Stop press, just as I write that the red team literally serve half a lamb per plate! The salsa verde looks beautiful and the whole earthy lentilly feel looks delicious. Their stuffed quash looks amazing and at this stage I really can't call which team is going to be cooking off, it's anyone's game at the moment. As they move onto plating up the pudding I can't call it either, and I am just relived that Tony's plum tart looks so good, I was worrying about his place in the competition.

The poached pears look delicious, might have to try baklava myself. John loves it, but Greg isn't sure and, I'm afraid, as Laura pointed out in the episode 16, if Greg doesn't like your dessert, it isn't a dessert. Maybe this is the nail in the coffin for the red team?

Well the red team have to go into the cook off, not as a result of their pudding but because the blue team showed more ambition and worked better as a team.

I love the fact that this season of MasterChef is exploring the depth of the characters more, focusing on their relationships with each other and how much they support each other.
The cook off is a skills and invention test. Smoked and pan fried quail, red wine and port dressing, shaved cauliflower, pickled walnuts and oak leaf. As Greg rightly points out to John, "that's a bit sexy and complex, are you up for this?" queuing the dirtiest laugh sex pot John has ever uttered before showing us just how complicated this dish is going to be.


The team are given the dish to taste and have to try and guess what it's actually made out of. They are then are given the ingredients to make it, with some rogue ones in there too.


This is where I start to tail off I am afraid, as I sense the impending doom that is about to befall this series of MasterChef…Robert looks too relaxed. He doesn't put any sauce on his plate and the judges say it tastes dry and chalky (as does my mouth). He looks crestfallen, I'm crestfallen, Greg is not happy…I'm seriously worried he is going to be eliminated.


Yup. He is gone. I will have to comfort myself with Tony's majestic magical monumental moustache.