Original subtitles

Alright fellas, do it.

So close to the semi-final. I'm actually feeling pretty good. I think I've hit my

stride and I'm in a great mental space.

I'm very proud that I made it to this point.

Morning guys.

Morning.

We're so happy for Andy because he's currently in his little newborn bubble

and he can't be here, but he wishes all of you the best of luck today for the

elimination.

Petro, you won yesterday's challenge, which means you are the first person

into our semifinals. Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

With only three of you in black aprons, the odds of going home today are high.

But on the flip side, your odds of winning this competition are huge.

You all came here with a dream and you've all left your lives at home.

You've sacrificed time with loved ones and today those same loved ones will be

your source of inspiration.

On each bench is a parcel addressed to you.

Inside is a special ingredient that will shape your dish today.

One by one, we'll get you to lift your lid to reveal what's inside.

Aaron, can you please open your package?

Okay.

What have you got there, Aaron?

I've got garlic.

Yeah, he does.

Garlic and a scroll.

It's from my partner, Crystal.

Oh.

Dear Aaron, you've done so well to get to this point in the competition.

While it's been a whole lot of fun, I know it has also been really challenging

for you, pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone and constantly questioning

yourself whether you're good enough to be here.

You've always been a good cook, there's no question about it, but you've leveled

up exponentially.

I mean, you can even make dessert now.

It's wild to think that life was so different nearly months ago.

I know that every day and every experience is a meaningful step towards

becoming the person and chef you aspire to be.

I want you to take a deep breath and look around the kitchen.

This is real.

You are way more than good enough.

Little Aaron will be in awe of you.

Good luck for the rest of the competition.

You're going to kill it and everyone's cheering for you.

You've got this.

Love, Crystal.

It's pretty special.

It's really special.

She's the one who encouraged me to get here.

Having someone like her behind me means that I've got someone to lean on and

someone who'll keep pushing me forward.

Very important.

Having that permission to chase my dream because someone's there supporting me

and supporting my dream has been so important.

Now is the time to really pull out all the stops and just keep going.

Why do you think Crystal put garlic in your parcel?

Um...

She knows I love garlic, so I use a lot of garlic when I cook.

So I have a whole jar of garlic in the fridge that's like about this big that I

cook with. And I do remember mentioning in the mystery boxes here, there's never

any garlic.

So that's probably why she's put garlic in here today.

Vinny, can you please open your package?

Ooh.

What have you got there, Vinny?

I have sardines and a little note.

Are you happy with the sardines?

Yeah, yeah. I think they're a really cool ingredient. I haven't really cooked

them very much, but... But,

you know, I've had them a lot and they're very close to, like, you know,

our family and our traditional Sicilian cooking.

Here's a letter from Vinnie. My dad... Can I open it?

Yeah.

So, my mum and my dad are separated and...

Growing up, me and my dad, we didn't really see each other every single day.

So it was only on the weekend we spent a lot of time together and I feel like we

really bonded a lot then.

To Vincent, the endless weekend drives to ripe, playing the song The Summer

Wind and barbecue dinners will always be a special time in my life.

Whether it was 30 degrees or 10 degrees, he always wanted to go for a swim.

Thinking the cold water would end your two-hour swim, it never did. But me

screaming out to you, let's go eat, would always do the trick.

What do you want to eat, Pop?

Barbecue pie, you would say.

As time passed, even though my time spent with you was at a bare minimum,

you still chose to sit at my restaurant to watch me cook and spend time with me.

You asked me questions after questions.

Looking back, as I see it, it has made you the extremely smart and intelligent

man you are today.

And also very handsome, just like your father.

You're not just my son, but my best mate.

You are and have always been a winner in my eyes.

If this is the last hit of advice I can give you, keep it simple.

Love you yesterday, love you always, Dad.

Oh, my goodness, Vinnie.

Do those sardines make even more sense now? Yeah, they definitely do.

Yeah, I'm already thinking about what to do with these sardines.

If it was my dad, he'd probably do full sardines, cooked whole, on the barbie,

pretty rustic, like a lot of Sicilian dishes are.

Gaspar.

Yep, the grapes.

As a family, there's a lot of, like, just memories around grapes.

There's probably a few years, like, when I was living back at home where, like,

every night we would just hook into a bag of grapes.

So we'd go through, like, a bag of grapes a day and we'd have to, like,

duck down to the shop at, like, 7 o'clock just to get some grapes.

Dear Casper.

As the final weeks of MasterChef approach, we have been reflecting on

your passion and flair for cooking and where that may have come from.

We knew from a young age that you loved creating things and making people happy.

Little did we know it would lead to where you are today and what a journey

you had.

We encourage you to follow your dreams.

Don't feel constrained by what you think are the expectations of others.

You got this, bro.

Take time to breathe and reflect on your goals and ambitions.

At this moment, you have an opportunity like no other.

We wish you all the best.

Lots of love, Mum and Dad.

It's really nice to reflect on all these memories that we hold, like, so close.

It's, like, the best motivation to just smash this cook and get through.

Hey, Petro.

We haven't forgotten about you. You've got a letter too.

Oh!

Thank you.

My letter is from my dad, Gus, and my mum, Georgia.

Dia Petro, as they would call me.

Cooking shows were always a staple in our household, and the conversation was

often, imagine being on MasterChef. How amazing would that be?

Look at you now, living that very dream.

From when you were a little boy, it was clear that food would be such a big part

of your life.

And learning alongside your Yaya Sophia.

We would be so incredibly proud of you and how far you've come in this

competition.

And we're sure she's watching over you.

Sorry.

We could not be prouder that your journey has led you to the MasterChef

kitchen.

No matter the outcome, you have already done something truly amazing with lots

of love, Baba and Mum.

Got quite emotional hearing about you, Sophia, because, yeah, quite sadly she

passed away whilst I've been in here.

But I did get to cook that dish in the family tree challenge, and that was

honestly probably the most special cook because I got to call her and say,

that, you know, I cooked that dish.

And she was so happy.

And then a week later she'd passed away and I...

So, yeah, family means everything and a big part of why

I'm here.

Oh, when boys cry, like, it just, like, it gets you, it gets you in the heart.

It's so lovely to be a part of someone's story like that.

Everyone standing up here, we're all feeling it.

Those messages from home should give you the motivation to do your absolute best.

You will have 75 minutes.

The pantry and the garden are open.

But you must make your ingredients from your package the star of your dish.

Dig deep.

Because your time starts now. Come on.

It is so tense

down there.

You know, this is to get into the thing.

Let's go.

Unfortunately, it's an elimination.

What's popping?

Nothing. Just hop in, mate.

Try a different one.

Okay, feel as though everyone right now is just... So zone it.

Let's go maybe a bit of this.

A bit of this.

Sardines is not an ingredient that I know back to front very well.

But I really want to pay homage to those memories with my dad. So I'm going to do

the sardines barbecue today.

I'm feeling very motivated to get one of those last two spots in the semis.

And I've got everybody back home really, like, cheering me on and supporting me.

It's like that final push before it's really on.

I really am feeling inspired by that letter, like, hearing just what my

family has to say about me and how proud they are.

At this point in the competition, it's really important to have, like, a good

support network.

The three other boys that are in this top four, they're all from Melbourne, so

they're in their hometown.

Why? Family, yeah, they're a long way away.

I, um...

Yeah, I really miss my family. Like, they are a massive part of my life.

Both my parents were in the Navy and being a defence family, we were, like,

posted away. We were used to being separated from each other for, like,

long periods of time.

But we're really, really close. You couldn't ask for better parents. And

getting letters from home and hearing, like, all the nice words and those

memories with food.

It reminds me why I'm here.

But it is a really hard ingredient to, like, hero. Like, I love eating them by

themselves, but then, yeah, how do you turn that into some, like, cohesive sort

of dish?

Semifinals are on the line, and if I'm going to find myself there, I need to

dig deep and do what I do best in this kitchen, get creative.

I'm feeling good, under the pump.

Great challenge.

Hoping that I can deliver on the brief today.

Crystal has sent me garlic.

I have to find a way to make that the star of a dish.

So I'm making a garlic spanner crab spaghetti.

And I'll have a garlic sauce, a confit garlic oil.

We'll have some garlic chips as garnish and also the wild garlic flowers.

The reason why I've decided to make pasta is because the garlic flavour has

to shine through. And especially with the spanner crab.

The spanner crab is quite a delicate flavor, more like a sweetness, and it

won't actually overtake and play the main protagonist of my dish. So that's

why I've gone with that today.

There's a lot riding on today's cook, and I've been quite strategic with what

I'm making today because I want that place in the top three, and I want to

make a dish that would make my partner proud.

My partner, Crystal, she's the most important person to me.

She and I have been together for a decade now.

She's always wanted me to go out there and chase what I wanted to do.

She's my number one supporter.

If I didn't have Crystal, I would have never applied for MasterChef.

I wouldn't have left my job.

I wouldn't be here at all.

And by being here, I've gotten more and more confident in my ability, my skills

or my instincts.

And I think I can finally see white crystal season me.

I have so much self-belief now, and I'm ready to push myself into the semi

-final.

My dad's letter was really lovely.

It's pretty cool to have my dad as one of my best mates.

We share a lot of good times together, and a lot of them do involve cooking.

My dad is a chef in an Italian restaurant.

I learnt so much about food and cooking from him.

And the food that he cooks is very rustic, old school.

So I'm going to really channel that today and keep it really traditional and

really close to my heart.

I'm going to have the butterflied sardines and cook them on the hibachi to

get that barbecue memories of us going.

And then some really quick braised beans, some caramelised zucchini and

some artichokes with a sweet and sour agrodolce.

and a really nice fresh herb sauce, just to really tie it all back together.

So the first thing I need to work out is how I'm going to prepare these sardines.

Traditional Sardinian recipes that I've grown up with. Sometimes serve them with

scales on them.

These are just a couple of test sardines, just to see whether or not I

need to take the scales off.

But I think when an ingredient is as good as these, you don't really need to

do too much to them.

So just a really nice sear on the hibachi, really crispy skin. You can see

those little blisters.

Are they salty?

A bit.

Yeah, yeah.

Try how salty they are. They're pretty salty, but they're really good, and I

don't think I need to scale them, so awesome.

It's a bit of me and a bit of my dad both in this, you know, and if I just

pour my heart into this dish like I do when I'm cooking at home with my dad,

I'm going to make a really good dish.

I've got a good crema recipe if you need it, Casper. Can you tell me?

Today, my family have picked green grape.

So I'm going to do a dessert.

So that's what you've been trying to do, yeah?

Yep.

Sweet, floral, but they also have a little bit of acidity. They're really

nice at the moment and they're crunchy as.

For this grape dessert, I'm going to draw on a lot of things that I've

learned and done well across the season.

I'm thinking about balance of flavours and textures and temperatures.

So for the base of this dessert, I'm going to have a little almond biscuit.

I know almond goes really well with grape.

On top of that, I'm going to have a little white chocolate cremeux made with

the juice of the grape.

To top the dessert off, I'm going to do a granita.

Every single element that I'm putting on this plate...

besides my little almond thing at the bottom, is going to have grape in it.

If I have five grape elements on the plate, it is just going to sing grape,

but now I've got to make sure that they are distinct enough so that they all

just don't mellow together when you beat it.

I've just put the granita mix in the freezer. I added in some verju, which is

acidic, just to sort of help cut through the sweetness.

This granita is going to provide a lot of relief to the fish that is inherently

going to be pretty sweet.

I'm feeling pretty good about it, yeah. So now I'm going to tuck down, get

started on my...

Almond cookie.

I've had quite a few good desserts in this kitchen, so I'm feeling reasonably

confident. If I'm cooking something that I think I'm good at, usually the outcome

is pretty good.

I love this challenge.

When the families show their support, it's one of my favorite every season.

And it's an interesting one because all the ingredients that the loved ones have

chosen for our contestants, they're all amazing, but they're actually really

difficult in their own way.

Aaron's got garlic, and the problem with that is that garlic is so powerful as an

ingredient. He's going to make a pasta with a garlic sauce.

He's making an emulsion, and he's going to just stir that through his pasta.

He's got spanner crab.

and place it on top of the garlic pasta.

It's a really simple dish with really big flavours.

He is going to have to do his absolute best work to make sure that this is an

immaculate bowl of food. Yeah, yeah.

So Vinny, he's got grilled sardines. He's got grilled artichoke, white bean

agrodolce, caramelised zucchinis. So there's lots of hard-hitting flavours

there. My concern is, is he showing enough technical elements to justify us

taking him through to the next round?

So he needs to be an absolute wizard with flavour.

Kasper, using grapes.

I think grapes are a very tricky ingredient because it's not that much

you can do with it. To be able to get flavour and texture and interest out of

grapes, he's going to have to work really hard.

He's going to be doing a grape cremeux.

He's gonna have to adjust sugar, for sure.

Right now, I'm just peeling my crab. I'm just slowly working my way through that,

making sure there's no shell.

I'm just setting myself up well for the next step.

Hi, Aaron.

Have you recovered from reading that beautiful letter from Crystal?

Not really. No.

How did you meet?

We met in uni, actually. Oh, my gosh. We had the same class together.

I saw her walk in late to a lecture theatre, and I was with my friends at

the time, and I was just jokingly saying, I'm going to make her wifey one

day. Oh, my gosh.

All right, so she chose garlic for you. She did, yes.

The key for you in doing this justice is going to be all about balance and all

about seasoning and making sure that this is the best pasta we've had in this

kitchen.

The challenge with garlic is you can use it in a subtle way

or it goes the complete opposite and it's completely overpowering.

For it to be the star of the dish, it has to stand out in a way that isn't

offensive.

Aaron, that's the best garlic peeling I've ever seen.

So I've decided to boil the garlic, which is the blueprint of my sauce.

With the boiling garlic, I'm just trying to boil off the harshness from the

garlic itself.

So it actually retains the garlic flavor and sweetness without there being any of

the harshness of it. So I want to make sure that everything's just singing with

its own natural flavor.

So, just went and checked on my granita. It's, like, going pretty well, so I'm

going to get started on doing my grape cremeux.

So, to make my cremeux, I'm heating up equal parts of cream and grape juice

just to drive home that grape flavour.

Then I will add some gelatin, white chocolate and a bit of butter and then I

can just let that set.

This cremeux is going to be a little bit of the body for the dish.

I think it'll be, like, a nice contrast to the granita and the biscuit.

I'm hoping it's going to bring a lot of that, like, honey floral flavour of the

grape.

Is that your promo?

Yeah.

Mixing it around, and I'm, like, tasting a little bit, and I'm thinking... Oh, I

think it is, like, just a bit too sweet.

And I can't really taste the grape flavour in the cremeux.

The cremeux is not very gravy.

I knew from the outset of this that grape was going to be a hard ingredient.

But it's really starting to dawn on me now how hard this is going to be.

White chocolate is such a dangerous ingredient, isn't it?

My cremeux doesn't have a whole lot of grape flavour.

White chocolate is a bit too intense.

I can't afford to remake the cremeux.

Right now, I've really got to try and temper the sweetness that the white

chocolate brings.

So I'm going to be putting in some of the grape pulp into my cremeux to let

that infuse a bit and hopefully get some of the tannin out of the skin and bring

a bit of balance.

But I'm hoping that this works.

I actually have no idea what my family would send me.

Maybe passion fruit?

Well, I would have had potatoes, and I would have done my jacket potato.

He's grilling some artichoke.

Yeah, nice, Vinnie. Good job.

The next thing for my sardines is my agrodolce dressing.

Agrodolce is the Italian word for sweet and sour, and it goes really, really

well with fish.

In here, I've got some currants and some white wine vinegar. So it's going to be

the start of my agrodolce, which is going to season my salad.

Really want it to be really well-rounded and hold up to that really nice, oily,

salty sardines, because I need to make sure that my dish absolutely shines in

flavours and is just true to me and what I like to cook and my family as well.

I've got most of my dish ready to go, and it's time for the main event.

I need to fillet and prepare four perfect sardines.

So you left the scales on, but you took all the bones out? Yes, correct,

correct, correct.

Have you cooked sardines? Yeah, yeah.

Are the scales... I've never scaled a sardine.

I don't know whether the fishmonger has done that.

Sardines don't take very long at all to cook, but I want to make sure I get a

beautiful crispy skin.

So I'm going to cook my fish two different ways.

On one hand, I'm flipping them over and cooking on both sides, and the other

hand, I'm only cooking them on that skin side.

Careful on the flesh side. Yep.

Any wrong move and they could stick to the grill, they could tear apart.

And I need to make sure with these sardines, the heat is hot enough to

crisp up the skin, but not too hot that it burns before it cooks all the way

through.

Taking myself back to when I was a kid and I'd watch my dad cook on the

barbecue. He'd always be moving things around. He'd always be managing that

fire. So I'm really making sure that I'm taking that much care today to cook

these sardines like my dad did when I was a kid.

Amazing work, Aaron.

Time is of the essence.

But all in all, I'm feeling pretty good.

I've got the Arthur's restaurant veg.

Binguini. Oh, it looks beautiful, Aaron.

And my crab's prepped.

Now it's time to build the sauce.

I get the boiled garlic into a blender and I add some cream, a bit of butter,

just to get a nice base.

Good, Aaron?

Yeah. This dish is such a balancing act. The difficult thing with garlic is that

it's harsh, it's strong.

It takes a lot of...

understanding and technique and leaning on instinct to take away the harshness

without taking away its perfume.

I can smell the garlic.

The hero.

I'm tasting the sauce, and there is a nice sweetness to it, a nice roundness,

but I feel like it needs a bit more complexity.

The garlic sauce is the style of the show, so I decided to add some confit

garlic.

The mashed confit garlic has gone into the sauce to give it another kind of

like element of garlic flavour.

Don't let this be your last cook in the MasterChef kitchen!

Ten minutes left!

Come on, Vinnie!

Come on out!

Come on, Casper!

Ten minutes to go.

My granita can be...

grapes and washed up but my cremeux is at the temperature now where I can put

in the parking bag.

Good job Kath.

And as I'm starting to taste them I'm realizing even ingredients that were

like singing grape now that they've cooled down it's a lot more subtle.

Yeah I'm starting to feel like maybe a little bit nervous that I need more

grape flavor.

It's not easy to hero grapes in a dessert.

But it's too late in the cook to really pivot hard right now.

So I'm really sort of racking my brain and trying to figure out the solution.

My challenge today is to hero grapes.

And I really need more grape flavour.

But it's too late in the cook to really pivot hard right now.

My brain is sort of racing, you know, what can I add to this to fix it?

Maybe like some pickled grapes.

Hopefully it will bolster the grape flavour.

Put a bit of Chardonnay vinegar in there too, just to add a little bit more

complexity.

Making this dish is a bit like solving a puzzle in my mind.

Is he doing a pickle meat?

It's not a pickle.

I just want, like, little cubes of pickled grape.

I don't know if it's going to be enough, but if I can solve this puzzle today,

I'm making my mark in the kitchen and I'm going to find myself in the semis.

Five minutes to go!

Come on, guys, let's go!

The cook on these sardines is the most important part of this whole dish.

Tested the ones that I cooked on both sides, and they go a little bit too dry,

so I'm going to use the ones that I've only cooked on one side now.

Yes, Vinny.

Nice.

My sardines today are cooking really quickly. They're only on my hibachi for

about five minutes, and that's just enough to get them perfectly cooked

through.

It's time for me to start tasting everything together.

And it is banging.

Every single flavour is absolutely popping in there.

And it's turned up to 10, but the sardines aren't overshadowed. You still

get that beautiful fish and that crispy skin.

I'm definitely feeling the pressure because how I've prepared my sardines is

a little bit more on the rustic side.

I have poured my heart into this dish. I just hope that's enough to get me

through today.

Use your emotions.

Three minutes to go.

Come on, guys.

Come on.

Let's push, guys.

How's it taste, Aaron?

Like garlic.

Nice.

Three minutes to go. I'm tasting everything together, and this is exactly

what I was after.

The sauce has now got a nuttiness and sweetness and an unctuousness. I wanted

to bring out different notes of the garlic, and I think I've achieved that.

So, yeah, I'm really happy with it.

Having an ingredient from Crystal, a letter from Crystal, it made the cook

feel quite light.

Regardless of what I do, I've done so well.

I think to see how far I've come, to see where I'm going with how I'm thinking

about food and how I'm creating and cooking now, she'd be over the moon.

When I'm starting to ask myself all these questions, like, what is grape?

Can I really pick it out in the components that I'm tasting right now?

Are the judges going to be able to do that?

Try to put the doubt to the back of my mind and make sure that I put the

proportions of the ingredients on the plate that will bring balance to the

dish and really highlight the grape flavour.

To construct my dessert, I'm going to cut out little rounds of my almond

biscuit, put that on the base.

And then pipe my cremeux around the biscuit.

Leave myself a little bit of pocket for some pickled grapes.

Cap it off with some of the cremeux.

And then really neatly shingle sliced grapes around the outside.

I'm really happy with how it's looking.

At the end of the day, if I make my parents proud with this dish, job done.

Good stuff,

guys.

Good

luck,

Aaron. Good luck, mate. Thanks.

Walking my dish up, you know, I think I would have made Crystal very proud.

I've come so far from when I first started.

Hello. The main thing I'm worried about is the balance of everything.

Whether I've given enough of the garlic flavour but not too much.

Aaron, your partner Crystal sent you garlic today. What's the dish?

I've made a garlic pasta with spanner crab and the garlic is done four ways.

I've got confit garlic that I put into the sauce. I've got a garlic oil, garlic

chips, and finally just the garlic flowers to really accentuate that

flavor. What was it like getting that letter from Crystal today and being

reminded how much she believes in you?

It was very special. So much of my strength comes from her belief, and I

think it was so beautiful having that at the start of today.

I think it really did make me feel very emotional, so I had to try and keep that

in check while cooking, but it was also...

Good booster, you know, helped to encourage me and show me that I have

come a long way. And now after going through the entire journey, after all

these months, you know, I can finally see a little bit of what she saw in me.

We're going to touch your dish now. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Aaron.

Thanks, Aaron.

I can definitely smell the garlic.

Garlic.

Arun has been very brave to introduce four different methods of garlic because

normally speaking, you don't normally put so much garlic in a dish. This is

crazy. And you love garlic. Because I'm French, so I should know better than

anybody else.

I'm glad he did because the garlic is phenomenal in all the sense.

The cream garlic was fantastically well introduced.

The confit is confit perfectly, you can see, and also lovely color of the

confit. I like that.

The crisp of garlic is impeccable. It could have easily missed them.

Yeah, I really love that. I thought that was delicious.

I think Aaron's pasta work was really beautiful and fine, cooked perfectly.

It's amazing how all those layers of garlic he's used has resulted in quite a

delicate result.

The garlic is definitely the hero, but somehow I don't find it's overpowering

anything, even the crab. I was really worried.

we weren't going to be able to taste that crab meat because the garlic would

overpower it.

But the little pockets of sweetness and slipperiness that I got from the pieces

of crab he chose were beautiful. I think it really added to the elegance of the

dish. If I would serve this dish in a restaurant, I would be very happy.

I'm feeling excited. I'm feeling nostalgic. You know, this is a very

close to my heart dish.

But I've also got that little feeling of nervousness. Is the flavor and the

technique in my cooking going to shine through as much as I think it actually

is? Or is this the one that does send me home?

Vinny, your dad and sent you sardines? Yes, he did.

What did you make with them?

Dad and Vinny's sardines.

So butterflied and barbecued sardines. And then on the bottom, I've just got a

base of some white beans, some caramelized zucchini, grilled

artichokes. There's some quick pickled currants. And then I've done a agrodolce

sauce. Nice.

What are your memories of sardines with your dad?

Oh, you know, lots of fishing, lots of barbecue dinners.

I'd often have, like, pasta con le sabre, which is, like, pasta with

sardines. It was, like, a real rustic dish where they'd all break apart and,

like, flake and stuff like that. So I really was channeling a lot of my family

today.

This dish is me.

Yeah, you've stayed very honest and true to yourself. Yeah.

We're going to taste your dish now.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Good luck. Thank you.

Very vinegary, rustic, and I think it looks beautiful. It looks like it's

packed full of flavour.

Yeah, it's very traditionally Sicilian. Very much the kind of thing that you

would serve family.

All right.

It's a really delicious dish, and I think he has balanced all the flavours

really beautifully.

Fish, beautifully grilled, nice char marks, really nice and smoky,

beautifully caramelised zucchini, all beautifully balanced.

It smells lovely. It's delicious. It's very tasty.

Mixing beans, artichoke hearts, oregano, carrots over there, the courgettes, the

way he's cooked them up. I can see he kept the principle and the integrity

once again.

and be very faithful to what has been passed on to him. That's great because

half of me is Italian and I was brought up with that.

I think it's needed.

I love the flavors in this dish.

It's those classic Italian, Sicilian flavors that he's drawn on that is what

I'm loving so much in this plate.

Even something as subtle but as powerful as the currants, which just add those

little bursts of sweetness when you're having a fish that is quite salty and

oily. That said,

I'm putting my restaurant critic hat on now.

I have had sardines in restaurants where they are, you know, maybe not better in

flavor, but there's something about the way he's prepared them, whether it's the

decision to leave the scales on because he wanted that blistering, whatever it

is. I found my train of thought interrupted when I was biting down on

them. You know, I was sort of fossicking around in my teeth, trying to remove

little bits and pieces.

So all of that is to say, while the flavor in this dish is phenomenal,

the eating of it isn't effortless.

It's a very, like, sombre walk up to the judges knowing how high stakes this cook

is. I worked hard to balance my dish today, but grape is really subtle.

Is it still really present in the dish? I don't know.

So tell us, what is your dish?

So on the bottom is an almond biscuit. On top of the biscuit is pickled...

grapes in a Chardonnay verjuice.

On the top of that is a white chocolate cremeux made with grape juice as well.

I've got the thinly sliced grapes.

So nothing's been done to them. I really wanted to have that fresh element in

there. And then to sort of be a bit of a refresher, I've got a granita made with

grape juice and some more verjuice as well.

Like I've taken some steps along the way to try and add a bit of balance.

Kasper, how was it to receive a letter from your parents?

Yeah, it was great. I think that's like motivation for me going into hopefully

finals week and probably something that made me dig a lot deeper.

Just that little extra boost of energy and motivation is exactly what I needed.

So how did you feel when you opened your package and you saw the grapes?

There's so many memories that we have with grapes in the house, which sounds

so funny to say.

Just a good memory. It's like we're all like night owls, so we'd be up like, you

know, 11 at night, 12 in the morning, just sitting around the kitchen bench

eating grapes, like debriefing from the week and that.

I'm trying to laugh because most of the people in the world, they will have a

drink or they'll have a coffee. No, you're having grapes.

So surely when you saw the grapes, you must have think, oh, no.

And I know I love a challenge in my mind. If I can tick this off, then I'm

ready for the finals.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. And good luck. Thank you. Thank you.

Very pretty dish.

Yeah. Should we dive in? Yeah, let's do it.

Before it melts.

Nice generous amount of granita.

Yes.

I'm actually quite a man.

It's a lot of work.

There's a biscuit, there's a cremeux, there's different style of grapes

presentation, there's that granita. The freshness of the granita is amazing.

And I really love this little almond biscuit which delivers the crunch.

I enjoyed it for sure.

The biscuit on the bottom is nice and chewy, ringing with almond flavor.

I think the cremeux is lovely.

Love the little pickled grape.

But what I'm grappling with is the flavour of the grape is very subtle.

I think that white chocolate is just punching so hard.

And I don't know if I had known that the grape was in there, I would have been

able to identify it as grape.

I'm not getting any of the verju in there, which by its very nature is quite

a delicate grape-flavoured product.

And that chocolate, because there's such a mass of it around the pickle, I was

struggling to even get the acidity.

I don't think this is a balanced dessert, and I do not think it's a

dessert that heroes grape.

It is so clear to us how much you all want this.

And you'll just have to prove just how far the three of you have come.

Aaron, garlic is a powerful and challenging ingredient.

But you harnessed it beautifully, creating layered flavors of garlicky

goodness.

And that's why you're in our final three!

So Casper and Vinnie, it came down to your dishes.

Casper.

The technique in your dish was obvious.

And you had several elements that showcased green grapes. But

unfortunately, the white chocolate cremeux made your dish too sweet and

overpowered the flavour of grapes.

Vinnie.

Your dish was full of heavy-hitting flavours.

with the distinctly savoury flavour of sardines coming out on top.

However, the cook on the fish lacked technical finesse.

You both cooked with so much heart today.

This was our most difficult decision yet.

And it wasn't unanimous.

Our decision came back to the challenge of heroing your ingredient.

Which is why I'm very sad to say

your time in the competition has come to an end.

Casper.

Casper, you've done so well to come to this point.

You should be very proud of yourself because we definitely are.

How do you feel?

It's disappointing, but I'm just equally as proud for these guys.

It's been, like, such a magical journey.

Probably the most, like, special thing I've done in my life so far.

All good things come to an end, though.

Nah, you're just getting started.

I just can't wait to see...

what you do in the future because you are honestly one of the best cooks here,

I think, and your mind is just genius level that I could not even begin to

comprehend.

He's a food genius and also beyond that, he's such a good guy.

We spotted that talent from way back.

Like, it was so clear to us that you've just got this really magical affinity

with ingredients.

It's also very clear, very loved.

by all your fellow contestants, and I really hope you're incredibly proud of

how far you've come along.

You are brilliant, and we cannot wait to see what you are doing next.

But sadly for now, it's time to say goodbye.

I'm really proud of what I've been able to do and showcase.

I've shown everybody maybe a different perspective on food, and I love every

minute of it.

I think I've learnt how much potential I have.

The journey isn't over yet.

I think it's only just up from here.

Next

week

on MasterChef Australia.

I'm a completely different person than the Vinnie that walked in here on day

one. Our top three have their eyes on the prize.

It is a privilege to wear the MasterChef chef's wife.

Feels surreal.

They're counting down the hours to the semi-final service challenge.

I can't believe I'm here, about to run a service in a professional kitchen.

But first... You won't be cooking.

A chance to let their hair down.

Time to whip off those aprons and swap places.

Today, my friends, Poe and Jean-Christophe will be cooking. And you

three will be joining me to judge them.

Time starts now!