Over the past 17 years,
hundreds of passionate home cooks have taken part
in the MasterChef competition...
Properly make-my-heart-thump fantastic.
..all fighting for the coveted title
and the life-changing opportunities it can bring.
It lit the fire.
I knew that this was what I wanted to do every day
for the rest of my life.
Tonight, five former champions return.
It's been 11 years since I last walked into the MasterChef kitchen.
I'm feeling good about it. It's nice to be back.
I'm nervous, I've got goose bumps, my heart's racing.
I never thought that I would actually
have to compete again in this kitchen.
I must be a glutton for punishment, because I didn't sleep last night
and having those feelings of exhilaration, but also dread
at the same time!
I'm trying to breathe and stay calm and focused.
Have you seen the calibre today?
I mean, crazy, crazy.
Absolutely thrilled to be here today.
The buzz and that feeling of being alive...
I've never felt since anywhere else.
They're back to put their food under the spotlight once again
for the judges and a very special guest...
..in a celebratory culinary battle like no other.
This is a Champion of Champions.
This is a cookery Clash of the Titans.
You and I are expecting culinary fireworks.
It's absolutely fantastic to see you all again.
Looking at you, all five of you look really nervous!
Yeah.
You've been in here before, you are winners, you are champions,
but we have never, ever had
champions cooking off against each other
in the MasterChef kitchen. This is so exciting.
What a fantastic gathering of culinary talent.
And to help us celebrate today,
we've invited in a very special guest,
a guest who is renowned in the music and food world.
That person today is going to help us judge,
but they've also set you a brief
to cook for us a dish that is comfort food
but is rooted in memory.
You will have 90 minutes.
Let's cook.
Whee!
I'm surprisingly terrified.
I didn't think this would be so nerve-racking.
Former craft beer salesman Tim Anderson was crowned champion
in 2011 with his experimental approach to cooking...
That was really clever.
..and a love of Japanese cuisine.
It delivers something entirely new, and yet still wonderful.
I'll give you one thing, Tim. It's brave and it works.
Tim was never afraid to be creative.
He was always daring.
It is really clever, really accomplished cooking.
This is the stuff MasterChef champions are made of.
TIM LAUGHS
What my life would be like if I hadn't won MasterChef?
I can't even imagine.
A lot can happen in ten years, and a lot DID happen in ten years.
I started running Nanban, my restaurant, in 2015
as a regional Japanese restaurant.
Opening the restaurant was the hardest thing I've ever done.
It was physically and mentally and emotionally taxing.
What I didn't realise is that it remains hard.
So I've made the decision to leave the restaurant,
which will be effective as of the end of this year.
The first lockdown was quite a transformative experience for me.
The restaurants were closed,
so I became basically a full-time parent to my daughter Tig.
And that's really what made me rediscover
how much I enjoy home cooking.
For me, there's nothing sort of more pure and beautiful about food
than giving it to somebody to nurture them, to care for them.
And that's what I want to do.
I've written five cookbooks.
Cos knowing that I can give that experience to somebody else
and help them cook something for themselves or for their family,
I love that.
I always said I would do it again in a heartbeat,
and here I am, maybe regretting that!
Hello, Tim. Hey, how are you?
I'm well. What is this? You brought your own radio in?
Yeah, I thought I could put some tunes on.
No, that's my rice cooker. I never leave home without it.
What is your dish, please, Tim?
I'm making an izakaya meal.
Izakaya are, of course, Japanese bars that serve food
and the food should be amenable to drinking beer or sake,
so highly flavoured snacky stuff.
So I'm making chicken karaage, fried chicken.
I'm making hanetsuki gyoza.
I'm making fish finger hand-rolled sushi.
You are doing rice and seaweed with fish fingers in the middle?
That's right. I love you.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
This is comfort food for you?
It is. Whenever I eat this kind of Japanese food,
it brings back fond memories of Japan,
where I met my wife and all that.
So yeah, there's that as well.
This is completely what we expect from Tim.
It's adventurous. He's taking classic ideas like a sushi roll
and having a bit of fun with it.
With each dish, it's got a separate dipping sauce.
Now, the processes that Tim's going through here are enormous.
He's not doing one thing, he's doing seven different things.
So it's showing off huge amounts of skill.
It feels amazing being back.
I love it. It's like I never left.
Originally from Crete, retired banker Irini Tzortzoglou's
bold Greek flavours and ambitious technical dishes...
Ouzo gel? Who makes ouzo gel?!
I really, really like it!
..won her the competition in 2019.
It's pretty ace, Irini.
This is absolutely sensational.
Pork travelling!
It really is full of love and full of passion,
and you can clearly see it.
Can I do a dance?
SHE LAUGHS
Emotion is written all over her face.
I'm desperate.
I want to cry!
Lifting that trophy...
Wow, this is mine!
..it was an unbelievable moment.
After all the amazing cooks
that were in my year,
and me and little Greek cuisine actually doing it?
I will never forget that moment.
I've been able to go back home and cook for hotels.
I cooked with Michelin star chefs and I wrote the book,
which I'm so proud about. Took me nine months to write.
And when it came and it arrived, I was crying, I was emotional.
It's...everything about me's in that book.
Thank you, Jessica.
Friends and relatives, they tell me they've never seen me happier.
There's a glow about me.
What a wonderful experience.
Irini loves the food of Greece, and we've got octopus.
Quite difficult to do in an hour and a half.
If it's cooked too long, it goes slimy.
If it's not cooked long enough, it's very, very tough.
On the side of that, anchovies deep-fried, fennel, seaweed salad.
She's pushing herself as she always has,
but Irini seems to have it under control.
I love every opportunity to cook under pressure. I feel so alive.
I love it.
Irini, how are you?
Now that I've seen you, I'm great!
I can guess this. Is it family? Is it a big table?
What's comfort food to you? Of course.
Comfort food means we get together.
We cook what is fresh out of our fields, our garden,
an excuse to be together, solve problems, share stories.
Can you win again?
You know, I have some really stiff competition,
but I will have a right go at it. Why not?
45 minutes gone. You are halfway.
Yeah. Time. Time is always the thing, right?
Bank manager Kenny Tutt took the title in 2018,
winning over the judges
with ambitious interpretations of classic dishes.
Love it. Love it, love it, love it. Where's me spoon?
That is stunning food.
I have no criticism with that dish at all.
His food just became more and more refined
as the competition went on.
The presentation... I mean, that's restaurant quality.
Kenny, this may be your finest hour, I think.
Really, properly make-my-heart-thump fantastic.
There is a man who was a bank manager
and is now a chef-restaurateur.
A lot's changed in my life.
I'm in Pitch, my restaurant. Never thought I'd be saying that.
MasterChef trophy still rocking and rolling.
Always pride of place, really.
We have another restaurant down on the seafront,
another dream of mine, and then at Ox Block in Brighton,
we cook local meat over coal.
Just incredible.
You sort of have to pinch yourself.
How many people coming in?
So we're having about 50 for lunch and 100 for dinner today.
Brilliant. Busy day.
My wife, Lucy, she works tirelessly
and has the same amount of passion as me to bring it all together.
We are ready to go. Let's go.
Thank you very much indeed. Good stuff. Brilliant.
I'll see you out there. See you at home.
He's like my husband and my best friend,
and feel like we've created something really special...
..as a family now.
Hospitality isn't an easy life.
Scallops looking great, and coming up on the sea bass, please.
But at the same time, it's wonderful.
Perfect!
When you hear everything, the chinging and the cutlery
and the people laughing and the smells and the food,
and it all comes together in, like, a crescendo, really.
One black garlic, goat doughnuts and a duck croquette, please. Yes, Chef!
THEY LAUGH
Kenny going back to do MasterChef is really exciting.
We're all behind him again.
Going back into that MasterChef kitchen,
I'm sure it'll all come back to me.
I just hope I don't forget all the stuff that I've learned,
and it'll just be like, "What am I doing?"
Why are you shaking, Kenny?
I don't know! Breathe, buddy.
I know. Yeah, exactly. You're fine, honestly.
Yeah. Just breathe, you're fine.
What's the dish you're going to make for us?
So I'm doing a fish pie.
We've got all the classic elements.
There's langoustines, there's scallops.
We're doing some beautiful hispi cabbage
with some seaweed, butter and sea vegetables.
Why is that your comfort food dish?
It's just the one I remember!
I really remember going in and Mum had put it together,
and we're all just steaming in, and...
This is my mum's dish that she gave me.
So...and you can see it's seasoned, chipped,
but that has had some real flavour run through it, that has.
Has Mum tried your version of her fish pie?
I've done mum a fish pie,
but I'm always nervous cooking for my mum, because she's a master.
We've got smoked haddock, which is very, very salty,
salty seaweed butter, gruyere cheese, which is also salty.
I mean, this is a powerful mix of things with seafood.
It's very nice to be here, but...yeah.
I'm not crying, the onions are getting to my eyes, I promise you!
Dr Saliha Mahmood-Ahmed won the title in 2017
with her majestic dishes from her Pakistani heritage.
That, for me, is a feast, visually and eat-ily.
I think the whole thing is fantastic.
Beautiful spiced food,
almost regal, John, in its presentation.
I'm really, really blown away by this.
It's just mouthful after mouthful of pure joy.
Saliha.
It's one of those really defining moments in your life,
something you don't expect to happen.
I also remember going straight to a night shift
after winning MasterChef.
I was very happy on that night shift
and people were asking why, and I couldn't tell anybody.
Life has been a complete roller-coaster since then.
I could never in my wildest imaginations
conceived that I'd be doing some of the things that I have done.
I've written two books,
first on Indo-Persian cookery and my second book,
which combines my love of being a doctor with food as well.
I have a food career and I have a medicine career.
So, yeah, the two are working quite nicely in tandem.
I honestly never thought I would be in front of John and Gregg
again as a contestant.
Why did I do this to myself?!
From a cook's point of view and a doctor's point of view,
comfort food, is it a good thing or not? Yeah.
So no matter how healthily one eats, it's actually important to remember
that function of food as a source of comfort,
and in that vein, I'm actually making chicken and chips today,
and I have to be honest, when I was on MasterChef,
often we would celebrate that I'd gotten through to the next round,
and me and my husband, my little one in a tiny little flat,
we'd, like, sit on the sofa with a box of six chicken wings and chips.
So I kind of wanted to do that.
Well, you won it! You must have had a lot of chicken and chips. Yeah.
Chicken and chips, but with Saliha's little twist.
We've got Indo-Chinese chicken wing.
She's also got cassava chips she calls yucca chips.
They should be crispy as anything.
They should be delicious. Stewed beans like baked beans,
but she's adding tamarind.
Serve the whole thing with coleslaw,
but her take on coleslaw - shredded vegetables with kimchi.
I just hope it can look beautiful.
Feel very nervous, actually. I just want to get it right!
I just want to get it right.
Inspired by the food she grew up with,
in 2014, former hotel manager Ping Coombes took home the trophy.
Her food is a fusion of classic Malaysian and Chinese,
which comes together in culinary cacophony.
I'm seriously impressed.
It's joyful tears!
The ingredients that you brought together here
for me is a marriage made in heaven.
Thank you.
There is nothing subtle about the food that Ping does.
Yes!
My MasterChef trophy's always in the kitchen
so that people comes in
and then they they lift it up
and I charge them £5 for it.
Before MasterChef, life was very different.
Cooking was just a hobby, and now cooking is my life.
Cooking is my career and I found my calling.
I have just launched a Malaysian menu recipe box,
and I also run a little cookery school here...
Great wok turn action.
..I've always loved teaching and I love teaching Malaysian food.
I'm so impressed, Brendan! You got any Tupperwares?
THEY LAUGH
During the pandemic, Andrew and I found
the chilled meal delivery service, which we operate now.
I do pretty much all the work, and she cracks the whip.
You need to take all of that. Take all of it? Yeah.
Deliver-drew. That's her silly name she's got for me.
Are we done? Yeah, we're done. OK, see you in a bit. OK, bye!
I remember when I was announced as a winner.
It's Ping.
And I thought, "That's it."
Oh, my God!
"I'm having the best time of my life. I don't want it to end."
So to be able to get back on this is amazing.
Ah!
SHE LAUGHS
Ping is drawing on her Malaysian heritage,
and she's making something called chilli ban mee.
We're going to get a bowl of noodles,
which are hand-cut and then boiled.
Those noodles are going to be quite thick and quite chewy.
That could divide the crowd.
There's no holding back here on flavour.
We've got a broth which is made from dried anchovies,
so quite salty.
It's going to be an XO sauce
made from dried scallops and lots and lots of chilli.
The only foil there for all this big flavour is the noodles,
so those noodles have to be plentiful.
The memory is my mum taking me to this coffee shop
that serves this dish. She actually hates ban mee,
but she would take me to this store to eat it.
So for me, this conjures up so many memories of warmth and love,
and because I haven't seen her for two years,
so this is the best way to remember her.
Are you better than the other winners? Absolutely...not.
GREGG LAUGHS
Some of you haven't heard this in years.
You have five minutes!
This is it.
I hope I haven't forgotten anything.
Everything is going more or less to plan. Little details.
Salad!
That's it!
Time's up. Everybody stop.
That was a bit hard, wasn't it?
I could do with a nap!
I now really want to introduce you
to the person that set you this great challenge.
Singer, author of two cookbooks
and host of the multi-award-winning food podcast Table Manners.
Oh, yes.
Jessie Ware.
ALL: Wow! Hey!
Hi, how are you?
Good!
# Never gonna move, oh, my love, you'll make me come to you... #
Initially, I started as a singer, but I always had an appetite,
and then I did this podcast with my mum.
Coming up on Table Manners...
Sorry! Do you want to blow your nose?!
Wow. Get it all out before the star arrives, Mum.
OK, get them in. Let them in.
We get to speak to other people about their food memories,
from politicians, singers, actors, writers.
We learn a lot through people's eating habits and traditions,
and I love that.
So I'm nosy, I'm incredibly greedy,
so I think I'm going to be the best guest judge
they could ever possibly wish for, these champions.
I can't wait to see how you present a dish
to tell me about a moment in time of your life.
Tim, come on, sir.
Inspired by his time spent in Japan, where he met his wife,
Tim has served an izakaya dinner of sharing plates.
Wow.
Is this comfort food for you?
It sure is!
I am really impressed.
Thanks.
A DIY fish finger sushi hand roll with Japanese rice and nori
and a yuzu tofu mayonnaise...
This is great. Really great.
Thank you.
..ginger-fried chicken karaage with a lime yuzu
and dashi vinegar dressing,
and pork gyoza with a soy, chilli and vinegar dip,
accompanied by a radish and watercress salad
with fried baby anchovies,
with a sesame, ginger and onion dressing and chilled sake.
I went to Japan for my honeymoon. Oh, nice.
And this really transports me back to then.
You've got, like, the comfort of the fried chicken
with this, like, punchy ponzu sauce.
I love the freshness of the salad.
This is how I love to eat, a bit of everything.
It's perfect. Thanks.
The fish finger just works brilliantly, brilliantly, well.
Got that thick mayo on it, you've got the saltiness
of the seaweed, it's delightful.
Your gyoza - filled with rich pork.
It's almost the sort of ultimate sausage roll, but soft.
And then you've got the lovely soy vinegar dipping sauce,
sharp with vinegar and the saltiness of the soy.
Tim, what's not to like, really?
It's elegant, sophisticated, clever, and it's comforting.
I'm pleased that Jessie liked it.
That's actually sort of more of an accomplishment,
because John and Gregg, I kind of already knew
they liked my food, because I won!
So to get it from her, that's... that's quite nice.
Irini has served a Greek feast of octopus braised in red wine
and fennel with a seaweed salad and crispy anchovy spines,
cracked wheat flavoured with toasted almond flakes and dried figs,
topped with marinated anchovies,
with an olive relish and an octopus jus.
Octopus - braised it nice and slowly, so it's lovely and tender.
Love the richness that's around the outside with all that fennel
in there, and then seaweed across the top.
I'm sitting in a pair of shorts with no shoes on, my toes in the sand,
and I'm firmly in Greece, thanks very much, in the sunshine.
I think it's delicious.
You got some lovely flavours here.
Nutty, herby, fruity, finishes with a little bit of bitterness.
These are lovely combinations.
I adore that cracked wheat.
You've got the saltiness with the anchovy and it kind of...
It doesn't overpower, and there's a real depth to the tapenade.
And I really think it's beautiful, and I really enjoyed that.
I wanted to transport the people eating it back to my island.
I feel so elated.
Kenny's comfort dish is his version of Mum's fish pie,
with salmon and cod fillets, smoked haddock,
queenie scallops and langoustines,
topped with crispy mashed potato and grilled gruyere cheese
and served with caramelised hispi cabbage,
sea vegetables and a seaweed butter.
This is the brief, a comforting fish pie.
I love the sweetness that you get from the scallops
and the langoustine, and then you've got samphire.
That is a great fish pie. Thank you.
You've taken an absolute classic and you've elevated it.
You've cooked the fish beautifully,
and on the side, a little bit of Show-Off Kenny
with some seaweed butter on a cabbage.
Kenny, it's great. Really good. Appreciate it.
Kenny, you gave us undoubtedly
a big, luxurious dish of comfort food. Well done.
Think it went really well. I just set out to do something
full of bags of flavour.
And, yeah, I think I pulled it off.
Saliha's celebration chicken and chips
is spicy barbecue chicken lollipops
with mango and paprika-spiced yucca chips,
fruity kimchi and fennel slaw,
tamarind beans topped with pomegranate,
and a green pea chilli chutney.
There's no escaping the fact that this is absolutely glorious,
and it is an array of flavour sensations.
The beans are smoky and then pomegranate sweet to finish.
That chicken is covered in
maybe one of the best barbecue sauces I've ever tasted.
It is tamarind-sharp, sweet, and it finishes with chilli.
So much chilli, it's making my lips tingle.
The only thing that's cooling at all is the pea chutney.
We have something here which literally
bombards your palate with excitement.
I love that.
This is unlike any chicken and chips I've ever had.
Wow. It packs a punch.
And the coating in this is so delicious.
It kind of popped like a lollipop.
It really popped in my mouth and it was so tasty.
And I think it really needed the chips just to kind of
calm some of the other moments down.
But I don't want to calm you down!
It shows your vibrance, your fun, and this was a plate of all of that.
I'm really glad that they enjoyed the punchy flavours.
It's such an adrenaline rush.
Like, I never knew I was such an adrenaline junkie
before I did MasterChef!
Ping's dish is inspired by her favourite childhood meal,
chilli pan mee.
Hand-rolled noodles with braised pork and shiitake mushrooms,
topped with a fried egg and crispy anchovies,
served with shrimp and scallop XO sauce
and an anchovy broth.
Not only do we get that lovely chewiness
that comes from the noodle,
but because the egg and the egg yolk is now going across the top of
those noodles, they become slightly slippery as well.
And then you get a sort of...
a little bit of a crunch from the minced pork
and the chewiness from the shiitake mushrooms,
which explode with a smoky flavour.
It's a very delicious dish indeed.
I love it. Thank you.
There is a sweetness to that chewy pork that is lovely.
That broth is a lovely, mild, fishy saltiness.
With the heat that finishes every mouthful of this dish,
it's so incredibly moreish.
This is such comfort food. I love it.
It's warming, it's got so much flavour,
and it's fun to eat.
I really appreciate having
this extension of your mother's love on this dish.
Thanks. I still cry about it. Aw! I miss her a lot.
I feel like she's here a little bit with... I don't know.
Oh, thank you. Honestly, it's really, really beautiful.
Oh!
My mum will be very proud of that dish.
Still, I don't think she'll eat it, though.
I loved hearing the stories.
All of them are incredibly gifted
and there was so much technical triumph.
It's been such an amazing experience. Thank you.
You're welcome back any time at all.
You've said it! I'm coming back.
Thank you. See you later. Bye! GREGG CHUCKLES
That was fun! Cor, glad to be back.
Well done! What a relief.
One down, but the big one still to go.
Yes, it is. But I think
you'll be all right. Can we go home now?
Can we go home now? Yeah!
THEY LAUGH
We had great food in the last round.
Our expectation has now gone sky-high.
We are looking for our Champion of Champions.
See this? Brand-new trophy.
Just one of you champions is going to take this home.
We want a celebration of you as a cook.
What sort of cook have you become?
How's your food evolved?
Two hours and 15 minutes.
One champion.
Let's cook.
I'm enjoying it, getting into a bit of a flyer.
Just hope I can get it up on time, cos that'd be really embarrassing!
Ex-champion...
Now I've just got to make sure it all comes out on top.
Kenny, tell us what your two courses are.
The first dish I've got is called Duck Duck Goose,
like the old playground game.
I used to always be the goose, always being chased.
It's a breast of goose pan-roasted,
then a duck hash with confit duck leg in the hash,
confit duck yolk, carrot puree,
and a beautiful, rich duck sauce.
My dessert is chocolate...
chocolate lime, which is a sweet my grandad used to always give me.
I love them. You know, the boiled sweet
with the chocolate in the middle. So it's all the flavours of that.
So, rich chocolate, a tart with a cocoa nib tuille,
and a lime snow. I always try and use stuff from the past,
using memories to create the dishes, and it just gives it
a little bit more substance, you know?
Kenny, we met you as a very talented bank manager.
Mate, you're now a chef. Getting there! Yeah, getting there.
I've never seen a goose breast just pan-fried
like you would a duck breast, because there's a lot of fat on it.
If it's not cooked properly,
it could be dry and it could be tough.
Chocolate with lime.
Ooh, that's a tricky balancing act, isn't it?
I know the sweets he's talking about.
I never liked them as a kid.
With lime snow?
That lime flavour's going to disappear in your mouth
and then you're left with this really strong flavour of chocolate.
I'm intrigued.
A bit nervous trying to actually get everything done and remember
that I need to have fun and breathe, so that's quite hard!
Ping's main course is based upon a chicken and rice clay pot.
Classically in Malaysia, it's a piece of chicken cooked over rice,
but instead of chicken, we've got guinea fowl
turned into a ballotine with pork and mushrooms and rice
inside the guinea fowl. A chilli gel as well.
And she's promising us a sauce which is flavoured with ginger.
It sounds classic in its appearance and its technique,
but with Malaysian flavours.
It is definitely a celebration dish,
because it is based on my mum's birthday dish.
So I really want to nail this, because when done well,
it just brings you the flavour of home.
Dessert is my take on ais kacang.
It's my dad's favourite dessert.
My father always order it because it's really hot,
and then he lets it melt into a puddle and then he eats it.
So I want to celebrate this.
Dessert is based upon shaved ice.
The toppings include sweetcorn, sweetcorn gel,
peanuts, and a rose-flavoured meringue.
Throughout a lot of Southeast Asia,
sweetcorn is used in sweet dishes and desserts. Delicious.
Ping, have you set your sights on this trophy?
I'm just thinking, where should I put it in my kitchen?
HE LAUGHS
45 minutes gone, which means you have an hour and a half left.
Oh! Spoon...
You've got some lovely stuff here. What's this?
Alubukhara. Persian sour plums.
Can I? Can I have a nibble? Do you need 'em all?
They're lovely. No, no, not at all.
That is so sour! It's sour, isn't it? It's like sucking a lemon!
Yeah. Note to self - don't be heavy-handed with that alubukhara!
In the last round, everything was packed with bold flavours,
so you've become more bold, do you think?
Yes, I call myself baudacious, which is bold and audacious.
Two courses, Saliha. What are you going to cook for us?
Quail in three different ways.
We've got quail breast, quail kebab and a fruity quail bonbon.
Why quail? I love quail.
I come from a culture where we bang flavour at quails,
which I think is quite exciting.
So it may be quail in a way that you've never really had it before.
The dessert is a jasmine jaggery set yoghurt with kataifi crisps.
It's filo pastry which has been shredded up really thinly,
packing it down to make almost biscuit-like structures,
with jasmine and strawberry consomme.
I think my objective today is to bring
some quail jasmine-y goodness to people's lives. Fab!
What we've got is an incredible use of different spices
and big, big flavourings, but they need careful balancing.
I really like the idea of Saliha's dessert -
strawberry consomme, she's going to serve.
A yoghurt parfait,
and a little kind of almost sugary pastry disc across the top.
Both of those things are flavoured with jasmine.
It's got to be floral, but not overpowering.
It's quite daunting to have your food judged again,
and you just want to please them.
You're just like, "Please like my food!"
I really hope John and Gregg like my food.
I have no desire but for them to like my food.
I'm making ramen.
There we go. Lovely. OK.
The first course is going to be our signature ramen
from the restaurant. It's called Lazy Goat Ragu-men.
We got dried, smoked prawn dust.
We got fried shallots.
We got a tea-pickled egg.
Probably the dish I'm most proud of in my career.
Why goat? Goat is one of the signature flavours
of Caribbean cooking and of Brixton Market,
and the flavours that come from there,
but put into a Japanese format.
I'm like a ramen evangelist, and my belief is that most foods
would be better if they were ramen.
THEY LAUGH
So that's what I'm trying to do, basically.
The problem here, I think, is the goat.
That is a really hard meat to cook.
I don't mind it being slightly chewy as long as it's not dry.
Sweet!
Phew!
HE LAUGHS
Dessert from Tim is based upon a float,
where you take a soft drink, put a scoop of ice cream in it
and it all bubbles across the top.
He's got the flavours of melon in a melon liqueur.
He's using Japanese lemonade,
and he's also making an ice pole,
which he's going to serve on a stick.
All right.
OK.
And it's going to be fizzy and it's got glitter in it.
With the dessert, I hope it makes them smile
when they just look at it, cos it's going to look quite crazy.
This is vodka with green food colouring.
Always get everybody drunk
and then the food doesn't matter that much!
You have 25 minutes left.
Time flies, doesn't it?
Up against it.
You have to juggle so many things.
The clock is your worst enemy.
Everything else is actually wonderful in the kitchen. Yeah!
Irini's menu was really complex.
We're getting Dexter beef... That's exactly how I would eat it.
..she's serving it with a stew or stifado of oxtail,
wrapped in a little piece of pastry.
And then she's serving the whole thing with a celeriac puree,
which has got cheese running through it.
We've got a little bit of Lake District meets Greece, right?
Yes. I wanted to showcase fantastic Cumbrian produce,
lots of lovely colours and textures.
Good pedigree ingredients.
You've got step grandchildren.
You get very emotional when you talk about them.
How proud are they of you?
I think they're my biggest ambassadors.
They talk to their school friends.
They advertise yiayia.
Dessert, clementines turned into a gel, a walnut spice cake,
and then we've got a set yoghurt parfait,
and the whole thing is then served with an espuma.
The good thing for Irini is, she's got so much going on
with that dessert, it could be beautiful if she loses half of it.
Not good. I haven't done my espuma.
Yeah.
Living dangerously, as always!
Five minutes, Irini. Five minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I honestly have no idea yet if it's coming together or not.
I'm not, I'm not lying when I say that I just don't know.
Oh, that's too much.
Now I'm shaking, I can't get that to work...
OK, calm down.
You have 90 seconds, and that's all you have.
Come on, Irini. We're nearly there.
My gel, my...
Irini, how long to finish off that plate? Not long, really.
I'm just putting the gel on.
Is that the last thing, the gel? And a drizzle of olive oil.
That's it! Time's up.
Stop. Well done.
Stop.
Why does time just eradicate?
Kanpai!
Malaysians call it "yam seng".
Yam seng! Yam seng!
Kenny, come on, sir.
Very cool-looking plates, Kenny.
Thank you.
Kenny's main course is Duck Duck Goose -
a pan roasted goose breast
with a confit duck leg and potato hash,
a confit duck yolk,
roasted carrot, carrot puree,
and a duck sauce.
I've never had goose before that's been cooked off the bone.
I think you've done a sterling job.
That fat rendered down, the goose is still pink.
Very, very tender indeed.
Your sauce, lovely and shiny.
Kenny, it's a great dish.
You call it a hash.
I call it nothing short of a pie!
Look at that - beautiful duck meat inside,
lovely potato that's crisp on the outside,
and it's got a little bit of pepper. Carrot, a little bit of sweetness,
the egg yolk giving everything, rich creaminess.
It's showing a proper chef's touch.
Very, very good indeed.
Inspired by chocolate lime sweets from his childhood,
Kenny's dessert is a double chocolate tart
with a biscuit and macadamia nut base,
whipped sheep's yoghurt
and a cocoa nib tuille,
topped with lime snow.
The lime just gives you a sort of lovely cleansing feeling
on your palate and then you get the rich cocoa, but it's light
and it's smooth and it's delicious.
That whipped sour yoghurt is perfect with chocolate,
and I also like the bitter cocoa nib
draped over the side of it.
It's rich, it's indulgent,
it's delicious.
To us, you look like the same old Kenny, but you've changed.
You've become a professional,
and it shows quite clearly on your plate. Well done.
I feel exhilarated.
I feel tired beyond belief.
It just saps all the energy out of you.
It's just an experience I'll always remember.
Wow.
I didn't expect that.
Ping's main course is her take on a Malaysian claypot chicken.
Guinea fowl stuffed with sausage and shiitake mushroom rice,
topped with a lime, ginger and chilli gel,
with shards of crispy rice,
braised little gem lettuce
and served with a guinea fowl sauce.
Your bird is cooked perfectly, and inside is softer, salty rice,
and we have a sauce that is almost fruity,
and then the heat of ginger.
That is a beautiful, beautiful dish in every single way.
You've done something quite magical here.
You made a ballotine from the guinea fowl breast.
You made crispy rice on the side with little gems of dried shrimp
running all the way through it that every so often you taste,
and I feel like I'm on the streets of Malaysia.
It looks beautiful and it tastes delicious.
Ping's dessert is her version of a Malaysian ais kacang -
shards of rose-flavoured meringue with a salted sweetcorn mousse
and a peanut powder
mixed with coconut ice.
Love the coconut ice.
Absolutely delicious.
The texture that comes from that sweetcorn is incredible,
because it actually tastes like custard.
And then around the outside, we've got salty peanuts.
Have you finished that?!
Almost. And you've got to eat that to believe it.
It's absolutely delicious.
You get a mouthful of cold and that's the ice, but that's OK,
that's coconut flavour.
And then you go into what... it feels like a custard,
and then you get the slight, almost savoury flavour of sweetcorn,
but it comes back to sugar with the meringue.
I can't leave that thing alone.
Your food's lovely.
I'm so relieved.
You're putting yourself out there again to open to criticism,
but to get those comments was absolutely out of this world.
Saliha's main is quail three ways,
with a ginger and chilli quail kebab,
an apricot and barbary quail bonbon,
and a quail breast glazed in honey and pomegranate molasses
on pearl barley,
served with a smoky aubergine puree
and a walnut and coriander zhoug,
finished with a sour plum and quail jus.
The quail breast, which is cooked beautifully and still pink.
On the outside, you have lashings of pomegranate molasses,
which is sour.
The kebab...
It's smoky, with cumin and coriander and cardamom.
You have really bombarded my palate!
I like it a lot.
Thank you.
I love the soft meat inside that bonbon with those barberries.
It starts off tasting like a redcurrant,
finishes very, very sharp.
Smoky aubergine - very, very good indeed.
Good cooking. And Saliha flavours.
Saliha's dessert is jasmine and jaggery set yoghurt
with kataifi pastry crisps and pistachios,
torched strawberries,
and a strawberry and jasmine tea consomme.
The smell of jasmine is overwhelming. That's amazing.
Love the texture of the set yoghurt, and it's very, very sweet
because of all that jaggery,
but you've still got a little bit of sourness on the back of your palate.
The pistachio nuts with the biscuit adds a real crunch to it.
I think it's wonderful.
Thank you.
What is beautiful is, your little strawberry sauce isn't sweet at all,
so it's almost like an essence of strawberry without the sugar.
I think it's absolutely lovely.
For me, your food is unique.
It's a beautiful, beautiful style.
Thank you.
The whole experience is just so magical, and it just brought
a tear to my eye, and that's unusual for me, you know?
You do love a bit of theatre, don't you, Tim?
Who doesn't? I'd set it on fire if I could!
HE CHUCKLES
Tim's main course is curried goat ramen with handmade noodles,
Scotch bonnet-infused bamboo shoots,
fried shallots and spring onions,
and a lapsang souchong tea-pickled egg
topped with tuna and smoked prawn dust.
Your goat is fantastic.
It falls apart.
The noodles are quite firm and still slightly bouncy.
I like the fact that there is this playfulness that goes on
with the flavours as well, because it is smoky,
but then there's this bit of chilli heat.
But all you want to do is keep on going back in and eat
more and more and more of it. Great!
The chilli on the bamboo really took me by surprise.
Very, very hot indeed.
Should come with a health warning.
The noodles are covered in beautiful, rich broth.
I love it.
Egg is perfect.
Clever food, but good cooking.
Tim's dessert is a Japanese soda float
with lychee lemonade,
Midori, a Japanese melon liqueur,
a bubble-gum lemonade ice lolly
and melon ice cream topped with fizzy pink glitter.
Oh, my word, what are you up to?
Whoa!
Wow!
There's bitterness from that Japanese booze.
I've never had it before. It's very, very warming.
It's putting a smile on my face. It's making my cheeks slightly rosy.
But then you've got all the lovely sweetness
that an ice cream and a lolly would deliver.
This lemonade ice pole,
because it's got fizz in it still,
tastes great.
You made beautiful ice cream, which is melon-flavoured,
and then the invention of the float...
I'm astounded how clever you are.
It's fun, it's exciting, it's interesting.
It's a triumph.
I mainly just wanted to show them something that I am proud of,
and I think kind of special.
I think they really liked it, so I'm very pleased.
Looking good, Irini.
Irini has served pan-fried fillet of Dexter beef
with oxtail stifado stew encased in brick pastry,
cheesy celeriac puree,
sauteed rainbow chard,
pickled shallots
and an oxtail stifado jus.
The beef with the chard and the celeriac puree is extraordinary.
It's almost as if I'm having a fillet of beef
with cauliflower and cheese,
and I find that really comforting.
The brick roll with all the olives inside
and the oxtail, I think, is absolutely delicious.
Irini, this has really taken me by surprise.
The fillet, it's soft,
it's got texture on the outside.
The sauce is tomato-rich and fruity sweet.
This is absolutely delicious.
Thank you.
Irini's dessert is a Greek yoghurt parfait
with a walnut and orange blossom honey syrup cake,
caramelised clementines and walnuts,
a clementine and brandy gel,
and a yoghurt and olive oil mousse garnished with bee pollen.
The sweetness is coming from the gel and the clementine.
And then, of course, because you put bee pollen across it all,
we get a mild, mild honey flavour.
From that moist cake is coming a sweetened honey syrup.
Absolutely lovely.
That parfait is exceptional.
It's the texture of a cloud.
The olive oil, which is peppery and sharp at the same time
with that light little puff, I think is delicious.
Irini, you have graced this table with stunning Greek flavours.
Well done.
Very kind, sir. Thank you.
All that is me and my DNA was totally on the plate.
So thrilled they like the flavours. Wonderful.
Tremendous. Sharing a meal with old friends,
but old friends who cook like MasterChef champions.
Couldn't ask for anything more.
Only one of you will become our MasterChef Champion of Champions.
Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you. Thank you. ALL: Thank you. Thank you. Cheers.
Now that's what I call a cook-off.
It's been surprising, exciting, interesting.
That was joyous.
Kenny's doing proper cheffy dishes, isn't he?
It's indulgent, but it's still true to him.
It's built around British classics.
It's food that you would expect to get in a restaurant.
Ping draws on her love of Malaysian food, but today I think
she really took it up a notch.
Two sides of Ping you see in her food.
One is the very, very serious, very technical.
The other one is the fun.
Her food today was delicious.
No two ways about it.
Saliha promised us big, big flavour, and that's exactly what she did.
If you are transported by the flavours of a dish
to somewhere else, that makes it evocative.
That's what great food's all about.
Irini's food,
it's almost as if the sunshine from a Greek island is
shining down on you.
She is a magician with the flavours that she knows so well.
I was so impressed with Tim today.
He has completely and utterly embraced Japanese style
and Japanese flavours.
There are no rules to his food.
It's just about enjoyment and making sure that food tastes great.
I have enjoyed being back, but it is hard.
But I did myself proud.
It's always lovely to win anything.
It's been a celebration anyway,
so I'll be happy either way, but obviously -
don't tell the others - it'd be amazing to win it.
It just felt wonderful to be back here.
In a way, as if I was a reborn cook.
Yeah, it feels like home.
Today, everyone genuinely is a winner.
That's what MasterChef is all about. It's the memory of the experience.
Being back here in the MasterChef kitchen
has bring back so many emotions.
It does make you feel alive.
They've all grown.
They've all changed.
They've all impressed.
Who is going to be our champion?
To have all five of you cooking together,
I feel like it's an honour.
You're marvellous and lovely people, and I love all five of you.
But we only have one Champion of Champions.
Our Champion of Champions...
..is Ping.
# I've been holding on to pieces... #
OTHERS CHEER AND APPLAUD
Group hug! So proud of you.
Thank you!
THEY CHEER
Wahey! Well done!
# A little bit of love, I need a little love... #
Tim, Irini, Saliha, Kenny - thank you very much.
You're leaving us! Thank you. Thank you.
Well done.
So proud. So deserved. Thank you, guys.
I'm very glad I came back.
It was fun to challenge myself a bit.
I did pretty much my best work today,
so it's a good day for me.
It's like a dream come true,
because you never think you'll ever be back in the MasterChef kitchen
cooking. Had a great day.
Cooking with champions, you just get so much inspiration.
I'm really proud of what I've done and, yeah, go and have a cold drink!
This is a celebration like no other.
I could not think of a nicer person
could have won it today.
# Just like the air I'm breathing... #
Yes! Yes!
This, Ping, is for you.
Thank you! How about that?
Everything is the same, it's, like, all happening again,
and I can't really believe it, really.
It's kind of like a dream.
GREGG CHEERS PING LAUGHS
I'm really happy! Really happy.
Champions of Champions is a bit of a mouthful, but I love it!
# Just like the air I'm breathing
# These awful wounds ain't healing
# Tryna find my way back to you
# Cos I'm needing a little bit of love
# Oh-oh, oh-oh
# A little bit of love
# A little bit of love. #