Just as it is important to thrash out vital political debates in the marketplace of ideas, so it is important to thrash out vital recipes in the marketplace of an actual marketplace. And so it is that our amateurs – newly shorn of Steph due to her passion for overcooking chicken – head to the Queen Victoria market in the bustling heart of Melbourne, to make some lucky shoppers’ lives worthwhile with transcendently pretentious street food. “When night falls, this is the place to be,” says Jamie, apparently having mistaken the market for Dracula’s Theatre Restaurant.

The challenge is a simple one: split into four teams, the amateurs will make a protein and a vegetable dish: the blue team will cook fish, the red team beef, the yellow team chicken and the pink team pork. The team with the best food will be immune from the next elimination. With only five hours to prepare – half the length of an average MasterChef finale – they’ll have to race to make the many hundreds of dishes that won’t matter. Accordingly, the teams begin making poor decisions immediately, to save time.

Josh, who has been in love with beef his whole life, takes charge of the red team, which is stacked with old people. “There’s only one thing in life you can’t buy – experience,” he says, though this is untrue as you also cannot buy Fantales.

The judges gather to discuss their experience with markets. Jean-Christophe reveals his first job was making pancakes at a market, while Andy claims that Jamie has eaten at more markets than Andy has had hot dinners, which sounds impressive until you realise that Andy has only ever had four hot dinners.

“Leadership is not my strong suit,” says yellow captain Jonathan, and sets about proving himself right by shouting at his teammates in a manner as irritating as it is ineffectual. The yellow team is making a Greek menu, drawing heavily on its members’ Asian, Croatian and British heritages. Andy and Jamie are unconvinced that Greece is the word for the yellows, but Jonathan is determined to prove that total ignorance is no barrier to failure.

“There’s only one thing in life you can’t buy – experience,” Josh says, though this is untrue as you also cannot buy Fantales.

Andy and Jamie visit the red team. Josh tells them that the reds are stuffing a capsicum with potato, because they believe anyone who attends Queen Victoria Market should be punished. “I’m not sure how that eats,” Andy says. Josh explains that it doesn’t eat, actually YOU are supposed to eat IT. Andy’s mind is blown. Sue convinces the red team that they should actually serve eggplant, if they really want their customers to suffer. “I’m like a dog with a bone,” she says repeatedly, remembering how her own dog loves to cook eggplant.

The pink team is slow at skewering mushrooms, but they get a much-needed boost from Andy, who pops by with some personal abuse to motivate them. Meanwhile, Poh says that the yellow team are chooks without their heads. “Did you say that because they’re chicken?” asks Sofia, overwhelmed by Poh’s incredibly comedic creativity. Poh and Sofia collapse in paroxysms of laughter at what is quite literally the funniest thing either of them have ever heard in their lives.

On the blue team Khristian reveals his plans to make his mussels pop. “I know what a perfect mussel is,” says Andy, deeply aroused by the thought. The blue team explains what they’re doing to Jamie. Jamie explains what the blue team is doing to the blue team. Andy explains what the blue team is doing to the blue team and to Jamie. Everyone feels good about this productive discussion. A vicious brawl breaks out over whether mukeka is Brazilian or African or just a word that they made up earlier today. Casualties are horrifying.

Jamie gathers the team captains together to tell them they need to focus and provide clarity and not allow their teams to get sidetracked by distractions like British celebrities interrupting their work with meaningless platitudes.

Meanwhile the yellow team is struggling: Snezana has rolled out ten flatbreads of a planned 400, meaning they will need to work until 2026 to finish. They come up with a new plan, not realising that they only actually need to serve food to the five judges and can tell the public to go to hell for all the difference it will make to the result.

“North African-ish seafood stew” reads the blue team’s chalkboard, which everyone seems to think is very cute because they are all sleep-deprived. The market is beginning to flood with shoppers, hoping to have a nice peaceful evening but destined to be disappointed.

The crowds gather around the yellow team’s stall, knowing that one rarely gets the opportunity to watch five people literally losing their minds in real time. But it can’t all be fun and games, and eventually the hard thankless work of eating must be done. Though “eventually” is very much the operative word when it comes to the yellow team, who respond to customers’ requests for food with startled bafflement.

“This is what MasterChef is all about: bringing delicious food to the people!” cries Sofia, who strangely enough has never watched an episode of MasterChef. The judges begin with the pink team’s pork. “I love the pork,” says Poh, possibly talking about the meat. The pink team has done well with its pork but its mushrooms are a disgrace.

Up comes the blue team’s seafood stew and eggplant dishes. “There’s quite a lot of seafood in there,” says Sofia, unprepared for the term “seafood stew” to be taken so literally. The stew is good. “This broth comes from Flavourtown,” says Jamie. “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA,” say the other judges, overcome by traffic fumes. Conversely, the eggplant is disappointing, but then eggplant always is.

The red team’s tandoori beef skewers are selling like hotcakes, which would be a huge plus if it weren’t completely irrelevant to the result. The judges like the skewers but Andy is unsure. He thinks the red team has been too timid and tried to “cater for the masses”, and doesn’t understand why they would do such a thing in a challenge in which that was literally what they had been told to do. The reds’ eggplant dip is a triumph despite the considerable handicap of having eggplant in it.

Finally, the yellow team serves its enormous chicken dish, which is every bit as Greek as the members of the team. “This is a bit confusing,” says Jean-Christophe, snidely criticising the editing of the show. The judges are baffled by the yellow team’s bizarre perversions of the entire concept of food.

The challenge is over. The crowd, gathered round in the hope of tearing a lock of hair from Jamie’s head, cheers ignorantly. The judges bring the teams together and let them know they’ve all done a great job except for the yellow team and the pink team. The red team, despite making the catastrophic mistake of cooking lots of food that everyone loved, has won, and will be safe from Sunday’s elimination.

But although their success, and the failure of everyone else, is cause for celebration, the end of this episode is tinged with sadness as Jamie is going home to have a shower and try to forget he was ever here. This leaves the amateurs to stumble through the rest of the series without the aid of an English accent to advise them, and us as the audience to survive with only the other 15 shows that Jamie is on to sustain us.

Tune in Sunday night, when someone will say, “It’s yummy!” But WHO?