pigeon breast so well.

-I'm so pleased.

It's so nicely seasoned and it's moist inside, really gamey, quite strong.

You've done really well with that, but the look of the plate is not good.

There is uneven cooking on this cabbage. There's burnt bits.

The same is true of the sauteed potato.

You have got a really earthy, autumnal dish

with a capsicum, a pepper, which is raw.

Your cooking is good, but the finishing off is a bit haphazard.

And the presentation, well, there isn't any!

Overall, I'm sort of happy, but I know I can do better and I will do better.

Laila pot-roasted her pigeon with the potatoes and served them

with a red pepper, stuffed with a pigeon liver and lentils.

You could have cooked your bird a little less, it could be pinker.

-Yeah.

-But the potatoes and all the juice is delicious.

Oh, thank you.

-Right, let's try this.

-OK.

Nothing?

Weird.

Yeah.

A juicy, sweet bell pepper with lentils that are too firm.

They shouldn't... No, they shouldn't be together.

OK.

The pepper and the lentils is just pretty nasty,

but the other half of the dish is really delicious.

-I think if you just concentrate on one thing and commit to your dish, you're going to do OK.

-Thank you.

-Thank you, Laila.

-Thank you very much.

I'm just a bit dazed at the moment. It wasn't as bad as I thought and I'm glad it's over.

Gareth wrapped his pigeon breasts in pancetta and served them on roast potatoes with carrot puree.

It looks fantastic. Fantastic.

Thanks.

Wonderful iron-rich pigeon, beautiful taste of that bacon around the outside, all smoky,

and a really beautifully seasoned, sweet carrot puree.

I think it's really very, very good indeed.

I'm so, so impressed, Gareth.

-Well, thank you very much. Thank you.

-No wuckers.

I really like that. It's a perfect, perfect match.

I'm really impressed. This was a mystery box and you've had no chance to practise this at all.

I'm very, very chuffed with how it went

and I'm so pleased that they liked my dish.

Guys, that may be the best start I have ever seen to a heat on Celebrity MasterChef.

Absolutely brilliant.

We'll see you soon for your next test. Off you go.

They've raised the bar of my expectations.

I now want great stuff from them and I'm going to be really disappointed if I don't get it.

You've got a skills test. What is it?

-Tomato bruschetta.

-How long have they got?

-Ten minutes.

The first thing our celebs have to do is take the skin off those tomatoes.

Out comes the core and a little, tiny criss-cross into the tomato,

so when it gets dropped into the water, the whole thing blisters and the skin is easily removed.

You don't want a bruschetta with tomato skin on it. It's disgusting.

Plunge straight into cold water to stop the cooking process, so now the skin starts to come off,

but the tomato is still lovely and firm to the touch.

-Everybody is going to know how to blanch a tomato, he says hopefully.

-Really?

-If they mess up at this stage, they might as well go home.

-Piece of Italian bread - ciabatta...

And the bread itself now gets soaked in olive oil.

Then we put our bread in, and listen to it.

-SIZZLING

-I don't want that bread to burn. I just want it to char.

OK...

Hmm!

Garlic prepared two different ways.

Take the garlic, cut it in half.

Take a piece of bread and just rub the garlic on the bread itself.

Now, the rest of the garlic, chopped up a little bit first...

The flat of the knife...

And there's our garlic paste.

The thing I'll be most upset about is if they've got big hunks of garlic.

Garlic and tomatoes together.

A little, tiny bit of salt to bring out the juice of the tomatoes.

Some basil.

A bit of olive oil.

A decent grind of black pepper.

I don't mind if they don't use all of the ingredients or the basil,

as long as they get flavour on that bruschetta.

And now we're going to put the whole lot on to our warm bread.

A good pile of it.

There you have it - tomato bruschetta.

It may look like it's really easy, but to get that flavour balance right, to get the textures right

with only a few ingredients is the most difficult part.

I'm up for this. I hope they are. Let's get 'em in.

-Hi, guys.

-OK, Gareth...

Tomato bruschetta, your interpretation, but the tomatoes must have their skin removed.

Ten minutes. Let's go.

-I need to relax a bit.

-You do.

I'm making a right mess of this tomato.

-Have you had bruschetta before?

-Yes.

-And how is the bread usually?

-OK, yes.

Three minutes.

90 seconds.

-Done?

-That's it, yeah, yeah.

Great seasoning on your tomato and your basil, but it's just on a piece of bread, it's not crispy.

Also, it needs some olive oil on it. I've never seen anybody peel a tomato with a vegetable peeler.

I know, I know.

-Not quite, Gareth. Not quite.

-Sure.

-How did that get in there?

-It's sort of hunks of garlic which are raw. It's not very good.

-Gareth, thanks, mate.

-Thank you, guys. Cheers.

I'm a little bit gutted after that.

I'm an absolute perfectionist.

I just hope that doesn't affect my chances.

-Hello, Laila.

-Hello.

-Ten minutes. Let's go.

-You've had three minutes.

-Stop shaking.

-I can't help it though. I've got you two looking over me.

I should really use some garlic.

Five minutes.

You've got four minutes left and you can finish ahead of time.

All right, I'm done.

We asked you to make us a tomato bruschetta.

-We've got dippy soldiers with tomato salad.

-Yeah.

-Not really what we wanted.

-No.

It's your interpretation. The flavours inside there are tomato, basil, salted capers.

The whole olives though mean that you just get a massive flavour of olive.

And just so you know, to take the skin off a tomato, you really don't need to peel it like an apple.

Yeah. I knew I wasn't doing it right, but I didn't know what I had to do.

-When you grated that garlic, can I just show you this olive?

-Yeah.

That's got nearly all the garlic on it.

Olive oil, toasted bread, tomatoes, seasoned, basil, I like,

but that olive is a big invader and it's trampling over everything else.

Mm-hm.

It's all right. It's OK, it's OK.

-Thanks, Laila.

-Thank you.

It was a disaster, I think.

They give you really good advice and I have to start listening and actually taking it in.

-Right...

-Hello, George.

-Hello, hello.

What we want from you is a tomato bruschetta.

Well done.

Five minutes left.

You've got three minutes.

-90 seconds left.

-There we are.

This is more like a sort of pizza and you've definitely got to work on presentation.

Some of it has got anchovy on. Some hasn't got tomato on.

-Not quite what we had in mind.

-No.

It's actually perfectly yummy

because it's warm tomato pushed into the toast with olive oil, a salty anchovy,

-but it's not the classic tomato bruschetta we had in mind.

-No.

I'm really pleased that you know how to take the skin off a tomato.

-OK.

-But you spent two minutes chopping and making garlic paste and you haven't used it anywhere.

-No, I put it in, I thought.

-No.

You left it on the board, the whole lot.

Cheers, mate. See you soon.

That was the most interesting assembling of products I've ever seen in my life.

I've just got to think a bit quicker on my feet.

What we want you to make is tomato bruschetta.

-Tomato bruschetta.

-Your ten minutes starts now.

There's five minutes left.

-Well done. Finished?

-I think I'm finished.

-You think? Are you or not?

-Yeah, I'm finished.

What you've done here is almost perfect.

No? You're joking?

I am close on ecstatic

by your result.

There was so much good in what you were doing there, Emma. You oiled the bread.

You put the oiled bread on the griddle pan. Perfect.

You rubbed a piece of garlic over the bread. Perfect.

You put the tomatoes in the boiling water, so the skin came off. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

I really like the sweetness of the tomato, the tang of the basil. Good.

Really, really good attempt. You should be proud of yourself.

The garlic is overpowering the lovely sweet tomatoes, but the way you worked, I'm really impressed.

-We think you're good.

-Thank you.

-We think you're very good.

-I think you two are all right as well.

-Thanks, Emma.

-Thank you.

I'm ecstatic about the comments that they've made today.

I just wasn't expecting that at all.

I love these four. I absolutely love 'em.

They're up and down, they're all over the place, you don't know what you're going to get next.

How can Gareth cook an outstanding pigeon dish and not even know how to peel a tomato properly?

The first round went so well that I set a bar for myself.

I'm a little bit disappointed that I haven't kept up to that bar.

I don't think there's anything wrong with Laila that a good, deep breath wouldn't cure.

Today has been nerve-wracking.

I think I'm going to put those nerves aside and just do my best.

George actually gave us something quite tasty.

He has to try a different approach because it's resulting

in scruffy-looking plates with virtually no presentation at all.

I've had my ups and my downs, but I'll tell you something.

I'm really up for this. I can't wait for the next test.

Emma continues to grow for me. I think there is a real cook there behind that big smile.

The minute I put on the MasterChef apron, it's like getting a Blue Peter badge. It's amazing.

It's like properly amazing.

For them next, they are in for a big, big test.

Oh!

Next time, the pressure intensifies

as the celebrities face their first outside challenge.

A trolley and a fork. A trolley and a fork.

-There's no way there's 40 portions.

-I'm hoping there is.

-There isn't.

Gregg, what do you do with your plums?

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