Things are getting real now. The pointy end looms. For the four amateurs cooking in tonight’s elimination, it is a chance to get one step closer to their dream of losing to Nat in the final.

As Harry, Mimi, Sav and Josh arrive in the kitchen, the judges are nowhere to be seen. Just as they begin searching for ransom notes, they appear from the shadows and tell the amateurs that today’s challenge will be “five times as intense”. From where will this extra intensity come?

Will they have to cook nude, or while being attacked by trained eagles? Nothing so fun — all they have to do is pick one especially intense ingredient to put into a dish.

The first ingredient is époisses, a pungent cheese that nobody can pronounce and that is banned on public transport. The second ingredient is a Carolina Reaper chilli, the world’s hottest chilli as voted by the readers of Maxim magazine. The third ingredient is monkfruit concentrate, 300 times as sweet as sugar, which is a major ingredient in Nicholas Parsons novels. The fourth ingredient is umeboshi plums, which are three times as sour as lemons and terrible company. The final ingredient is a bitter gourd, the only gourd in the world to genuinely believe it could’ve been a success in life if everyone
wasn’t against it.

They have to cook with at least one of these ingredients, which will obviously be difficult because all the ingredients are horrible and it is completely inexplicable why they even exist, given nobody in their right mind would ever want to eat them.

Harry is pairing the smelly cheese with gnocchi, Mimi is combining the bitter gourd with crabs, and Sav is sticking the super-hot chilli in a prawn consommé, revelling in one more chance to achieve her dream of bursting Andy’s head.

Josh is in a reflective mood. He is depressed that he didn’t win the last cook — he genuinely thought he would, but his failure to be Nat cost him. Like Harry, Josh is cooking with the époisses cheese, putting it into a steak sandwich. Andy feels a chill run through him: he senses that Josh might be on the verge of feeling good about himself, and moves immediately to prevent such a disaster. He tells Josh that steak sandwiches are the last refuge of a scoundrel, and Josh agrees that he is a bad person and promises to try to be better.

Meanwhile, Mimi has cleaned her crabs, which is more information than anyone needed. “I’m feeling pretty good,” she says, instantly summoning Andy to her bench to explain why she should be full of crippling self-doubt. But despite Andy’s warnings, Mimi is sure she can pull the gourd back from its extreme bitterness. She begins by explaining to the gourd that happiness comes not from railing against fate, but from practising acceptance.

Back to Harry. “Gnocchi’s done a lot for me in my life,” he says – it was gnocchi that helped him connect with his nonna, made his wife fall in love with him, went guarantor for his home loan, etc. We flash back to scenes from Harry’s home life and see he and his wife kneeling before a gnocchi shrine to worship.

“On a day like today it’s all about maximum flavour!” shouts Andy, even though it’s actually about reducing the maximum flavour. He then moves over to Sav’s bench to remind her that the last time she made consommé she really sucked at it. With another psyche crushed, Andy whisks himself off, satisfied with a job well done. “Balance is key,” says Sav. “I have to make sure it’s not going to blow someone’s brains out,” she continues, in a tone that kind of suggests she really would love to blow someone’s brains out right now.

“This bitter gourd kimchi is looking such a beautiful colour,” says Mimi, not realising it’s TV and we can literally see the kimchi, so we know she’s lying. Even worse, she takes her brioche buns out of the oven and they’ve begun to cook. I’ve always assumed that taking something out of the oven and finding it’s cooked is a good thing, but apparently it’s a huge disaster, which proves something that I have always suspected: I do not understand how bread works. Luckily Mimi does, and therefore she starts making sushi.

Meanwhile Josh has lost belief in himself, much later than everyone else did. He is trying his best to turn the disgusting cheese into something edible, but the sad piano on the soundtrack is not auguring well for his chances. Poh tries to give him some encouragement, risking undoing all Andy’s good work. “Come on, Pezza,” calls Nat from the balcony, which makes all the difference. Suddenly Josh has a brainwave: onion puree! As moments of epiphany go, it’s not exactly up there with Archimedes, but it’ll have to do.

Sav checks her consommé to make sure that it’s still spicy. “This challenge is all about taming the beast, so I have to make sure the beast is still there.” This is wise – few lion tamers find it possible to make a living without lions. Having balanced the extreme heat of the chilli, she decides to put more chilli in, because at the end of the day, MasterChef is about hurting people. Meanwhile, having pivoted from crab burgers to sushi rolls, Mimi decides that sushi rolls suck and the right way to go is to put a bunch of stuff in a bowl.

With Josh and Mimi suffering agonies of doubt, Harry feeling pretty damn cocky, and Sav chuckling darkly over the sinister fulfilment of her master plan, time runs out. The judges prepare to taste with the trepidation natural to people who have deliberately asked a bunch of amateur cooks to serve them dishes made from the worst ingredients in the world.

Harry is first, with his “gnocchi époisses”. “That cheese, as soon as I smelt it, it gave me flashbacks to home,” he says, remembering with a smile how dreadful his home smells. All are agreed that Harry has done a great job making a dish that barely makes anyone want to vomit.

Second is Mimi, with her indecisively assembled bowl of various objects. Sofia loves the bitter gourd kimchi, but admits that as good as it is, it tastes terrible. As surprising as it is, it would seem that trying to make three different dishes in 75 minutes isn’t the best way to shine.

Third is Josh, who is deeply depressed but has nevertheless brought the judges a steak with some bits of bread sticking out of the top, with onion puree and cream cheese. “I don’t want to go home on something I’m not happy with,” he says, but why would you be happy with something that you went home on? Josh speaks in riddles. Jean-Christophe thinks the dish is great, but Poh and Andy think it’s basic, and isn’t it better to have something complex that tastes bad than something basic that tastes good? Actual human beings would say no, but
these are MasterChef judges.

Fourth is Sav and her prawn consommé with deadly chilli. It makes Jean-Christophe cough and beg for mercy. Everyone laughs at the wacky Frenchman. He declares himself blessed to have had the opportunity to be assaulted by Sav’s cooking. Everyone loves Sav’s violent attack.

Judgment must now be passed. Sav is declared dish of the day, having injured the judges like never before. The two in danger are Josh and Mimi. As Josh’s sense of doom rises to a crescendo, the judges pull a surprise twist, declaring Mimi’s failed buns the deciding factor. Josh survives, and Mimi walks out of the kitchen to an almost total absence of emotion from everyone.

Tune in tomorrow, when the amateurs are asked to cook with things that taste nice.