ANNOUNCER: Previously on MasterChef Australia... The start of a huge week began at San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. Gotta bring your A-game today. They all delivered great dishes... This is what we're talking about! ..but it was Trent who won the ultimate prize. You're the first contestant going through to the fast track to finals challenge. Tonight, the California dream continues. Please welcome Dominique Crenn. She's been awarded the Best Female Chef in the world. And today she's handing her kitchen over to you. In this team challenge... Come on! Let's go! ..they'll have to replicate not one but two of Dominique's designer dishes. This is insane! It will be the most chaotic cook... I have not started one thing. ..they've ever encountered. What have you got left to do? But for those in the winning team... I would think that my pastry chef did it. ..the chance for a guaranteed place in finals week. I don't think the incentives get any bigger. SONG: # Burning up in my heart. # Like a flame. # Like a bright shooting star. # In our souls we all know # Our dreams make us who we are. # Burning up in my heart. # Like a flame. # Like a bright shooting star. # Able 2017 MIMI: We're in the Marina District of San Francisco and this is so a different side to San Francisco that we didn't see yesterday. The architecture is beautiful. All the houses around and the shopfronts are just incredible. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. MATT: We're in the chef whites today. It's always a good buzz when you put these on. I don't know what's ahead of us today but I guess it will be something pretty serious. HARRY: We come to this little restaurant called Atelier Crenn, and it is absolutely beautiful. Good morning, hey? Look at these guys, all beautifully pressed in their chef's whites. Very professional. And quite appropriate, I think, because this is Atelier Crenn, which is a two Michelin star restaurant. Oh, wow. One of San Francisco's best, and of course, one of California's finest restaurants. BRETT: This is just crazy. Two star Michelin restaurant. This is gonna be huge. Trent, you absolutely knocked it out of the park yesterday. You cooked the dish of the day and it won you the chance to cook tomorrow for a guaranteed place in finals week. Which means you won't be cooking today. The rest of you are. And at the end of the day, three of you will join Trent in that challenge. So, a lot on the line today. MATT: The stakes are high, the reward's huge. I don't think the incentives get any bigger at this stage. GEORGE: Because there's so much at stake, we've come up with a very special challenge. (CHUCKLES) It's like part pressure test, part team challenge. (LAUGHS) God. (LAUGHS) Two favourite things in one. Yeah! So before we do anything else, let's get you into teams. Eh? If you get number one, you're in team one. If you get number two, you're in team two. I pull the knife out and I'm team two and I look around and I'm with Brett and Harry. I'm gonna be on the red team today with Matt and Mimi and I've worked with them both before, so I'm excited to be doing it again today. Atelier Crenn is named after one of the most exciting chefs in cooking today. She is the first woman in America to be awarded two Michelin stars, and today she's handing her kitchen over to you. (ALL CHUCKLE NERVOUSLY) Please welcome Dominique Crenn! (APPLAUSE) Dominique's been named the world's best female chef by The World's 50 Best Restaurants list, so for us to be working with her today is a huge inspiration and, yeah, great motivation for me to push hard. Hello, guys. Hello. Dominique, thank you so much for your generosity and your bravery, for letting us come into your beautiful restaurant. Give us a sense of what makes your food so special, why Michelin have given it such high accolades. Every ingredient has a meaning, so it's all about memories. I'm also looking at life, so life is about complexity, it's about texture, it's about acidity, happiness, sweetness, and that's what we do with the food. It's poetry on the plate and it's a story. And obviously the challenge today is gonna be a big, big challenge. This is another level. Ready to see what Dominique's got in store for you? ALL: Yes. (WHISPERS) I have to be so careful. One two-star dish would be hard enough. But today, with so much at stake, each team, you'll be replicating two of Dominique's signature dishes. I think everybody's hearts just sank to the floor. This is gonna get hectic. Dominique, will you do the honours? Yes, of course. OK, so the first dish, it's called my walk in the forest. Oh, that's so beautiful. I've never seen food displayed in that style. It's art. Yeah, it's pretty breath-taking. And the second one, the dessert. The beet. Ooh! MIMI: The cloche comes up and I just see this perfect little beetroot on a bed of dirt. It just looks incredible. Oh, my God. They're so cool. GEORGE: Wow. Guys, get close. Talk us through the walk in the forest. The idea was walking into the forest with my dad, so all the feeling and the emotions when you walk through the forest. So it's a dish about texture. Underneath, you have a pine meringue that has been burned. You have two different soil. One is basil, one is pumpernickel, that different way of cooking mushrooms, and mushroom peppers. But this dish is all about balance. ELISE: There's little mushrooms. They've got this amazing basil green soil, this meringue that sits underneath it and I'm thinking, "How can we do this? "How can we re-create this dish?" What about the beet? It's all about the beets. It's about the earth, so this is a beet sorbet with chocolate. And you want to taste the sweetness, the bitterness and the woodiness of what the beet is about. Here, guys. Plenty for everyone, yeah? Right, dig in. Tasting this mushroom dish is just a complete sensory overload. The depth of flavour between the pan-fried mushrooms, the dehydrated mushrooms, mushroom paper, and then pickled mushrooms, basil soil, pumpernickel, the meringue, just this sort of slight sweetness that adds so much to the dish and the overall balance. Matt? You're a happy man, aren't you? Oh... It's mind-blowing. Right, let's try the beet. It's so nice and earthy. There's a reason why it's two star in the Michelin, yeah? It's amazing. Like, there's so much flavour and depth in there and it's... Mm. It's, like, earthy, chocolatey. It's delicious. You're gonna be with us, right? Yes, I am. (LAUGHS) Looking at the two dishes, the precision and the attention to detail that's gonna be required of us is huge and I can't wait to get stuck in and try it. You have two hours and 45 minutes to re-create Dominique's dishes. On top of that, you'll have another 15 minutes to finish, plate up and present to us four of each of those dishes. You will need to be clever, have your wits about you. Good luck, everybody. The time starts now. HARRY: Time starts and immediately we all get into reading the recipe. Jesus Christ. Oh, man. I'm looking at this recipe and there is so much to do. This is a huge challenge but I'm really excited to be able to do it. Elise, do you want to do dessert? Brett, do you want to do savoury and I'll float? Yeah, yeah. Brett's really comfortable with savoury, so he's gonna get started on the mushroom dish, and then I put my hand up to do the dessert. I really want to do it and Harry's gonna come down and help me wherever he needs. So do you guys want me to get started on dessert? Immediately I'm just drawn to the dessert. You happy to get started on it and then I'll race down and you can give me a job as soon as...? ALL: Yep. I grab the beetroot recipe and race over to the separate dessert kitchen. I'm working alongside Elise, but we're on separate teams. We've just got the same space to work in. Let's do this, women. HARRY: This is gonna be a walk in the park, mate. Not a walk in the forest. BRETT: Let's do it. Mains is a massive, massive recipe, so I'm gonna get straight on to it with Brett, smash out as many elements as we can and then I'm gonna go over to the dessert kitchen and start helping Elise. So we're just starting on the mushroom. So the first thing that Brett gets on to is the mushroom broth and I jump onto the pumpernickel soil. Especially because there's two kitchens and we're gonna be working separately, we have to make sure we've got a good communications strategy, make sure each person knows what's going on. Beautiful. I'm over in the other kitchen with Mimi and we're both working on our beetroot desserts. 1,000g. I think the hardest thing of this beet dish is the beetroot sorbet. Dominique's beetroot sorbet was so smooth, it was light, it was earthy and, you know, we've got to do that. A kilo is a lot more than you think, hey? The first step is to peel all these beets and juice them. We need to get 1000g of beetroot juice. That is so much and I'm sitting there peeling beets and it's taking forever. Hey, I've got 365g. Far out. MATT: Alright, I'm gonna get this started. Gonna throw the shiitakes in. I'm in charge of a walk in the forest today and the first thing I need to do is make this mushroom broth because it's gonna be used in a few applications. It's gonna be used in the pan-roasted mushrooms and it's also gonna be used in the mushroom puree that we'll turn into the mushroom paper. This dish is all about mushroom and flavours of the forest. The mushroom is the star so we need to make sure that we get a powerful mushroom flavour throughout the whole dish. Alright, Haz, this is going in. 30 minutes on high. HARRY: Once we've seared off the elements for our mushroom broth, got to get it into the pressure cooker where it'll cook for about 30 minutes. 30 minutes on high. So at the moment, Brett and I are working on pretty much everything. We've got our mushroom broth started. We've got the pumpernickel soil in the oven and we're getting onto the mushroom whims now. You're doing the mushroom whims now? Sorry, yep. OK. The mushroom broth is in the pressure cooker. So now Elena's gonna start on the basil soil and I'll start on the mushroom whims. The mushroom whim is the dehydrated mushroom element of this dish. Slicing these royal trumpet mushrooms, I am conscious to make them as thin as possible. The ones on Dominique's plate were like... ..they were like wafers. It's all about attention to detail today. It's definitely intimidating. This is a two-star Michelin. Once I've sliced the royal trumpet mushrooms over a mandolin, dip them into the isomalt syrup, onto the acetate. They need to go into an oven at 80 degrees and they will be in there for the entirety of the cook. Alright, they can go up there. How is the recipe looking? Where are we? So, here? ELENA: Yep. I think we're off to a pretty good start. We'll just get a few things done first so that Matt feels well-supported and then I can go find out where Mimi's at. Far out. I am still peeling the beets and the process is taking a lot longer than I thought they would. There are so many things to do in this recipe and I'm only at step one out of 43. I just really need to move on. So I am trying to rush through peeling beetroots so quickly that... (BLEEP) Are you alright, Mimi? Oh. Cut pretty much half my nail off. I just feel instantly really, really faint. 1 1 MIMI: I've cut my finger. It hurts so much and I've got the medic fixing it but I have so much left to do. I can see that Elise has her beetroot juice already on the heat. I just need to keep moving. Hey, lovely? Yep. With your cut? Yes, someone would. Thanks, Elena. Yep? Do you need a hand at all? You happy if we keep chopping and stuff? Yep, keep going. OK, thanks, Mimi. Thanks. Once I've peeled and juiced the beetroots, I put the beetroot juice with some sliced beetroot into a saucepan, bring it up to a simmer for about 25 minutes and crack on and get some more done. Mate, I'm gonna start with this pan. So, mushrooms in first, yeah? Yes. With the mushroom broth in the pressure cooker, I can now crack on with the mushroom puree. The mushroom puree is the base element for the mushroom paper. Have to pan-sear some mushrooms, garlic, some sage, some sea salt, some diced onion as well, and then basically that will get blitzed up. Once it's all ready, it needs loosening with the mushroom broth. (STEAM HISSES) I'll slowly incorporate some mushroom broth into the puree until it's nice and smooth. ELISE: My beetroot juice is done. I now need to let it cool down a little bit before I put it into the food processor. So I add some salt, some stabiliser and glucose and I'll just leave it on the bench to cool down. Right, guys. Hi. A little under two hours to go. Oh, my God. The pressure's on. Good luck. Thank you. I can't believe it's already gone past 45 minutes. I need to hurry up. I need to get this step done. I don't have time for the beetroot juice to be cool before I put it into the food processor, so...I'm going to take a risk. I'm thinking, it should be alright. I'll just start it off slowly and it'll be fine. Oh, it just splurted everywhere. Oh, that was really smart. It just goes everywhere. I had beetroot juice all over my recipe, all over the wall and I'm thinking, "You idiot." When you put hot liquid into a blender and turn it on, it explodes everywhere, and that's just what happened to me, so... I knew it was going to happen. I don't know why I did it. I was just hoping that it wouldn't do that. But I can't stop. I've got to keep going. I now need to do the chocolate crumble. Alright, I'm gonna start organising the hazelnut praline. Our mushroom puree is done. That's just cooling down before we turn it into mushroom paper. Now I need to get cracking on the hazelnuts. That will form the base of our hazelnut praline. The recipe says hazelnuts with all of the outer skin off them, so I try to remove as much of the husk as possible, but it's so tedious. Oh, mate, these hazelnuts are... (LAUGHS) ..trying my patience. This is probably the most labour-intensive thing I've ever had to do in a kitchen. But it's all about the detail. HARRY: Hey, Matty? Yo. How long are you gonna be going on these hazelnuts for, mate? Oh... As long as it takes to make them spot-on. Quite a while, my friend. I know I should be helping Elise with the desserts but these hazelnuts are taking forever. And I really hope she's OK down there. Mm! Oh, my goodness. I'm looking at the sink. You feeling the pressure down here? BOTH: Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to know how long you've got to go? No. Just under 90 minutes. Oh, my God. Are you serious? I'm starting to freak out. I'm almost halfway through my cook and everything's just starting to pile up. There's so many steps we need to do and the time is just going so quickly. OK, guys, so my advice right now - you need to ask for help. Working as a team is not working on your own, OK? I need Harry to come down and start helping me. You... Are you really flat chat? Yeah, kind of. Do you need a hand? Yeah, I need a hand. Maybe smash off one element. See how you go here. I'll get this done, I'll come straight over. Yeah, thanks, Harry. I'll be about 5 minutes, I think. I know Elise needs help but I can't just drop this hazelnut praline as it is. I need to finish it and then I can get over to the dessert kitchen. Mimi needs my help. I'm gonna work with her on one step. The basil oil is right behind you. It's ready to go. Yep. Basil is here. Yep. Ready to drain here. Yep. You happy if I go away? I think we're kind of at a good point that I can finally head over to the dessert kitchen to give Mimi a hand. Hey, Mimi. I really do need help. You do need help? Yes. When I run into the dessert kitchen, Mimi's panic has sort of set in a little bit. I have not started one thing. They don't even have their sorbet in the churners yet. We are so behind. I want to try to do whatever I can to help because we can do this. I just need her to believe it too. So can you please make the chocolate crumble? She's decided that she wants me to work on the chocolate crumble that sits on the bottom of the plate. Needs to be quite dry and bring a sort of crunchy sensation to this beautiful dessert. Alright... Chocolate crumble. Thank you so much. So, into the stand mixer I've got my butter and my sugar creaming together. As soon as that's creamed, I can combine the egg through there. I've sifted and weighed all of my dry ingredients that I'm just gonna gently fold through until they're combined. Then I can put on a lined tray and put it into the oven. It needs 23 minutes to make sure that it's evenly brown and crisp. I can see that it is helping Mimi to get on top of some of the elements and she's finally got that sorbet into the churner. I can hear that Elise would like one of her teammates to be with her as well. I think I'm pretty behind at the moment. It's quite a difficult challenge to do. I did go up and ask for help and Harry said he's gonna come down as soon as possible to help me out. (MOCK CRIES) MATT: So far I'm feeling pretty good. Our mushroom whims, mushroom puree, mushroom broth, hazelnut praline are done. However, I still need to get that mushroom paper finished off. Something so delicate and so packed full of flavour needs to be precise. Still need to get this puree, heat it back up with isomalt and then I can spread that across acetate to 1mm thickness and then that will need to go into the oven at 80 degrees and dehydrate. 1mm thick, mate. Think I've got maybe a little bit more of an artistic touch than Brett, so just giving it another round over. Mate, that's got to get in the oven. ASAP. Elise definitely needs some help so I'm gonna get in there and do what I can, as soon as I get this mushroom paper into the oven. Where's the micro scales? I'm using them here. I just need one thing. I'm checking on my chocolate crumble. I'm meant to move it every couple of minutes but it's just not looking right. (GROANS) It's all melted together, the butter's split away from it and, yeah, there's something not right. DOMINIQUE: Uhh... I think what happened is you probably overworked with the batter and it's probably separated. Can you do that again? Dominique says that we've overworked the batter way too much, so I have no option. I'll start again. Red team, blue team, one hour to go, guys. Are you serious? Until the end? We're not gonna get this done. I need help. It's gonna take me 20 minutes to make this crumble again and I'm just falling behind. I really need help. Harry! HARRY: That's papery enough. It's time to get my mushroom paper trays into the oven. It should be preset to 80 degrees. I put the mushroom paper trays in there, I close the door. I'm looking in the front to make sure everything's OK. And the acetate just crumbles up and curls right before my eyes. (BLEEP) I cannot believe what I'm seeing. No time for this. The oven was set too hot. I really should have checked it before I put the mushroom paper in. Can you come here, mate? We've got an issue. What's up? This oven that's supposed to be set at 80 degrees, yeah, I put the acetate in there and it just melted. We're gonna totally have to make this mushroom paper again. At this point I'm feeling really overwhelmed. I have so much to do and on top of that, Elise is struggling. She really, really needs my help. 1 What the (BLEEP)? I don't have time for this. I've just put our mushroom paper into the oven and it melted right before my eyes. Mate, have we got more puree? That is the puree, but that is not the mushroom paper. So you'll have to mix all that other stuff in again. We're gonna have to make our mushroom paper mix again. So, you gonna do that again, Haz? Yeah, mate. Alright. Have we got time? Well, we have to make time. I feel so torn, because I need to help Elise, but I also need to get this done first. Right, listen up, guys. You have 30 minutes to go. Not long at all. I'm putting this in the oven and I'm going over to help Elise. MIMI: The sorbet looks really good. My beetroot sorbet is finished churning, so I've got to get it into the piping bag and form the little spheres. I need to make four of them - one for each plate. This is such a cool technique. We're putting the sorbet into the syringe and then putting it into a water balloon. It just creates the perfect sphere. Once I get the beetroot sorbet into the water balloons I need to put them into the blast chiller, just to freeze up. So, Dominique, what specifically are you worried about? Mostly, uh, the pastry kitchen. So, it's the beet that is proving the biggest problem? Yes. Maybe the teamwork was not where it needed to be. I'm just worried. Can we put it into context, but? I mean, amateur cooks, a couple of hours, two-star Michelin. Yeah. The pressure... Yeah. And probably two of the most complicated dishes they've ever cooked. How's it looking, man? Uh... It's like 76 degrees now. OK, we'll set there. The oven now is set at 80 degrees, so I take the mushroom paper and sit it next to Harry's. Fingers crossed. Say a Hail Mary. Mushroom paper's all set in the oven to dehydrate, so now I can finally get over to the dessert kitchen. Alright, I'm running over to see Elise. OK. This is finished. ELISE: Alright, well, that's done. Let me get on to my 1,000 kilos of mandarin. (CHUCKLES) Aaahh! I need help! There's less than half an hour to go. Elena's still there with Mimi, and I'm thinking, "Alright, I can't do this on my own." There's still so many steps to do. Just peeling the mandarins for my mandarin pudding. Still gotta temper chocolate. Um, you know, we've got to do a glaze that goes over the...the beetroot. And it's just me. And Mimi's got help, but, you know, I'm quite...I'm struggling. Hey, Elise. Harry, what are you... Never fear - Harry's here. (LAUGHS) Oh, here he is! Yes! Thank God. Alright. What can we do? So, we've just gotta freeze those spheres. I'm feeling really, really sorry and bad for Elise, because she's been down here by herself and now we have a mountain to scale. I feel so bad. Don't feel bad. We'll get there, yeah? Red team, blue team, what have you got left to do? Fluted mushrooms. While I'm waiting for those I'm just getting everything sorted for the pickled mushrooms. The meringue? The meringue? Yeah. Don't do it at the last minute. Yeah, yeah. The meringue on the base has just got this slight sweetness to it and a pine flavour that adds so much to the dish and the overall balance. I think it's a really important component of this dish, so it's drop everything, get that done. Oh, my God, Elise. My sorbet's finished churning. I now need to mould it into spheres. Oh, my God. I've got enough, but I just want to do, like, an extra one. And then put them into a mould? I've now done seven beetroot spheres just in case some of them don't work. I think that's enough. But it's not long to finish, and I just hope I haven't put them in there too late. Let's just hope they set. OK, trumpet mushrooms. The pressure's really starting to mount now. I'm doing a two-star dish on my own, so I've really gotta focus and start knocking a lot of this stuff out. I'm just doing...getting all the ingredients together for the mise en place, if you like, ready to go. Right, can I just stop you for a second? You've got 15 minutes to go. Remember what's at stake, yeah? Come on. Let's go! Yep. OK. With 15 minutes to go, one of the last things I need to do is the fluted mushrooms. Um, right now, I am currently in the process of fluting mushrooms. To make fluted mushrooms, you begin by removing the outer skin and, from the centre, basically, working your way out and just making little carvings in...almost like a...a wheel. If I did fluted mushrooms in a food truck I would never make any money. This is just... Uh, this is above and beyond, um... (CHUCKLES) Yeah, this is a completely different world, compared to what I'm used to. It is the first and probably only time I will ever flute mushrooms. But well worth it to win the chance to get fast-tracked into finals week. I'll run this...I'll run this upstairs, I'll blitz it up there. ELISE: There's less than 15 minutes to go and I feel like I'm making some headway. I've got my spheres in the freezer, Harry's done the coffee grounds for the base, and now we're making mandarin pudding. We're just going a million miles an hour. This is insane! I go check on my second batch of chocolate crumble... ..and it's wet again. (LAUGHS SADLY) It's just like mud. I have definitely done something wrong, but I don't have time to do this again. This is meant to be a two-Michelin-star dish. Is it good enough? I don't think so. 1 Red team, blue team, 10 minutes to go, yes? ELISE: Aaagh! Yes, George. Oh, no. The second batch of crumble - it's not right. But I don't have time to fix it. Did you hear me? ELISE AND HARRY: Yes, George. "Yes, George!" ALL: Yes, George! "Yes, George!" ALL: Yes, George! Come on! Let's go! This is insane. Somebody start to melt chocolate right now. ALL: Yes, Chef Dominique! Come on! We've got to get this chocolate on the go. Yep. There's only minutes left and we haven't even made our chocolate root. This dish is not complete without the little chocolate twigs at the end of the beetroot, so I need to get onto that. I do that by just placing some chocolate over a double boiler and melting that down. Melt the chocolate. Melt the chocolate. Melt the chocolate. Come on. Yep, melting chocolate now. Once that's done, I get it off the heat and put it into a piping bag, but it's not cool enough to pipe. It's still a bit too warm. We're going to have to pipe it out in the last 15 minutes. I just hope it works, because we don't have time to do it again. ELENA: There is a lot of elements to get completed. I just don't know how we're going to get all this done in time. I've never been so stressed. But we're just going to have to keep on pushing, despite the chaos that's in this kitchen, until they say time's up. Down here or up there? Up there. Basil soil. Done. All of our core ingredients are either finished or they're on the go. In this final 10 minutes, everything needs to be prepped for that 15 minutes of prep time because it's not just plating. We're cooking as well. Yeah, I just need to make sure that everything is organised and ready to go. Right. Giving you a razz up. Remember, you're in a two-Michelin-star restaurant. Everything has to be perfect, so let's move it. Three minutes to go. Oh, my God. There's only a few minutes left and I think we're in a pretty good place, so I start reading through my recipe and checking things. Beetroot glaze. Well, beetroot glaze is... Yeah. So we haven't even done it. We've forgotten about the beetroot glaze. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. There's not enough time to do it now, so we're going to have to do it later. Guys, one minute. Come on, guys. Yes? Let's go! Yes. Yes, yes. Come on, come on, come on. Here's the cold water. We really need to get these chocolate roots going. I grab the piping bag and just start piping the chocolate into the cold water. They're looking half decent. Alright, guys. Listen up. 10 seconds. Yes, George! 9! 8! 7! 6! 5! 4! 3! 2! 1! Done! (BOTH CHEER) Oh, man! Well done, guys. Well done. You've done your best. Well done. Yeah? So, the two hours and 45 minutes flew by and I think we're in a pretty good spot with the mains, but really worried about the desserts. I'm a little bit worried about the sorbet not setting properly and the fact that the crumble isn't right. I'm... My brain is absolutely fried. The things we do. I'm stoked that I've made it through the pressure test. OK. Everything's ready to go, but we've still got a truckload left to do. This is all done in 15 minutes, yeah? Apparently. We need to get cracking. Your 15 minutes starts now. Elise, you're gonna get all the stuff out. Get it ready to plate. This is the pumpernickel. And I'll start with the mushrooms, yeah? Yep. Too easy. Let's go, guys. Let's smash this out, hey? Definitely. We've got 15 minutes to finish this dish. The whole team comes together and we're feeling good. The first thing I've got to do is pan-roast these mushrooms. While I'm working, Elise and Harry are going to look after plating. Alright. I'm gonna start doing this. I take the meringue out, I put it into a piping bag and I pipe that onto the wooden plates. Are you happy with that, guys? I really want to replicate exactly everything that was on Dominique's dish. Are you happy with that sort of look? Yeah. But remember, we've got to smear it down. Yep. It's really important to spread this meringue out thinly so the judges don't get a big mouthful of sweetness. Is that good? Then I blowtorch the meringue. It needs to be nice and toasty. A bit more? Sprinkle some pumpernickel soil in a wandering trail across the path. This dish is totally about balance, so we have to make sure that all of our elements are perfectly balanced on the plate and that it looks spectacular. Oh, Elise, do you want to do the herbs? Yep. I finish it off with these beautiful nasturtium leaves and a few other foraged herbs. It looks so good, guys. I'm really chuffed with this dish. I think it looks so much like Dominique's dish at the start of the day. I really, really hope it's well-balanced. So, every element is on here? Yep! All the elements are there and we're really happy. Yeah. I think it's up to us to taste now. Off you go. ALL: Thank you. What a wonderful representation of your dish. Lots of mushrooms. I'm getting all that kind of mushroomy, madeira flavour just wafting up. The turning of my mushroom is beautiful. This has that feeling of a path. The idea of the path and these two meandering tracks of two different soils over the top, and great colour on the meringue as well. I think mine looks fantastic. I just want to taste. Can we taste, please? Have everything there. All the texture and the sweetness. The crispiness. I think it's very well balanced. With every spoonful, you get every element of that dish. You get sweet, you get sour from the vinegar and you get lots of crunch. And also different herbs with each mouthful, which is interesting. And I love the little mushroom paper. Yeah, that was delicious. You know, you've got to sit back and go, "Wow." This is an incredible effort. I feel quite proud. Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure you do too, you know. I mean, these are just, you know, amateur cooks. I'm quite speechless right now. Guys, great start to the tasting. I think so too. Yes. I'm...I'm happy. Yeah, Ellie, do you wanna get the... I'm going to get the... ..everything out of the ovens? We need to have a plan for this final 15 minutes, so Mimi and Elena are going to take care of the meringue and collect all of our ingredients, get everything there, ready to go, and they can start to plate while I'm cooking off the mushrooms. Mim, how's that meringue? Yeah, good. All good? The meringue really added a sweet note to that dish and it was something on the plate that just was perfectly balanced and complemented everything. I'm trying to remember how this meringue looked on Dominique's dish, but I'm not quite sure, so I'm going to be pretty generous with it. And then blowtorch it lightly. How brown was it? MATT: Lightly browned. Pan-roasted mushrooms. Have you got them? Yeah. Here. OK. What's next? Then do the praline, Elena. Yeah. You go paper. I'll go whims. The plate looks beautiful. It looks a little bit different to the dish that Dominique first presented us with, but the flavours are all there and the elements are all there and we're all quite proud of this dish. Oh, good job! Dominique, what do you think of the presentation? It's...a walk in the forest. I can see the texture. I can see the puree, the pine meringue, the mushroom. It smells really good too. GARY: It does smell good. I'm excited to taste it. Alright, guys. We're going to taste. Thank you. Enjoy. The basil crumb is fantastic. In terms of the other elements, the vinegar hit is there, the mushrooms are not overcooked. They've got that lovely silkiness to them. The little whims... Yeah. Crispy. Delicious. First time they've ever turned a mushroom and, you know, that takes a lot of experience to get that, so I commend them on that. And also, you know, the cooking of the mushrooms are delicious. But I'm getting a lot of meringue. It's totally overwhelming the dish. Yeah. Do you get that too? Your meringue was toasted a lot more than this is. Yes. Which brought out a lot more savouriness. When you give it that good toast, the bitterness came out. They've piped the meringue, but they've missed the step of spreading it out with a palette knife, which would take off about half that meringue, then you toast it. Look how much meringue compared to the rest of the dish. That is way out of balance, which is a big problem. 1 Wow. This is an incredible effort by both red and blue team, but now it's time for dessert. Yes. Always. Come on, guys. Let's go. Dessert service is absolutely hectic. We have so much that we need to do. We need to make these plates look spectacular. The first thing I need to do is finish piping the chocolate which is going to create the root for the beet. We didn't get a chance to test it, so I'm just praying that it works. Haz, how you going? Working out? Yeah, they're working great. Good man. Thank God. They look so good. All we need to do now is just wait for them to set. We've gotta get these beetroots out. There's a bit of work to do with the sorbets. First of all, I've got to take them out of the balloon that they're encased in. Then they go into the glaze. While Brett's glazing the spheres, I need to plate the base elements. So I assemble the mandarin pudding... ..oats... ..and chocolate soil. I know the chocolate crumb isn't perfect. It's meant to be quite crunchy and ours isn't that. But it still has that chocolatey flavour that you get in Dominique's dish. I'm just hoping that's enough. Guys, this glaze is just sort of running off. It's starting to get a bit soft and runny. The glaze is just not sticking. I put the sorbets in the freezer really late and they're melting. I'm really worried. Come on. You don't have time. Start putting these on. We cannot let all of Elise's hard work go to waste and just let these sorbets melt on the plate. We need to hurry up. Leaf on that one. The root was supposed to go that way? Doesn't matter, Haz. Come on. Just get it on there. The sorbet is melting so quickly, right before our eyes. We need to finish dressing these plates and get them out to the judges as soon as we can. Quick, quick, quick, Elise. Elise, Elise. Let's go, guys. Confidence. I want to be a part of the fast track to finals challenge more than anything. This is what I'm here for. I put so much effort into that dish today. Dessert is served. Alright, guys. We're gonna taste. GARY: It does look brilliant, but then it's not perfect. You can see that glaze kind of pooled on that side. It's running. That kind of puts me off, I'll be honest with you. I'm not crazy about the texture of this dish. If it's runny on the plate a little bit, it's kind of put you off. Yeah. The texture of this sorbet - it's soft and I think that that is a real issue. I think because of... The beetroot's soft, then you've got that soft cremo, the caramelia, the yoghurt. It's all sort of melting into one. And then the chocolate soil. It's a little bit chocolate mud. That slight moistness of the soil, you lose some of that... ..that lightness. What I'm not getting is that kind of earthy complexity and I think it's because it's wet and so it's distracting me. I...feel that it's a bit unbalanced for me. But, I mean, the sorbet tastes really good. It's just, like you say, wet. Yeah. The mandarin pudding, the texture is fantastic. It's super smooth. It's very bright and it's got a good flavour. I think there's some delicious flavours in there. Yeah, exactly. I was just going to say that. That little chocolate branch is fantastic. They probably didn't think that they'd be able to do this. MATT: So, is everything else ready for these to be glazed? Yeah, I need to glaze them. Yep. Yeah. We have a massive problem. We've forgotten to make this beetroot glaze for our beetroot spheres. We're going to have to try and do a batch in this 15 minutes. This is crazy. So it's a half batch, yeah? Yep. So, Matt's in charge of making the glaze. We need to make it so quickly. We're really pushing it here, but we need it to make this dish special. Good job, Matty. Good job. I don't really know if... ..we're going to be able to get this glaze done in 15 minutes. I need to juice the beetroots and then cook it out on a stove top. How you going, Matt? Alright. We won't know until we dip those sorbets in, will we? This is absolutely flat-out. If I can't get this glaze made, we can kiss that fast track to finals goodbye. 1 MIMI: How you going, Matt? It's alright. We won't know until we dip those sorbets in, will we? This final 15 minutes is absolutely flat out. Let me know as soon as it's ready. Yep! But it looks like the glaze is coming along. How's it going, Matt? Yeah, it's actually looking alright. OK. I think! I don't know. I've never seen a beetroot glaze before. If anyone can pull a beetroot glaze off in 15 minutes, I think it's Matt. Do you want to come and have a look, Mim? Yep. Perfect. Perfect. Get it off the heat. To assemble the beet sphere, we have to put it on a skewer and dip it into the glaze, then hold it for about five seconds for that to set. One, two, three, four, five. You good, guys? Yeah. Unbelievably, it looks like we're actually gonna... ..we're gonna get this done. Stalks in? Is this the last thing to go on? Yep. Alright. Yep. It's a big confidence boost to us, the fact that we are going to have a glaze. That way? Yep. Yes! I'm incredibly surprised, 'cause from feeling completely out of control and chaotic, we might have pulled this off. Everything on here? Yep, every single thing is on. 100%? 100%. Every single thing is on here. Done, done, done. Done. Alright. Yes. Good job, guys. Good job. Gave you a heart attack. Jeez! It not only looks great, but to put up a dish that you're really, really proud of to a two-star Michelin chef is incredible. That makes me feel happy. Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm. It's absolutely popping off the plate. I'm excited. Yeah, I'm really excited too. Can't wait to taste, honestly. Run. See ya. Thanks. Enjoy. This looks like a beetroot. I love the way the leaf falls off the plate. The way that glaze glistens is spectacular. And that's, I think, the first arresting thing you see with your dish. I think it's an amazing version. And there's a real spirit about it. I can see that you are so excited to taste it. I'm so excited. They kept to the essence of what the dish is about. I remember the last thing that I said to them is think about a beet coming out of the soil and it just... ..it just... That's what it is. Can we taste? Yeah. Wow. Delicious. It's not too sweet. It's crunchy. I'm tasting the beets. It's really, really good. I'm impressed because, I mean, we saw what was going on in that kitchen. It was chaos. There was stuff everywhere. And then what we've got here is the total opposite. The most incredible, balanced dessert. That is... It's yum. When you pop it in your mouth, you get that kind of earthy, savoury from the ice-cream and then your palate is just picking up, you know, chocolate and then praline and then cremo. It is unmistakably your dish, Dominique. If you blindfold me, I would think that my pastry chef did it. It's just... It makes me smile. It really does. Wow! What an amazing day. Maybe a little stressful. A little under pressure. But that is what it's all about and, I think, more importantly, what a pleasure and an honour it has been to cook at Dominique's restaurant. And cook two absolutely beautiful dishes. I think you'd agree. Lots of detail, lots of process, and more importantly, lots on the line. Three of you will win the opportunity to cook along with Trent for the chance to go straight through to finals week. So, let's look at how you went, starting with the red team and your walk in the forest. Basil soil, great. Pickled mushroom was wonderful. One flaw - too much meringue and you hadn't toasted it enough. Blue team, your walk in the forest - far better balanced. Textural, crunchy and a really beautiful representation that really sang with mushrooms. It was the best savoury course. Well done. Well done, guys. So, desserts. Beet. Blue team, the sorbet was too soft and overall, the dish was a bit wet. Red team, your beet - it looked like a beetroot that had been pulled fresh from the ground. It was an earthy and exuberant version of Dominique's dish. Dominique said if she was blindfolded... ..she would think that it had been made by her own chef. And that's why, red team, you win today's challenge. Congratulations. MIMI: I'm so happy that we've won and we now have the chance to get a guaranteed spot in finals week. It's so exciting, but also puts a lot more pressure on. Dominique Crenn, we have to thank you just to allow us to come and cook in this beautiful restaurant. You deserve a round of applause. I want to thank you for inspiring me today. Now, and I think you deserve it, you go back to the hotel. Recharge your batteries and get ready because it is going to be a massive day, and of course, another wonderful Californian experience. Get out of here. Off you go. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so humbled by this experience and so grateful to have cooked in the kitchen of the best female chef in the world. I'm going to fight so hard tomorrow 'cause I really want to get that fast track into finals week. ANNOUNCER: Next time... Welcome to Inglenook Estate. ..amidst the vineyards of the Napa Valley... It's all about the grape. ..one of these four contestants will win their ticket to finals week. It doesn't really get much bigger than that. It's so close... You want this bad. ..they can taste it. ELENA: I need to go with my instinct. Focused on the prize... MATT: Think about it. ..they'll fight furiously. I'm willing to throw down everything I've got. All four will deliver outstanding dishes. Very, very clever. MATT: Delicious. But one... Food heaven. ..will surpass them all. That's as good as anything else we've eaten. 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