ANNOUNCER: Previously on MasterChef Australia... Your reputation is on the line. John pitted a Filipino classic... ..against modern Australian cuisine... Oh, my God. What am I in for? ..and only just missed out on a winning immunity. You've really marked yourself down as being one to watch. Tonight... (ALARM BEEPS) ..it's the ultimate wake-up call. Good morning. Or should I say goodnight? Take over a commercial bakery... This is my worst nightmare. ..and feed a ravenous lunchtime crowd. Never have I cooked on such a huge scale. There is a large queue of people out there. Go. Go, go, go. Whoa! Move it! Let's go. The team that makes the most money wins. We need to do that ASAP. We're going to open the doors. You've got nothing in your cabinets. But first, they have to get food onto the shelves... These guys are going hungry. ..before there's a riot. This is stressful as hell. # Burning up # in my heart # like a flame, # like a brighter shooting star. # In our souls, # we all know # our dreams make us who we are. # We got today. # Ooh, yeah, yeah. # So spin me round and... # Ooh, yeah, yeah. # ...show me the way... # Ooh, yeah, yeah. # ...back to... # Burning up # in my heart # like a flame, # like a brighter shooting star. # In our souls, # we all know # our dreams make us who we are. # Able 2015 (ALARM BEEPS) Morning. (LAUGHS) It's so early. AVA: The last time I woke up at 3am... I don't know. I can tell you the last time I went to bed at 3am, but not when I woke up. MATTHEW: I'm OK with getting up early, but some of the others in the house, you know, early starts don't seem to be their thing. I love MasterChef. (LAUGHS) You know, it's an early start, but it means that were going to be doing something interesting so I'm really excited to get up early and see what they've got in store for us. Morning. Morning, everyone. Oh, my God. Why are you all so spritely? AVA: Walk into the lounge room and we can see there's a table of aprons and there's a letter addressed to the contestants on it. "Dear contestants. Today you will be competing in a team challenge. "You will take over the bakery at Abbotsford Convent." I'm a Melbourne girl, so I know about the Abbotsford Convent bakery. And I know that they do beautiful breads. I'm actually really excited about this one. "You will cook a selection of high-quality baked goods for their customers. "You will need to bake bread, pizza slices, pies and cakes. "The team that makes the most money will win the challenge and be safe from elimination. "Take a token from the flour bag to determine which team you're on." ASHLEIGH: Today's team challenge is, I think, a perfect challenge for me. This is really my dream, to be baking delicious sweet treats for people. But I'm feeling a little nervous about how huge this challenge is going to be. Red. REYNOLD: Red. Oh, you're kidding. Captain? Ohhh, this is probably my worst nightmare. No. Go again. Redraw. No! (LAUGHS) I wanted a little bit more time before I was captain again. Oh, this is mayhem. Last time, I let myself down. So why are we doing mains again? Because apparently four people didn't get their main. And I wonder sometimes if I did let my team down as well. For me, today is all about forgetting what the past was, knowing where I went wrong and make amends this time around. You love being captain. You're so bossy. (LAUGHTER) So as we're going around the room... Red. ..everyone's picking. There's not a captain for the blue team yet and then it's just me and John left to pick the last two chips. It's red. STEPHEN: So that makes you captain. I'm stoked I'm the captain. I look around at my blue team and I think I've got a pretty strong team with me. "Now, captains, you have 5 minutes with your teams for planning. "In those 5 minutes, you must choose two team members "who will accompany you to the bakery to start baking bread. "The bread takes longer to cook, so the three of you will be leaving immediately. "The rest of your team will join you later. Good luck and happy baking." So first things first - myself and two other people have to go to the bakery right now to start cooking the bread. I decide to bring Amy and Georgia along with me. Amy is like the bread queen of the house. She makes bread at least once a week. And Georgia, she just has a wealth of knowledge in all aspects of cooking. I don't mind going and kneading bread. I'd love you to come with me. I'm going to take Stephen with me and I'm going to take Billie with me. Billie and I baked bread on the weekend and she's got so much knowledge about baking, so Billie's coming with me for sure. Ready? Let's make this bread rise! STEPHEN: Ah. Breads and pastries. Breads and pastries. SARA: The breadmakers from both teams arrive at Abbotsford Convent. Wow. All we know is we have to start baking this bread before the rest of the team arrives to make the pies, pizzas and sweets. Good morning. Morning. Or should I say goodnight? I'm not sure. Are you a bit disorientated? It's an early start, isn't it? Welcome to the Abbotsford bakery and cafe and Dominic Raco here is the head baker, the owner. How long have you been running the business for? Uh, now 10 years. 2005. So it's got a certain reputation and it's got a reputation for sourdough bread, which is absolutely delicious. So you've got a lot to live up to. Dominic, as a baker, is going to be on hand just to offer you any tips and tricks that you might need, just to kind of shove you along in the right direction. Has anybody made bread before? Just out of curiosity. Three days ago. You've made bread. We made one loaf together on Sunday. (LAUGHS) That's what you call a head start. How many loaves of bread have you made, do you reckon? Just out of curiosity? Oh, when we're in full production, we'll do anywhere between 1,200 to 3,000 loaves. Whoa! So, a little more, then. Now, the positive is the more loaves you sell, the more money you'll make for your team. But they won't go out unless Dominic approves each loaf. You got it? CONTESTANTS: Yep. Alright, get pumped up because at 11 o'clock, the cafe doors will open. You've got all the information you need. Your recipes are at your benches and everything else you need is around you. What are you waiting for? 1 OK. We've got our recipe. We need to make as many loaves as possible today. We're going to make 3 loads of these, right? To create 60 loaves. So we decided to go for 60 loaves, just in case some don't work out. Are you right? Because more loaves equals more money in the till. To make our sourdough, the first things we need to do are weigh out our dry ingredients... Alright. That's 4.8kg of flour. ..the leaven that you use to make the bread rise... Add all of that and all of that. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, alright. ..and then we'll combine all of that into this huge mixer... ..until it's at the right consistency. Mixing now. It's very exciting. Take out a little piece. Now, just stretch it and see if it holds together. Like that. See? That means it's ready. Yeah, it's elastic. As soon as it comes out of the dough mixer... Come on. All your might. ..we have to prove it for one hour. After that, we have to shape them into Vienna loaves and then cook our loaves, so it all makes sense why bakers get up so damn early... Next one in. Go, go, go. '..cause you need all the time in the world. ASHLEIGH: It's the crack of dawn. Core time at the bakery. Come on, guys. Let's go. Hey, guys. How are we? Let's go. Let's go. Hustle. The first thing we need to do is plan our menu and decide what kind of pizzas, pies and sweet things we're going to make to sell in the shop. Jacqui, I want you on pies. Yeah. We were thinking for speed, chicken and leek. Great. I could do my brownies if that counts as a cake. Yes! Let's do that! We are expecting 500 people today and to feed that many people, it's going to be so much work. We're just gonna have to keep on moving and not stop for a second. I want to do one thing properly. I don't want to get stressed. I want us to do one thing awesome, 'cause that's what you want from a bakery is a brownie that you feel like you could eat for seven days. I think we need to focus on getting the stuff that going to take the longest, like the pastries. Pies is number one. I want you on pie. I don't want to do the pastry for it, though, because I'm not confident with that at all. No, that's fine. OK. Being captain today, I'm thinking about my past experience in advertising and what I can bring to this challenge. I don't want people standing there and there's nothing in the window. If there's always something to give them... Totally. Yeah. If my team and I can make quality products today, I think I'll be pretty confident in selling it to the public. Alright. Let's get chocolate. SARA: Guys, I want communication. Anything, bring it to me. I want to taste everything before it goes out. What's going on? Hi, boys. Can we kind of... Can we shuffle in here? Go. Sure, 'cause there's heaps of room. Tell us the items. What are they? Alright, so... obviously we've got our bread going. The pizzas, we're going to do two. So while Matt's doing the dough for that, we've got some sopressa, some hot salami and we've also got some zucchinis that we're thinking of charring and doing with ricotta, just in case people want a vegetarian option. The pie we're doing today is a chicken and bacon pie. Get in. I've got Johnny boy and Reynold on the sweets. Only one dessert at this stage. Reynold's idea is to create a chocolate and raspberry Swiss roll and he says it will only take 8 minutes in the oven. Something that can just be pumped out really quickly so that if they're really popular, we can do it again and again and again. Now, I've got no issue if you just want to do one thing. That was a minimum, right? But I know when I walk into a bakery, when you look at that counter, what do you want to see? You want to see lots of beautiful things. Now, I'm staring over there at Reynold. We know John's strengths. Now, I would be putting pressure on them. I want two items from each. Yep. Fair call. It does become apparent that we have more than enough capability to push out a second dessert because it's more options, more profitability, more chance that we can win today. You guys are going to be doing a second dessert. If there's chocolate, can you guys do, like, a lemon tart? Something curd. Because if you see chocolate and you're not into chocolate, you're probably going to be into the opposite, yeah? Yeah. I can do a shortbread biscuit. Yeah, but what's interesting about it? Like, if you could make a lemon butter cream. And then we'll finish with the thyme on top with a thing and a thing. We'll do that. Ava, can we just talk about quantities? For each portion, looking to serve 100 of this, 100 of this, 100 of that. Yeah, let's just work with those numbers. One of my biggest concerns today is quantity. I want to make sure I have enough food for these people but I want my team to have faith in me. Are you OK with this? Yep. You OK with this? You're working with Ash. All good. As a captain, I need to lead from the front today. That means giving my team solid direction. I know today I need to go with my gut and I need to make good decisions that I'm confident with. So give us an update. Have you got a menu? You've figured it out? You know what is happening. Yeah. Tell us what that is. So our menu at the moment is Ashleigh's famous brownies that are to die for. We're also doing a chicken and leek pie and we've got Jacqui working on the fillings. We've got a pizza going. Who's making the pizza? That's Jamie down the end. So at the moment we're working on pumpkin and caramelised onion. A pizza bianco as well. Maybe as a second option. So we've got pies, a pizza and brownies. Here's a little thing - basically, it's a retail exercise. This is what they call facing up. It's like when you walk in, what you want to see? Do you want to see fresh strawberry tart, little brownie, little lemon tart, pie. For example. Something that's got instant buyer appeal. I'm a visual merchandiser, so I fully understand what the judges mean about needing to entice the customer with gorgeous treats in the window. I just keep picturing the cabinet and I feel like there's not enough stuff in there. I want maybe another element in there just to aesthetically... To make it look pretty, I think we need to add something else to the menu. Do we want an extra dessert or do we just want to stick to brownies? My first thought was thinking a lemon tart. I really want a lemon tart. I want that colour in there. I want that freshness and that zing from a lemon curd. And whenever I walk past a bakery, I'll buy at least seven of them. But my team - they're not confident in the lemon tart. The thing with lemon tarts, I think it's better if they're individual and I think that might be too hard. Do you reckon? It's your decision. Um... I can be a little indecisive at times, particularly when there's a lot of opinions coming in. They're coming up with a lot of amazing ideas and they're pushing this idea for a passionfruit and lemon curd eclair. Something like a lemon curd cream type thing in the middle and like a passionfruit icing. Or passionfruit glaze on the top of the eclair. Yeah, I'd be OK with that. Ava's not fond of our eclair idea and is favouring the lemon tart. Um... I really want a lemon tart. But to make the filling and the pastry for that is really time-consuming. Do you think that's a good idea? Are we gonna have time to do pastry for lemon tarts? Yeah... I think so. I'm really worried we won't get the brownies as well as the lemon tarts on the shelves in time. Ava really needs to make a decision. Um... Leave that with me, girls. I'll be back in two seconds. ANNOUNCER: Coming up... ASHLEIGH: How do we turn it on? Whoa! ..it's chaos in the kitchen. I need way more help. We're not going to get this done. The doors open in two hours. There is a large queue of people out there. But will they have food to feed the growing masses? As soon as those doors open, you better have something to sell. 1 GEORGE: Red team, blue team, listen up. Two hours before the bakery opens. And can I tell you, at the moment, it looks like... I don't know. A massacre. Armageddon. Yeah? So get it together. JACQUI: Today's challenge is a service challenge. The doors of the convent bakery will open at 11 and they'll shut at 2. Can someone help me, please? This bread is so heavy. We have to have bread, cakes, pies, pizzas ready, stocked in our windows when those doors open And we have to sell until two o'clock and whoever makes the most money is the winner. I'm on pies today, so I'm now getting onto the chicken and leek filling. It's got to be tasty. It's got to be the best chicken, bacon and leek pie I've ever cooked. I've got skinless chicken thigh fillets, but it needs to be chopped and there's a lot of chicken. We're aiming to make 100 pies. Actually, we're probably aiming to make 200, aren't we? 200 pies? Oh, OK. Never have I cooked on such a huge scale. We're expecting 500 people through those doors today. That's ridiculous. I can't even imagine making more than 20 pies at a time, let alone a couple of hundred I think we're trying to do here. I just want to check my pastry because it's really short. That's OK. We'll just add a bit more flour. Ava wants me on pastry so I'm going to make all the pastry for the pies. I start doing the sums and working out what I need to times my recipe by to get the right amount of pastry and it's absolutely huge. So, 400g times 25. 10,000g. Yeah, so 10kg. We worked out that we need a bucketload of pastry. Somewhere between 10 to 15 kilos of flour need to be used, 'cause we're thinking we're probably going to make around about 200 pies. And that's going to take us forever. That was the fifth one? Yeah. So now we're on to our sixth, yeah? I'm starting to really worry that we're not going to be able to get enough pastry, let alone get it all done in time for this cafe to open. JESSICA: Nutmeg, mushrooms, bacon. Magic combination. This is our pie filling. It's the chicken and all the herbs, etc, and I'm just making a really lovely thick roux now. Cooking out the flour. And that's going to help thicken the sauce. This is one of the hardest things that I've done in MasterChef so far. Definitely. I am standing on a bucket just so I'm high enough to look into this giant pot that I'm making this roux in. It's like a really kind of thick paste and you have to keep stirring it and stirring it and stirring it. Oh, me arms! This is, like, I don't need to go to the gym for, like, another three weeks. Ideally, we'd like to be able to make at least 100 pies today. I hope that it's going to be enough. You weigh it out to 4kg and then that machine puts it into a nice block. SARA: So the first thing we need to do to start rolling out the pastry for the pies is out our pastry in this kind of compression machine which makes it flat and in a square. There we go. OK. How do we get it off now? So when we go to roll it, it's rolling in a uniform shape. Can you please flour it? I'm really worried. I can just see it being like paper in a printer. Once we put it on to the conveyor belt, there's two levers. One makes it go left, one makes it go right, so essentially it's like a giant pasta machine. But the moment we turn on the on button... OK. This thing. Yeah. ..the pastry just goes 'wreh'. Whoa! It's alright. OK. Oh, my God. OK. Have you ever been on need treadmill in the gym and then turned it on? That's just what happened. We had the pastry on and it was in reverse, I guess, and oh, my God. I'm so thankful it just did not fall to the floor. Round two. Go, go, go. We got to move. Have you got salt in there yet? No, not yet. My God, you people have worked hard this morning. You've got one hour to go before the shop is open. You know what that means? Head down, bum up. Go, go, go. GEORGE: Come on, guys. Let's go. Come on. So what we're doing now is the second option for our sweets and I'm doing a shortbread cookie with, like, a lemon custard topping on that. It's just another option for us. We're doing a chocolate Swiss roll, so if someone walks in that doesn't like chocolate, we've got that option as a sweet. AVA: So, you've got four trays in there. Two trays in there. ASHLEIGH: And four more coming. You're amazing. I'm really confident in Ashleigh's brownie for our sweet side of the menu today, but when I walk past a bakery window and I see the lemon tarts, the strawberries on top of a tart, all that colour, that's something that I think our menu is missing. I'm confident in the one thing that we're doing. It's just everyone has a bit of doubt about the lemon tart. What's the doubt about the lemon tart? That the pastry is going to take too long and it's too warm in here, but I love that idea. Make a decision, get them behind you to achieve that goal. Arrrgh! I love a lemon curd tart. I'm really excited about it. We're going to be pushing it with it, but I think I've got to follow my gut. We've got to do it. Melita, when you're done with this, we're gonna go with the lemon tart. OK. I know Melita isn't sold on the lemon tart idea. A lot of it has to do with time. But she has to trust me as her leader. And she completely does and she, you know, goes along with it. She starts to make the pastry for it. It's a tiny bit crazy, but I want to see if we can do it. This is seriously the hardest challenge ever. At this point in time, I think both teams are looking equally as chaotic. Sara, I need way more help. We're not gonna get this done. Alright. I'm gonna come. We've got so much stuff to do. Making lots of bread. Lots of pastry, lots of cakes. We're struggling to keep up. Just drawing your attention - you are way behind on the bread. If you don't hurry up on the bread, you ain't going to make any money. Move it. Let's go. DOMINIC: This is how we heat up the oven. So the air goes into there and blows the heat right around and goes up the chimney. So that's how you get all your even heat. STEPHEN: So, Dom gives us some really important instructions before putting the bread in the oven. You need to cut the bread because if you don't, the seams will split up. Are you ready? Take this peel here. I've got a paddle in my hands. Watch your back. It's about six, seven foot long. And I'm shovelling loaves into the oven. We'll try one first? Let's just try one first. I start off with one at a time just to get the hang of it and yeah, it's going OK. Are you just going to put one in at a time? No, I'm going to up the ante now. Come on, big fella. Give it a try. So, I'm starting to get a bit cocky now and putting three loaves on. So, three? Yeah, three. Oooh! Yes! This is why you came on MasterChef, mate. This is it. MATT: Come on, come on, Come on. Alright. There is a large queue of people out there. SARA: There are people as far as the eye can see. I'm actually astonished at how many people have lined up in the rain, waiting to have a taste of what our team is capable of. You need to do one other thing. You need to get out there. Board it up. Write down your menu. The other thing - the other thing is you have to think about pricing. You overprice something, it won't sell. You price it too cheaply, you give the other team basically a free kick. Alright. Outside and put the stuff on the boards. Hi! Um, OK. AVA: I write down what I think is fair to pay, so I immediately start thinking pizza, $7. That makes sense. The brownies, they're big slices. You wouldn't pay more than $4. Pies, $3.50. This competition will be won or lost on pricing and I know the pies are cheap, but there are so many people lining up here today. If we can turn over heaps of these pies, we can make a massive amount of money. The more pies we sell at a lower price means, you know, we could come out on top. Um, I reckon the blue menu is the best because most things are a lot cheaper on the blue team. I reckon I'll get more value on the blue team than the red team. The red team looks a bit more pricey than the blue, so yeah... I'm just thinking about what would I pay and let's maybe just tack on 50 cents more than that. I'm pretty worried at this point about the way I'm pricing because I want to be reasonable but also competitive. If my prices are wrong, it could totally put off my customers. They might just decide to go to the blue team instead. It could literally be the difference if we go home or not. Enjoy, ladies and gentlemen! Have a good day! See you later! 1 GEORGE: There's a queue of people outside and there's nothing in your cabinet. At the moment, you're selling doughnut and not the literal stuff, yeah? Come on. Let's go. SARA: There are hundreds of people lining up already and as soon as those doors open, you better have something to sell 'cause if you don't, not only are you not making money, but as a customer, you've been patient, you're hungry, you want something to eat, and I don't want to disappoint people today. I would check the oven if I were you. The bread's almost ready. It looks amazing. That does look amazing. Good work, guys. I pull out one of our loaves of bread and it looks just about perfect. Turn it over. That's ready. So as I'm trying to get the bread out of the oven, I'm trying to be quick. Hard to get that paddle underneath the bread without sort of knocking them over. We've lost one, Billie, at the back. What happens when you roll them over is they get the soot from the fire on them, which is a nightmare. If these don't get past Dom, they're not going to sell and we're going to lose money. Do you want to do a quick inspection? Let's check the blue team's first. These ones, yeah, you can't. Obviously, 'cause it's dirty. Fair play. Let's have a look at the red team's efforts. Dominic rejects a few of both teams' loaves of bread. Fortunately, though, we put in a lot of loaves to start with. We've still got enough to put in the store straightaway that we can sell. I'll be happy with all of these. Fantastic. Just pop them on the counter. Great work, guys. Well done. Yeah, well done, Matt. ASHLEIGH: I have to get the brownies out. Okey-dokey. I'm finally getting my first batch of brownies out of the oven. Where's all the trimming? Haven't cut the edges off yet. You haven't cut the edge bits? Can you call me when you cut the edge bits off? We don't have long to go until service and I really need to start cutting those brownies. They need to be cut, but I need your help with this lemon tart and curd. I'm really worried about making the lemon curd tart. It's taking Melita a really long time to make the pastry. I don't think she'd gonna have time to make the lemon curd as well. So I need to step up and help. 165 sugar, 160 lemon juice. I might not put as much zest in as I usually would, because it's being quite soft. We just really need to give ourselves every possible opportunity to get some extra money. Hey, John. They're looking perfect. Good, yeah. So now it's just execution. I've got Reynold and John on my desserts today. Reynold's idea is to create a chocolate and raspberry ganache kind of Swiss roll type thing. I've tasted the cake. I've tasted the ganache. They taste really good. I've just got the raspberries to go through it. A bit of acidity to cut through the richness and hopefully it tastes really good. I mean, chocolate and raspberry. You can't go wrong. People like it. We're also going to create a lemon shortbread. A biscuit's very simple and it's going to help us churn out a lot, but they still need to be interesting and they still need to be lovely for people to eat, so we're going to do a lemon and thyme buttercream. You know, really build it up so it looks more substantial than it is. Is that buttercream? Yeah. It's a lemon buttercream. Everything's better with butter. As soon as they're done, bring them out the front. I need to start filling our cabinet, OK? OK. The thing I'm least worried about are the sweets because I'm seeing how quickly and competently the boys are putting those together. It's the pizza and pies that I'm worried about. Matt, we need pizzas, please. MATT: I'm going as fast as I can. I only have Matthew on the pizzas. It's one of these challenges where there's not enough time to do everything. It's just a matter of getting these done and getting them out to the customers, so the pressure's really on to make sure we've got some food ready. We're going to make two different types of pizzas. The zucchini pizza, the sopressa and salami pizza. 500 people to feed. It's an enormous amount of people. So this is a huge challenge for us and I know that I'm going to have to start working harder and faster. Matthew? Yeah. Go like the wind. Guys - red team, blue team. That queue of people is scary. Keep the momentum up, keep the pace up because now it's about filling that counter. There's a lot at stake in here. You do not want to end up in an elimination off this, alright? You want to go home? Give up? ALL: No. You want to stay? Crack on. AVA: The pie is our next big job that we need to be doing. Let me stir. Are you right? Pie filling is done. Now we just have to actually get it in some pies, so the filling's done, pies aren't done. Overall, they're in the weeds. Yeah, of course they are. It's a big challenge. And understandable. It's a big challenge for them. I think my biggest concern is I still think that they underestimate how long it takes, for example, to make a pie. You know, how do you get the flavour in there, plus make a great pastry, plus bake it without them all exploding and I think they're underestimating that. AVA: What's your ETA on starting to fill the pies? We need to do that ASAP. Service is fast approaching. Our pies aren't even nearly ready to go in the oven. I would have hoped to have a whole tray filled by now. Is it OK? But because our pastry is so short, we're struggling. Well, it just keeps tearing. Just put it on. Just put it on. It's not going to be as easy to roll out as we hoped, but... That's OK. That's OK? My heart sinks a little bit because I know it's not working fast enough. Is this the first lot? Yeah, this is our first lot. And it's not efficient enough. All hands on deck, who hasn't done stuff to be helping with pies. I'm going to cut them out and just have them ready. Yeah. JESSICA: I'm going to go start filling pie bottoms. Let's assemble them in the fridge. OK. Yeah. The pies are our number one priority now. It's about thinking clever now. Wherever we can speed up time, we'll do it. The pastry really suffers in the heat out in the kitchen, so I've nominated to stand in the nice cool refrigerator putting our pies together. They're giving everything to getting these pies ready. They really look like pies! I know! (LAUGHS) Are they in the oven yet? Well, they're about to be. AVA: I can see that the red team have a tray lying in the oven already. And then lock it. Press start. So they're already going to have hot pies ready to serve. I look down at our scraps and our empty tart shells, and I just think, "What happened in that time?" What time do you want to have them in by at the latest? We've got 15 minutes till we've got people here. OK. So... That's alright. We'll be fine. I'm... I'm coming to the realisation that we are not going to have pies in the oven before service. Right, guys! Food in the counters. Food in the counters! Food in the counters! Come on! You've got to go, yeah? No food in the counter, no money. This is stressful as hell. Where's your brownies? Are they out there yet? They're about to get cut. Come on! Move! Let's go! The shop's just about to open. It's frantic. We're running out of time ASAP. Yeah, what do we do? We're all sweating, we're all on the brink of crying. Is anyone available from blue team to help with pies? Get those biscuits out there. Now! Come on! JOHN: Yes, George. Everyone today just has to dig deep. Why are you standing there? I'm waiting to run this out. Well, why don't you help him put them on? What's wrong with you? I don't know. Money is everything today. Whoever raises the most money is going to win. As soon as stuff is done, bring it out the front for me for me. The quicker we can get our product onto the shelves, it just means there's more time that we're selling our stuff and less time that they're selling their stuff. Where's my tags? I have both sweets in the cabinets. I have some pizzas already in the cabinet. I'm feeling pretty good at this stage. Ava, I'm going to open the doors and you've got nothing in your cabinets. You need to get something in there. I know. Red team have got loads of stuff. They've got pizzas, they've got biscuits, they've got chocolate cake. You need to move. We're running out of time. We need to get these in the oven now. Yeah, need some hands, Ava. I've asking for some help to get these lids on. We've had three hours in the kitchen to get the pies and the pizza ready for service and they're not even nearly in the oven. Jamie, when are you gonna start to roll out your pizza dough? I'll start shortly. So...I'm pretty stressed. Can I take these brownies? Yeah, Ava, these are ready. Put them on any kind of tray and bring them straight out to me. Far out. Alright. I'm going to run these out. Stephen, can you help me load the brownies? We need to get the brownies. The MasterChef convent bakery is open! Open your wallets and spend big. Come on! Doors open and it's manic. Hi, guys. What can I get for you today? I've got Kristina and John by my side and we're like, "Hi! How are you today? What can I get you?" And I'm upselling from the moment we start. We have some pies. We have some pizzas as well. Sourdough and some sweets. If they buy a pie, I'm like, "You know, why don't we sweeten the deal with a bit of biscuit," and try and sell as much as we can now. Can I interest you with a lemon cookie as well? Nice upsell. Nice upsell, Sara. There's not a lot yet. It's coming, ladies. Don't worry. It's all on its way. Service starts and the only thing that we have to sell customers is Ashleigh's brownies. There's going to be a little bit of a wait on the pies, unfortunately, but we've got brownies and we'll have pizzas up as soon as we can. This is my worst fear. I see Sara running out with trays of biscuits and little scroll things. Just put them straight into the thing. And we've got brownies. Just brownies. Just brownies. Nothing else. 1 The MasterChef convent bakery is open! (CHEERING) Not long, yeah. It's coming, ladies. Service starts and the only thing that we have to sell customers is Ashleigh's brownies. I'm so sorry. We've got a little bit of a wait on some of our food. Our pizzas will be next. Our pies will be next. We've got lemon tarts coming. WOMAN: I'll just wait. Will you? You sure? Is that OK? Have you had a brownie? Part of me is definitely panicking. I'm running out to customers drenched in sweat and apologising, trying to sell them brownies when they're after a pie and a pizza and then running back in. Hey, ladies. And seeing that we're nowhere near being able to feed them. We need to get these in the oven now. Yeah, we've got another tray of pies. Where is it? Over... We just need to get it in the oven. The pies are still gonna take a bit of time to cook so I think that'll be a bit of a disappointment to a lot of people. The only thing we've got is the brownies so you really need to push it. They're gooey, they're unctuous, they're famous worldwide. Just...can you push it? Yeah, yeah. Thanks, babe. So, one pie, one sourdough and two of the pizzas? Sure. Any desserts to sweeten that meal? WOMAN: Yeah. Thanks so much, love. Just take it to the cashier. They'll look after you. Thank you. Oh, my God! When you think you've got enough, you don't have enough. Things are going very, very quickly. But it's the pizza and pies that are going the quickest. The pies are here. So we have more coming. We're gonna need a lot more pies. It's lunchtime. People want to have lunch and they're our savoury option and they're the ones that take the longest. I need them, like, presto. Alright, we need another lot of pastry. Can we put this through again? We're using the offcuts to try and stretch the pastry as far as we can to make a second batch 'cause at this stage, the quantity of pies needed is gonna be the most important thing. The only concern is the joints of where it joins can break and once it's cooked, it becomes really crumbly and it's really hard to take them out. Yeah, it can be a disaster. Ash, you rock my world. These are beautiful. These could save us. AVA: Ashleigh and Melita bring out some of these beautiful lemon curd tarts. They're so vibrant and pretty. They worked amazingly. I'm so, so proud of them. Lemon tarts! I know they're gonna sell well. I know people are gonna love them. But there's no way we're making enough money to be in front. I've got a little bit of news for you. Yeah. Blue team - guess how much you've done on the till. How much? 50 bucks. Red team, guess how much you've done on the till. $300. (CHEERING) Go, red team! Let's go, red team! So, blue team, you've got a choice - you either roll over and die or you fire up and start selling stuff. Let's go, blue! Quick. Let's go. We need to have some more savoury items. We need to get some pizzas on. So I have to push the team crazy hard. Let's go. We need to get pizzas in the oven now. Can you get someone to help me? Customers are waiting on pizza. It's taking way too long. Jamie is trying to do everything at once. Now we're at crunch time, we're not getting pizzas out. He needs more hands. He needs help. Need you on pizza. Just need to put all our energy into that. When you've rolled it, do you want us to put it on here and then I'll dress it? Yep. Go sauce, then cheese. So these are nearly about to go in. Yeah. So I reckon, like, 10 minutes. 10 minutes. Alright, I'm gonna go tell people. Let's go, guys. Come on, blue team. We can get there. Can I interest anyone in a brownie or a loaf of sourdough while they wait? What can I get for you, ladies? WOMAN: A brownie. A lemon tart. That's all we've got to try at the moment, but we're getting there. I really need the savoury things out quick. These guys are going hungry. It's getting a bit embarrassing for me being front of house... Jesus. ..while we don't have pies and pizzas to sell. You can definitely tell the crowd is starting to get disgruntled. How is everyone? Hungry! Yeah, hungry. How's the weather out there? I'm really clutching at straws trying to keep this crowd happy. How are we all doing at the back? Still good? Still OK? Won't be long but it will be delicious when it comes. I promise you that. If we don't get pies out soon, if we don't get pizzas out soon, there could be a riot in here. Billie, how far are we away, love? Um, like, 10 seconds away on the first batch of pizzas. ALL: (CHANT) Pies! Pies! Pies! Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! Oh, my God! What is that? (CHANTING) WOMAN: Pizza! (CHEERING) Finally the pizzas start churning out. Where am I gonna put them? Stick them on the front here. And they are selling so well. Hands up for pizza. (CHEERING) Well done, Stephen. WOMAN: Mmm! It was definitely worth the wait. They're really good. Amazing! How many have you made, Matthew? This is probably about 50-ish now. Maybe a few more. More pizza. AVA: Alright. We've got some hot sopressa pizzas. WOMAN: We had the red team's pizzas. The zucchini one was beautiful with the ricotta. Yeah, that was lovely. At first sight, the red team's sopressa with zucchini pieces look really good. They look generous. Oh, yum. You'd be happy if you got those. They're what you expect when you go to a good bakery. Yeah, it's a bakery. It's a bakery pizza. It's a bit thicker than normal. Puffy, fluffy. Fluffier. And it's that - you can grab the whole thing, off you go and you're in heaven. Matthew, let's face it, did an absolutely sterling job. He just stood there and he just churned out really beautiful, well-measured pizzas. Pizzas? Anyone for a pizza? Oh, there you go, my friend. GIRL: I had the blue team's pizza - it was delicious. The blue cheese definitely complemented it on the top. It made it rich and tasty. I waited nearly 30 minutes for this pizza and it was absolutely worth it. The blue team did a really good job. Blue team's caramelised onions, blue cheese and pear, and pizza bianca. It's just not as light as the red team's. Also not as juicy, you know. I think with the bakery pizza, it's gotta be juicy. I think the red one takes this out in terms of taste, right. Need people to get the pies out of these so we can sell them. The pies are finally coming out of the oven. I'm running these out. We've got some people who have been waiting for 45 for us. I can finally start to serve the first four people in our line that have been waiting patiently for 45 minutes. Hello! Hey! Pie, pie, pie! Pie, pie, pie! Ready? This is so hot. We're gonna do this like this. Yep. That is for you. You always get that feeling of, "We might have a chance now!" (HUMS) These people have been waiting for so long. I was so happy. You know, we could come out on top. You now need to hunt another 150 of those. We need 60,000 pies coming but we've got this! WOMAN: Goodbye. Thank you so much. Have a great day, guys. Everyone, we have beautiful hot pies. They've just come out of the oven. Mmm! Gee, the pastry's nice. Today I'm eating the red team's pie. It's absolutely full of chicken, so really nice. The blue team seem to be a little bit cheaper on both their pies and their pizza. So for that reason, I'll go for them. Cool. Thank you for waiting. There we go. No problem at all. The blue team's pie is sensational. Pastry is delicious - flaky and tasty. It's beautiful. GARY: I like the blue team's. MATT: Loads of filling in there. Load of filling. Generous. Quite looking forward to this. Yummy! Mmm! Mmm! Mmm! Mmm! Mmm! Mmm! Oh, yeah. Good amount of filling, nice salt hit from the bacon. Perfectly good chicken - not dry in any way. Juicy enough. Really good pie. Really good pie. Jacqui made the filling and I thought she did a great job. She knew what she was doing from the get-go and I think it shows. GEORGE: Let's taste the red team's. Really tasty filling. But I prefer the texture on the blue team's in terms of the way the chicken's cut. You know? It's got some bite to it. If you compare the two pies, the red team's $7.50 pie or the blue team's $3.50 pie. Yeah. You can understand why some of the blue team's customers were waiting because that pie is far superior but this challenge is about making money and the red team's pie, $7.50. Hey, $7.50. That's an exxy pie, isn't it? But that's the challenge, isn't it? It is. Sara, we've got pizza there that's ready to go. Yeah, I just need those pies. The pies go way too quickly. It's good that they go quick but then you also know that the next load has to be even quicker. They're just gonna keep going and going and going. There's a little bit of a wait on the pies so they'll bring it out to you very shortly. We're just waiting on the next load. Shouldn't be too long. It should be five minutes or so. I'm wondering what the hold-up with these pies are. Sorry, guys. Thank you. So I go out the back to see what the problem is. And it becomes very apparent very quickly that these pies are not coming out smoothly... ..at all. Oh, my God. They're so stuck. Just get them out as best you can. So the next batch of pies come out. Argh! We've used the overworked pastry. Just trying to be as delicate as possible. They're getting really hard to pull out of these tins. Actually on the verge of a breakdown! That whole batch of pies is wasted 'cause they're not coming out. You're kidding me. They're not coming out. They're totally stuck. Aarggh! Losing an entire rack of pies is definitely a big hit. There's 28 pies in there so, you know, that's easily a couple of hundred bucks worth of revenue right there, you know. That easily could be the difference between winning and losing today. 1 Oh, my God! They're so stuck. Just get them out as best you can. These pies aren't coming out. The are breaking as we're bringing them out and they're looking like an absolute mess. You probably can't use them 'cause we can't get them out of the tray. Oh, my God. This is when you have to problem-solve. I do not want to see any of our product not being bought. So I come up with the idea of 'deconstructed pies'. I'm thinking even if they've crumbled, I can just sell them at a discounted price and everything gets more mushed in your mouth anyway, right? That's maybe a bit discounted. I think people have lined up, they're still hungry, it still has all the flavour that we intended so we're selling our deconstructed pies for $4. A little bit crumbled but, you know, discounted. Anyone? Hands up for a deconstructed pie. Yep. It works! People are buying the deconstructed pies. I'd rather them buy a deconstructed pie than no pie at all. You've been amazingly patient and I really appreciate it. GEORGE: Come on, guys. Keep pushing it out, yeah? Don't let it get on top of you, yes? I know you're tired. I know it was an early start. The light is at the end of the tunnel, yeah. Push out what you've got left. Let's go. It's near the end of service. The things were a little bit slow at the start but we rallied. We've got a massive queue so we're gonna feed them all. We've got pies coming out. We've got pizzas coming out so we're serving everyone. Judging on feedback from customers, I know so many of them came back for seconds. Then there's that and it was two pies? I'm hoping with our low prices that people have bought a lot more items and maybe that'll get us over the line. If anyone wants anything sweet, we have so much and it's very delicious. The desserts are selling pretty well. A lemon thyme cookie and a Swiss roll. We've got a lot of Swiss roll and we have a lot of biscuits and I'm glad that we have the different options. GIRL: I had the red team's raspberry swirl. Definitely lived up to my standards and I thought it tasted really nice. Reynold did this all on his own as well. And you know what? I snuffled a few of the ends in the kitchen. They were good, were they? They were good. I love the raspberry inside. It's lovely. A nice touch. Great. Yeah, yummy. That's a good roly-poly. Yeah. Really good Swiss roll. Some lemon and thyme biscuits, guys. The red team cookie thing was just delicious. I must rate that yum! Cream had just enough elements of the lemon and thyme. It was just lovely. Oh, yum. You know what's nice about it is that soft crumbly biscuit and a hint of savoury and a hint of salt, which I really like, so it just cuts that sweetness straightaway. Very good. Really good. Yeah. John worked hard doing these all day. He just kept pumping them out, so I think he's done a great job. Ladies and gents, if you've just got a sweet tooth today and you fancy a brownie or a lemon tart, they are really, really good brownies. MAN: Today I've chosen the blue team. Brownie and a lemon tart, thank you very much. And the key thing was the brownie. Good brownie and you've got me. WOMAN: Mmm. Delicious! Look at that - look how fudgy that is. Yeah, it looks beautiful. That is a good brownie. Chewy at the edges, light but still fudgy in the middle. And the acidity of the raspberry - wonderful. And you know what the great thing was? They had brownies all the way through the day. It's fantastic. Take them away, Gaz, before you eat them all. Mmm. I've got some tarts here. Do you want them? Yeah, fab! Give them to me. Lemon tarts! WOMAN: I'm gonna go the blue team because of the lemon tart. I haven't even looked at the prices. If it's a good lemon tart, I won't care how much it is. That's a beautiful-looking custard. That curd is good, isn't it? Fantastic curd. It's set, you know? It's, like, you pipe it in and it's set. Who made that curd? Ashleigh. That's amazing. Absolutely brilliant. She was a real star today, wasn't she? Guys, this is the last brownie. Perfect. Oh, beautiful! Watching people take this food that we've just put all this care and love into is just awesome. Two delicious brownies and your piece of pizza as well. No worries. Thanks so much! I want to see that look on people's faces. There's not a feeling like it and I want to do that forever. Oh, my God! Five minutes to go! Alright. Come on! We've got five minutes to go. I am starting to see an end of this line. We've actually fed people but I'm gonna sell to the absolute last second. We're literally gonna spruik these for two bucks each, OK? It's time to spruik! Coming up. Come on. Hot pies. Hot, perfect, chicken pies! Don't make me dance on the tables. Come on! We're selling everything we've got. We don't want to waste anything. I found four brownies. Four brownies! There they are! Just gotta get rid of all this food and get any money in that we can. Two pies for $5. Two pies for $5. Two for $5. One minute to go. One minute to sell the last of your baked goods. Alright, guys, we've got $2 for pizza. Ladies and gents, pizza - $1 a pizza. And a kiss! It's much nicer than theirs. $1 a pizza. You've never seen people trying to flog pies and pizzas like we are. $1 a pizza, guys. $1. $1 and a kiss. $1 and a kiss! We're just going as low as we possibly can, both dignity and price, just to get this stuff gone. I'll dance for you, I swear I'll dance. 10 seconds to go! (ALL SCREAM EXCITEDLY) 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Well done, guys. Amazing challenge. (CHEERING) Brilliant work. I couldn't have asked any more from my team. They gave everything. You guys looked after one another and you did beyond phenomenal. When you look at their faces and you see how broken they are because of physical exhaustion but how much fun they're having, it just lights you up. I'm so happy with how we did, you know. I think maybe we could win. Our food was awesome. I'm hoping with our low prices that people have bought a lot more items and maybe that'll get us over the line. Oh, my goodness. Are you absolutely exhausted? ALL: Yes. I can only imagine how you feel. I'm tired and I haven't done anything. All I can say is this was a huge test and now you have a little taste of life in a commercial bakery. Your first real insight into the realities of running a business. Let's be honest, it's all about putting cash in the till. You know what's fantastic is that the money that you raised today is going to be donated to the Alkira Centre for adults with intellectual disabilities. Pat yourselves on the back. The question is, though, which team is gonna take out this challenge? Red team, you had some star performers. Matthew, you churned out pizzas all day long. You were relentless. You were so hardworking and that's the stuff we love to see. John, lemon thyme cookies were a standout. Well done. Blue team, you know what? We can't go past Ashleigh and those gorgeous brownies. I tell you what - tried and tested. Beautiful. Good job. You might be interested to know that the sale of your brownies accounted for 30% of the total. (ALL EXCLAIM) And on top of that, you made that amazing lemon curd for that lemon curd tart. So, well done to you, Ashleigh. Brilliant job. Well done. You did a good job! As a team, you made double the number of pies and they were absolutely delicious. The filling was spot-on and worthy of a pie shop. So, those all-important totals. Blue team, you made $2,565.75. Well done, everyone. Incredible. Red team... ..you made.. ..$3,205.80! Yes! When I hear Matt Preston say $3,000... ..I don't hear anything after that. We've made it. We won. Blue team, I'm sorry but you're going into elimination. It's my fault that the blue team are in elimination. 100%. I did our prices that way. I did them too low. It's my fault easily. Red team - you've won, you're safe. You made over $600 more than the blue team. Obviously your pricing policy worked but more importantly, you had food ready to go and in that first hour, you made $600 more than the blue team. So, blue team, while they did an amazing job catching up... ..you lost in that first hour. Most valuable lesson to learn. Sadly, it's a heartbreaking lesson. You go forward to elimination but you've done a great job today. You should be very proud of what you've done. Put it into perspective for all of you. I mean, honestly, we wake you up at 3:00 in the morning, we bring you here and we throw you into the deep end, OK? Win or lose, put that aside, yeah? You raised money for charity, and around $5,000 worth, so you should be very proud of yourselves... ..'cause we're proud of you. Tomorrow's a new fresh day, right, and tomorrow you're individuals and you're fighting for yourself, yeah. We'll see you tomorrow in elimination. Well done, guys. Well done, guys. Well done. 1 AVA: Yesterday was the bakery challenge and I made a few captain choices that weren't the best. So, I do feel responsible for our team going in for elimination, and I want to redeem myself for yesterday. JAMIE: Walking through the doors today, my mission is to focus on good, clean, sharp, bold flavours and show a little bit of skill. We can only imagine how you feel. That was what you call a hard day, yesterday. Today is an elimination. And the harsh reality is someone's going home at the end of it. Today's elimination - three rounds. And as you've probably guessed, behind us is your pantry. Looking at it, I'm sure you've worked out what the theme of today is. Any ideas? Thai cuisine? Thai. Well done, Melita. One of Australia's favourite cuisines. Full of complexity, flavour, and refinement. I'm feeling really confident because I love Thai flavours. I love Thai food. It's one of my favourite cuisines, so I've got a few things up my sleeve. I should be OK. Given the complexity of Thai food, it would be unfair to send you into those woods alone with no guide. So, we've invited one of the world's great Thai cooks to come into this kitchen to advise you, to help you, to mentor you. He's worked with David Thompson at Nahm. He's worked with Marty Boetz at Longrain. He's worked with Teague Ezard at Ezard. He has two restaurants in Melbourne that are the hardest places to get into in Australia... Oh, Benjamin Cooper. One's called Kong Barbecue. The other one is called Chin Chin. Yeah. Benjamin Cooper. Please welcome Benjamin Cooper! (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) SARA: Awesome! Hello. How are you? Good. Good to see you. Oh, my God. I'm so excited. Like, I love him. Like, he's amazing. I'm so thrilled. Like, it's pretty exciting to see him here today. Rose, breathing yet? (INHALES) (CHUCKLES) Explain what you love about Ben's food. It's everything traditional, but it's got a twist on it - the way it looks, the way you present it, the way you put your combinations of flavours together - it's phenomenal. Like, it's amazing. Yeah, you're awesome. And this - love it. Sure, he's quite good-looking, yeah. He's a half-decent guy, yeah. Benjamin, what do you think people love about Thai food? What makes it so very special? The reason I fell in love with it is its vibrancy - you know, it's such a vibrant, happy, festive food. It's got that heat and spice and it's colourful and it's textural. GARY: Benjamin, any words of advice? It should be punchy. It should be vibrant. Yep. If there's no chilli, you should probably leave now. You know, looking around in there, there's certainly ingredients that spring to mind. The scallops are looking good. I did notice the eggs. Eggs. Egg dishes are a big part of Thai cuisine. Yeah. The rules could not be simpler - three rounds, and in each round, you have to make one delicious dish. But here's the kicker... ..in round one, you only have 10 minutes. Oh! Far out! ANNA: 10 minutes seems impossible. All of a sudden I start to think it's not going to be as easy to survive today as I thought it was. AVA: An hour in the kitchen normally feels like 10 minutes. So, 10 minutes in the kitchen... ..that's crazy. We are tasting everyone's dish in this round, and we are looking for only the top three. ROSE: OK. The top three are safe. Everyone else goes into a second round. Are you ready? Yep. Don't knock us over when you run past. Your time starts now! (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) KRISTINA: 10 minutes is absolutely nuts. It's going to take them minutes just to get their equipment and their ingredients together, so they're going to have to come up with something super quick. ASHLEIGH: Oh, my God! This is ridiculous. ROSE: Benjamin suggested scallops and when the judges say, "The scallops look good," then, you know what? The scallops look good. So, I grab two beautiful scallops. ANNA: My first thought is mussels. I love mussels. They can be cooked super, super quick and I'm also really trying to avoid the scallops because I know that that's something that everyone else is going to go for. So, I love this - straight for the scallops, about three of them, which is a really good idea, because, let's be honest, you don't even have to cook them, do you? By the time you've introduced those classic kind of acidic flavours - lime, fish sauce, some hot, something fragrant, aromatic - job done. They're crazy good scallops. They could be done raw. Oh, yep. I think I'd do exactly the same thing. Today, I am cooking seared scallops with a herb salad. The first thing I want to do is get the scallops lightly curing in some lime juice - that'll sort of partly cook them. And then I need to make a beautiful, balanced dressing. We've got, like, salty fish sauce, I want the sourness from the lime. I love a lot of chilli, so I want the heat from the chilli, and a bit of sweetness from that palm sugar. Ooh! Heavens. AMY: What are you making, Jamie? Just a...like, a raw dressing. I'm going to do a pan-seared scallop with a Thai dressing using all the key ingredients. And I'm going to put a bit of a twist on it - I'm going to use mandarin juice to give it a bit of an edge. That's going to be amazing. Hopefully it'll be a cut above what a lot of the others are doing. Keep pushing, guys! STEPHEN: Soy sauce and Thai food in, like, a little dipping sauce? GEORGIA: No. JOHN: Lime and fish sauce. Yeah? And chilli. Chilli. ANNA: I get back to my bench and I've got to get these mussels in. So, I need to debeard them really, really quickly and get my broth going. I do have a split moment of regret choosing the mussels when I realise that to debeard them and actually scrub them and make them clean could actually take me a couple of minutes that I may or may not have, but I don't have any time to change my idea. GARY: This is the kind of challenge that if you blink, you'll miss it. 5 minutes to go. Come on, guys. Come on. SARA: Come on, guys! You've got this! Let's go! ANNA: I get some coconut milk into that hot pan and just start loading it up with aromatics and ingredients that are going to give a lot of flavour in a short amount of time. BILLIE: Everyone else is cooking scallops, so I'm going to cook a larb with my scallop dish just to maybe show a little bit more technique to try and push it up there to a top three dish. I just hope I can get it all done in 10 minutes. SARA: Anna, I reckon put your mussels in now so they're still... ..they're opening while it's getting warm. (WHISPERS) Thank you. This is so quick! Three minutes to go! Come on! GARY: Come on, you're running out of time! ASHLEIGH: Today, I'm making soft shell crab with a green pawpaw herb salad. As I put the crabs into the oil, they start sizzling, which is a good sign, but I'm not quite sure exactly how long it's going to take for them to go really nice and crispy. I just hope I've got enough time left. MATT: 2 minutes left! 2 minutes to go! (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) ANNA: The broth tastes really good. It's tasting really balanced. All the really key Thai flavours are there, and I've just got to make sure I can get those mussels opened in time. Right, this is it! Every second counts! Plate up, come on! One minute to go! We've only got one minute to go. I've got no time to spare. I've still got my crab frying in the oil. I have to get it out and get it on the plate or I'm never going to have a dish up. 30 seconds to go! Come on! 10 seconds! Nine! ALL JUDGES: Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One! That's it! Time's up! ROSE: I dropped a scallop. One scallop. I dropped one on the floor. Oh, my God. (SIGHS) Dammit. What a great cook, an energetic cook. Mind you, 10 minutes - what can you possibly do? We'll find out, won't we? First up... ..Anna. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) ANNA: My heart is beating a million miles an hour as I take my dish up. It's well-balanced, but it was 10 minutes. So, I hope that they like it. I think this is the dish that we were most interested to taste. Tell us what the dish is. Mussels in a coconut broth. When I heard 10 minutes and I saw mussels, I was like, "Done." With that big chunk of chilli - fresh, raw chilli - it's got this really kind of herbaceous, kind of... BENJAMIN: Rosy... Yeah, rosy flavour. Floral. Delicious. GARY: I like the creamy, the lime, the coriander, and the sweetness. I think it's a delicious dish. Phew. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) It is amazing to have received such good feedback. I'm feeling absolutely over the moon. Next up... ..Ashleigh. ASHLEIGH: Carrying my dish up to the judges, I'm actually feeling OK. I think it looks pretty nice. I just really hope that the judges are going to like it and that it will be enough to save me. Right, what did you cook? I cooked a crispy soft shell crab with a herb salad. That was brave in so little time. Come on, you maybe divide it up so the boys can... I reckon you should come up and have a taste, 'cause I'm... ..I think that's pretty brave. I think it's pretty brave. GEORGE: 10 minutes. BENJAMIN: That's a big challenge right there. Thank you. I don't know many qualified chefs that would be prepared to take that on in 10 minutes. So, yeah, fantastic effort. For me, the dressing may be just a touch on the salty side, a little bit heavy. (APPLAUSE) GEORGE: Next up, Billie. BILLIE: Seared scallops with a really fast pork larb. The scallops and pork - classic match. Mmm. You know what? Every challenge should be 10 minutes. Love it. Brilliant. Well done. Thank you. Jamie. JAMIE: A pan seared scallop with a Thai dressing. I've used mandarin juice in there. Yeah, the use of mandarin's good. By going with the mandarin, you've gone with a slightly earthier dressing for it and it's allowed that scallop to stand up. So, I really like the use of mandarin there. GEORGE: Well done. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) ROSE: When I hear what they have to say about everybody else's dishes, I'm not feeling very hopeful at all right now. MATT: Next up, Rose. I'm thinking that one scallop in a dish in an elimination is disastrous. There are four judges, and the scallop's tiny. I can't serve up a big bowl of salad with one scallop on it. 1 MATT: Rose. (APPLAUSE) ROSE: Walking the dish up to the judges, and there's only one scallop on the plate. It's a complete disaster. But I'm praying, hoping, channelling all my energy into this salad. I hope the salad is just really beautiful and punchy, and it's the thing that saves me. What's the dish? It's a cucumber and papaya salad with a seared scallop. Would like to have put seared scallops. I'm going to put this in four, then. That's a good idea. Yes. What... Were there more scallops? Why only one? I accidentally dropped a scallop. And, yeah, I just didn't have time to come back and get more, so I'm really disappointed. It's fresh, it's clean, and it looks lovely. That little tangle of vegetables there just looks wonderful. It just needs, I think, to be a bit... I think it's the balance of the dressing - a bit punchier. A bit more in my face. BENJAMIN: Yeah. And let's be honest, if there was more scallop in there, I think it would change the dynamic of that dish completely. Yeah. Thank you. (APPLAUSE) GEORGE: Melita. MELITA: I've cooked seared scallops with a Thai dressing. I'm really enjoying the sweet and the salt in that dish. That's really lovely. A bit more acid would be nice. Yeah. GARY: Jacqui. JACQUI: I'm way out of my comfort zone here. Are you? Yeah. Yeah. Why? Um... I don't do a lot of Thai cooking at home. What's the dish? I've done ceviched scallops with a Thai dressing. You know, you could pick up the fish sauce and the lime and the coriander, which is lovely, but I'm not sure it's enough for me. Yeah. Stephen. So, dish, what is it? Seared scallops with a Thai dressing. Don't say it like that. Oh, no, sorry - it's seared scallops with a beautiful Thai dressing. (LAUGHS) (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) Yes! Right. Sweet and zesty, and then those lovely soft scallops - I think it's a great dish. The dressing's got a nice balance to it. Yeah, look, it does look a bit flat. Yeah, of course. GEORGE: Ava. (APPLAUSE) AVA: I definitely don't want to go through to the second round. I want to get through on this dish. I'm hoping that the simplicity and the flavour balance in the sauce is going to be enough to get me through. Did you enjoy this challenge? I really did. 10 minutes? I, weirdly, really liked it. Yeah? 'Cause I didn't doubt myself at all, so I was just like, "Yeah, that'll work," and, "Let's do that." And I was like, "Taste and go and go and..." Yeah, I really liked that. That was really weird. GARY: Wow. We haven't seen that Ava before. I love this A... I want more of this Ava. What have you cooked? I tried to lightly cure the scallop, and then I've pan seared it. And I've just done a herb salad with a Thai dressing. What did you cure the scallop in? Lime juice, chilli, and a little bit of fish sauce. Very lightly cured in the three minutes. (COUGHS) I feel like I'm going to breathe fire right now. I'm good with chilli, but I'm... Phew. It's out of balance. MATT: That is an extraordinary tasting. I don't think we've had as positive a tasting on any challenge this year. And you had only 10 minutes. There were four dishes that really stood out, but only three of those makers can be safe. The first person safe... ..is Anna. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) Second person safe... ..is Billie. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) The final place for safety in round one came down to two dishes. It came down to Ashleigh's soft shell crab, and it came down to Jamie's scallop dish in a very strong set of competition. Ashleigh, we loved all the work you've done. Jamie, we loved your use of mandarin and we ask ourselves the question we always ask ourselves - "Which of those two dishes, if we were only forced cruelly to choose one, would we order again?" And the majority vote... ..went to Jamie's scallops. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) Well done, Jamie! Jamie, things we love on this show - crispy crackling, gravy with chicken, people turning corners. And today, your cooking turned a big corner. That's the best dish you've put up - clever, complex, well cooked. Well done. All three of you - you're safe. Ashleigh, I'm sorry. That was so close and so delicious, and you did so much, but maybe we're just keeping you around to cook us a cracking dish in round two. (LAUGHTER) Guys, up to the balcony. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) ASHLEIGH: I am feeling devastated that I'm going through to a second round of elimination. It's just going to keep getting harder, but I just need to make sure I do everything I can to put up an amazing dish. GARY: That's the end of round one. We're now into round two. And essentially, the rules are just the same except... ..you have... ..wait for it... ..20 minutes to cook us a beautiful dish. Now, that should mean you have more time to think. BENJAMIN: If I was to give you any advice - you know, you don't have a great day every day. You're going to get knocks. But don't let those knocks hammer you down. You have good days. You have bad days. But you've got to be able to cook through that. You've got to retain the confidence in your ability, know that you're capable, and always carry that with you. Don't be afraid. Lose the fear. Just go all out. We're looking for the top three again. And of course, the bottom three will go into a third and final round. Up for it? ALL: Yes. Your time starts now. AVA: (SCREAMS) Sorry, gentlemen. Oh, my God. What fish do I have here? SARA: What are you looking for, Rose? Snapper. Going into this round, you know, I'm really taking a lot more risks. Benjamin keeps talking about not being afraid of using the ingredients, and I want to show no fear. So, I can see the snapper. It's really, really, really big. AVA: That's a big fish, Rose. Yeah. I know that I've grabbed the biggest piece of protein in the whole pantry and the flavours are things that I've never worked with before, but, yeah, no guts, no glory. I'm just going to go for it. That is a big fish. It's crazy to do that in 20 minutes if you're not confident. Everybody thought I was crazy. All the four judges came and watched me. They just didn't say anything. They just stood there. And I'm starting to think that maybe it was a bad choice. It's so big, but I just need to get the two fillets off. I've decided to do a chilli salted snapper with a cucumber relish, wrapped up in the betel leaf. I just hope I can get this done in time. GARY: 20 minutes - that gives them a bit more time to get their finger stuck in, but it's still not that long, is it? 20 minutes, I'd be going more ingredients. Not so complex just yet. STEPHEN: I've got 20 minutes to pull something out of the bag. And my mind's just racing through all the Thai dishes that I know and how to put them together. I'm cooking blind at the moment. I'm just doing a prawn, sort of coconut based, curry. Hopefully. 5 minutes down already, 15 to go! GEORGIA: Come on, Mel. I'm going to do a chilli caramel salad with some chargrilled prawns. BILLIE: Good work, Ava. In round one, my sauce wasn't balanced properly. The judges commented on how incredibly hot it was. So, I'm going to pull back on the heat, and I want to use that caramelised coconut to give it a bit of sweetness too - like a sticky, sour kind of dressing on everything. GEORGE: Wow, how nice is it? An extra 10 minutes. Literally 10 minutes to go. Come on. (CHEERING) Yum. Yum? Yum. Everything looks yum. Yum. MATTHEW: Come on, Steve. Come on, Stephen. Come on, mate. Stephen. Hey, mate. How's it going? Are you making a curry? Oh, I'm just... Maybe not a curry, maybe it will turn out to be a bit more of a prawn soup. I reckon you need to slow your body down a bit and let your brain catch up. So, I was... 'Cause you're going a million miles an hour... Yeah? ..but there's not a lot going on. I've got no idea what to do, and I'm a bit worried because I think I'm in for a real chance of going home if I go into that next round. 1 GARY: Stephen. Hey, mate. How's it going? Are you making a curry? Oh, I'm just... Maybe not a curry, maybe it will turn out to be a bit more of a prawn soup. I reckon you need to slow your body down a bit and let your brain catch up. So, I was... 'Cause you're going a million miles an hour... Yeah? ..but there's not a lot going on. Come on. Think, think, think. You got it. After talking to Gary, I focus, and decide to go with a curry, 'cause I know I can perfect the flavours and hopefully get myself safely back up to that balcony. MATT: I don't know about you, but this feels like it's a shorter cook than the 10-minute one. Five minutes left. Five minutes to go. (CHEERING) MAN: Come on, guys. Come on, Melita. WOMAN: Push, push, guys! Come on! ROSE: We've only got a few minutes to go, and I've managed to get my snapper cooking. And I really need to get onto this dressing for my dish, so I start adding some chilli, but I'm a bit nervous about the balance of flavours. I don't want to add too much heat, and I'm just hoping that it's enough. WOMAN: Come on! Alright, guys, two minutes to go! Remember, if it's not on the plate, we can't taste it, so plate up. Come on. AVA: I'm starting to panic a little bit about time. I feel like it's running away from me. I've left my prawns too late. I've, you know, took too much time chopping vegetables. JOHN: Come on, Ava! I'm just hoping I can get all of this on the plate. How long have we got? (YELLS IN SURPRISE) JESSICA: Get it on a plate now. BILLIE: You can do it, you can do it. Pull it over. 10 seconds to go. Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! SARA: Ava, lime wedges! A bit of lime. Five! Four! Three! Two! One! That's it! Time's up. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) Oh, wow! How'd you get that done? I've never made anything quite like this before. So, you know, to do this in 20 minutes, you know, I'm proud that I've put this up in 20 minutes. You'd think that 20 minutes was a long time to cook, wouldn't you? But it just... (SNAPS) ..went like that. Benjamin, are you impressed with what they're putting up? Oh, I was stoked to see such a step up in quality between the 10 and the 20 minutes. You know, like, they really thought it through. They pushed the boundaries. I'm amazed. I'm blown away. Love it. First one up - Stephen. (APPLAUSE) STEPHEN: Taking the dish up to the judges is nerve-racking as always. But hopefully, it's going to be enough to get me through this round, and get me up in that gantry. What's the dish? It's an absolutely gorgeous Thai prawn coconut curry, you know? This looks great, doesn't it? BENJAMIN: Yeah, it looks fantastic. Yeah, lots of colour... Organic and rustic and ballsy. High hopes. Take a mouthful of that and you'll be in Phuket. (WOMEN GIGGLE) Coming up, gentlemen? Oh, thank you. Got to be invited. Oh, sorry. Oh. I like the prawn meat. Oh, the prawn is good. Yeah, that's good. KRISTINA: Yeah, yeah, Stephen! It's soupy, it's wet, the rice is there - it's, you know...it's ballsy. I'd be stoked sitting down to that with a beer. When you watch us eat it, you can see the enjoyment, the pleasure and the kind of childlike excitement that it brings bubbling up inside us. To do that - that is, for me, that's the essence of what a great dish is, and that's why that's a great dish. And I reckon we need to have a chat about this. (JUDGES MURMUR INDISTINCTLY) He's... It's delicious. It's delicious. For me - and this is 100% honest here - if you put that up in my kitchen - done deal. Happy man. Thank you, mate. Well done. Stephen, on that basis, we can't keep you down here. Get straight up to the balcony. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) For someone to cook a dish that's so good that they don't even need to taste the rest of the competition and you get sent straight up to the gantry, is, you know...it's amazing. And that's going to be a memory that stays with me for the rest of my life. GARY: Next up, Rose. (APPLAUSE) ROSE: I spent so much time filleting my snapper and I've just chucked my dressing together at the last minute. I'm worried that this dish doesn't have all the right Thai flavours in there. I've cooked a chilli salt snapper with a cucumber relish, some peanuts and a betel leaf. BENJAMIN: Texturally, beautiful. The betel leaf and the snapper together, fantastic. And using that snapper in that way - really clever. I'm really pleased that you were gutsy enough to go and grab that great big snapper and tackle it, and do something that actually has... ..it's got a nice little identity. Good flavours, but it's just missing something. Yeah, for me, the chilli could have been ramped way up. GEORGE: Jacqui. JACQUI: Green mango salad with crispy whitebait on a betel leaf. It is not intense enough, it's not sour enough, it's not hot enough, it's not sweet enough, it's... Mmm... Nope. GEORGE: Melita. I love the idea of that, I really do. And I think you've got some great favour going on in that curry paste. But there's a lot of oil there, and so I'm left with, you know, greasy fingers. Yeah, alright. MATT: Ashleigh. GEORGE: What have you cooked? ASHLEIGH: Mussels in a coconut broth. You know, for a soup, there's a lot of elements of texture going on there. It's definitely a good dish, you know? There's technique there. There's...there's thought process in there. Look, my criticism is it's a little on the sweet side. Ava, you're next. AVA: Taking my dish up to the judges, I'm happy with everything I've done, but I'm thinking it might not be enough. I'm going through to the next round. I might be going home this afternoon. You know, all those feelings of dread still start creeping in. Nervous now? Yeah, a little bit. Pleased? Yeah, really pleased. Yeah? I love 20 minutes. It's good, I just... I don't have to do, "Oh, my God, I need to make a puree now, "I've got 7 minutes." You know, I don't do any of that, I just cook. I don't know. BENJAMIN: So, what have we got? It's a crunchy salad with a caramelised coconut dressing and prawns. Looks good. Does it taste good? Let's get in there. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. (CHUCKLES) Yeah, come on. I have, over many years of eating out professionally, discovered that there is a certain scale - like, chillies have the Scoville scale and restaurants have hats or stars. There's also a scale of diner pleasure, and it's the grunt scale. (CHUCKLES) Two grunts - good. Three grunts - really good. When Benjamin Cooper gives you four grunts as he eats it, you know that is a ripper dish, and that's everything he loves. Everything he loves. Really good. I love it. Great dish. I love the way the coconut's come through that caramel. You've still got this beautiful coconutty flavour without the heaviness of a cream. So, yeah, it's come together really well. GEORGE: I'm so pleased for you, 'cause you got put through the wringer yesterday. Yeah. And you were the captain of the losing team, so I felt for you, and here you are today, stepping back up. And that's what it's all about. When you get knocked down, you stand back up. And you stood up now in round two, and you put up a delightful, delicious, yummy dish. Well done. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) Getting the tick of approval from the judges... (YELLS IN EXCITEMENT) ..it's exactly what I needed. Just a bit of validation and...oh, yeah, it's amazing. (APPLAUSE) MATT: Stephen already safe with a fantastic prawn dish. Just two spots for safety in this round left. The remaining three will go on and cook for their place in this MasterChef kitchen. One will go home. ROSE: Standing in front of the judges, and waiting for them to deliver the verdict, I'm...I'm freaking out. I'm so nervous. I just want to be safe. The first dish safe is... 1 MATT: Stephen already safe with a fantastic prawn dish. Just two spots for safety in this round left. The remaining three will go on and cook for their place in this MasterChef kitchen. One will go home. The first dish safe in round two... ..is Ava's. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) Thank you. I don't know what we love more, Ava - whether we love that dish, which was full of all the palate fireworks that we love about Thai food, or your new-found attitude, which is unbelievable. And it's, like...it lightens up the whole place, and that's brilliant. So, please let this be a turning point... Yep. ..'cause that was great cooking, and it had so much going on for an hour's cook - let alone 20 minutes. So, well done. Thank you. The second person safe... ..is Ashleigh. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) Ashleigh, that dish was elegant. It was beautiful. It was complex. So, well done. Thank you. Ashleigh, Ava - you're safe. Go up to the balcony. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) Well done, guys. ROSE: I'm just so disappointed. I really tried to take on board the feedback that they gave me after the first round, and I really thought that I'd put that in there. And to hear that it wasn't right - I'm gutted. Rose, Jacqui, Melita - it comes down to this moment, round three. You've had two chances to save yourself, and this is the third and final. MELITA: I can't believe it. Cooking Thai is one of my strengths, so I'm quite disheartened that I'm fighting it out in the last round, and there's no more chances after this. Benjamin, any final advice? Think about what you'd cook, if you were at home, for the people you love. That's where Thai food comes from - in here. Get loose, get amongst it - big, organic, ballsy, brash. Don't be afraid. Have fun. ROSE: Ben's advice - to cook something that you would make for your family, cook from within yourself. I'm feeling a little bit inspired by that, and I am going to give it everything that I've got. It's simple - at the end of this round, one of you will go home. 30 minutes. One amazing Thai dish. Your time starts...now. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) Walking round the pantry and I'm really just trying to keep in mind the feedback that I've had from the last two rounds. I'm picking up some chicken mince. I pick up some aromats to make my paste with. And instead of grabbing two chillies, I've just grabbed a whole handful of them. Chilli. Last two rounds, I didn't put enough heat in either of my dishes. And this round, I'm just going to go for it. Like, "They want hot, I'll give 'em hot." This is going to be a very spicy dish. JACQUI: The first two rounds I had to pretty much pull recipes out of thin air. I am not familiar with cooking Thai food, other than the very, very basics. And I'm really, really worried that this could be the thing that sends me home. Benjamin - 30 minutes, what can they do now? There's a big difference now. I mean, you've got to be looking at what proteins you're going to go with. Like, all those chillies should be gone - bang. Just pick them up, take 'em down - bang. Yeah. Maybe I should walk around and give them a few. Maybe. GARY: Rose. Hi. (CHUCKLES) I'll go there. Don't be afraid. Not at all. Jacqui. Yeah? Ben was talking about being bold. Yeah. Thank you. Has Melita got any chillies? There's a couple. There you go. A little present. MELITA: Benjamin wants us to ramp up the chilli. So, to hell with George - he can sweat for this one. While we're here, do you want to tell us what you're cooking? I'm doing a Thai chicken red curry. So, you're going to make a paste? Yes. Break the chicken down? Yes. OK. What's your strength? Thai red curry. I usually don't do it in half an hour though. Play to your strengths. It's really important to me to want to do well, because I feel like I need to prove myself - to prove that I know Thai flavours. I love eating it so much. I cook it a lot at home. So, I'm hoping that I can redeem myself with this one. GARY: 10 minutes down, 20 minutes to go. That means pedal to the metal. Let's go. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) AVA: Go, Jacqui! Today, I'm doing some chicken skewers. I'm trying to take on all the advice and the feedback that not only I got, but everybody else got, and use them in a dish that is going to save me today. What part of the meat are you going to use? I'm going to use the thigh. Yeah. I just want it to keep juicy. And what are you going to put with it? I'm going to...do a little cucumber relish and some coconut rice. You need to breathe. I'm having trouble breathing. (EXHALES) 10 seconds of breathing will do you wonders. Cool. 10 seconds? I'm thinking, "I can't afford 10 seconds to stop and breathe, "I've got to get going here!" Rose, what are you cooking? I'm going to do a mince dish that I make at home. Alright. It's got a really punchy base to it, so it's a really spicy, fragrant mince served on the rice, with a fried egg on top. Loving the sound of this. Really? STEPHEN: Go on, Rose! Go on, love! I get my wok on the heat so I can fry off my paste before I pop my mince in there with it. I open up the lid and take a bit of a taste of it and it is hot - my mouth is on fire. There's a lot of chilli in that. Should I put a bit more sweetness? What about acidity? Something maybe cooling. Some lime. Tasting my sauce, there's definitely a lot of heat in there, but it just needs a bit more balance. It needs a little bit more saltiness, it needs a little bit more sweetness, because right now, all I'm getting is a chilli hit and nothing else. (COUGHS) Phew, they wanted kick. GARY: I love what's going on. I mean, the back of the room, Rose has made this lovely spicy mince. There's plenty of chilli love in there, that's for sure. And Jacqui in the middle, she's doing a kind of satay chicken. BENJAMIN: I like the idea of satay. I mean, it's got that rustic nature about it, and I like that. And Melita? The biggest concern I have here is the chicken curry - the red chicken curry. Red chicken curries are traditionally earthy and deep. Does she have enough time to pull that out, and get that depth out of it? MELITA: Awesome! GEORGE: It smells wonderful in this room. 15 minutes to go. Come on. Oi. JAMIE: 15 minutes, Mel. Come on. Any freshness, Rose? When I turn it off, I'm going to throw in some Thai basil. In this round, I really want to make sure that I get my flavours perfectly balanced. If I don't get this one right, then I'm in trouble. So, this is what you love to cook at home? Yeah. Yeah. Now, the big question for you - you've had more knock-backs than anyone else in this competition - what keeps you going? What makes you get back up, and do it again? Oh, you know what? I just want to be here so bad. I... You know, Matt, I am a... I'm a strong person. I know I'm a strong person. I've been through a lot in my life. My heart is in this so much. I signed up to MasterChef to change my life, and if I can keep picking myself up and just keep pushing, then I can actually do this. I want to make food everything, you know? I want food to be a part of my life every single day. And, you know, that's my dream. Good luck. Keep strong. Thanks, Matt. STEPHEN: Come on, Rose! Come on, Rose! Alright, ladies - let's go. Push, push, push! (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) GEORGE: There should be only one thing on your mind - to save yourself with a delicious Thai dish. Five minutes to go. Come on. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) JACQUI: Time's running out. It's almost time for me to plate. I realise I haven't got all the ingredients I wanted to go into my little cucumber salad. I forgot palm sugar for the dressing. Palm sugar, palm sugar, palm sugar! If I don't run and work as fast as I can, this could be the last four minutes I cook in the kitchen. OTHER CONTESTANTS: Come on, Jacqui! SARA: Move now, Rose, move. ROSE: I crack my egg into a bowl, and pour it into the oil. Rose, two minutes! Come on! Alright, alright! Stop screaming at me! I need to take my rice and heat it up, and I've got to plate this dish up. I've got to get it looking really beautiful, and got to get this dish happening. On the plate, looking pretty - one minute to go. Come on. Go, Melita. MAN: Come on, Jacqui! GARY: Ten! Nine! ALL JUDGES: Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One! That's it - tools down. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) MELITA: Time's up. I look at my pot, give it a stir and notice there is heaps of chicken still in there. Looking at the amount of chicken that's in the pot, I'm actually wondering if there's any chicken on the plate at all. If there's no chicken on the plate, it's not a chicken curry. I'm really concerned. Oh, my God! 1 We had a great day in the kitchen for us, because we've seen some good food. They've embraced this challenge, the lot of them. (SIGHS) GEORGE: Well, it comes down to this, you know? Three dishes, three contestants, and one of them is going to go home. Yeah, we've got to pick the one that goes home, haven't we? JACQUI: Super, super worried about the fact that I've just done chicken skewers. Maybe it's not enough. But I hope today... ..cooking from the heart has paid off for me. Oh, Jacqui, how was that? I found myself really out of my comfort zone today. I'm a fighter by nature. I don't give up. I preach it to my kids all the time - you never give up. And I guess I need to show that to my girls. I say it to them, but this is showing them. Um... ..so, I didn't give up. I just hope it's enough today. What a story to tell your kids, but, hey? Oh! (LAUGHS) That's the best lesson they'll ever learn in life. That's for sure. What's the dish? Marinated chicken skewers, a coconut rice and a cucumber salad. Shall we taste? Yeah, let's. Jacqui, thank you. Thank you. There's a hell of a lot of flavour in that chicken. Mm. And I love that little cucumber salad too. I think it's nice and fresh. I like the dressing. It's well drenched. But it's a bit disjointed, to be honest. I want the cucumber to be chunkier, I want some pickly flavours to be a bit more intense and aggressive... Yeah, some vinegar in it. Some vinegar in there would have been really nice, and it would have also brought out some chilli heat. ROSE: Taking the dish up to the judges - I'm really disappointed in myself that I'm back here again, but I'm proud of the effort that I've put in. I'm happy with the dish. I just hope it's enough. GARY: What have you cooked? A chicken larb with steamed rice and fried egg and crispy shallots. It's great to see you cook this food here, but now bring us the stuff that you know you can cook really well, that comes from your happy place. That's what we want to see. Rose... ..keep that in the back of your mind. Thank you. Off you go. Thank you, gentlemen. GARY: What do you reckon, Ben? This is classic Thai. This is classic Thai. Like, this is street food at its best. Mm. It's going to be interesting to see whether it measures up in terms of flavour, doesn't it? Hopefully, it's got some punch. It should, you know... ..there should be a bit of chilli in there, and that egg - you want to get a bit of that yolk through there, I reckon. Plenty of flavour in there. A big kick of chilli. Gooey egg. Clever dish. She pulls it out right at the end. Three rounds in, the most confident dish. Yeah. Like, bang - up. Yeah. Amazing. I love the way that chilli sneaks up on you. You know, you get the sweetness, you get the lime juice, the acidity. And the egg's a perfect combination. She's taken a street food dish, and she's just put a little bit of polish on it. And it's banging with flavour. MELITA: Knowing that there's probably not much chicken, I'm really concerned. This could be a disaster. (SIGHS) What's going on? Um... (SIGHS) (VOICE BREAKS) I love Thai food. I love eating it. I love cooking it. And this round really just knocked me quite hard. I don't think, you know, we've tasted a bad dish today. There was not one bad dish. It was just there were all good dishes, and some were a bit better than others. Yeah. You happy with this dish? What is it? It's a red Thai chicken curry. Alright, time for us to taste, I think. Off you go. Fingers crossed, hey? Thanks, Melita. Thank you. Head up. Right. Let's taste. It does smell wonderful, I have to say. It smells wonderful. Is there protein? There should be chicken in there. Have you found a piece? No. There's not one bit of chicken in there, is there? Right, let's taste. Look, if I hadn't have been told that there was chicken supposed to be in there, I'd be really happy with it as a vegetarian dish. The vegies are cooked beautifully. Everything's there. The curry...perchance could have a little bit more depth. I'm disappointed, but. Where's the chicken? I found a little bit. Oh, did you? I had a little bit. I reckon I had the only bit in there. But it was tiny. I think just in the panic of her plating up - you know, that kind of rice in a bowl, curry on top - she just forgot. With so much on the line, that last round was about being big and bold and really pulling out all stops. A dish full of flavour and complexity. There was one dish that put smiles on our dials and really shone. And that belongs to... ..Rose. Rose, you are safe. What a delicious dish that was. Well done. Good balance. We loved it. ROSE: Thank you. You can go over and join the others, if you want. Rosie... (LAUGHS) Oh, my God! So proud of you. Jacqui, Melita, it comes down to the two of you. One of you is safe. One of you is going home. Jacqui, great skewers, loads of flavours. You got mixed reviews for your salad. Melita, freshness, acidity, and some complexity in your sauce, given the short amount of time that you had. But, Melita, in the serve of red chicken curry you presented to us... ..only one of us got any chicken. And that's why I'm sorry, Melita, but the time has come for you to leave the MasterChef kitchen. Melita, it's always tough to hear. But you know what we hope it does? We hope it gives you the inspiration to follow through on your dream. Absolutely. But now, it's time for you to say goodbye. See ya, mate. MATTHEW: You did really well. You did really, really well. You should be proud of yourself. What I've learnt from this experience is that, regardless of what challenges I face, I need to have confidence in myself and my abilities and what I can do. I can go out and still realise my dream of having a restaurant. So, I'm gonna go out and do it. ANNOUNCER: Next week on MasterChef Australia... We're gonna show you that your dreams can come true. ..it's MasterChef Favourites Week... Yay, it's Poh! ..as we welcome back... MATT: Callum Hann. ..some of our most successful... Hayden Quinn. ..and best-loved contestants from seasons past. Justine, welcome. I'm nervous. They'll challenge... Good luck. You'll be fine. ..dazzle... You call that a toffee apple? (LAUGHS) JOHN: I've got no idea how this is cooked. ..and guide. Really need to lift our level. Alright, get cracking. And they will inspire... Really, really love that. Delicious. Because that's happy food. ..some of the best cooking of 2015. You could win this competition. Do you think? (LAUGHS)