It's the last chance to make it through
to the MasterChef semifinals.
Last time, David...
..Nawamin and George each went through...
..leaving six to cook again for the remaining five places.
I was disappointed not going straight through.
But today is a new day and I'm definitely up for it.
Today's last chance saloon, you know?
Got to nail it. So...no mistakes.
You've just got to roll with the
punches and see what you can do.
Tonight, they will face just one test set by one of Britain's most
renowned chefs, Theo Randall.
Congratulations, that is absolutely delicious.
If they want a place in this competition,
they are going to have to come out all guns blazing.
You guys now have a chance of grabbing a semifinal place.
You've got to dust yourself off.
I know a few of you are disappointed.
A few of you have found yourself in this round because of
the tiniest mistake. Eradicate those mistakes.
What we want you to do is cook something Italian.
Recreate that heart, that soul, that love, that Italian passion.
We have a guest in here today who's going to taste your food
and help us judge.
Head chef of the River Cafe, where he worked alongside
the legendary Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers.
There he held a Michelin star.
He's now had his own restaurant in the centre of London
for over ten years. Ladies and gentlemen...
..Theo Randall.
Great to have you here. Theo, what are you expecting?
I am expecting some really delicious Italian-inspired food.
Simple as that. There you are.
Easy!
One extraordinary plate of food, 90 minutes.
At the end of this, five of you will be semifinalists.
One of you will be leaving the competition.
And Theo is on watch.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's cook.
Italian food is one of those cuisines
that you just fall in love with and
you just want to try more and more.
The secret to good Italian food is making the produce sing.
If you've got really wonderful ingredients,
you don't want to overwork them.
These look rather good. They're beautiful, aren't they?
Yeah. That's amazing, look at those.
You can cook food with an Italian style.
It's not necessarily going to be lots of classic Italian dishes
like an osso bucco or a ravioli or a tiramisu.
It's going to be their take on what Italian food is,
which is really important.
I'd love to see something that I haven't seen before today.
Or maybe I am slightly sceptical about something
and it turns out to be fantastic.
Kenny has always attempted a lot,
probably too much for the plate,
which has affected his presentation and his timings.
Kenny right now must be picking at his mind because his dish in the
last round was near-on perfect.
However, that little cannon of lamb wasn't cooked properly.
MasterChef does take a big chunk of you - your heart, body and soul.
You know, you still have got your family to think about,
your work life, but this is something where I am doing OK at it, you know?
So it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and now that I'm at
this stage, I just want to keep going.
Kenny, what are you going to cook for us?
So, I'm doing a cannoli, with a tonka cream,
a strawberry moscato jelly,
strawberry sauce, amaretto biscuit.
So it's basically strawberries and cream,
but Italian version.
What's a cannoli?
It's a crisp, sweet shell,
basically, piped full of cream and you can have sort of different fillings in it.
But this is more of a refined, very thin,
it's almost see-through sweet pastry.
Tell me about the relationship between Italy and a tonka bean.
These are from Brazil, I think, to be fair to you,
but I had a tonka bean panna cotta at my wedding
and I liked it very much.
And that was Italian and the guy had done a great job.
Strawberries and cream Italian style, with a tonka bean.
Good luck!
The thing about cannoli is cannoli is a wonderful,
crispy biscuit tube which is really hard to get right.
He's actually filling it with mascarpone as well,
which is quite heavy.
Normally, it's with ricotta, which is quite light.
So it's very important that it's got a crispness to it and it's got
a nice, sweet flavour.
JOHN: Nisha has grown through this competition.
However, in the last round she failed to cook her venison properly.
This is a test of character for Nisha.
Disappointed or determined to put it right?
It was very infuriating and annoying that I made that sort of mistake
at such a critical point cos I could have had a semifinal place
already, and I'm here again fighting for that place.
But, do you know what? At least I didn't get sent home.
So I'm giving you a spin on tiramisu.
I'm making ravioli that's filled with mascarpone vanilla cream.
I deep fry it so it's crispy, so you get crispy ravioli
and that's going to be with some chocolate and espresso mousse.
Making amaretto biscuits with amaretto as the crumb,
and some chocolate shards.
Risky. Deep-fried ravioli, mascarpone, amaretto biscuits...
I think it works because I like the crunch.
Tiramisu is lovely.
But sometimes, it's all the same texture.
I'm really one for crunch and texture.
Looking forward to that! OK!
Thank you.
My concern is that she's going to be deep frying the ravioli.
If the pasta is not thin, it's going to be really tough.
And she's got to make sure that the filling's not too wet so it doesn't
explode when she's deep frying them.
Alex's food has always been about the heart of Portugal and taking
humble ingredients and doing justice to them.
What she's going to do though, now,
is jump from Portugal into Italy
and deliver big, bold flavours this time.
Are there similarities, do you think,
between the food of Portugal that you love and the food of Italy?
Definitely, yeah. Really kind of simple cookery,
but everything tastes amazing when it's cooked well.
What are you going to cook for us, Alex?
I'm cooking some squid ink tortelli.
I've got squid inside as well.
And then I'm going to have tomatoes two ways,
in a sauce and also roasted for a bit of texture.
And then I'm going to fry off the tentacles as well
to add to the plate. So, tortelli.
Tell me about tortelli. It's just a bigger version of tortellini.
And feeding Theo?
Oh, yeah, I'm not thinking about that right now!
The pressure does not ever end in this competition.
It just kind of increases.
It's just been cranked up a little bit now.
So she's putting squid ink in the pasta which is obviously going to
make it go black, so she's looking for dramatic presentation.
The only problem with that is if you have too much of it,
when you've got quite a few eggs in there,
it might make the pasta a little bit wet.
45 minutes left, so you are halfway.
You're halfway.
Simon in the last round made us a bowl of ravioli.
However, he got it wrong because it didn't have the flavour.
It didn't have the texture.
He needs a big round if he's serious about this competition.
My dish today is a play on one of my favourite drinks.
So I'm doing a orange and rosemary polenta cake with a Campari
and orange gelato, a orange fluid gel and caramelised oranges.
Does not look right.
We've got time for another one.
Simon, what happened with your cake?
They seemed to just collapse so I've knocked a little bit of the air out
and done another one.
And you've checked your recipe and you put everything in?
Yes. Is it polenta based?
Polenta and ground almonds.
How many times has your poor wife had to taste a polenta cake?
Over five, definitely!
She was still eating it yesterday and she was enjoying it.
She dreamt of it last night.
So I don't know if that's a good thing or bad. I'm hoping it was a good dream.
Caramelised orange with polenta cake is a real classic.
And if he can get that right, it will be absolutely delicious.
JOHN: Then he's got a gelato.
My concern right now for Simon is the texture of cake and ice cream.
There's very little wrong with Greg's cooking in the last round.
But he had failed to cook the skin of that pigeon.
How Greg adapts his style today to Italian food is anybody's guess.
Personally, I'm fascinated to find out.
I want to surprise John and Gregg today because it's my thing in terms
of what I do with dishes. You know, I like to challenge,
I don't want to go along the norm.
I'm not doing it for the showboating aspect.
I'm doing it to make it interesting.
Greg, you're enjoying this competition now, aren't you, each round?
Yeah, I'm enjoying each round but it's like pleasure
and lots of torture all the way through.
What's your dish, Greg?
So I'm doing a seafood risotto,
but I'm not using rice,
I'm using squid cut up into tiny pieces instead of the rice.
I'm using Jerusalem artichoke puree. I'm going to fold the squid
through that to get that consistency of cream, seafood.
They're going to have some clams sitting there like little soldiers.
The prawns are like the dressing, the cherry on the top of the dish.
So you're using little bits of squid in a puree to make...
And that will make the texture of a risotto?
Yeah, so I've cut them all up and they resemble rice grains.
Greg's culinary mind is quite wonderful.
He's making risotto without any rice.
I think that's quite extraordinary!
THEO: Is quite hard to get right, though, because risotto, classically,
you add the stock, it absorbs the rice, the rice puffs up.
There's no room for that in this dish.
I just hope it comes off.
Listen up! You have 30 minutes left.
You have 30 minutes.
Moonira can do a huge amount of work in a short period of time.
We liked her lamb shank in the last round.
Her couscous needed flavour.
I do love Italian food.
If I'm going out with my sisters,
we tend to choose an Italian restaurant other than Indian,
because it's simple flavours but they all go together,
and sometimes you want something
different than just spice and chilli.
Moonira, what are you going to do for us?
I'm doing a vanilla and saffron panna cotta
with a lemon polenta cake and semolina crumb.
As a child, the panna cotta is something my mum used to make,
but it wasn't called a panna cotta.
It was called a halva or a falooda.
As I grew up, I realised, oh, my God, that's a panna cotta!
We've got a little bit of you in here, haven't we?
Saffron. Saffron, I love saffron.
But that works with Italian flavours?
I think so, yes. Saffron and vanilla go really well together.
Good luck with it. Thank you.
The saffron panna cotta sounds interesting.
It's got a unique flavour, saffron,
and it doesn't necessarily always work in sweet things, but let's see.
I don't want to scare anyone, but you've got ten minutes left.
Oh, my God, I've forgotten to put my egg white in my mousse.
You haven't put egg whites into your chocolate mousse?
I forgot, yeah. Have you got enough time?
Yeah, I should have.
They're going to pick up on every single mistake today,
so if my prawn's got an eyebrow that's too far to the left or right,
they're going to get hold of it.
I think I've rescued it, so hopefully, it should be OK.
One minute. 60 seconds.
Mamma Mia!
Last touches. Final touches.
That's it. Stop.
Finito.
Well done, mate. How did you get on?
Oh, my God. That looks stunning.
That looks beautiful. Oh, I love the black.
Look at the colour. Yeah.
That is... It's very Italian.
Alex, please, come and join us.
For a place in the semifinals, Alex has made squid ink tortelli,
filled with squid, garlic, parsley and lemon,
served with squid tentacles,
tomato sauce and roasted tomatoes, a lemon and panko bread crumb,
basil oil and micro red basil leaves.
I think it's a lovely looking dish.
It's got the heart and essence of Italy, smartened up for MasterChef,
and that's exactly what we were after.
Well, I'm guessing that's what you were after, Theo.
Yeah, absolutely.
Congratulations. That's absolutely delicious.
Pasta's beautifully prepared.
It's got a nice bite to it.
Nice and thin. I was a bit concerned about your squid filling having
enough flavour and, boy, it's got loads of flavour.
The tomatoes were just delicious.
They were sweet. The little crumb on it
added lots of texture and flavour,
and the basil oil brought it all together.
I think it's absolutely brilliant.
Boom.
That's fab. Absolutely fab.
Inside that lovely parcel of pasta,
which is beautifully cooked and thin,
you don't have the strong flavour of squid ink,
instead you've got the flavour of squid.
I like it a lot, Alex.
Thanks.
That, to my mind,
is an absolutely delightful and delicious dish and I think you have
conjured up the flavours of Italy absolutely perfectly.
Well done. Well done.
I cannot believe it.
Amazing comments from Theo,
so honoured for him to have liked my dish,
I'll never forget that.
It's amazing.
Kenny has created cannoli with a tonka bean cream filling,
with a moscato wine and strawberry jelly,
an amaretti biscuit and pistachio crumb,
honey-coated strawberries, a strawberry sauce, and micro basil.
If I got that in a restaurant, I'd be very,
very pleased and I'd be hoping it tasted as delicious as it looks.
With this, Kenny, I marvel at your technical ability because your jelly
is absolutely perfect.
Transparent, with little jewels of strawberries floating around.
Your little cannoli filled with tonka are crisp and lovely.
I think it's really delicious, Kenny.
That is very good.
The textures, the presentation...
I mean, that's...
..restaurant quality. Thank you.
I'm telling you, that is an absolute treat and a triumph of a dessert.
It's strawberries and cream times ten.
It's just lovely.
Well done. Well done.
Nailed it.
I don't think I've had feedback like that on anything,
so I'm just absolutely elated, really.
I'm so happy. I'm so happy.
Simon has baked an orange, rosemary and polenta cake,
served with a Campari and orange gelato, an orange jelly,
caramelised oranges, and rosemary flowers.
I love your cake.
I think it's really good.
The gelato is delicious.
My only disappointment is the caramelised orange.
More colour on the caramel would have made it much nicer.
It's very difficult to present a cake,
so I feel like we've got three separate things on here.
However, that cake is delicious.
The gelato is even better.
I love the bitterness on that gel.
Really, really good flavours.
Thank you.
My thing right now is gelato and cake.
The cake I think is really good.
The gelato I think is fantastic.
But when I put the two together, I've got this weird texture thing.
I mean, the cooking's really good.
It's the combination of textures that I have an issue with.
They all really like my cake.
They all really like the gelato.
They were a bit concerned maybe they didn't go perfectly together,
so we'll just see.
Moonira has made a saffron and vanilla panna cotta,
and lemon polenta cake, with a semolina crumb, lemon curd,
a blackberry gel and glazed blackberries.
I must say, the panna cotta looks perfect.
Certainly got the wobble.
That is pretty delicious, I have to say.
I mean, the panna cotta was just unbelievable.
The texture was incredible.
The saffron works so well with the blackberries.
The texture was delicious, of the cake.
It is absolutely brilliant.
Your panna cotta, this is the star.
That is stunning.
And it leaves on your tongue
vanilla, that sweet comfort, and saffron.
You know, what you've done here is you've stretched
the concept of Italy
as far to India as you possibly can, but you've done it very nicely.
Just love it. Properly love it.
For me,
best dish you've cooked so far in the competition.
I'm really happy.
I don't think I could have asked for any better comments
than what I just got. The last two rounds were a bit shaky,
so I really needed a round like that.
Well done. You smashed it.
Thank God. You smashed it.
Thank you.
Greg is serving his take on a risotto,
made with finely diced squid,
cooked in a Jerusalem artichoke puree,
topped with clams, prosciutto, carabineros prawns, a pistachio oil,
nasturtium leaves and micro fennel.
That's really smart. It's like edible art.
I think that's fantastic.
I'm so shocked by how clever that is,
how those bits of squid have become like rice,
how the texture is that of a risotto which is creamy.
Your prawns are really lovely.
Your clams, with a little bit of wine,
which just makes it sharp enough.
But you've then carefully put a clam in every single shell.
They don't come like that.
I'm mightily impressed.
Delicious. Thank you.
I think technically you've done brilliantly.
I mean, you've got knife skills to cut squid that fine,
it's difficult on its own. But the fact you've got the flavour from
the clams into a non-risotto, as in that there is no rice in there,
and get it absorbed into the Jerusalem artichoke puree is very
impressive. It's a big risk, making a dish like that,
because it can go horribly wrong and you can look really silly,
but you've come out on tops with that one.
Thank you.
To make a risotto texture out of a puree and bits of squid is just
brilliant. It's got the nutty earthiness of artichoke,
but it does feel like you're eating a risotto.
It's absolutely lovely.
Thank you.
Put some stones in my pockets
because I'm sort of cloud nine at the moment.
Yeah, really very happy.
Pretty stunned, really.
Finally, Nisha is serving a tiramisu-inspired dessert.
Crispy ravioli filled with vanilla mascarpone cream,
a chocolate and espresso mousse, with an amaretti biscuit crumb
and chocolate shards.
I love it. Really delicious.
I think what's amazing is the pasta almost tastes like puff pastry.
It's got the most extraordinary texture to it.
The chocolate mousse, I was worried it's going to be too sweet,
it's not at all. It's quite bitter, which I quite like.
It doesn't resemble tiramisu.
There's coffee in there and there is a bit of Marsala, but
as a dessert, I like it.
There is absolutely no denying all the work in there.
Ravioli, shards, making your own biscuits.
I like the flavour of your chocolate mousse.
The filling inside your ravioli I think is great with lots and lots of
vanilla. For me, I want some sauce.
You've worked really hard at this.
The ravioli is very, very clever.
In there, I've got a vanilla cream.
Nice work, nice flavour combinations.
In hindsight, maybe it did need a sauce or something,
but they didn't say they didn't like it, they said they really liked it.
Not sure.
I have to tell you, from my point of view,
that was an extraordinary round.
THEO: I think you've done an incredible job today.
The food has been absolutely delicious.
I mean, the standard and the level of cooking you've got to
has been incredible.
JOHN: We're going to ask you to step outside.
We have got a really difficult decision to make.
I cannot believe the standard of the food today.
Alex's, for me, really took me to Italy,
with the tomato and basil and the squid.
The flavours were beautiful.
It was technically perfect.
I thought, you've nailed it.
Alex's dish, absolutely delicious.
Greg's dish today was quite an accomplishment.
Taking little bits of squid and cooking them just for
the last couple of minutes in a hot puree
of Jerusalem artichokes so it resembles a risotto
was inspired. John, I tell you what,
what he's doing is thought-provoking and it's really, really clever.
Kenny was brilliant today.
Absolutely brilliant.
Those little cannoli, with the tonka beans and strawberries in honey.
It was just plate-lickingly gorgeous.
And what I love about Kenny,
today he gave himself time to put it on the plate with real care.
I thought Moonira's dish was just beautiful.
The masterpiece was that absolutely fantastic panna cotta.
We all couldn't get enough of it.
It was so good, so delicious and so technically wonderful.
Those four have got themselves a semifinal place.
We now have a discussion about Nisha and Simon.
Nisha made us a chocolate dessert based on a tiramisu.
The idea to take a ravioli, turn it into a dessert and then to fry it?
I mean, this is original thinking and this is clever work.
Chocolate mousse, chocolate shards, ravioli, amaretti biscuits,
all on one plate. A little bit more moisture, please, Nisha,
and it would have been absolutely perfect.
Simon made us a fantastic orange liqueur-flavoured polenta cake
and an absolutely fantastic gelato.
He makes lots of great things, but do they really belong together,
gelato and cake?
I don't know.
The thing about Simon and Nisha today is their desserts were good,
but around them was excellence.
If I go out at this stage, I know I did absolutely everything.
I gave it my absolute best shot.
I've got no idea if I've done enough.
I'm pleased with the main elements.
Yes, there were a couple of little mistakes.
That could be enough to send me home.
I think the standard's hugely high, so we'll just see.
Please believe me when I say today you were touching brilliance.
And I mean that, brilliance.
It is with regret...
..that we have to say goodbye to one of you.
The person leaving us...
..is Simon.
Simon, thank you very much indeed.
Thank you.
It's been a phenomenal experience,
something that's just so good to go through,
and there's so many highs and lows,
but I'm never going to look back on it in anything other than just
a fantastic, positive way.
That was close. That was really close. I'd prepared myself.
I thought I was gone. I really did.
I'm so happy.
I'm relieved.
Couldn't have gone any better.
It really couldn't have gone any better for me today.
It feels incredible to be a semifinalist.
I can't tell you how...
I think I'm just in shock.
I don't... I'm in shock.
I can't wait to call the family, call my kids.
They're going to be screaming over the phone.
I don't know if I could get much happier on the happiness scale.
I just don't know. I keep pinching myself and now I'm here,
I'm a semifinalist in MasterChef.
It's pretty... Pretty fantastic.
So, yeah, what's going on?
What is going on?
On Wednesday night, it's the start of the semifinals.
The final eight contestants are split into teams.
Come on, guys. Keep going.
Let's get it done.
I'm scared. You've got to leave here in eight minutes, guys.
You're going to have to shift.
Whoa.
Keep calm. It will be fine.
And one more amateur cook will be leaving the competition.