Original subtitles

It's the last Professional MasterChef quarterfinal.

And this week's four heat winners return

for a test of their culinary skill like never before.

To be in the quarterfinal is feeling really exciting.

|'m really happy-

But, yeah, I think I'm more nervous now.

I think I need to go in all guns blazing because I think if

I play it safe, I'm not going to get it through.

It's definitely exciting, but nerve-racking because

everything just is happening so fast.

As long as I keep believing in myself, I think I can get

through to the next round. There's lots more that I've got to give.

Tonight, they face two tough challenges...

The main element of the dish is absolutely delicious.

...including cooking for some of the country's most discerning

food critics.

I honestly think this is the best expression of those flavours

I've ever had.

Only the best will earn a place in the semifinals.

Two massive challenges in front of our chefs.

We are going to put them under a huge amount of pressure.

Well, Marcus, you know what you get from pressure.

Diamonds. It's time to turn up the heat.

Welcome back, chefs.

You are our last quarterfinalists.

You have shown us that you can cook with passion, creativity

and really think outside the box.

That makes this challenge perfect for you today.

Underneath that box in front of you is a clue to your challenge.

Chefs, lift the box.

A carrot and a carrot cake.

You're looking a little bit puzzled.

We would like you to use all of your skill and knowledge

to make a savoury ingredient and to turn it into a tasty dessert.

You have a whole array of ingredients in the larder here

to use as your savoury ingredient.

You've got cheeses, you have some bacon, root vegetables,

some chillies, miso paste.

Don't forget, you can complement those savoury flavours with classic

pastry ingredients like chocolates, nuts, fruits, different sugars.

But the key ingredient has got to be savoury.

You've got ten minutes to come up, gather your ingredients

and plan your dish.

After that, you've an hour and 15 minutes to execute it.

All right, come on up.

There are many savoury ingredients that are used in pastry.

You've got cheeses for a cheesecake,

candied beetroot, we know works with chocolate.

It's about imagination.

Our chefs have got to be daring.

They've got to be bold.

It's definitely difficult in that, with pastry you need recipes.

So, yeah, it's a bit challenging, but it's exciting. It's fun.

Quite scary. To come up with a plan is tricky.

My brain right now is going a million miles an hour.

If a vegetable is naturally sweet already, that's

a good place to start.

But it's how they treat that vegetable and what they add

to it to elevate it so that it's an elegant, delicious dessert.

So I've gone for the butternut.

It's sort of going on the way of pumpkin pie.

I love a pumpkin pie. How it's going to end up,

I'm not too sure yet, but I'll have to pull out of the bag, definitely.

This challenge is going to show us who is creative, who is brave,

and who is willing to push the boundaries.

It's a little bit difficult, but I have a plan,

so I feel comfortable now.

So, yeah, I know what I'm going to do now.

Right, your ten minutes are now up.

Let's get cooking.

24-year-old chef de partie

Nikita has been working in Michelin-star restaurants

for two years.

She won her quarterfinal place with an impressive Malaysian

inspired lobster dish.

I love creating my own dishes at home. Thinking on the spot -

I think it could go either way.

I could blank or I could have lots of ideas, and I hope

it's the latter!

Nikita, how are you feeling? Er, good.

I have a...| have a plan, so... That's it, then.

Yeah! That helps.

That helps. Yeah.

I've chosen parsnip. It's naturally sweet.

I'm making a parsnip, vanilla, white chocolate mousse

on a biscuit base with a chocolate sable, dark chocolate,

and maybe some parsnip crisps.

So what's the key things you need to finish first?

The parsnip mousse is the most important thing, but I need to get

the flavour of the parsnip into the cream before I can make the mousse.

So to get the parsnip flavour, you're grating the parsnip down

and you're infusing that into milk. Or cream.

Into cream. So there'll be no actual parsnip in the mousse?

I'm going to taste... just the flavour? ..the mousse

with the cream first, and then make

a judgment call on whether it needs the actual parsnip.

Then I'll blend some in, maybe. You've just got going,

so we're going to let you crack on. Thank you.

This sounds delicious.

Parsnip goes so well with vanilla, but also it's got natural sweetness,

so it lends itself really well to a dessert.

I think she needs to keep the grated parsnip in this dish

for it to sing through.

I think if you take the parsnip out, the fear is that you may not get

the flavour you're looking for.

30-year-old corporate head chef Lucy wowed the judges with creative

dishes inspired by her childhood family favourites.

I think this challenge

is another thing that has kind of thrown me

a little bit, a bit like the Skills because I am a control freak.

I think lots of chefs are.

But ultimately, if I can get everything perfectly executed,

then |'ll be happy.

I'm just getting on with my choux at the moment.

It's key that I get it on now, so that I... That's my main element,

so I want to know that it's ready.

Lucy, what savoury ingredient have you chosen?

Why, and what are you making?

I've chosen miso because I think it works amazingly with loads

of flavours, so I'm hopefully going to make a choux bun

with a whipped miso, chocolate ganache

and a ginger cream,

which also has a bit of cream cheese in it.

So you'll get another savoury tartness coming

through, and then a peanut brittle.

You're at this stage of competition,

you're fighting for a place in our semifinals.

How are you feeling?

I'm feeling terrified, but excited.

Well, your dish sounds delicious.

We look forward to trying it. Thank you.

Everything about this dish sounds fantastic, but it is littered

with real pitfalls.

It's very, very salty, miso. It's going to bring the savoury element

to the dish, but you've got to use it sparingly.

But it also needs to complement the chocolate, and then you've got

to get the ganache the right texture, the right consistency.

So it's all a balancing act - not an easy thing to do.

Chefs, you're already halfway.

Time is racing by.

Swedish sous-chef Theres grew up on a farm

and made a strong start to the competition, using flavours

and techniques from her homeland.

Theres is making a tart that will be filled with a fennel

and ginger compote and caramelised apple on top of it.

Pastry, I'm hoping that she'll roll it lovely and thin because I want

it to be properly baked so there's a bit of a snap.

That texture is key to go with this lovely fennel

and ginger compote.

I like the mixture of flavours.

I just hope the fennel comes through.

There's, you looked a little bit nervous in the beginning

when you were up looking for your ingredients.

When I saw it was pastry, yeah, it's not my strongest side.

Well, you did an incredible dessert for us in the last round.

I'm not sure that I'm going to accept

you don't know much about pastry!

I know a LITTLE bit, because home in Sweden, everyone has to know

all the station in the kitchen.

You don't have one pastry chef, so you have to learn everything.

Who is supporting you?

No-one in my family know this!

Ooh! So it's a little bit hard when they're calling me.

Keeping a secret? Yeah. I quite like that.

They see me on television and...!

Well, I think they're going to be in for a surprise when they see

what you've been cooking.

It's looking good with my tart.

I think I'm a really creative chef with the pastry because I always

want to show them more, more skills

and always deliver something

really exciting for them.

Yeah!

NIKITA: I'm doing it again. The flavour's not there.

How's it going? Stressful.

Stressful. My first mousse didn't work.

OK, so what have you clone - made it again?

Yeah. But a different style mousse without the white chocolate.

Nikita's making her parsnip mousse again.

She's just realised there's not enough flavour of parsnip

going through it.

She's cutting it fine.

Right, you've got 20 minutes left.

Originally from Dorset, 23-year-old senior chef de partie Charlie

has been cooking since he was 15.

He made it through with two ambitious and perfectly

balanced Signature dishes.

I hope the judges feel like I'm a humble guy.

I'm young, so maybe I don't know everything.

Inventing is quite new to me.

So it's going to be a big, big challenge,

but I'm up for it and I want to see how good I am at doing that.

Charlie is making a butternut squash panna cotta, so he's going to set

a butternut squash puree with some cream and gelatine.

Inside the butternut squash puree,

he's got cinnamon, he's got nutmeg.

Two beautiful spices that'll bring out the flavour

of the butternut squash.

Going well, I just need to put it into my cream

to get it into the fridge to set.

The key to this is, is the panna cotta going to set and

will that flavour of the butternut squash come singing through?

I hope so, because this sounds delicious.

You've got some lovely looking garnishes on your bench there.

You look incredibly well organised.

Yeah, I've done a pumpkin seed praline, sort of staying

with the butternut vibe with the seeds.

I've done some fresh shavings of butternut, which I'm just going

to brush with honey. That sounds really good - and logical.

I can nearly taste it in my mouth.

Have you clone a lot of pastry work?

When I was much, much younger -

I'm still young, so I can't really say that! -

but, yes, when I first started, I did a lot of pastry.

You started cookery when you were really young.

I did indeed, yeah.

Family friends had a restaurant, a B&B, they said,

"Would you like to be a chef?

"Would you like to try and do some things in the kitchen?"

So, yeah, for sure I did.

All right, chefs, you have ten minutes left.

Cor, Lucy, they are whoppers!

Yes, they're a little bit bigger than I wanted them to be.

Just waiting on my crumble now and then I need to plate up.

Three minutes left.

You want to be putting finishing touches on your dishes.

I think it's going to be OK.

It's got a nice wobble.

Right, chefs, we're almost there.

You're under a huge amount of pressure, I can see that.

Keep calm. Keep it together. Yeah.

Right, that's it. Stop cooking.

First up is chef de partie Nikita,

who chose parsnip as her savoury element and has made

parsnip mousse with a biscuit base,

dark chocolate ganache,

parsnip puree and candied parsnips.

It's a little bit rustic in the execution, but essentially

I think that's a nice plate of food in front of me.

The biscuit is lovely, but the texture of the mousse

is too soft.

Needs more parsnip flavour,

but there is a savoury element to this dish

that I really quite like.

It's just not hitting the note of parsnip as well as we wanted,

and, I'm sure, as well as you wanted too.

If you had got this mousse clone the first time, right,

then you'd be in for a cracking dish here.

The chocolate ganache is sweet and it's light, and it's got

a very delicate flavour of parsnip off it.

When you eat all of it together, including the candied parsnip,

I absolutely believe I'm eating a parsnip dessert.

I'm so glad that I redid the mousse.

And I'm glad they liked the flavour of the candied parsnips,

and they got some of that flavour through it, but it just didn't

quite get there.

Head chef Lucy's dish is choux buns

filled with miso whipped chocolate ganache

served with peanut cream cheese, a peanut sesame brittle,

topped with sesame seeds and peanut crumble.

This is Gregg Wallace territory,

these choux buns, they're big.

I think I was a bit worried about time, so I used the choux

when it was warm still. And so they just puffed and got very excited!

Much bigger than I wanted them to be.

It may be big, but it looks beautiful.

The texture of your choux pastry is quite crispy

considering the size of it.

That is very good.

The chocolate ganache is not sweet enough

and it has too much miso paste, so it's quite salty.

The peanut cream,

again, it's too salty.

I like the addition of the sesame seeds at the end.

I think that's like a little nod to complementing the miso paste.

I love the flavours together, but it definitely needs to be sweeter

to balance out that savoury miso flavour.

The idea is fantastic.

You're so close to getting a sweet dish with a savoury element in it.

This is just too savoury. Needs more sugar.

I'm feeling good.

It didn't go exactly how I wanted it to go.

But that dish, you know, albeit not perfect, it definitely showed some

good potential.

Sous-chef Theres has flavoured an apple tart with fennel and ginger,

topped it with caramelised apple and served it with lemon creme fraiche.

I think the idea is there.

The ginger is really nice and strong, but the fennel needed

cooking down more. It almost needed to become more of a soft stew,

like a fruit compote.

The pastry case is not cooked.

It's not been executed well.

You've not really hit the right note for me.

The apple on top has got a much more complex apple flavour

than I expected it to have.

I can really get the caramelised sugar notes and I think eating it

together with the fennel and the ginger is quite pleasing.

The flavours are good.

You've got the bones of a good base for a dessert, but it obviously

is missing the flair and the finesse that we were looking for.

I was not happy.

I think I was a little bit lost trying to come up

with something so quick.

I think that was hard.

Finally, it's senior chef de partie Charlie, who's served

butternut squash panna cotta topped with honey-soaked butternut shavings

and pumpkin seeds, pumpkin seed praline, pumpkin puree

and a cinnamon and ginger crumble.

That's a dish that has got a lot of detail in. It looks nice.

There was a bit of a wobble there,

which is what you want from panna cotta.

There is buckets of flavour inside this dessert.

I can really taste, without a shadow of a doubt,

that this is a butternut squash dessert,

and your panna cotta is just set.

Ancl I love a panna cotta that is just set.

The cinnamon and the nutmeg in the butternut squash puree is great.

Ancl not to mention your lovely crispy butternut squash tuiles.

There's so many elements, there's so many things for me to talk about.

But I am very impressed that you managed to get a silky,

smooth, luscious panna cotta from a butternut squash.

The main element of the dish, the squash panna cotta is

absolutely delicious. Beautifully set,

it's got the right balance for me.

We asked you to make a sweet dessert out of a savoury ingredient

and, for me, you've clone just that.

Well clone. Thank you.

I've done a panna cotta before, but not incorporating

the butternut puree inside.

So I would say I'm lucky rather than skilful.

But, yeah, I'm glad it paid off.

We saw passion here today.

We saw a huge amount of emotion.

We saw some really good cookery.

This was not an easy challenge.

I'll tell you what, Marcus, I cannot wait to see these four chefs cook

for the critics. I think we are in for a show stopping meal.

What lies ahead of you is a huge challenge.

You're cooking for three of the leading UK food critics -

Leyla Kazim, jimi Famurewa and Jay Rayner.

This is a fabulous opportunity to show them how good you are.

Impress us and the food critics,

and you could be sailing through to the semifinals.

Two courses, an hour and 15 minutes.

Off you go.

Semifinals is obviously coming up.

It's close, but not close enough yet.

I'm feeling good about the next two dishes,

but it's for big critics, so...

I'm bloody nervous.

Charlie, cooked for critics before?

No. Never? In the restaurant, yes, but not personally, my dishes.

So it's totally different.

OK. Ancl tell me, what are your two dishes, then?

So my starter is a salt-baked beetroot with a wasabi

and goat's cheese foam.

Different textures of beetroot, pickled beetroot, beetroot powder.

Vegetarian starter. What inspired you to go with vegetarian?

My mum's a vegetarian.

She did do a lot of meat cooking.

I've got two brothers, so meat was important

to get big and strong, you know!

Did your mum convince your brothers to go vegetarian?

No. My brother is actually a farmer and he does meat cows, so...

No.

I really like the sound of Charlie's starter.

Salt-baked beetroot is a great way to enhance the flavour of beetroot.

The key to it, though, is that it's properly cooked.

You do not want that beetroot too raw

because the flavours will be dull,

but you don't want it overcooked because it will be mushy.

Wasabi goat's cheese foam is about it being able to sit

on the plate without collapsing straight away.

Looking forward to trying that.

Ancl for your main course? Rose veal fillet. It's pan-seared.

I've got different elements of oyster,

so I've got the oyster yoghurt,

I've got a full oyster with oyster leaf wrapped around the oyster.

I've got artichoke and then I've got artichoke crisps on top.

And a veal and artichoke sauce.

Well, Charlie looks pretty chilled, doesn't he?

Well, he always has looked chilled since he's been in here.

He lets his food do the talking,

which is always quite nice. That's it. Yeah, let's see!

Fillet of veal.

There's nowhere to hide with it, there's no fat on it, and it needs

looking after. Delicately cooking in the pan

and just gently warming through.

Oyster and yoghurt emulsion is a very interesting part of this dish

because the oyster is being used as a seasoning,

which I think is a great idea.

Charlie's using artichoke leaves to get flavour into his jus.

I'm really hoping that he gets it on early enough

so it's lovely, shiny, elegant, and bursting with flavour.

I don't know why I chose beetroot, to get my hands pink,

and now I'm turning spiky artichoke.

I have a lot of skill, different techniques in this menu.

Yeah, I want to really show them

that this is kind of the Scandinavian cuisine we do.

Theres has got two very unusual dishes.

Her first course is, hay-smoked scallops with roe mayonnaise,

mussel foam, sea lettuce salad.

She's dressing the sea lettuce with a fermented vinaigrette.

So many lovely things going on,

but what you don't want to do is camouflage the natural, beautiful

flavour of the scallop itself.

The roe mayonnaise is key to bringing together

the salty vegetables, the fermented vinaigrette, the smoked scallops,

so that mayonnaise needs to have

a really strong yet sweet balance to it.

These dishes, what's the real inspiration behind them?

With this dish, it's like what I want to have when I go out and eat.

If I see a really nice vegetable main course,

I prefer that except for beef.

Mm! And that's what I want to do here - really tasty.

Her main course - roasted Jerusalem artichoke.

It's like a baked potato - it's got to be cooked nice and slowly.

Pickled artichokes.

We've got smoked shallot puree. Ancl the natural sweetness

of the shallot is going to go really well with that smoky flavour,

which is going to complement the Jerusalem artichoke.

Juniper butter foam.

Ancl then we've got a little bit of diced cucumber and diced apple

being dressed in fermented vinegar and smoke oil. Mm.

It's a lot of smoke in this dish.

And I'm even going to smoke on the table with the juniper.

And when you bring some smoke and everything together is,

yeah, it's a really good balance.

The critics rarely get a vegetarian main course, especially, you know,

in such a pressurised environment as today.

That's a huge, huge risk you're taking there.

Yeah, it is. But I want to show them too

that you really can get a really good and tasty

and really pretty plating vegetable main course.

Sounds delicious. Looking forward to it. Thank you.

My starter is cured mackerel, which is cured with dill and lemon,

with cucumbers, radishes, apple,

a cucumber granita

and a buttermilk and dill dressing.

The mackerel taken off the bone, cured.

Like the sound of that. She's got to get the curing

just right. She's got to get the timing just right.

Cucumber granita is going to bring freshness to the dish, but it does

need to taste of the cucumber.

For main course, I've gone for another real classic flavour

combination - cannon of lamb,

courgette flower, which is stuffed with ricotta and oregano,

courgette and basil puree,

con fit tomatoes and a lamb jus.

This sounds delicious.

The key is, though, that she gets that lamb perfectly

cooked and rested so it's juicy and then pink in the centre.

Courgettes and basil puree. You want to taste the courgette,

you want it to be nice and green and vibrant and nice and smooth.

Who's tried these dishes?

My husband and friends, unbeknown to them, tried them all at the weekend,

so... They just thought they were coming over for supper.

Yeah, friends coming over for a little dinner party. Exactly.

You served your menu of the day. I did, yes. That's a bit sneaky!

So was it a resounding success?

It was. It was.

They like to be critical, which I like, because my husband is not.

He just says everything's yummy and it's so annoying.

Really? He just likes eating?! He just thinks it's delicious.

And I'm like, "Yes, but feedback - that's helpful for me."

I want the ingredients to speak for themselves.

Not too much sort of faffing about, but it's difficult getting that sort

of balance between simple flavours and then thinking, you know,

I've done enough.

Nikita, how are you feeling about today? I'm excited for today.

I'm excited to show you the kind of chef I really am.

I don't feel I showed you that in my last round.

Yeah, I really want it, as everyone does, but I really want it.

What is your menu?

So for the first course, I'm doing prawns with ghee roast masala

and som tam.

Som tam is a Thai salad with raw papaya.

It has lots of vegetables in it, usually mango. OK. The main,

I'm doing roasted duck breast

with slow-cooked leg croquette,

celeriac puree, cherries,

pistachios and a port sauce.

So two very different dishes.

Yes. So the first dish is Southern Indian.

So it's something I ate when I travel led there

and then I've matched it with a Thai inspired salad.

The second dish is also what I love to eat, but it's a bit

of a different side of me. I want to show you that I don't just do

one thing, I do lots of things.

The prawns, she's putting them in the water bath,

will keep them nice and tender. Needs to be very, very careful.

You certainly don't want to overcook them because they'll become too chewy.

She's making a masala sauce, which has got

chilli, tamarind and cashew butter.

You don't want the sauce to be too hot, otherwise re going to lose

that lovely natural flavour of the tiger prawn.

Som tam. This is a beautiful Thai salad that's got a great crunch

and a wonderful kick.

I think Nikita chose this main course because perhaps

she was worried she wasn't showing enough technique to us.

Ancl there is a lot of technique in this main course.

Really important with duck cookery is that you get the fat rendered

down and then just beautifully roast off the breast.

Ancl the most important thing is allowing it to rest.

Duck leg croquette - does she have enough time to make this?

I know she's got it in the pressure cooker already,

but this is a really big ask of herself.

I'm definitely pushing myself with these dishes. Because it's such

a short amount of time, you have to dial back.

You can't do everything that you want to do.

But I've done run-throughs and I'm on time.

But just, just on time.

OK, chefs, 20 minutes until the first course is served.

MasterChef: The Professionals never gets boring

because the people who are in that kitchen really reckon themselves.

And often they're fight.

There is real, real talent hiding in that kitchen,

and we have the privilege of meeting it for the first time.

It's a really exciting moment.

I know some people in the industry who actually started out

on MasterChef: The Professionals,

and I can see how it changed

their lives, and the fact that I get to influence who potentially goes

into the next round,

you know, it's a huge responsibility and a privilege,

and one I take very seriously.

Hello. Hi.

What'll impress me is big flavours,

big ideas, creativity, imagination and chefs that are

really going for it.

Really take a big swing and try and really knock our socks off.

All right, Charlie, five minutes left.

I'm ready. All the stuff is here.

I just need to start plating.

The interesting thing about salt baking is it is a very good way

of cooking beetroot because it keeps all the fluids inside.

What I don't want it to taste of is

the salt that's used to bake it with.

What's this? This is a beetroot mash.

I want to keep it a bit chunky. OK.

To get that texture in there because everything is soft.

Beetroot and goat's cheese is, of course, a classic combination.

With a bit of heat from that wasabi,

I think that could work very well.

It looks more like a meringue. It looks a bit like a dessert, yes.

I hope it doesn't taste like a dessert.

This is my wasabi leaf crisp.

Is that it?

This is like a vinaigrette, but hot.

That's it, Chef.

- Hello. - Thank you.

So today I've cooked for you a salt baked beetroot,

wasabi and goat's cheese foam,

a wasabi crisp with a top of fresh wasabi.

And the sauce is a hot vinaigrette.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Charlie.

Mmm.

The useful thing about baking beetroot like this is it keeps

its texture, and it's really clone that.

The foam was a beautiful, whipped, creamy,

light, airy, delicious

whorl of a thing, which gave me all the goat cheese flavours I wanted.

This is beetroot with goat's cheese, and I've eaten a lot

of that in my time.

I honestly think this is the best expression of those flavours

I've ever had. I absolutely loved that.

The heat that he's just hidden in there from the wasabi,

it's really lovely.

It kind of takes you by surprise in a lovely way.

My favourite of the tastes is sourness, and this plate

has plenty of that from this incredibly coloured vinaigrette.

It really is a sour dish

if you get some of that sauce

with each mouthful. But it works.

The salt baked beetroot is delicious, perfectly cooked.

Ancl I love that little bit of fresh wasabi

that he's just put on top of it as well.

The little beetroot vinaigrette is excellent.

It's just a beautiful dish, an absolute triumph.

Right, main course. How are we doing? You all right?

Yeah, I think I'm OK.

I'm on plan here. Good, good, good.

The veal fillet,

well, that's going to have to be cooked very, very carefully,

because if it's the fillet, it's going to be very short on fat,

which means it could come out a bit dry and tough.

Oyster leaf. That with the oyster yoghurt emulsion

and an actual oyster,

I just wonder if it might be a little bit too strong

against a delicate piece of veal.

This is my oyster emulsion yoghurt mix.

Nice.

Oyster leaf is inside as well.

JIMl: It sounds like somebody who has a real focus to their cooking

and they've got something they want to show us.

Everything gone to plan? Everything gone to plan, Chef.

What's left to go on the plate?

Just the sauce, Chef. And this oyster leaf chiffonade.

Done.

Well clone. Well clone.

Amazing.

So your second course is a pan seared fillet of rose veal,

artichoke chips, oyster yoghurt emulsion,

oyster leaf chiffonade on top

and an oyster cooked in an oyster leaf.

And on the side is a veal and artichoke jus. Thank you.

My veal fillet is just

that little bit more clone than I would like,

but I think yours, Leyla, was bang-on. My meat

had a good colour on the outside, a good crust.

I was really worried that it might be too much oyster,

but I'm basically getting hints of the sea with this lovely

bit of veal.

I think it works together really well.

You are getting that hint of surf and turf almost, aren't you?

A really high-grade surf and turf.

The artichoke crisps are really, really worth singing the praises of,

I think. Lacy, golden, delicious fry.

The details are really impressive.

It's delicious. The veal is beautifully cooked.

The artichoke is delicious.

If I could find one thing, maybe the sauce

could be a little bit stronger. But I like the flavour of it.

It's light.

Everything is there to make sure that the dish eats well,

and this dish eats REALLY well.

I kind of did enjoy it, yeah, and I knew I pushed myself.

But today it worked out. So it's good.

It's good, yeah.

All right, There's,

six minutes left.

How are you looking?

Um...|'m OK!

Hay-smoked scallop.

The smokiness of that has got to be well balanced

and not overwhelm.

So, have you got your scallops under there? Yes.

Ancl that's the first time the scallops have been with the hay.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm particularly interested in a fermented vinaigrette.

If anything's fermented, I'm all for it.

You've got one minute left.

Yes.

Get those scallops on the plate.

Roe mayonnaise sounds fantastic.

And mussel foam, again, is, you know, a familiar taste,

but giving a different treatment.

Right, are you clone? Yeah.

Theres's Scandinavian inspired starter is hay-smoked scallop served

with roe mayonnaise,

sea lettuce salad dressed with fermented vinaigrette

and pickled salsify topped with a mussel foam.

This smells absolutely fantastic.

You've got this wonderful waft of the smoke.

Wow.

This is divine.

The cooking of that scallop is extraordinary.

Theres said it was going to be hay-smoked, and it was.

You got it in a waft off the plate, you got it on the palate.

That roe mayonnaise is like a Marie Rose sauce

that's grown up a bit,

read a few filthy books, knows a bit about the world.

It's just a beautiful celebration of elements of the sea.

The acidic vinaigrette is gorgeous.

It's got these little softened, but still quite robust bits

of pickled salsify, and they just pop with lovely brine

and acidity and sweetness.

This is a proper piece of interesting cookery,

using ingredients that I hadn't really come across before

and flavours that I thought I knew but didn't.

I think this is absolutely delicious.

The scallop is so beautifully cooked. I kind of like that

there's a very light aroma of the burnt hay on top.

The mussel foam is delicious, but there's just not enough

of it here. I think the roe mayonnaise is delicious.

It really brings the scallop flavour to the dish.

For her to present a vegetarian main to us, she must have real confidence

in this dish.

The one interesting challenge with Jerusalem artichokes is roasting

them, so they get to that fudgy caramelised state.

If they're clone right, it's delicious.

MARCUS: Right, you've got just under three minutes left.

How are they? Good.

Um, I don't want to have too soft, but a little bit al dente in them.

There are so many little booby traps and places where things

could go wrong.

The smokiness that she suggests will be evident in the puree

needs to be there, the pickling in the artichoke.

But I think if she can pull it off, it'll be something really special.

So after that, you're going to set the juniper berry leaf on fire?

Yeah. And then cloche. Yes.

Right, off you go.

Whoa, it's a proper waft of bonfire when that cloche comes off.

Theres's vegetarian main course is roasted artichoke with smoked

shallot puree, juniper butter foam, pickled artichoke

and a fresh cucumber,

apple and kohlrabi salad dressed in smoked oil.

Well, on the one hand, Theres has made me feel better

about my own failures roasting Jerusalem artichokes,

because she's clone exactly what I did when I attempted to roast them,

and make them fudgy and toffee-like,

and she hasn't.

They're hard.

Love the silky richness of that puree,

the smoked oil is kind of giving it that real lovely

bonfire feel again.

But the artichoke is completely uncooked.

Everything else is really impressive and really lovely.

It's a real shame.

The artichokes - nice colourisation on the outside. I like the fact

she'd left the skin on,

but they're just a little bit undercooked for my liking.

Puree tastes delicious.

The juniper butter foam is fantastic.

I don't think she's executed this dish in a way that she hoped,

but undeniably it is bursting with flavour.

That was tough. The time...

Yeah, I don't know where the time was going!

Yeah, I think I did it a little bit too hard for myself.

All right, Lucy, eight minutes for your first course.

Great. How are you looking?

Just about there. just about. Tight.

Mackerel is an interesting fish because it can take a whole

bunch of preparations.

If you cure it, it will become beautifully tense

and have a really good texture to it.

I think it's going to be quite a refreshing dish because you've got

a pickled cucumber granita, so that's going to have

that beautiful sourness.

It is a lot of acidic things.

So she's just going to have to balance that and make sure

that it's not wincingly strong.

Your time is almost up.

Are you pleased with it, Lucy?

Yeah. I mean, I think it's nice colours, it looks good,

but I definitely rushed it at the end of it.

So here you have cured mackerel with crispy mackerel skin,

a pickled cucumber granita,

apple, cucumber and radish

and a buttermilk and dill dressing.

Thank you. Thank you.

Well, this looks very pleasant.

The fish,

I actually quite like it cured like this.

Ancl what I do really like is the ice-cold refreshing granita

against the smooth voluptuousness of the buttermilk.

It's quite cleanly flavoured,

but there's something a little bit clinical about it.

There's technically loads of lovely bits and I quite like the freshness

of that diced apple. The way she's got that beautiful mottled

buttermilk dressing in the middle is really nice, but it's a hard dish

to fall in love with.

Lots of skill has gone into it and it hasn't quite resulted

in anything that would make you go,

"Ooh, I'll have another plate of that, please!"

The mackerel is beautiful and fresh,

but the dish is just lacking seasoning.

There's a detail missing which would elevate the dish

from it being simple flavours to simply delicious.

Your lamb is still sitting on your bench!

It is. That needs to go on right now.

Are you going to get that lamb clone in time? Yes. I am.

The lamb cannon,

I'd like to see a bit of fat on it.

Properly caramelised, good and crisp.

The basil puree could overwhelm things because that's

a really big aromatic flavour.

I think it's a really lovely flourish added to what will

hopefully be a really beautifully cooked piece of meat.

It sounds QUITE safe, but also pretty tasty.

You've got a couple of minutes left,

Lucy, start getting something on the plate.

Are you happy with the cooking?

Just about.

Right, basil cress on.

I just need to put myjus and my things, and then I'm ready.

Off you go.

Thanks very much.

So you have cannon of lamb with a stuffed courgette flower

with ricotta and oregano and lemon,

a basil and courgette puree,

con fit tomatoes and pickled green tomatoes.

And then a lamb jus, which has pickled tomatoes and capers.

Thank you. Thank you.

There's nothing that's been given a real sear in the pan

and had some flavour kind of really brought into it.

But those capers are a real joy.

You get a little jolt of that lovely briny flavour, and it really helps

because she's massively undercooked the lamb.

I like the ricotta.

That's nice.

But the courgette and basil puree is so watery,

and not much flavour in there.

There's something insipid about the lamb.

You don't look at that meat and go, "Mmm!"

It's disappointing because I can see that Lucy has skills.

Ancl actually, almost all of those skills are distilled

in this sauce, which tastes of something and it's bright,

and dropping the capers in is clever.

The lamb has hardly been sealed around the outside

and it just lacks the flavour of lamb.

There's a lot of flavour going on in the sauce,

but to be honest, the courgette is not seasoned, the ricotta is not

seasoned, resulting in two delicious ingredients not

being actually elevated.

I feel very disappointed.

I hope that it tasted nice and they likes the flavours,

but to me, it wasn't perfect,

and if it's not as near to perfect as it can be, I feel it a lot.

So, it sounds like Nikita is bringing us

a fusion of India meets Thailand,

which I'm 100% all for.

I'm just wondering if the masala flavours and the Thai flavours

will clash or not.

How are we doing?

Yeah, good.

OK. I just need to dress the prawns in that and put it on the plate.

That's all you've got to do? Well, how long do I have?

I don't know! Well, we're just having a catch-up chat!

Som tam is the thing that I really honed in on, I absolutely love it

when it's done properly.

It's got that funk and heat

and sort of sour punch to it,

which I really, really love.

What's left to go on the plate?

This masala, the prawns

and some crispy curry leaves.

JAY: What's key here is that she's serving us a plate of prawns

and they need to be cooked very, very sensitively.

Happy? Yes.

Right, off you go.

Smells good.

Hi. Hi.

So here you have a prawn in a ghee roast masala

with som tam, with raw papaya,

mango, seasoned with fish sauce.

Thanks. Thanks, Nikita.

This is the kind of food I want to be presented with.

The ghee was so, like, the deepest, most intense curry

that you've kind of ever had

and it really delivers in terms of flavour.

The prawn that it's roasted in is perfectly clone.

The som tam, the papaya salad

is crisp and light.

There's nothing prissy about this.

Takes real skill, but it's spectacular.

Ancl I'm loving it with the peanuts.

Ancl then the crispy little curry leaves on top work so well.

The masala sauce has got great flavour.

There's a heat to it, but it's a nice heat.

It's a heat that's working very well with the sweetness of the prawn.

That is really, really delicious and impressive.

What have you got left to do? Sol need to finish cooking my duck,

and that's the first thing to do.

I'm going to fire it in a pan very quickly and through the oven

for four minutes, and then it'll rest.

Pane the croquettes and fry them. And then I'm plating. OK.

We're all quite familiar with how we want something

like this to taste, how tender and lovely and pink and juicy

we want that duck breast to be,

so we're going to be judging it ever more harshly.

If you put the word croquette on a menu, that means you've dropped

something in the deep-fat fryer.

I like that.

My worry is cherry salad and a port sauce

with that celeriac puree could all be quite sweet.

Is that cooked?

It's maybe a bit rare.

What else has got to go on the plate? The celeriac puree, the sauce in the jugs.

Got one and a half minutes left. Yeah.

How is it?

It's a bit under.

This piece is better.

That's it. That's it?

Sauce is in the jugs? Sauce is in the jugs.

Thanks.

So here you have pan-roasted duck breast with a duck leg croquette,

celeriac puree,

cherry and pistachio salad,

and then a cherry stuffed with pistachio

and a port sauce.

Thank you. Thanks.

I'm hoping the duck will just be...

It was borderline for me, but it wasn't raw.

So I'm just hoping that's enough.

But you want it to be perfect.

Every time that I thought, "Oh, it's going to get too sweet,"

it was just perfectly balanced.

The savoury hit came through, the beautiful golden crumb

of that croquette, like, really hits you. The duck breast,

that was cooked beautifully for me.

I love it.

The cherry and pistachio salad and the sauce

and the cherry glazed in port,

LOVE all that.

I also really like the celeriac puree,

which is beautiful consistency and great flavour.

It's a very old-fashioned plate of food.

The virtues of duck with cherries,

the glossiness of this sauce, a perfectly rendered skin on the duck.

It just suggests that Nikita is someone who knows how to cook

and wants to please you, and what more does a diner want?

I think the flavours are great.

I think the puree is beautiful and smooth. The duck could have clone

with a couple of minutes longer, but it tastes good.

This is duck with tried and tested flavours,

but with Nikita's breath of fresh air.

Some good cooking on show today.

Our chefs really brought some fantastic ingredients

into the kitchen and delivered some beautiful food.

It was a great round to finish the quarterfinals on.

My chef of the clay has to be

Charlie. Goat's cheese and beetroot is a combination

we've had before many, many times in this kitchen,

but I have to say, Charlie's dish was delicious.

Beautifully, beautifully prepared.

Looks good, tasted good, too.

Charlie's combination of oysters and veal together

was very impressive.

He's definitely earned himself a place in the semifinals.

Theres, the flavours that she had in both those dishes,

they blew me away.

I love the way she cooked that scallop.

It retained the sweetness of the scallop

like I've never had before.

Theres took a gamble doing a vegetarian main course.

But, my goodness, when she cooks, you don't forget her food.

Lovely balance of flavours, but the Jerusalem artichoke

wasn't quite cooked enough. It was crunchy.

It had flavour, but it just needed

just a little bit longer in the oven.

Lucy loves classic flavours,

and that's what her food showed today.

Her mackerel dish was well thought through,

but a little bit flat in the final execution.

It just needed more care ancl seasoning in certain areas.

I thought Lucy's main course was beautifully presented,

a lovely little garnish.

But the glaring thing for me was that the caramelisation

of the lamb wasn't clone enough.

It was nicely cooked, but it just needed a bit more time

in the pan to get more flavour out of it.

Nikita's starter was very tasty.

I thought the prawn cookery was excellent.

There's masala sauce, depth of flavour, and they both worked

together very, very well.

Nikita's duck main course.

The crunchy croquette was delicious.

Duck breast just needed a couple more minutes in the oven,

but I thought Nikita has had a fantastic clay in the kitchen.

Becoming a semifinalist would just be my biggest achievement.

I can't... Yeah. It'd be everything.

I really want to stay in the competition.

I really want to cook for the next challenge and show more of me.

If I did get through, I would be over the moon.

When you get this far... I'm getting emotional, and I don't want to be.

When you get this far, it means a lot. So...

The food the four of you produced today was delicious.

It was fantastic.

Ancl sadly, we can't take all of you through to the semifinals.

Ancl we have made our decision.

There was one chef in here today that really did stand out,

and that chef is

Charlie. Congratulations, Charlie.

Two outstanding dishes, beautifully executed.

Well clone. Thank you.

The first chef leaving the competition is...

...Lucy. Lucy, sad to see you go.

You cooked very, very well. But it was a tough round today.

Thank you. Thank you.

I definitely didn't cook to my best today.

I don't know whether it was time pressure... But I'm proud of myself.

I just wish I could have pushed it a little bit further, of course.

Theres, Nikita, this next decision was incredibly tough.

We have decided

to take both of you through.

Well clone.

Well clone to all three of you.

Congratulations.

NIKITA: I'm just completely in awe.

This is the biggest achievement of my career, of my life.

I just can't believe it.

Yeah, to say that I'm a semifinalist, it's not sunk in yet.

Really tough clay for me.

I really pushed myself.

I'm really happy now.

Yeah. I cannot stop smiling because I'm really happy

I got through this clay.

CHARLIE: I'm feeling good, yeah. Feeling great, actually, yeah.

I've got the first few steps out of the way and

and I'm on the road, so, yeah, happy.

Next time, it's the semifinals,

and the ten best chefs from the heats are back...

...cooking off against each other for the first time...

It's intricate, it's delicate.

This is brilliant.

...as they fight for their place in the competition.

Don't run out of time.

Mmm!

It's a stroke of genius. It's really good.